EF#13: Moms, This is How We Do It!

Well, okay, sport. It is something that I really love doing but needs a lot of discipline (not time). Since I am basically an individual lady, I prefer to do sport alone. Thanks to Youtube and cable TV that provide me a lot of exercise videos, from pilates to high impact aerobic.

Usually, I managed to exercise at least once every two days. Things changed when my son turned one year old and started to walk. As he grows older, he sleeps less and wakes up earlier. Most of the time, when I am in the middle of doing aerobic, he wakes up. Lucky me if he just sits nearby and watches me in front of the television. The case is different if he’s thirsty and I should breastfeed him (and my husband is still asleep). I have no choice other than stopping my exercise.

At first, I was so disturbed by not having enough time to exercise. Then, I read in a parenting article that new moms shouldn’t have any high expectations or become too perfectionist on something, or it will let them down. So, what I’m trying to do after that is to willingly accept that my exercise has to end, and try to find a more perfect time to do it.

Now, I exercise once a week, or twice a week if I’m lucky. As a replacement, I am doing these things to keep my body moves:

1.      

Walk to the market in the morning

The air is still fresh, the distance is not that far. When my son goes with me, I push his bicycle. It means that I use my arms more, yeayy..!

Walk in the afternoon with my son

Around 4 pm, he likes to go outside and watch older kids play around. If he’s getting bored, he will walk wherever he wants and I follow him. More calories are burned when: he wants me to carry him all the way home, or he wants to ride odong-odong which has a farther route from home.

Use my son as a dumbbell when we play together

Usually, I put him on my legs while I am lying down, then I move my legs up and down. Other variation is when I carry him on my back. Oh ya, you don’t have to play together to keep your arms move. Since my son is still 21 months, I carry him a lot when he wants to see the gecko closer. I also carry him on his armpits across the room when he pees on the floor and I need to clean him in the bathroom. Hmmm, it’s quite an exercise if it’s done more than 5 times a day :D

Multitask household chores

I like to do some chores at once. For example, while waiting for the washing machine to stop, I am also cooking in the kitchen. So, when the machine stops spinning, I leave the kitchen for a while to unload the laundry and put in other dirty clothes, and then I go back to the kitchen. The route kitchen-washing area-kitchen will expand to front yard if I need to empty some buckets that are full of rain water. This is one of my green lifestyle: using rain water to water my garden, although it means I have to carry heavy buckets for several times. *rubbingpalmsandarms*

 

Link from here

Tidy up my son’s toys with the most complicated way I could

I haven’t really tried to teach my son to clean up his toys since he sleeps whenever he wants (before I ask him to clean up, he’s getting sleepy already and I have to breastfeed him ASAP). So, at the end of the day, the house was messy from the back to the front. Instead of bringing the toy box with me –which is way easier- I will take the toy one by one and bring them to the box. 

Since I only have two hands and they can’t carry all at once, I need to go back and forth. I do it really fast so my heart can beat faster since I include some movements like squatting, standing, bowing, nungging (a.k.a put your head lower than your knee when you try to reach pencils under a shelf or a sofa). If there’s a toy 2 meters away from the box, I will try to reach it without walking. How? I stand with legs open wider than my shoulder, or reach out my arm in crawling position.  Stretch, baby, stretch!

Oh my, explain all in writing made me tired already. It’s 1 am already. If I want to do exercise from cable TV tomorrow morning at 5 or 6, I have to sleep now (and hope that my son will wake up after I finish). Aamiin.