Accountability

Most mornings I start my day at 5:20am. I crawl out of bed, pull on a bathing suit, puff my bronchodilator, grab a glass of milk and drive to the gym. I come home, showered, dressed, and having my workout done to a sleeping household. I quickly start my treatments so I don't waste any precious time before my daughter wakes up. She comes wandering into the living room sometime around 7-7:30am. By this point, I am sipping my morning coffee and somewhat impatiently waiting for her to wake up. My favorite part of this routine is that when Kaylee wakes up I am all hers. I can make her a healthy breakfast and sit and chat about our plans for the day. She gets a mommy that is totally present.

While I was feverish and sick I took a week off from the gym. My body was exhausted and I was able to sleep an extra 2 hours everyday which I felt I desperately needed. However, this meant she wandered into my room to wake me up when she was ready to start her day. I was groggy and tired and had no desire to get out of bed while she was bouncing with morning energy that only small children seem to possess. I threw fruit at her and snapped on the TV so I could start my 45 minutes of treatments. I was interrupted because she was still hungry, needed water, was bored watching TV, etc. She would try to tell me something, but I would be coughing so violently I couldn't respond which left her repeating herself over and over. In turn, it made me frustrated that she kept repeating things while I was coughing so hard I couldn't breathe and she got frustrated that I wasn't responding. My 45 minute treatments turned into an hour because of all the times I had to stop. By 8:30 I still wasn't showered, neither of us had breakfast and we were both a little grouchy. One morning after I strapped on my vest to start my treatments Kaylee asked me teary eyed, "Mommy, when are you going to do shaky (vest) in the middle of the night again? I like when you do that better."

Those two sentences were all the motivation and reassurance that I needed to know that my workout routine was something I needed to keep up for a very long time. It is better for my health and my lungs. It is better for me because I can do my treatments uninterrupted and in peace (the way I like it), and just in case that wasn't enough motivation, it made may daughter's morning experience so much better. Trying to fit in treatments and an exercise routine while parenting young children can be a challenge at best, but this time having a small child request that I workout again with tears in her eyes (although for selfish reasons on her part) was the very best motivation I could have asked for.