Well I am back after an unexpected blogging break! I didn’t plan to stop blogging for the last month but I had some technology issues which I’ll talk about later. I thought I would pop in today for some catching up! It’s always hard for me to write a post after some time away from blogging so this may be all over the place. Let’s talk about workouts, technology issues, and what’s been going on in December around here!
Workouts
To be honest, workouts have felt “blah” lately. I can’t exactly pinpoint why but I will do my best to explain what I think is going on. I had intended to make this winter my “off-season” and not train for anything. My hope was to really focus on strength and injury prevention stuff. A few weeks ago I noticed my back was acting up a little bit so which was frustrating because I really hadn’t been running much at all. I think it was more likely due to my daily posture (including carrying around a 21 pound baby and all the cumulative hours of sitting hunched over breastfeeding).
I’ve made a few visits to the chiropractor but its really hard with my schedule. I’ve taken Grayson with me but he’s at a weird stage where he’s too big to be kept in an infant carseat (and we actually got him a convertible carseat recently) but isn’t walking so there’s nowhere for him to really go when I’m at appointments other than sit on the floor or in a huge jogging stroller. While I plan to continue to go there when I can I am really just trying to take care of things on my own as much as possible.
It’s not that it’s even painful or anything, it’s more just annoying if that makes sense. I feel like if I run too much I will end up actually injured, so I have backed off a lot. I’ve been focusing on my strength training and also adding in some more yoga which has felt great. Without running as much, I feel much less motivated in all areas of my life. I used to wake up, have coffee and do some work on my computer, and move on to my workout. Now I sit around assessing how my back feels each day and trying to decide what kind of workout I feel like doing.
Yesterday my upper back/neck got really tight on the left side. Usually its the right. So I’m not sure what was going on with that. I used heat, took a bath and did some yoga which seemed to help.
Cabin Fever
On top of all that, I’ve barely been outside at all over the past month. Grayson and I were both sick a few weeks ago so we weren’t getting out for walks. Then it was either really cold or raining for a few weeks. (or it seemed like on the random days that we had nice weather we had something else to do that day). We finally got outside for a little bit this weekend and it felt great!
Technology Issues
I mentioned this on Instagram, but I also started having technology issues a few weeks ago. There were moments when I thought I lost all of my documents. It started when my Mac notified me that I needed to do an update, but I didn’t have enough space. I had followed all the recommendations and all my documents were stored on the cloud.
Long story short, after several early morning and late evening chats with Apple support, we found that I had like 4 copies of my entire documents folder stored somewhere on my hard drive. The other thing taking up alot of space is shared albums. I don’t really understand why those take up hard drive space. I’m not sure if this is true but I think what they were trying to tell me is when you access files from your cloud they create a mirror copy on your hard drive which uses space. Seems like it defeats the purpose of the cloud in some ways.
Anyway, I got it sorted out and can now access my files again. Yay! But I fell behind on some of the things I wanted to get done this month including some blog posts I had planned to write. It’s still not back to 100%, like my pictures are really slow to load for some reason.
December Fun
Ok, enough complaining! Let’s talk about what’s been goin on this month. After coming back from Thanksgiving Grayson got his first cold. It lasted about 10 days, but was gone just in time for his birthday! He turned 1 on December 15th. We had our families over to celebrate on Saturday and I think Grayson had a lot of fun.
I baked him a smash cake which I think turned out pretty well. He hasn’t really had any sugar before I didn’t want to overload him with it when he would likely be eating huge amounts of cake. The recipe I followed just had some maple syrup in it and the frosting was make from plain yogurt which he actually loves. When we put the cake on his tray he just kind of looked at us like “is this really all for me?”
He got some fun gifts but we only opened a few of them for now. It’s always going to be hard having his birthday 10 days before Christmas. Hopefully we can just take out a few new toys at a time so he continues to have new things to play with for a few months.
Next up: Christmas! We will be doing church and dinner with my parents on Christmas Eve, then having them over again on Christmas day. On the 26th we will fly to Michigan to celebrate with Rob’s family. Each time we fly it gets a little tricker so I’m glad its a pretty short flight!
Sorry for the long post, but I had a lot of catching up to do! I hope you all enjoy the holidays and get to relax and spend some time with family and friends!
Do you feel less motivated in general when you aren’t running/training for something?
