Living La Lupe

Authentic Moment #7: My Police Escort

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Running for the trainAround this time of the year I always remember all of my ridiculous travel stories flying home from college for the Christmas break. My very first time coming home for Christmas, I had no idea what the heck I was doing. I overpacked like crazy. I had a huge rolling luggage, a large duffle bag, my backpack, and a small carry-on bag. Of course this is in addition to the sweater, winter coat, scarf, hat, and mittens I was wearing because it was snowing pretty hard when I left my dorm.

The plan was to catch the shuttle that picked up at the Bookstore and ride it all the way to Midway Airport in Chicago. My dorm was on the complete opposite end of campus from the shuttle pickup. And with all the luggage it was definitely about a 30 minute walk especially in the snow. As usual, I was running late. Like very late. Like the shuttle is leaving in 15 minutes and I’m still throwing things in a bag late. I somehow made it down three flights of stairs with all that luggage and out the door. I’m hoofing it across campus as quick as I can which is still pretty slow. The luggage was so ridiculously heavy.

I was basically running as fast as I could down God Quad. I looked at my watch. The shuttle should be leaving at that very second. I kept running hoping that it was running late. I got to Main Circle which is still a pretty good distance from where I needed to be and I gave up. I couldn’t run anymore. I was exhausted from everything weighing me down. Literally.

At that moment, an angel appeared. An NDSP officer was parked at Main Circle for whatever reason. He saw me, jumped out of his SUV, grabbed all my luggage and threw it into the back and told me to jump in. He tore down the road basically flooring it the whole way as I could see the shuttle pulling out of the parking lot. Ugh, I thought, what am I going to do? I just missed the shuttle.

The officer laid on the gas even more and screeched to a halt as he cut off the shuttle which was now halfway into the main road. He got all my luggage out and stood at the shuttle doors until the driver opened the doors, loaded my luggage, and sold me a ticket. Then he drove away without even letting me say thank you.

I could feel the glares boring into my skull as I shuffled to my seat exhausted and out of breath.

Thank you, NDSP officer. Thanks for helping a so-bad-at-time-management, freshman girl get home for Christmas.

(I do wish I could say that was my only misadventure due to me being late. It soo was not.)

 

Inner Dialogue About Exercising

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workoutAfter four pregnancies and ending with twins, baby weight is a real thing. In my head I can bound up my stairs two at a time but when I try, my legs laugh at me. Or if I am chasing Olivia, she can actually outrun me because my body just won’t move quickly enough. It would be nice to be more fit. To be able to hop up on a curb just using leg muscle and not have to throw all my weight so momentum carries me.

After Teresa, I decided to really get serious about losing some weight. I got a personal trainer, started going to cardio classes, started a 10K training program and started working out on my own at home. This was my inner dialogue one night when I didn’t want to do anything:

“Damn. I missed the Piloxing class I wanted to go to tonight. Ugh. I just wanted someone to make me work hard, now I have to make myself work hard.

It’s the thought that counts. I wanted to work out but I guess not.

No, I have to work out. I skipped it yesterday. I can’t skip two days in a row.

Nah. I don’t want to. I already worked out one day this week. That’s better than the week before. Baby steps. You can’t go from zero to hero in a week.

Just get some exercise clothes on. Just do that.

Eh.

Ok, just get up off the sofa and start walking up the stairs, then you can decide.

The workout clothes I like isn’t clean. This is a sign. I shouldn’t work out.

Just put on some clothes.

Ok, I’ll just lift weights for 15 minutes. I don’t really need to get dressed for that.

Vanessa, just get dressed!

Ok, fine. *gets dressed*

Crap, isn’t it cold outside? I’m wearing shorts and a short-sleeve top. I should change.

I don’t want to change. I just won’t workout.

Vanessa, just get downstairs!

Ok, I’ll just do some planks or something.

No, get out the door. Run.

It’s 50 degrees out! I’m not going to run in these clothes.

Just get out the door!

Ok, just around the block.

Shit, it’s cold. Run faster. Get this over with faster.

Ok, this feels good, just to the pool and back.

*runs a mile* Well, my heart rate is up, I should do something else to keep burning the calories. I’ll just work arms.

*arms done* Ok, I’ll workout just until 8:15 and then I’ll stop.

*got some core exercises in and started legs* Well, I’m almost done with the whole workout, I might as well keep going. But I’ll definitely stop at 8:30.”

And then I finished a whole workout.

I’m feeling pretty darn proud of myself even if my inner dialogue was tortured and pathetic throughout the whole night. Thank you, War of Art. The whole time I kept thinking. This is resistance. This is resistance. This is resistance. I have to fight it.

