New Year, new me babyyyyyy, just kidding.
New Year, same me, but a new opportunity to be better and chase my dreams!
This year-end review is allowing me a quick moment to reflect on lessons learned and time shared with others during 2023. As a whole, the year 2023 seems like a blur of a memory.
We kicked off the new year with an 8-week-old baby and an almost two-year-old. It was all chaos and cuss words returning to full-time work at the top of the year while my husband started his fully paid three-month caregiver leave with our newborn.
I don’t remember much from February to April. I believe my best friend moved out in April, but I’ve tried to push that out of my mind more than anything. Small baby started daycare around this same time and was sleeping well. I started trying to run more consistently in preparation for the Bolder Boulder 10k as my first race back postpartum. It was an adjustment, but I was so happy to be back to running and chasing my goals again. Things were busy, but manageable at this time.
I don’t know exactly where things changed, but it seems to correlate with the more my husband and I ran the more hectic our lives began as the summer months were coming to an end.
The fall of 2023 was a very wild ride between work, the girls, and running. I was given the opportunity to open a new clinic closer to home in Colorado which led me to move the girls’ daycare closer to home and my new work location.
The new clinic required planning and weekends of painting and moving equipment. The clinic officially opened on the first Monday in October. The clinic has been steadily growing over the holidays to the point that I will be officially full-time at the new clinic starting January 15th. I can hardly believe it. As far as my year-end review goes, opening a new clinic and building it from the ground up has been one of the better highlights of 2023.
Since the grand opening in October, I have continued to progress my training, completing my first postpartum half marathon in October in 1:32:13 placing 4th overall female, my small baby turned one, and I completed my first postpartum marathon in November finishing in 3:21:31 taking 3rd overall female. It’s been a grind and the Houston Marathon is right around the corner.
This marathon build has been so much less than ideal as my girls decided to trade on and off getting sick with fevers from Thanksgiving to Christmas leading to many missed miles and being tired beyond belief. I missed miles, workouts, meals, and sleep during the month of November. November and December were probably the hardest months of the year. I took naps when I should have been cleaning my house. We ordered food, probably equal to what I cooked.
It was a hot mess and then to top it off, my husband and I discovered we had a little mouse problem. Holy hell, I couldn’t believe it. Super gross and probably the pitfall of this year-end review.
One afternoon, I came home to hear little critters in my laundry room and just for kicks I set out a couple of traps meanwhile thinking, “I am going crazy.” Not even five minutes later I caught two mice on one trap. I started to lose it! I called my husband so many times telling him to get home now because removing mice from the house was wayyyyyy outside of my comfort zone.
I wanted to burn my house down and start anew, but between the marathon miles and working 40 hours a week with sick kids, I couldn’t get myself to put in the extra work to deep clean things that had gotten out of hand and probably allowed us to miss the mice earlier. It was bad. I will be the first to admit.
However, I am proud to say that since the break back home for Christmas and the taper in full effect for Houston, I have been a cleaning freak. I still have a lot to go, but it feels really good to have things look clean and actually be clean for the first time since my best friend moved out back in April 2023. I am determined to be better. I am donating things left and right. Cleaning out my house and determined to be a better homemaker. My kids deserve better and so I will be better.
So it’s been a year, but really it’s been a crazy last couple of months to 2023. I am grateful to have survived those months, but truly it feels like it was pure luck. I felt like I was drowning. I mean, to be honest, I really did drown because things that should have been getting done weren’t. I know the girls were taken care of, but I don’t want a repeat in 2024.
As a Doctor of Physical Therapy, I write SMART goals for each of my patients to ensure their program is specific to them and their goals. Therefore, I have made SMART goals for myself for 2024 including a planner to set up timelines and reminders to stay focused.
I am tired of coasting through time just trying to make it to the next point. I want to live purposefully and show my girls that I can be successful as a mom, PT, runner, and person without letting other areas of my life come crashing down. It requires planning, organization, and the ability to adjust as needed; but I am determined to take control of my life and to find joy in the small trials and tribulations I face. I want to take each challenge with grace and a fierce determination to be a living example of what I aspire my girls to be one day.
You are doing great. You both will and can figure this out. You both are working parents and you both are homemakers. Don’t take that title on by yourself. You both can do this. You are doing great, and are great at figuring out how to get better organized. Love you 🙏🏻❤️🙏🏻