Broken Bone Update and Other Recent Happenings...

It's been a busy week, as usual, but next week is when the real fun will start! I suppose I should start of by letting everyone know Charley got her cast off on Monday. When the cast first came off, I was expecting her to have some atrophy on her leg. I mean, she's been in a full leg cast for 3 weeks! I was pleasantly surprised to see that there was minimal atrophy, and her leg looked pretty normal. It hasn't exactly been smooth sailing, since she got the cast off, though. My poor kiddo is afraid to walk!  I can't say I blame her. I mean, the last time she really walked, it hurt! Plus, her leg has to be pretty stiff from being in that cast for so long. She's taken a few steps, but isn't very confident with walking and still has a significant limp. It's almost like retraining her completely. I've taken her to a few indoor playgrounds where there are kids to play with, as possible motivation, but as much as she wants to play with the kids, she also realizes that she can crawl or scoot instead of walking, and still socialize with the other children. Oh well, she will figure it out. I hope it happens soon, though! I was looking at some videos of her from a couple of weeks ago, and it's honestly hard for me to remember the last time we went somewhere and I didn't have to carry her. On a positive note, my arms are feeling particularly strong... Ha!

Business has gotten off to a slow start. We've had a couple of mommy groups come on the bus for open gyms, but haven't been able to get out and pitch the business in person, because Charley's been home with me all the time. I was again, hoping to start her in school this week, but her grandfather, who's an orthopedic surgeon, advised me against it. He did give me the go ahead to start her next week, though, so I'm anticipating making a lot of contacts and getting a jump start on Monday. I've been feeling ultra-motivated the last few days. Even though I haven't been able to make the progress I had originally intended, I have been doing a lot of behind the scenes work, and I know we will get some daycares signed up in the next week or two.

On another note, since Charley hurt her leg, I really haven't been to the gym. I wasn't sure they would want to take her with that huge cast, and I was kind of afraid it might get a little too rough there. But yesterday, I decided I'd take her before it got too crowded, alerted the childcare workers to the injury, and finally got a workout in. It felt amazing. It'd been so long since I had those endorphins going, and I legitimately missed going to the gym! I never thought I'd say such a thing. Ha! Anyway, I pushed myself pretty hard, and anticipated being ridiculously sore today. Surprisingly, I'm not that sore! I can feel the burn in my abs a little bit, but my arms and legs really aren't too bad. I suppose my arms aren't sore because I've been carrying around a 33 pound toddler with a 7 pound cast for 3 weeks. But I really expected to feel worse than I do. I guess that 3 weeks off didn't totally ruin my physical condition! With that said, I'll be back in the gym later today, just happy to get my 2 hour me-time again.

I know I've mentioned before that I tend to be a little bit clumsy. As athletic as I am, I definitely inherited the clumsy gene from my mom. In fact, all of my sisters inherited that gene. When I say my mom is clumsy, I mean REALLY clumsy. Things that happen to her, just don't happen to other people. Like the time I heard her voice yelling for help, when I was upstairs in my bedroom. I couldn't figure out where the voice was coming from, but it got louder and louder as I approached the laundry shoot. I opened the door to the shoot (which went from the second floor of the house to the basement) and her voice came through loud and clear. "Help me!" she yelled. So, I ran to the basement to see what was going on. When I walked into the laundry room, it was all I could do not to laugh. The people who had lived in the house before us had built some kind of a guard for the shoot, so the clothes didn't go all over the place when they came down the laundry shoot. Apparently, my mom had been getting the clothes, and she managed to get her hair tangled in a nail on the built on contraption. Her arms were flailing, as she stood there, helpless, and tangled up. Hilarious. I shared this story, to give an image of the clumsiness that runs in my family, because I had my own "Betty moment" last night. Charley had been asking me if she could play with her friend Sawyer all day, so we wandered over to Sawyer's house last night, waiting for him to come back from dropping his brother off at football. I was encouraging Charley to play on their new swing set and playhouse, because I was trying to get her to walk. I was being silly, and dancing around with her, trying to keep my body moving because it was after dusk and the gnats had come out. I hate gnats. They're little, they come around in masses, and they just drive me crazy. Anyway, I was dancing around and trying to entertain Charley, when I saw a gnat coming at me. And it flew directly into my eye. MY EYE! How does that happen?! I already have a tendency to get red eyes from allergies this time of year, how was a gnat in the eye going to impact that? After laughing at myself a little bit, I blinked a few times, and managed to remove the gnat from my eye. It could've only happened to someone in my family. Sigh.

I know Charley has been a major focus of this post. I spend more time with her than anyone else, though, so what do you expect? In the last few weeks, I've been noticing how much she picks up on what I say and do. When she really wants me to listen, she will say, "Mommy, look into my eyes. Are you looking at me? Are you listening?" Then she'll tell me something along the lines of, "I said, I want a cookie right now!" She gets very serious when cookies are involved. Yesterday, I told her, "No," at some point, and she replied, "Mommy, don't talk to me like that!" Ugh. Teenager attitude in a 2-year-old body. Sometimes, she really amuses me, though. Her inflection and delivery tend to be right on, when she imitates me, and she understands concepts that surprise me sometimes. Yesterday, a little girl at the gym made a comment about not crying when she was a baby. I said, "Ha! Charley cried!" Charley looked at me from across the gym, and said, "Mommy, why are you telling them that?" What toddler says that?! Anyway, check out the video below, it's pretty funny.

Alright, that's all for now! Have a great weekend!