Hi friends – thank you for all the enthusiasm on my pregnancy #2 announcement post Friday! We appreciate the love so much and it’s nice to have it out in the open now. <3
This weekend, I got out for a couple fun adventures. First was a run/walk from Hains Point over to the Capitol Christmas Tree!
My friend Kathleen joined me for the adventure; it was great to see her and to catch up and really fun to see the beautiful tree. I always forget how big it is!
It was a game time decision to go check it out and I’m so glad we did!
We did a run/walk combination – running feels okay physically and the belly doesn’t bother me yet, but I get really out of breath super easily so luckily Kathleen was up to take lots of walk breaks when I needed them.
You can see the bump a bit here! This vest is juuuuuust about too tight now. Any recs for a maternity winter running jacket or sporty vest? I didn’t need any warm fitness maternity gear last time since I was mostly super pregnant in summer!
It was cold and windy but felt good to be out there. I think we made it about 3.5 miles total including the walking!
The other big adventure this weekend was that Matt and I took Riese down to the National Harbor in Maryland and went on the Ferris Wheel! There’s a Ferris Wheel in one of Riese’s little books and Matt had been promising her a ride on one, so we decided to go for it.
It was pretty empty down there on the water since it was so cold, so probably a good day to go! Our masks felt nice as face warmers… having to wear a mask in winter is way better than wearing one in summer heat, that’s for sure!
Hi, Ferris Wheel!
The view. Riese loved it! And it was really nice to get out of the house and do something fun together. 🙂
The sun was just setting as we were leaving – beautiful!
We came home to some leftovers from Friday night – spaghetti bolognese. The sauce had ground beef and lots of veggies (peppers, onions, mushrooms). Spaghetti has been hitting the spot lately so I didn’t mind having it twice!
Also hitting the spot lately: BLTs! Sometimes with a fried egg, sometimes not.
And my flour free protein pancake (<- recipe, I usually do the microwave version nowadays to keep it easy) is still a huge breakfast favorite over here, too. It’s Riese’s most loved breakfast by far!
The other thing we did this weekend was set up our Christmas tree! We ended up getting a fake one this year because we’re planning to drive to Pittsburgh soon and hunker down there for the rest of the month with my in-laws, and I was worried about having a real tree in our house for almost a month while we were gone/not here to water it.
I figure we can use this fake tree anytime we’re going to be gone for the holidays but still want some cheer in the house. 🙂 Riese loves it because there’s a button you can push to change the lights from multicolor to white, to a mix, to blinking vs. solid, etc. Very exciting!
She had fun helping us decorate it, too, although after we were done she decided to take all the ornaments off the bottom half…
And put them on this tiny tabletop tree instead. Whatever works, right?
In other news, Riese is officially done with naps. (Gahhhh)
Ya’ll were right when I asked for sleep advice last month because Riese was staying up WAY too late every night; many of you said it sounded like she was ready to be done napping and I honestly didn’t want to listen because naps have been saving us during the workweek with almost no childcare – it’s when I get most of my work done, and it was even reliable enough that I could schedule nutrition client calls during naptime, too.
I used to do a fair amount of evening work earlier in the pandemic but once I got pregnant that stopped because I’ve been too exhausted to stay up later than 8:30/9 most nights.
Anyway, we had been trying to just wake her up earlier from her nap but after a particularly rough night on Thursday where she was up until 11 p.m., we decided it was time. We skipped nap entirely on Saturday and Sunday and she was so much easier to get to bed – we had her in her room and settled by 7:15 and she was actually asleep by 8 both nights.
Having our evenings back felt pretty amazing, and for the weekend it was actually fun to not have to worry about nap and to be able to be flexible with timing and have earlier afternoon adventures. Especially with it getting dark so early, it felt like there wasn’t much time to do anything fun with Riese in the afternoon because it was dark an hour after she woke up from her nap!
We didn’t bother with trying to do any sort of quiet time this weekend, but I think we are going to try to start to introduce that sometime soon. A couple friends sent me this very appropriately timed post from the “biglittlefeelings” Instagram account that has some tips for starting a quiet time routine, so going to give that a go at some point soon and will see how it goes! Any further tips for navigating the post-nap world with a 3 year old are, of course, welcome. 🙂
I hope you have a nice week – stay tuned for a fun recipe on Wednesday that makes a really cute holiday gift for local friends/family!
