Sicknesses

No, nobody is sick in my house...at least right now.  I have a friend who thinks that her kid's constant sicknesses are caused by daycare.  On one hand I agree a little bit, but on the other hand I totally disagree (does that make sense?).  Yes, illnesses can be spread at daycare, but they can spread elsewhere instead.  I have several stay at home mommy friends whose kids are constantly sick.  I also have friends who work full time whose kids are constantly sick.  But on the reverse side, I have both working mom and stay at home mom friends whose kids are never sick.  I think the majority of it is just the kid.  Some kids are prone to ear infections, some are not.  Some kids have a better immune system than others.  My kids don't really get sick much (besides the occasional runny nose) and they go to daycare.  A close friend who stays at home has 2 kids who have had more ear infections than I can count.  I also think the term 'stay at home mom' is totally misused...because non of the moms that I know who stay at home are actually home all that much!  They are at Gymboree, the library, other mom's houses, play group, the ball pit at Chick-Fillet, the YMCA, the park, the pool, the zoo.  One friend is literally never at her house.  It makes me tired to think of how much she is out and about.  And most of the places I listed above aren't all that clean.  They aren't regulated like my daycare is regulated...my daycare sanitizes all the baby toys every night.  If your kid has runny poop and poops out of the diaper more than once, they send them home.  If they even see a hint of pink eye, they send them home.  They don't mess around.  Okay, enough of that.  I feel better.

So tomorrow I have a swim lesson.  Sounds weird right?  Well, for some reason I decided to sign up for a triathlon in September.  Actually, the reason I signed up was because I got so pumped up watching Ryan in the triathlon earlier this month that I decided I had to try one too!  I know how to 'swim', meaning I was a lifeguard in High School and College and I am very comfortable in the water...but swimming laps is a whole different story.  When I lived in New Zealand in 2004-2005, I decided I was going to try and swim.  Everybody there swam for exercise.  There was a YMCA a few blocks from where I was living and they had 3 pools!  So I bought a new (one piece) swimsuit and tried it.  I can't believe how frustrating it was.  People who weighed 3x more than me were lapping me.  I was out of breath by the time I swam 25 meters, and they were going back and forth like nobody's business.  Yet, I could lift a decent amount of weights and go hard on the elliptical for 45 minutes.  It didn't make sense.  So I quit.  I probably tried it for a couple of weeks.  Flash forward to now....last week actually.  I got in the water again at the gym....guess what?  SAME PROBLEM as 2004!  And I am in the best shape of my life right now.  I can go run 6 fairly quick miles with no problem, I can jump rope forever, I can do some serious plyometrics...you get the idea.  But I still can't swim!?  So I ask my husband, who has taken many a lesson.  He gives me a buoy to put between my legs, and tells me to swim without kicking.  He also gives me a few pointers on my stroke.  Then I try it.  WOW.  I can swim back and forth without getting too winded.  So I try without the buoy...and I immediately run out of breath.  I get home and google it, and sure enough, the kicking is what most people have trouble with.  If you try to swim distance and kick too much, it just makes your heart race because it uses up all your energy.  Distance swimmers barely kick.  So this is what I hope to learn at my lesson tomorrow!   Somewhat along those same lines, when I started running a few years back I realized that I was trying to run waaaaay too fast for my skill level, but I didn't realize it until I started monitoring my heartrate and my running pace.  I strapped on Ryan's GPS watch and found out I was literally sprinting.  How did I not realize that before?  No wonder I couldn't even run around the block without dying.  Breathing is really the key to a lot of things.  I have learned a lot about breathing in Yoga!  Enough rambling chatting for today...more later on my swim lesson!