It’s been awhile and I have lots of things I plan to post about (Eva’s birth story is an important one, before I completely forget it), but I’m going to be 40 in forty days, and this seems significant enough that I should write about it NOW, and not weeks or months after the fact.

And yes, I’m actually counting down the days. My friend gave me a little sleigh chalkboard that I was using to count down the days to Christmas (for the kids), and I decided to leave it up and use it to count down the days until my birthday. Not because I’m so excited! can’t wait! until my birthday, but because I have a weight loss goal that I want to achieve by my birthday and I thought that seeing the countdown of days from New Year’s Day to my birthday might keep me on track. So far, so good.

As far as my current weight loss goal, I’d like to lose 10 pounds before my birthday. That would be the last little bit of weight that I gained while I was pregnant. I gained a lot of weight when I was pregnant with Lily. Like 70+ pounds. I just didn’t give a f and ate whatever I wanted. I really enjoyed that pregnancy to be honest – until around 8 months when a pelvic girdle disorder made it very difficult to get up and walk around.

By the time I got pregnant with Eva, I was still 20 pounds up from Lily. With Eva I didn’t go crazy and only gained 35 pounds. I lost all of that weight within a few months, plus an additional 10 pounds soon after. So now it’s just these last 10 pounds that need to go!

While I’d like to lose the weight before my birthday, I’m not stressing it. I’m pretty focused now, so if it’s not all gone within the next six or seven weeks, it will be gone shortly thereafter. Honestly, what I really want to do is get into a better PHYSICAL condition. Stronger. Because ever since the end of my pregnancy with Lily, my body has felt broken and worn down. I wake up most mornings with a headache and my body feeling sore, as if I had an intense workout the day before.

I don’t know why my body hurts SO much. It could be the weight gain. Or maybe just the physical act of carrying and delivering two babies. Or maybe it’s because I haven’t had a good nights’ sleep in almost three years and haven’t been able to recover. Or maybe it’s because I’ve had babies climbing all over me and sleeping on me day and night (I’m into my third year of breastfeeding). Or maybe it’s just the fact that I’m getting older. People always talk about all the aches and pains that come along with it. Maybe this is just a natural part of the aging process? (God, I hope not. I hope it’s fixable.)

I’m sure that it’s a combination of all of the above.

Anyway…this post wasn’t really meant to be about diets and weight loss or complaining about how hard motherhood is. Although diets do make up the majority of my posts, so why should this one be any different? No, my intention was to talk about turning 40 and all the changes that happened in my life during my thirties and so on. I guess I’ll have to save that for my next post. Good thing I’ve still got 39 days left!