It helps for me to remember back then, even when I was more fit, even when I weighed less, even when I had developed a workout routine I loved, it was still really hard to make myself workout. I still had to work past my tiredness and my desire to remain sedentary. I still had to ignore everything in my mind telling me I shouldn’t: too cold, too hot, too late, I’m too full, I’m too tired, my knees don’t feel the best, my stomach kinda hurts, it’s been a hard day. My excuses never go away, I just have to push past them.

[Also, please excuse that I thought running in 50 degree weather was too cold. Remember, we’re Texans.]

Feeling Numb

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December 9th, was the one year anniversary of the twins getting out of the NICU. Ever since having the twins I’ve been jotting down my thoughts here and there. They weren’t always coherent but they were me trying to figure out life and everything we were going through. The NICU was hard. Even if our kids were only “feeders/growers” it took me a really long time to wrap my head around the experience. And, honestly, I’m still not quite sure I’m there. Even months after we were out of there, that feeling I had in the NICU, that despair, that numbness, I just couldn’t shake it. But I want to start wading back into those memories and see if I can make some sense of them.

Here is something I wrote back in May:

It’s strange. I haven’t had a lot of breakdowns like I usually do after having a baby. It’s not bec4011925024_b84b109b43_oause I am more put together or because I’ve got the hang of this. It’s that when you’re in crisis mode, you learn to stuff your feelings back down your throat and keep them there. I think I’m still in crisis mode. I’ve always been good at it. I’ve always been able to put on my brave face and get through hard things. But in actuality, I feel very small and scared and completely wrong for the job.

Since the babies have been born, I haven’t allowed myself a space to feel much of anything. Today I started watching “Call the Midwife” and I started just bawling during it. It is easier to cry about someone else’s pain or someone else’s problem than allow yourself to deal with your own. I constantly feel so overwhelmed and so much a mess that I have been on the verge of collapse or meltdown. And once or twice it would have been just fine. I was alone, the babies were asleep. I finally had time to freak out, to cry, to let it out. And I couldn’t. I couldn’t cry. La Lupe calls it desahogandose. Why? How weird. You forget how to feel.

5 Ways to Cope With Sleep Deprivation Without Caffeine

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3075723695_81a4eded57_bFirst off, I just want to make clear my expertise on the subject. I’ll just bullet point my sleep deprivation résumé:

  • In college, homework never started before 1 am
  • Papers never started getting written before 2 am
  • Movie nights with roomies always to precedent to any schoolwork
  • Coffee makes me sick and I’ve tried many a time to make myself get used to it (ask my roomie who used to work at Starbucks).
  • My first year of teaching, getting married, and getting pregnant all happened the same year.
  • Olivia never ever slept. Ever. Never. Ever. For a solid year I took the 1-3am shift of rocking her and Kraft 3-5am.
  • Then Lina came 18 months later.
  • Then Teresa 18 months after that.
  • Then the twins 25 months after that.

You get it, I never sleep. Sometimes it’s my own fault because I just want to relish the quiet and the still for every second I can, but, mostly it’s because of the crazy life we’ve made for ourselves (which we love but it still makes us crazy). And I just can’t drink coffee. I don’t really drink soda. And, while I started drinking tea about a year ago, I usually mistakenly buy decaf tea because I hate myself and am too sleep deprived to read the dumb box when I pick it up. (Also, funny fact, I just calculated that I have been breastfeeding 40% of the last 7 years and caffeine always really negatively affected my milk production.) So while I would gladly chug any liquid that helps me stay awake, my body is not having it.

I hope my sleep CV is satisfactory to you. Here are some things I’ve learned in the last 13 years of not sleeping to help me not hate life.

1. I hate to sound like, well, what I’m about to sound like but here goes: If you decide to be alert and awake then it happens. You can give in to the grumpy and exhausted (which I do often) but you can decide to not feel like that most times. Remember this is just a season. Sleep will come again one day. Even if it seems forever off. Act like you want to feel and it usually follows.

Of course, sometimes you can’t fight it like this kid in the video. We’ve all been there. But it’s probably not all the time.

2. Don’t eat a lot of sugar. I know this seems counterintuitive because sugar is supposed to help your energy but I found that it doesn’t for me. During Lent this year we gave up sugar as a family. I have never felt so rested. I do notice when I drink a soda or eat a couple of cookies or something my body feels like it is dragging. Self-control around sweets is really hard for me so I tend to just keep them out of the house. I don’t buy sweets at the store or sodas. If I want dessert, I make myself bake it.

3. Eat well. This goes along with the sugar thing. When I get behind on meal planning and we are eating a lot of fast food, my body feels sluggish and unresponsive. More so than usual. If I don’t change my sleeping habits but I eat better, I feel like I’m sleeping better.

