We got back from a trip to the beach a couple weeks ago, and while we were there, I got in a couple of great stroller runs and one really lovely solo run. And then I hurt my toe, and I haven't been able to run since. 

I've been slowly increasing the distance I can go with the running stroller over the last few months. Running with a stroller is no joke. Throw a 23 pound baby and some hills into the mix, and I was huffing and puffing after barely a mile. 

I was really looking forward to some flat boardwalk stroller running. With the super hot summer we've been having, even the early morning runs were still pretty challenging. But it was nice to get out, and see some different scenery on our runs. And my child only protested slightly when I needed to take walk breaks. 

I also got in one glorious and lovely run by myself at the beach. With the blistering hot weather, it's been pretty much impossible for me to run over my lunch breaks these days, so it was nice to have a morning where someone else could stay with the kiddo and I could get some much needed solo run time. 

My endurance had been slowly coming back. The week before our beach trip, I did a 3.5 miler. It's a distance I never thought much of before, but these days every slight uptick in mileage is a big win in my book. 

But then the morning I got back from my wonderful solo run, I bashed my pinky toe into a baseboard at our beach house, and I haven't been able to run since. 

I've only been able to wear open-toed shoes (thank goodness it's summer). I got it X-rayed at urgent care when we got back and the doctor told me it was broken, which unfortunately was what I expected given the amount of swelling and discoloration. 

They taped it and gave me a walking shoe and told me to follow up with an orthopedic. 

I left a message for mine, but then the following day, urgent care called me back and told me the radiologist reviewed my X-rays and actually didn't see a break. So maybe it's not broken.

It's been a few weeks now and my toe definitely feels better. I think I'm going to still follow up with the orthopedist even though urgent care told me I didn't need to. 

I still haven't tried to put on a closed toed shoe and I definitely haven't attempt to run. 

I've taken two full weeks off any sort of exercise, and my toe does mainly seem to be doing better. It's less swollen, but if I push on it where the "break" looks like it was in the X-ray it definitely still hurts. 

So just when I was making some major progress on the running front, I have a stupid injury and I'm back to not running. We'll see how long this injury sidelines me. I'm hoping not for too long. I really, really would like to race in the fall, and good fall race times come from tough summer training runs. 

I'm definitely still adjusting to not having as much free time to read as I used to, especially now that the weather is warmer and I'm used to spending the summer months sitting at the pool with a good book. My days at the pool look a bit different now, and there's definitely no sitting and reading. 

But I still managed to read a few good books in May. 

Four Stars

The Mystery Guest by Nita Prose
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I really enjoyed the first book with Molly the Maid, and I was excited to see her back to her crime-solving ways in this follow up. When a famous author drops dead at a speaking event at her hotel, Molly is yet again a suspect, but so are many other people. Molly works to uncover the identity and motive of the true killer. Just like the first book this was fun and fast and a really enjoyable read.

Women of Good Fortune by Sophie Wan
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I was introduced to Sophie Wan at the Gaithersburg Book Festival, and when she did a reading from the book and I found myself laughing out loud, I knew I wanted to read it. The rest of the book didn't disappoint either. It was a fun read about three friends in China who are all largely unhappy with their place in the world. One is engaged to marry into a wealthy family and the friends plan a heist to steal the traditional wedding gifts. I enjoyed the story of the women, and I even came to like some of the more problematic male characters in the book.

Good Inside: A Guide to Becoming the Parent You Want to Be by Becky Kennedy
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

It's weird to rate a parenting book, but raising kids is hard and there are a million theories on approaches to how to not mess up your kids. I liked the general premise of this book -- that children act out not because they're bad, but because they're dealing with some inside emotion that they haven't yet learned how to manage and that a parent's job is to help teach them how to regulate those emotions so they have vital coping skills for when they're older and life throws tough stuff at them.

The Dead Will Tell by Linda Castillo
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I took an unintentional short break from the Kate Burkholder series because I forgot to put this book on hold at the library for like a full month, but I was excited to dive back in to the next mystery with one of my favorite detectives. In this book, Kate investigates a murder in Amish County only to uncover that it has ties to a cold case from the 1970s. This book had a slightly different twist than some of the others that I've read in this series, and I really liked it, but don't want to say more for the spoiler.

