peanutmom.com

I’ve been a member at Next Level Extreme Fitness for two years now. I’ve learned a few things about how to get my ass to the gym at 5:00am five days a week

When I think about the home I grew up in, everything is forgettable except that door. When it comes to preserving your kids’ height for posterity, you can use a piece of trim or some other permanent piece of your home, or you can build a wall-mounted wooden ruler height chart which can travel with you no matter where you live. My trim was 3.5 inches tall; I added 2.5 inches and hung the ruler so the bottom measurement was 6″, or six inches off the ground. My friend Rachel’s trim was 6″ tall, so I created her ruler to hang 4″ above the trim, or 10″ off the ground.

The first night Peanut wore the Thumbusters, I snuck into her room after she fell asleep and found her like this: Thumb in mouth. She put the TGuards on without complaint, but asked that we not put the dots of Yucky Stuff on after she was asleep (presumably because she planned to suck her thumb when we weren’t around during the day). By night 26 we didn’t even need to use the locking bracelets anymore, because she didn’t try to take off the TGuards at night. The TGuard instruction booklet mentioned 30 days, and although we were easily at day 50 by that point, I didn’t think we were going to be doing the TGuards for six whole months.

Because of how my gym’s classes are structured, meeting new people happens whether you like it or not. The gym has a Facebook group that’s just for members. It’s nice to have a space where I can ask questions or lament my sore muscles with a group of people who get it. It’s a misnomer to say that ‘my life has changed so much.’ It’s not my life so much.