The Fabulous Life of Stefanie

With just a few days left before 2018, I thought it would be fun to take a look back on the past twelve months of shenanigans and share a bit about what I hope the next twelve hold! Travel One of my most favorite things to do and we did A LOT of it. We started off the year with an amazing trip to Puerto Rico, where we climbed in caves, ate all the delicious things and spent every single day in the pool. This was one of Maddie's favorite trips ever and we have spent a lot of time talking and planning on how to give back to the people there in 2018 as they continue to recover. Over the summer we traveled across the country and back and all around the East Coast hitting up three beautiful weddings as well as a long visit down the Cape with family and friends. In October we watched Matt run the Chicago Marathon and took advantage of all the amazing museums and walking around there is to do. I love traveling with the girls and am glad that we decided from the get-go that this would...

I'll just come right out and admit that this is probably one of the longest breaks I have taken from writing down our adventures over here and it was completely unintentional! Life got really busy, mornings got earlier and nights got really tired. But, here I am! I even have my first new laptop that is mine all mine since I was in grad school. Mac Books have come a long way in 10 (ohemgee) years. How are you? How was your Thanksgiving? Ours was pretty lovely - family, chosen family, food and more food. We ran our annual Turkey Trot, which was a bit of a disaster for my own running career, but I was back at it again this morning with 5 really good miles, so I will just have to redeem myself next year. I am training for another marathon - number 5 - which will be in Louisiana in January. This has been my best training yet and I chock it up to a lot more miles and a lot of time spent at the gym on my lunch breaks cross training and doing the exercised I learned in PT. I am hoping to...

Happy Friday, y'all! This has been a bananas week with my first overnight away from baby Annabel, lots of work projects due, an event at Maddie's school and trying to stay awake past 8:30 so that someday we might finish  up Mad Men. Ah, this life of mine. Here are some of the things making me happy! Physical Therapy : not so much needing to go, but it has made such a huge difference in the way I feel before and after runs and has made me actually do the stretching that all runners tell other people to do and never do themselves. I go to Elliot Physical Therapy along with most everyone else in my running club and they are by far the nicest, most patient, talented people. I feel even better about this marathon because of the work they have done on me! Radio Flyer Wagons : My Mom got this for Annabel for her birthday and both girls are LOVING it. Also, super easy to maneuver around for the grown ups. it is such a great alternative to double strollers and they look so darn...

Well, well, well here we are. 46 days. 7 Saturdays. 2 course dress rehearsals. Then it is GO TIME. Training is going great. Can I say that? It's my third marathon so I have something to compare to but this is like no other. This is Boston . I am running for charity and life is totally different then the first and second time I set out for 26.2 (because it always is, isn't it?). I have a baby who sleeps in my bed and wakes up a lot to nurse or cuddle or play pat-a-cake on my forehead at 2am. I put in a lot of time in the office and at night after the girls are asleep building my career. I have fundraisers to attend, beers to drink, friends to enjoy, a husband to cherish. I am tired. I am sore. I have thirteen other things I should be doing right now. But here I am and I am doing it and putting, ahem, my best foot forward. BUT I really truly trust in my training. I get out there and get the miles under my feet every Saturday. I make it to the Pilates class by run club host...

Well hello! I feel like I just climbed the Mount Everest of life and am looking at the world through new eyes, so I thought I should start off by playing catch up on this dear old blog of mine. Last time I checked in I was at the tail end of vacation and having a pretty lovely time, which was how it all wrapped up. We flew home on my birthday, me wearing my brand new Lululemon running capris from my dear husband (who has quite a story about that adventure on his blog ), and got settled back into East Coast mode, only to have me turn around and go to San Diego a few days later while Matty took on full Maddie duties with our nanny on a trip as well. Then I came home and ran a marathon. But let's keep things in order. In the few days before I left again, I had an awesome birthday party with my best friends, an AMAZING dinner at Craigie on Main with my main squeeze, and we visited the MFA to see one of their exhibits that was ending. I used to have a bad habit of really wanting t...

I don't know why, but Maddie has been having some serious sleep issues again, which results in her waking up in the middle of the night and one of us sleepwalking to bring her into bed with us and then her keeping us up for a couple of hours until we either put her back in her room, where she eventually passes out, or us almost giving up on ever sleeping again when she eventually passes out....at which point an alarm always seems to go off. This morning, my sweet, sweet husband actually got up with her at 5am and let me have a glorious hour all to myself in which I had the deepest sleep ever.  But then it was time to get up.  I know that someday we will all joke about what a terrible sleeper little Maddie was and how it helped her study so hard to become the engineer/train conductor/macaroni and cheese chef she ends up being, but for now, it just sucks. A lot . And it makes for some pretty hard Mondays, especially with those long runs on Sunday. Oh, parenthood...