Three Stars

Meet Me at the Lake by Carley Fortune
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

While I didn't love this book as much as Fortune's first book, it was still an enjoyable and easy read. Fern's mom owns a lake resort that gives major Dirty Dancing vibes. When she's killed in a car accident the resort passes to Fern. Fern's moved to Toronto and has no desire to go back to her sleepy lake town, but she knows she has to sort out what to do with the resort. When she arrives she finds Will, a man she met one day 10 years ago checking in. Fern's ex also works at the resort. Things are awkward, but the tension makes for a good story. I struggled with both Will and Fern's characters at points, which is why this is only 3.5 stars, but overall it was still a fun summer read.

Life has been more than a little hectic lately with since I went back to work in January and since the little guy started daycare in April. My free time for reading has felt like it's disappeared, and we've also been battling a string of nonstop sickness in our house since starting daycare. I didn't mean to fall this far behind on book recaps, but alas here we are. 

So here's a round up of the handful of books I've read over the last three months.

February Books

Four Stars

The Whispers by Ashley Audrain
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Nothing like a good neighborhood drama to really suck you in. There are secrets in the neighborhood and uncertainty and competition between the women who live on this street. But when a young boy falls out his bedroom window, the neighborhood rallies in some ways and in other ways, they try to dig deeper to find out what was really going on in that house. This was a good book that had me continually trying to guess what was coming next.

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Three Stars

The Other Mothers by Katherine Faulkner
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I thought this book took a little while to get going. A young nanny is found dead and the police rule her death a tragic accident. But when the girl's mother seeks out Tash, a freelance journalist and insists there had been foul play, Tash finds herself being sucked into a group of glamorous, rich mothers from a local children's playgroup. The circle welcomes her and soon Tash finds herself sucked into their world. She claims its all part of the investigation, but she might be in too deep. This book picked up a lot toward the end, but I wish it had had a bit of a faster pace throughout.

March Books

Five Stars

The Women by Kristin Hannah
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Even though I definitely thought the first half of this book was stronger than the second half, this is a five star book. It was beautifully written. I keep telling everyone to read it and I keep wanting to talk about it. After her brother is killed in the Vietnam War, Frankie McGrath signs up to be an Army nurse. The first half of the book covers her time during the war, and the second half covers life when she gets home. Parts of this book made me so mad I wanted to chuck it across the room, but I loved it. I also felt a really personal connection to this story since my aunt served as an Army nurse in Vietnam -- in one of the hospitals mentioned in this book -- and it was something that I didn't know much about. This book touches a lot on how the women who served in Vietnam were often unseen and their service was unvalued when they came home. It's a must read.

Three Stars

One in a Millennial: On Friendship, Feelings, Fangirls, and Fitting In by Kate Kennedy
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I wanted to love this book so much and I thought I would with all the nostalgia it packed into it, but I found the essays to be a bit of a mixed bag. Some were really good and enjoyable, and others I just struggled to get through.

Bright Young Women by Jessica Knoll
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I was really excited for this book that reimagined the Ted Bundy story through the lens of one of the women in the sorority house in Florida, but I found it fell a little flat for me and at times felt like a real slog to get through. I did like the push back that Bundy was this incredibly intelligent person, but I just think I had such high expectations of this book, and while it wasn't bad at all, I just found it a bit slow.

April Books

Four Stars

The House of Eve by Sadeqa Johnson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I really loved this book. It follows two Black women in the 1950s. Ruby lives in Philadelphia and is dreaming of being the first in her family to go to college. Eleanor just moved to Washington, D.C. to attend Howard University where she meets and falls in love with a man from a very wealthy family, where she also feels she doesn't fit in. I didn't realize when I picked up this book that it would center so much on babies and trying to build families, but I loved the way Johnson bounced back and forth between both characters and their unique circumstances and how she eventually brought them together.

Killers of a Certain Age by Deanna Raybourn
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This was such a fun and fast read. A group of female assassins have been working together since they were in their 20s. They're now in their 60s and ready to enjoy retirement -- except their employer puts a hit out on them. This was a great read with characters I loved working together to take down the man.

