Month 4: Bed by 10pm

Ever since Nicole began working at Play and Learn Children's Center in March she has been tired. Seriously. You may not have noticed as she's not the type to complain, but spending 8+ hours a day graciously handling 4 year olds:

• not wanting to nap (go figure)
• crying 
• running, rolling, jumping, and crawling constantly with boundless energy
• traumatizing one another by not sharing, name calling, tattling, etc.
• defecating themselves
• defecating on each other 
• more crying...

...all while trying to teach them a thing or two about numbers, letters, and colors makes for a full day. Don't get me wrong, she absolutely loves her job and her kids A LOT, and we both delight in the perk everyone who works with children enjoys: hilarious stories daily. But sometimes it can be a bit draining.

We're young, so we still enjoy staying up late (past 11pm) but after such nights I'll often come home to find her napping anywhere from 1-4 hours trying to catch up. So when we were compiling our list of 30 day challenges, Nicole was a big advocate for going to bed by 10pm for a month. We're both excited to see how our lives change feeling fully rested, and who knows, this may be a change we'll continue well beyond October!

Update on Month 3: Take 15

For Justin: So far this was my favorite monthly challenge. To keep it interesting I checked out MobilityWOD, a crossfit affiliated blog with a new stretch/mobility exercise every day. My whole body felt incredible after these exercises and I can feel noted improvement in my knee pain. Also as I promised in the last post here's my chinaman squat:

While it's not perfect (rounded back, right foot turned out), and I'm straining quite a bit (it's supposed to be restful), it's a start and I'm committed to continuing ~15 min/day!

For Nicole:  Confession time...I completely failed this month at practicing violin for 15 minutes a day!  I actually probably only did it three or four times all month.  Part of the problem was that I missed practicing the first couple of days of the month because it turned September while we were visiting Justin's parents for the weekend and I didn't have my violin with me.  That made it really easy for me to skip practicing initially since I had already "failed" in a sense by taking those first few days off.   The rest of the problem was that I realized I just didn't want it enough to discipline myself to actually put in the time/effort.  So for now I still sound like this, but maybe I'll try again someday...