Try as I might, I cannot think of anything to blog about that doesn't include complaining about the weather, recapping our super busy weekend, talking about running or gushing about that super sweet cherub of ours. That is boring though, right? These are the things that I ALWAYS talk about. I mean, this is my life - being busy and running and raising an awesome little person (all while loathing the weather), but I feel like I should be saying more. I love to read blogs and I get a lot of joy from knowing people come to this little corner of the internet to read these words and I really want to be more here. Heck, I will be more here, someday. Just not today. What I really need is a vacation, and I cannot wait for 23 days to pass so that we can officially be on one. Not to wish three weeks away, because there is a lot of good stuff on the calendar, but I want to get away and press my reset button. I want to see my Mom and not have cell service and stay...

You know when you are so busy that your mind just kind of shuts down and goes on autopilot and then a week has passed and you are like "WHAT?! WHO AM I? WHAT DAY IS IT". Yep, that has been my week (or two, oh my gosh what day is it?!), Add in a gnarly head cold and a little person who has been waking up ready to party in the middle of the night for two nights in a row and you have me in a nutshell! Work is INSANELY busy and I left for three days to go hang out in Brooklyn, which meant that my to-do list decided to have little baby tasks and triple in size while I was gone. I imagine little tasks jumping around on my notepad in my office when I am away just multiplying themselves....and no I am not on cold medicine today. I have had this little head/chest cold going on again ; I really cannot believe how sick I have been this winter. Granted, it has been a terrible winter in New England, but I am so much healthier now than any other winter so I really do not get it. I exer...

I seem to have fallen into a not-so-awesome pattern where I get everything laid out Sunday night for both going to the gym and getting dressed for work to be out the door early, we get the coffee ready to brew, and get settled in for an early night. Then, I stay up too late, wake up in the middle of the night, and snooze button my way through not just the gym but also that time to get out the door anywhere near the time I want to. Ugh. Me and that snooze button have a very unhealthy, co-dependent relationship. Not that this is news.  I guess I can cut myself a little bit of slack since I did manage to get out for 18 glorious miles of marathon training yesterday, including up and down Heartbreak Hill for my first time. I took it slow because I am getting over a chest cold, but it felt pretty good, and it was one of those runs where I thought to myself "yeah, I can run a marathon...again", which is good because it is only 8 weeks away! The sun was out, Matty was by...

Saturday I had a bit of a nervous breakdown. In the middle of doing a huge pile of dishes I felt myself losing my last thread of sanity for that morning and went ahead and had an ugly cry. Then, I did whatever I do when I am feeling overwhelmed, and cleaned the hell out of the whole house, rearranged some furniture, made a new recipe and asked Madeleine to accompany me in a brass band dance party in the kitchen. I may have also sent a mean text to my husband and taken a xanax. Coping methods, people! They are so varied among us, no? The most ironic thing about all of this is I knew exactly what was wrong before that ugly cry came out. I was feeling overwhelmed and out of control about one aspect of life (our financial situation) so I projected it onto something that I had more control over (the cleanliness of my house). I do this ALL THE TIME. When I am stressed out about the miles ahead of me on a long run, I switch my brain over to my to-do list at work and start meticulousl...

Hey y'all, sorry it has been a week since I have visited this little corner of the internet; life has been BUSY. This weekend we were down the Cape for a few days for the Hyannis Half Marathon and gone are the days where we can be gone for the weekend and just wing it for the week. Sunday evening was all about laundry and food prep and foam rolling and vacuuming the new layer of salt from this terrible winter we have been having and then all the sudden I woke up and it was Wednesday. But, I digress. It was a lovely weekend and one that I was more than happy to scramble around to make up for just to have the sunshine on my face and quality time with my favorite people for a few days. My half marathon was...ok. I used my Garmin watch for the first time in a race and enjoyed being able to keep an eye on my pace as I started out. I wanted to go fast but not too fast in order to avoid a burn out, so I tried to stay between 9:20 and 9:35, which I did for the first five miles. A...

Whoa, last week was a doozy, and this week is going to be pretty crazy too. I have a lot going on at work and am getting prepared to run the Hyannis Half Marathon on Sunday by eating as clean as possible, sticking to my training plan and trying to get a lot of sleep and kick this lingering congestion. Here's hoping I can make it happen!  There is so much going on but I wanted to put up a quick post with some of the cute pictures I took of Maddie over the weekend and let everyone know that I still hate winter, especially after spending three hours running outside in it yesterday. All of us had a three day weekend that made me wish all weekends were three days; it is just amazing what I can get done with just one extra day, and getting to spend extra time with my little family was pretty great. Highlights included: longs runs on separate days (yay for  not eating up a whole day!), Nutella pudding (by me) and banana bread (by Matty), Maddie's first time with  paints an...