First Lie Wins by Ashley Elston
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This was another fun and twisty read. Evie Porter isn't who her boyfriend Ryan thinks she is. In fact, Ryan is her mark and while she's awaiting the next instructions from her boss on how to gather the intel she's been assigned to gather, she learns this job might not be as straight forward as it seems. This book flashes back and forth in time so you get a glimpse at Evie's other jobs and what led her to this life. I enjoyed the twist at the end and thought this book was great overall.

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It's been a little over a year since I was medically benched from running because of complications discovered during my 20-week ultrasound when I was pregnant.

I remember how hard and disheartening it was at the time to get scary news about a pregnancy complication and in the same breath find out that all my favorite ways to manage stress (running, working out in general) were largely wiped off the table. 

I cried a lot, but eventually with a few weeks of space from the news, got to a place mentally of knowing this was just a temporary setback. I started plotting my postpartum running comeback. 

But that comeback has been so humbling and not at all what I imagined it would be. 

Originally, I had a target half marathon in mind for March. I figured I had all summer to heal and then in the fall could slowly start building up my mileage and by winter, I'd be back to my normal training volume. 

Then I had all those postpartum health issues and needed surgery again in September, and I threw the idea of a March 2024 half marathon right out the window. 

I set my sights on a five miler in December 2023 instead, thinking maybe I could do a run-walk situation, under the impression from my doctor's initial thoughts that this recovery would be quicker. It wasn't quicker, and that race got thrown out the window too. 

Ever since then, I feel like it's been one step forward and a bunch of steps back trying to get back to regular running. 

I got an initial clearance to slowly work some running into my walks around six to eight weeks after that second surgery. I proceeded cautiously, introducing running in 1 minute increments. Then bumping to 1:30 and 2 minute increments. 

And then I had some more surgery setbacks and more doctor follow ups, and finally, finally in December, I think I was really cleared. 

All that time healing meant, I was unable to run for almost my entire maternity leave, and that was rough. But I told myself that once I was back to work, I'd be able to get back into a running groove. 

Pre-baby, I either worked out before work or over my lunch break. I knew before work was largely going to be out of the question, at least for running, while I'm still breastfeeding. That's a level of discomfort I'm not really into. So I was ready to really embrace lunch time runs. 

And then I went back to work and was so overwhelmed by trying to catch up that for the first three weeks, I don't think I took a single break of more than five minutes. 

As I've settled in more, I've managed to run about once a week, sometimes twice. It's not what I envisioned, but it's better than nothing. 

And I'm finding a new problem cropping up with my toes, that I think is related to perhaps some slight foot growth I had during pregnancy. I got it checked out by a podiatrist and he told me I didn't need to stop running as long as I've adjusted my shoe size.

Now the only other main barrier to getting into a really good running routine is the constant daycare sicknesses that seem to be cycling through our house. Every time I get in a string of consistent runs I feel like we knocked out with another illness. As of now, it's been about two weeks since I've run last because I've had some combo of strep throat, some other upper respiratory virus, maybe bronchitis, and who even knows what else. 

The baby has been home sick from daycare for over a week too now so that's been rough to juggle. 

I'm hoping we're coming out of this phase soon. I'm so antsy to get back to running, especially as the weather is getting nicer. I'm eyeing races for the fall, and I'm hoping I'll get this huge part of my life back soon. 

It's been a minute since we've had a home improvement post to share. But this one has been sitting in the drafts folder for a while now, and it seems time to share. 

Once we got through the scariest parts of my pregnancy and were pretty confident we'd be bringing home a baby in the summer, we got to work converting the room that had been our home office into a room for the baby. 

The room is the smallest of the three in our house, and I knew since it wasn't huge, I wanted to do some sort of wall feature. We debated a bit between board and batten or picture frame moulding, but before we could do anything to add some character to the room, we had to do some basic repairs. 

The floor in this room squeaked horribly from the house settling over the years. We tried a couple of simpler solutions that ended up not solving the problem, so we had to open the wall and add a bunch of screws into the wall framing to tighten things up. 

Once the squeaking was eliminated we patched the wall back up.

(I promise I didn't just take the pictures. I did work too). 

Once we had the wall repaired, we had our blank slate to work with. We settled on board and batten for our wall feature, and started using painters tape to visualize the height and width of our potential battens. I will not tell you how long we spent on getting all the measurements right and trying to figure out how to make sure no battens overlapped outlets or created awkward spacing in corners or by doors. The prep work and the math took a lot of time, but it was worth it because once this was done, it was a matter of getting the supplies and diving right into the work. 

