Reasons and more reasons

River playing with math manipulatives- starting young!

I haven't been feeling like writing lately. Partly because of the headaches, partly because I'm not making lots of progress on projects, partly because I'm not exercising regularly, partly because of the baby blues, partly because of lack of sleep, the reasons keep piling up.

So let's talk about the reasons I listed above.

Headaches
There's one eye clinic in town that takes Tricare and the soonest I could get in was Thursday. My eyes haven't changed as much as I thought, though both eyes have gotten worse. The eye doctor thought perhaps post-pregnancy hormones could be to blame for the headaches. I've ordered new glasses, so we'll have to see if they make a difference. In the meantime I'm compensating by not spending as much time reading, whether it's on the computer or on paper.

Projects
I have made some progress, but not enough to write about yet. I'm still being slowed down by Ocean. He's getting better about continuing to sleep if I set him down, but he still prefers to be held as much as possible. He's two months old now and I know his snuggly stage won't last too much longer, so I'm enjoying it while I can and fitting in projects here and there.

Exercise
Saturday evening I finally got the treadmill completely unearthed. I spent last week moving things around and switching out the bed. I need to touch up some paint and hang some pictures, and then the room will finally be done. I'll post some progress pictures this week. Since the treadmill is accessible again my goal is to spend some time on it at least three times this week.

Our schedule on Saturday didn't allow me to run outside like I have the last couple Saturdays, and I missed it. This Saturday I'll be running a 5k race, so I'll be back outside again. The weather is finally cooling off and fall is in the air, so this is a great time to be running outside :)

Baby Blues
I don't remember having the baby blues after the Sunshine or River, but this time around I've noticed some weepiness on my part. I had a hard time after my second miscarriage and self-medicating with chocolate wasn't enough so I spent some time meeting with a therapist and working through my issues (mostly all the hangups I had around our fertility struggles). Doing so has made me a bit more aware of my mental state, so the weepiness didn't catch me completely off guard.

I've been diffusing an essential oil blend every night and it's helped me feel more balanced. Late one evening I found myself feeling a tiny bit weepy and I realized I hadn't started the diffuser yet. Generally I let it run for 8 hours and as long as I keep the start times about 24 hours apart I don't have any problems. There's new rules from the FDA about essential oil claims, so I won't mention the name of the blend, but it contains spruce, ho wood, frankincense, blue tansy, and blue chamomile.  I'm not saying this will help everyone, but it has helped me.

Sleep
I'm working on convincing Ocean that bed time really needs to come before midnight, but only with mixed success. One night he went to sleep at 11:30, but the next night he didn't go to sleep until midnight. One step forward, two steps back. It's not going to be an immediate thing, but working on it now means I should be able to start getting to bed earlier sooner, rather than later. An earlier bedtime for me means I can wake up earlier and hit the treadmill before the kiddos wake up.