It's been a long time since I've checked in here. SO much has changed since my January post. A few seasons, to begin with. Also: our family. And my address! Let's catch up, shall we?
Babies!
Over the summer, I gave birth to boy/girl twins! We are all doing so well and they are now about three months old. I had a Caesarean section with them, and while recovering from the surgery itself wasn't terrible, I am finding recovering from a twin pregnancy in my upper 30s to be pretty incredible. I have been assured that some of this is due to hormonal changes that are sustained while nursing, but gracious. I feel like a little, old arthritic lady more often than not these days! The weight has largely come off though, my energy levels are stabilizing, and the babies sleep pretty well, so those are three great things going for all of us. The kiddos are absolutely darling and I am completely smitten! I remain really excited to introduce them to bicycling, which I plan to do in the spring when they have better head control! I am looking at Burley trailers as a possible Christmas present.
Location, location, location!
As if doubling our family isn't enough (haha. sigh.), we also moved over the summer. We bid adieu to our little house and purchased a new, larger family home a couple of miles west of the first one. From a biking perspective, this is good, bad, and neutral. The good news is that we're in a neighborhood with more gridlike streets, which opens up cycling routes for me and for the kiddos when they are old enough to ride independently. We're also part of a more complete community, so we have things to ride to within a 1-2 mile radius of our new home, like the Y, library, shops, restaurants, church, etc. So I am really excited about incorporating bicycling to those places into my life, and until I can ride with them (or independently) more easily, I like that these places are also within walking distance of our new home. The bad news is that I've added 2.5 miles to my work commute, which, given how slowly I ride and the busy-ness of part of the route, means I probably won't ride my bike to work much, if ever. When I was 6 miles from work, it took me a solid 50 minutes to get there or home. I imagine adding another 2.5 miles to that would add another 20 minutes to the commute, and while I'd be willing to try it more readily if it was just me at the hubby, for the foreseeable future, there are two small people to feed and take care of the morning, and I can't fairly leave that to my husband, nor do I really want to plan to be up for the day at 5:30am, which I'd need to do to get riding early enough to get to work at a decent hour, only to hit issues at the other end, where I'd either have to leave work early to get home in time to release our nanny or plan to pay her for extra time. All in all, it just doesn't make sense right now. I'm a little bummed, but the other reasons we chose this neighborhood ultimately trump bike commuting to work, which I think I would only have done regularly if we'd shortened my work commute to 3 miles or less, and that radius around my office didn't offer much that made sense for us at this point in our lives. In neutral news, I'm the exact same distance to and from my local multi-use trail, so hey!
 |
| Source |
Plans.
So that's where we are. I find myself feeling physically ready to ride again, but with that we're finally in a place to work on our home on the weekends. So I may not be able to ride a whole lot this fall after all -- if I do, I will definitely be writing about it, though, so it may be worth checking in once in a while. I will try to post more regularly again once I have figured out how to fit bicycling back into my drastically updated life!
x