4. Actually sleep when you can. I’m awful at this. No matter how sleepy I am, it is so hard for me to go to sleep. I always want to check one more thing off my to-do list, or watch one more episode on Netflix, or read one more chapter. Stop it. Just go to sleep. Now. Go now.

5. I think the #1 most important thing is to manage your sleep expectations. There have been too many times that I have crawled into bed, cocooned myself in a blanket, and reached out to sleep as if it were my dying wish only to hear the door creaking open because someone just wet the bed or to hear a baby whimpering through the baby monitor. Nothing on God’s green earth will make me more mad than this very moment.

I feel like it’s similar to this commercial:

“Deep couch sitting” is telling your body that you are going to get sleep right now this very second. Don’t do that. I figured out that I have to trick myself. Really. When I go to sleep, I don’t tell myself it is to sleep. I just tell myself that I’m going to lie down and rest for a little while. If I get to sleep, fan-frickin’-tastic. Truly. The stars have aligned and the angels have sung. If not, I can’t get that mad because I was only going to rest for a bit anyway. This was a game changer for me. I still get really mad from time to time when I’m hoping to catch a few zzzs during the twins’ naptime and one of them just won’t go to sleep but, for the most part, it helps.

DISCLAIMER: This is not actually medical advice. I know people that have insomnia and other sleep disorders and this will not at all help any of that. This is just my experience and what has worked for me. You could just ignore it all. That’s cool. Or even better, just go pour yourself another cup of coffee. 🙂

 

 

 

 

Authentic Moment #6: My Dad’s Reaction

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Let me set the scene.disney

My parents L-O-V-E Disneyland. It’s actually pretty cute. They went there on their honeymoon. They took me there every year between the ages of 3-12. We even all went when I was pregnant with Olivia (our first kid) because my dad had won a free trip for four.

They’ve been dying to take our girls to Disneyland basically since Olivia was old enough to walk. But I’ve always said that we can’t go until no one needs a nap. Which is roughly when the youngest of our kids is around 4 or 5 years old.

This was my dad’s reaction when we told my parents we were pregnant for the 4th time:

We’re just going to go to Disneyland. You just keep having babies. We’re never going to get to take the girls.

Pure gold. 🙂

My Kids Make Me Brave

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I’m really into Zumba. I love it. Give me a good beat and some synchronized dancing and I’m there. It’s like going to a club without all the parts that suck about a club – creepy guys, being out late, having to dress up.

This is mostly what I look like at Zumba:

and this is about how cool I think I look:

But I love Zumba regardless and go to classes at the Y as often as I can.

It was just any ole’ regular day and I was in class when the teacher mentioned that anyone who wanted to participate in a big group of Zumba instructors and students dancing during the half-time of a UT basketball game could sign-up with her. My immediate response (in my head) was that I’d rather Zumba across hot coals than dance in front of hundreds of people.

But then I thought about our girls. Kids need to see their mom do non-mommy things sometimes. Something that is just for herself. And if it’s athletic, even better. I thought about how it’s important for them to see me doing things that require me to be brave. That make me uncomfortable. Really the combination of these things is super rare. When else would an opportunity like this come along again?

And so, on Friday night, I, along with my wonderful instructor and about a hundred other Zumba-lovers, ran out onto the UT basketball court and performed. It wasn’t perfect but, man, was it fun. And everyone was so excited and pumped up. Of course the video cut out about halfway through but you get the gist (I’m in the third row, in the middle):

When Kraft and I lead marriage prep, one of my favorite questions to ask our speakers is how does having kids strengthen them. Well, this is my answer. My kids make me brave. In small things like this Zumba thing, but in bigger things, too. Like actually dragging myself out of the house to attend a protest with my kids so they see it is important to stand up for the things we believe in. Or talking to the guy asking for money on the corner so that they see that we should all treat each other with dignity and love. Or advocating for my kids at school or at the doctor’s office so that they see we sometimes have to have uncomfortable discussions. I would have felt like this even if I had never had kids, but I would probably not have been spurred to action as much as I am now.

Kids grow up too quick to not make every moment possible a teachable one. Being a parent means you have decision overload. Too many decisions have to be made to not be intentional about how you are letting these decisions shape you as a person and shape the culture of your family. I screw up pretty regularly. I freak out and yell and scream and get annoyed and say the wrong thing and am too hard on my kids and expect too much. But I want them to have as many memories as possible of me doing the right thing as often as I can muster (which usually isn’t much but I try). Don’t get me wrong, I think them seeing me mess up and apologize can be just as instructive as me doing the right thing. But when I am put together enough to make a good choice and show them I can be brave in totally new and unexpected ways, well, hot damn.

The best part of the whole video is Teresa yelling “MAMA!” at the beginning.