Ha! Maggie is singing Electric Light Orchestra’s “Oh Oh It’s Magic” while she cooks. I think that song is on one of the latest F00s (if you don’t know what our F00 CDs are, check Colin’s website on the topic here).  Maggie is a singer, no doubt about it.  She composes songs whenever and where ever she is, and about whatever she wants.  And she likes to ask us to sing along, and gets upset if we don’t sing the right lyrics (even when she’s making them up as we go along).  Oh, to be two and have everyone tolerate your whims!  Now Degen’s in on the singing action, debating with Maggie about whether “Row Row Row Your Boat” or “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” is the song to sing at the moment, as they drop the red cord of my previous post down the back of the couch in true preschooler fishing style.

I like having time alone when I exercise.  I try to work out early in the morning, sometimes before even Colin gets up, and almost always before anyone else in our apartment complex is outside.  Walking the three minutes to our gym outside in the fresh air before dawn refreshes my soul.  I love sunrise–I’d forgotten how much.  And since it’s been about three years since I’ve even had the bathroom to myself on a regular basis, having a half-hour or more legitimately to myself gives me an emotional boost. I feel like God and I are the only ones awake and I find I can pray with more gratitude and focus.

Exercise is helping me lose weight!  I’ve lost 5 1/2 pounds and one fat percentage point since I started.

I have time to listen to music.  Right now it’s not great music, academically speaking, but I’m enjoying it and I’m sure I’ll discover more as I go along and get bored with the baby stuff.

I feel happy more of the day.  I find I don’t have to work so hard to be happy.  I don’t have to try so hard to be motivated to pick up the house because I’ve already done something good and feel great about it.  I don’t want to sit on the couch and watch TV so much of the time.

I have a reason to get up in the morning besides someone crying at me.  So much of the last couple of years I’ve woken up to crying babies, and it’s trained me to almost dread waking up.  Now I have an appointment with myself to do something for myself that makes me feel good.  I admit that I still defiantly stay in bed after the alarm rings, but I think that may gradually go away on its own.

I like to have a quantitative measure of what I’m doing.  Changing diapers and making dinner and folding laundry could be quantified, so maybe I should do it with those too.  But with a treadmill it calculates all the numbers for you and you can see as you work just how much work you’ve done and compare it to yesterday.  I like lifting weights, too, because I count as I lift and each time I finish a set it’s like I’ve made it to a goal.  I almost like weights better than cardio because I get to the “I successfully finished something!” point more often.

As of today, I’ve exercised eight days in a row (excluding Sundays) for 30 minutes or more each time. I don’t think I’ve done that even once in my whole life before now. Yay Bethany! Also, because it’s Saturday and I managed to do each and every one of my health goals every single day this week I got to go buy myself a bouquet of flowers! Colin and the kids went with me to buy them before General Conference this morning.

I ended up choosing three little bunches of yellow daffodils from the florist’s refrigerated room of beautiful blooms. I was expecting to go to a grocery store or Walmart to pick up a bunch, but Colin surprised me by taking me to a real florist shop with lots of variety to choose from and friendly, knowledgeable sales people. It was definitely more romantic and rewarding that way. Thanks Colin! Degen held the flowers in his lap almost the entire way home (he wanted to smell them) and wanted to help me put them in a vase.

As a bonus to my great feeling of accomplishment and my lovely motivating reward, I LOST FIVE POUNDS this week! Isn’t that awesome? Plus, I’ve felt quite healthy and generally positive about life. And exercising has been really fun and a good break for me with legitimate alone time. I’ve borrowed Colin’s iPod each time I head for the gym and listened to my tween Mega Movie Mix CD that Colin bought for me a couple of years ago.
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It’s cheesy and I would hate to admit it’s what I listen to in front of a sophisticated audience, but it’s clean and a bunch of it has a good beat that’s perfect for exercise. I listen to other songs, too, but that’s my current default. Watch out FOO8!

Today I lifted weights on the crazy, huge machine that has about 10 different kinds of weights to lift. It looks like a demented black-and-white metal octopus. I never know quite what to do with weights, but since I’m almost always alone in the gym I figured I couldn’t embarrass myself too badly by trying. Ironically, just as I was finishing my attempt at lifting and heading over to the treadmill, someone came into the gym! It was a big, muscular man who must have been a football player when he was younger. I told him that he was welcome to change the TVs to something other than Food Network (which he immediately did with a little chuckle). He then proceeded to lift with great confidence and apparently no effort about 2 million times more weight than I did (yes, I exaggerate…a little) about 100 more reps than I did. This didn’t intimidate me, however, because I’m a beginner AND it gave me a chance to watch him covertly in the mirror so I could find out how the machine was supposed to be used. “Oh! That goes behind your shoulders!” was typical of my internal responses. So, thanks to the big man in the gym who didn’t know he was teaching me how to use the weights machine.

I think my favorite is the "Music Measles" idea that I may try this week.  You put red stickers on the music leader and the presidency, then tell the kids you have the "music measles" and that it's very contagious.  Then you start singing the songs and as you see kids sing you take stickers off the adults and put them on the kids and at the end you see who got the most measles.

There are also ideas on the site for Nursery music and for other organizations in the Church.