What Went On in July

It’s already time for another monthly recap of what went on in my life, on the blog, with working out and with the two little monkeys in my world! Here’s what went on in July:

I worked out with celebrity trainer Harley Pasternak…and I made it through! New Balance hosted this fun event to celebrate the launch of their new shoes Vazee. It was held at the Trump Hotel in SoHo and just look at the view:

Before we began, one of the New Balance reps showed us their TV ad (the first they’ve ever done, which surprised me) as well as some in-house motivational video behind the concept. You know how you can watch something and just get so excited and revved up to work your butt off? Like you think, if I started running now, I really think I’d just go and go for miles on end? Yeah, well that lasted for about 4 minutes of the workout, when I realized exactly how out of shape I really was.

Now, I’m not proud of this, but I may have announced way more often than was necessary that I was 10 weeks postpartum at the time. Even I cringed a little as I heard the words coming out of my mouth for the fourth or fifth time. It’s not that I wanted Harley or our TRX instructor Grace to go easy on me – I think I just wanted to have an ‘excuse’ for myself if I found it too difficult. And there were parts of the workout where I really struggled. Pike to plank on a TRX? Holy crap that sucks. I have no idea what I looked like doing it (thankfully!!) but it felt like my butt was only raising about an inch in the air before coming back to a poor excuse for a plank.

Anyway, it was a lot of fun, Harley Pasternak is knowledgable, nice but tough and a motivating trainer and New Balance was kind enough to let us all keep a pair of their Vazee shoes. I love mine (PINK!) but I was so, so blown away when they reached out a couple of days later to see if Roman would like a pair of his own kid’s version of the Vazee. He was beside himself when his “special bloggy package just for me!” arrived.

I was still sore a couple of days later when we went away for July 4th weekend. Now, we hadn’t planned to go anywhere over the summer, not even for a weekend. My maternity leave is totally unpaid (since I work for myself) and we knew money would be tight. So we were ecstatic when our cousins who live up near New Paltz drove all the way to Brooklyn to pick us up and take us to their place for a relaxing long weekend. No travel worries or costs, just lots of hanging out, pool days, barbecues and spending time with family and friends. Perfection. 🙂

Our cousin is a canine cop, so Roman is beside himself with joy that he gets to sit in a police car whenever he likes. He got to use the lights and sirens and the loudspeaker (which was super cute: “Attention Daddy! I love you! Stop being a naughty naughty! Over!”) and honestly would have spent every waking moment in it if he could convince someone to be in there with him.

I’m also so proud of how brave Roman was with the dogs. I mean, we have cats. They are 11 pounds each. They are afraid of Roman. Now, he LOVES Lucy, their rescue pit bull, but Roman has been terrified of the two police dogs (one is retired, one is our cousin’s partner) since he’s been little. This visit? Hugs and kisses were the norm by the end of our trip.

The Workouts

I already runfessed to you guys about my lack of running over July. Weights, swimming, yoga have been the workout du jour most days of the week. I’m loving feeling sore after strength training again – it’s been a while, since I was lifting pretty light toward the end of pregnancy.

I also put together a few workouts for you guys this month: in case you missed them, check out this postpartum workout you can do at home, or a stroller workout (it’s a fun one!), or this stretch routine to do after running (or weights, or whatever your workout love may be).

So speaking of workouts, I’m actually in the middle of putting together an e-book. I’ve had the idea for a while, but it’s one of those things I’ve just kept putting off. If you’re not a blogger, you may not realize how much behind the scenes work goes into the process of blogging. All the blog maintenance, planning, scheduling and actual writing is time-consuming, so it’s easy to keep putting big projects on the back burner.

I posted this to Instagram to gauge interest in either a how-to strength training guide (so you can plan your own workouts in the gym or even at-home), or a training plan for running a half marathon:

The response was overwhelmingly in favor of the strength training guide (in actual fact, every single vote was for strength training!). Luckily, that’s the concept I’d already planned out, so in my spare time recently (ha!) I’ve been working on that.

Random Fun Stuff

Fran and I have been watching True Detective and Ray Donovan on TV. We watched the first season of True Detective and loved it, so I was excited for this season. I will say, Vince Vaughn is amazing in it – he is a much better actor than I realized before seeing him in this role. Fran is loving this season, but I’m finding it hard to get invested in it (which is kind of a moot point now because there’s only one episode left).

It’s just so confusing! Every week there’s mention of a character or we see someone and I have to say to Fran, “Wait, who’s that? I don’t get it, what is going on?” It could be that I’m distracted by listening to see if Colin Farrell’s accent can be detected even slightly, or wondering if I could pull off Rachel McAdams’ hairstyle, but I am lost at sea.

How funny is this? My friend Melissa posted this Brooklyn comedian’s poster on her Instagram and Colin Farrell liked it!

Ray Donovan, on the other hand, is as great as ever. It’s well written; fast paced without being action packed; wry and raw. I also really enjoy saying “Let’s watch Ray Dawn-Or-Van!” in his onscreen wife’s Boston accent.

He’s Already Three

Months, that is. Tanner is chunking up spectacularly. Hobbies include smiling, drinking boobie milk, making dolphin noises, yoga with mama, having stories read to him, watching his crazy big brother rampage around, giggling and napping.

Roman is still a little threenager, but we have a lot of fun together. At any moment, I can be called upon to play at being: a police officer, fire fighter, storm trooper (don’t worry, we haven’t let him watch Star Wars), construction worker, scuba diver, super secret spy, an agent on a mission, a doggy, or a naughty naughty bad guy.

Posts You May Have Missed This Month

So this month I had some fun and compared all the ways (I came up with 15 of them) that running a marathon is just like giving birth.

I also shared more about what life is like as a mama of two after three months.

You are PERFECT. This is why I think it’s stopping you from working out.

My post on whether you could be cheating at running went viral! (No, it didn’t really, but it was definitely my most popular post this month). If you missed it, check it out and see if you’re guilty.

Here’s what I love so much about blogging (plus some link love for my friends).

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What did you get up to in July?

What are you watching on TV?

Any new workout obsessions?