The Importance of Routine

Total steps yesterday:  6,526
Exercise plans for today:  yoga

Happy Saturday!  Yesterday marked 16 weeks of pregnancy - the baby is now the size of an avocado, which is pretty cool.  I love avocados.  I hit up prenatal yoga this morning, which has become the new routine.  It's a good start to a weekend, and I actually enjoyed the class today.  We did a new pose that felt amazing for stretching out my hips and IT band.  I've had a lot of IT issues throughout my running career, so this stretch will definitely be incorporated going forward.  It gives the deepest stretch through the outer thigh, up through the hip, and in to the lower back.  Apparently it'll be great in pregnancy if sciatica becomes an issue later (p.s. please let's not have sciatica become an issue, body).  Anyway, you basically sit with crossed legs, then put one foot up on a yoga block and lean in to the stretch.  I now will recommend this to everyone:

Bonus!  You can see Zoe's tail in the bottom right, and Zebra's feet just above my left shoulder.  I love how animals just want to hang close to you.

I think routine is really important.  I'm not one of those fly by the seat of my pants people anymore - I might have been when I was younger, but now I like things to be a bit more steady.  I also find that it helps me stick to working out and eating well if I'm on a fairly regular schedule.  Most weeknights are identical:  James and I get home from work, I take Zoe for a walk, one or both of us cooks dinner.  We'll watch a show while we eat, then take Zoe out to the dog park, then come home and read / watch something / eat frozen yogurt until bedtime. 

Lately, we've been working our way through the show Parenthood.  It's free on Amazon, which is nice, and pretty entertaining.  It follows a family of four adult kids, all with kids of their own, as they wend their way through parenting challenges.  Aside from being a good show, I feel like it should be required viewing for all first time parents.  It's led to James and me having many, many discussions about how we'd handle different parenting challenges, and I think it's good to see where we agree and discuss when we don't.  So far, the one area where we've come down on completely different sides is in how to address a child with a bad grade on their midterm report.  If this happens in real life, our child will get some mixed messages.  But since Lil W will never get a D on a midterm report, I think we'll be fine.

Zoe also likes routine, and is the best dog when we follow routine and a bit of a hellion when we don't.  She's also incredibly smart.  Like, a little too smart.  Her newest trick?  She's learned the first few notes of the end credit song on Parenthood.  And since we typically take her out to the park right after an episode ends, this is what she does when she hears the song:

Note:  baby girl is fully asleep on her favorite lion pillow before hearing the song.  This is an awesome and hilarious trick, but does have one downfall.  If we try to watch another episode after the park, or watch one at a weird time of day on the weekends, we have to be very careful to cut the show off before the credits start, else Zoe think it's time to play when it's actually time to sleep.

She's such a good girl, though.  I hope our child is half as well behaved, and at least twice as smart.  Though I imagine that the baby will probably mess with our routine significantly.  I guess I should be ready for that?