Has anyone else had similar Mac issues?
How will you be celebrating the holidays?
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I’m glad you’re back! Technology issues can be so frustrating! My work anti-virus software hates my blog, so I have to read/comment from my phone, and I suck at typing with my fat fingers. 😉
Ugh on the back issues. I struggled a while ago and it was definitely my poor work/computer posture to blame. Massage helped but that’s even harder to do with a toddler! He is so cute and the cake sounds perfect! Merry Christmas!
I really hate typing more than a few words on my phone! Even commenting on Instagram I find annoying because there are always weird autocorrect things that happen. Merry Christmas to you and your family!
Happy Birthday to Grayson! Looks like you all had fun. With my birthday a week before Christmas and my brother’s on Christmas, our family is quite familiar with the “dual” celebrations and all the combo gifts. Haha!
Sorry about the tech issues. I can’t stand when problems like those crop up. Merry Christmas!
It’s so hard having a birthday this time of year! Rob’s sisters’s birthday is 12/26 and my niece is 1/9 so we have a lot going on over the course of a few weeks!
Happy Birthday to Grayson! He looks like he had fun on his birthday party. Bummer about the Mac issues. I’ve never had problems with it. I love mine a lot and will be buying a new phone so my sister can use the one I have. I was looking through my emails and saw that I bought mine 4 years ago. Have a safe and fun trip in Michigan.
I’ve had my Mac for 5 years so I guess at this point its expected to have some issues. I just hope I can make it last a few more years! Im not ready to invest the money for a new one.
Awww, the picture of Grayson and the cake is so cute! I hope you get to the bottom of those back issues soon. Moms can’t be down! Plus we need our endorphins!
I’m having Mac issues as we speak. I need to see what’s going on with it because it’s running really slowly,
Have a wonderful Christmas!
I really didnt want to go to the Apple store this time of year so I did the chat support thing and it was actually really helpful. At one point I allowed them to share my screen so they could guide me in how to see what files were taking up the most space. Much better than dealing with crowds and a wait to get it looked at in person!
Ugh – those technology issues sound really brutal. It’s amazing how great technology can be, but also how annoying it can be as well!
Love all the photos from Grayson’s birthday! 🙂
So true! I mean its amazing that theres such a thing as the cloud to store everything on, but its frustrating when it causes more problems than its worth!
Welcome back! I had some issues with my MacBook just before Thanksgiving. It happened while we were driving to my mom’s house so we stopped and my husband took a look at it. It was telling me that I was out of storage, but when he started digging, it had plenty. We think it was a cloud issue with mine as well.
Happy belated birthday to Grayson! Cutting the sugar on his smash cake sounds like a smart move and probably something I wouldn’t have thought of – smash cakes weren’t yet a thing when my sons turned one.
I hope your back starts feeling better quickly!
That sounds a lot like what was happening with my Mac!
We watched both our nieces eat a ton of sugar for the first time on their 1st birthdays and they were up all night. He will have plenty of time to enjoy it as he gets older!
Glad to see you back with us, Lisa! Technology issues…..UGH! I am such a tech idiot, that when/if something isn’t “working” like it should, I almost go into a panic attack because I know I’ll have no clue how to resolve it. I’m currently having issues with old blog posts and the pics not showing up….I probably just need to go back and reload (?) them, but who has the time? I saw Grayson’s favorite book is Goodnight Moon…all three of my kids LOVED that book, too 🙂
Some of my much older posts have that issue and I have no idea why. Like you I definitely don’t have time to go fix them one by one!
We read Goodnight Moon to him every night!
He sure is a cutie! Having a toddler is so different than having a baby. You seriously have to have eyes on them every second. Glad you figured out your blog stuff. Nice to have you back joining us!
Its pretty exhausting, but also really fun!
Welcome back! Had peeked in on Insta so knew your silence wasn’t something seriously wrong, which was a relief.
The shared albums drive me nuts. I can’t get them to release space on my running iPod, which has no need for shared albums or anything other than run snaps.
Love the TRex on his cake – I found Tree Rex paper for my nephew. My niece’s b irthday is Jan 3 so we go through some of the same re” spacing things out. One of her presents didn’t make it on time for Christmas so I had it re-sent to their house and told them it can be bday or “random rainy day”
That’s so weird that the shared albums show up on your iPod! Stuff like that is just so frustrating.