Holiday Run Streak, Day #21

Toddler. Drama.

A chilly "feels like" 14 tonight. The heavy gear cut through the cold no problem, but I'm in need of a new buff. Lost my last balaclava, so my neck was a bit chilly. I'm going to be continuing my training through the coldest part of the New England winter (February, always to my surprise) so it'll be important to get a new one in and get used to wearing it. I ordered two in case one isn't a good weight, or I hate the material, or whatever.

One and a quarter miles. Mentally the space one mile takes up is so small now, that I can cover it in what feels like a few minutes. In reality, it's about ten minutes when I'm taking it easy, but my mental game is on point with this streak. With this being a one miler, I'll need to put in a long run this weekend to bring up my average miles/day, but I think that's doable. I haven't been able to get a thirteen miler in this streak so far, so I really want to do one this weekend.

The toddler continues to be fussy as all get-out. It's a perfect storm, I think, of teething, sleep regression, and just generally being a toddler. She fights sleep, wakes up in the middle of the night, and emotionally torments me when I head out running by crying and screaming "Daddy, I miss you! Come baaack!"

So that's been hard. But my wife is a champ (she taught pre-school, and handled a toddler class) so she's training me on more of the early childhood stuff than my simple Bachelor's in Education gave me. I mean, I got pretty good training out of it, but I have to admit I didn't know there was a two year sleep regression.

It's a new challenge, for sure. And it's scary in the way that all new challenges in parenting have been scary. Like: what if I mess this up? If you screw up handling an outburst, does your child become completely unable to handle their emotions? And I think about the negative memories and complex feelings I harbor for my own parents. I don't know what's normal in any of this, or what's to be expected, but I'm trying my best and hoping for the best.

So let's hope that does the job for today...