I also went a bit overboard on the paint samples in my quest to find a green that would feeling calming and soothing. 

Since this was a small room, I wanted to make sure our battens were very thin and wouldn't make the furniture sit off the wall too much. We priced out quarter inch thick wood boards and realized it would cost us a lot of money to buy all the battens individually. Instead, we bought a single piece of quarter inch thick plywood and used my dad's table saw to rip it down to 3 inch wide pieces for the battens and 4 inch wide pieces for the horizontal boards at the top. 

Once we got all the wood home, it was time to start nailing it to the walls. We worked section by section, hanging our horizontal pieces first to ensure they were level and then fitting our vertical battens in as we went. Since our walls aren't perfectly level, we had to get creative at some points and add some filler at the bottom of some of the battens so everything would line up nicely between the baseboard and the top board. 

Oh look, a picture of me actually doing work. 

After we got the wood all hung, it was time for my least favorite part of any project -- the caulking and the wood filing. There were tons of small nail holes that needed to be filled in, though that part went fairly quickly. The caulking always takes me forever. I knocked it out in an afternoon though, and let it sit to dry overnight so that I could dive into the priming and painting. 

The wood all got a coat of primer and so did the areas of the wall that we had patched.

Then we hit everything with two coats of Benjamin Moore's Jack and the Beanstalk. The painting took some time as we had to alternate between brushes and rollers to get clean edges around the wood and smooth finishes on the walls. 

To brighten the room a bit, we also painted the top half of the walls Benjamin Moore's Chantilly Lace. 

For safety, we changed all the outlets, replacing them with childproof ones. We also rehung one of the closet doors to make it easier to open after we had the crib in the room. 

We built the furniture, hung the bookshelves, and then just waited for our little guy to be ready to move in. 

I spend a lot of time in this room now, and I love the way it turned out.

I didn't read a lot of books in January, but the ones I read were so good. Three five star books in one month, not a bad way to start the year. 

Five stars

The Light Pirate by Lily Brooks-Dalton
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I cannot stop thinking about this book, and I really want to talk about it with people (good thing it was my book club read for the month). It reminded me a bit of The Displacements in that Florida gets hit with devastating hurricanes. I liked how this book imagined what could happen if the storms became too much that it was impossible to repair critical infrastructure. I loved many of the characters in this book and despised others. All around a great thought provoking book.

A Fever in the Heartland: The Ku Klux Klan's Plot to Take Over America, and the Woman Who Stopped Them by Timothy Egan
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This book is so wild it’s hard to believe it’s nonfiction. It tells the story of the KKK’s resurgence in the 1920s, and the woman who brought them down. The way the author wrote some of the court scenes made it feel like a thriller and I just kept reading to find out what happened next. It’s hard to make a story that compelling when people already know the outcome. But this was so good. Highly recommend.

Gone Missing by Linda Castillo
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I tore through this book in like a day and a half. It’s another great mystery thriller featuring Detective Kate Burkholder trying to find three Amish girls that have gone missing. This book is five stars despite the fact that I hated the ending and that I felt one of the characters ended up with an unresolved storyline.

Four Stars

Mother-Daughter Murder Night by Nina Simon
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This was a fun and fast read about about a mother, daughter and grandmother that unwittingly get sucked into a murder investigation when a body is found at the daughter's work. When the police question the daughter, the grandmother is determined to find out who really killed the victim and clear her granddaughter's name.

Three Stars

Through the Glass Ceiling to the Stars: The Story of the First American Woman to Command a Space Mission by Eileen M. Collins
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I always enjoy a good astronaut memoir, though I wish at times this book would have given some deeper details about various aspects of the life of an astronaut. At times I felt it just bounced from one event to the next without some deeper insight that only Eileen could have shared. But despite that, I still enjoyed hearing Eileen tell the story of how she became the first woman to command a space shuttle mission.

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After 6 months, my maternity leave is officially over and I'm filled with so many emotions. 

I'm so grateful to have had this time even though it was not what I imagined it would be. There were times when it was so, so hard and days when I so deeply missed talking to another adult during the day. There were times it felt so isolating even though I was lucky enough to have friends on maternity leave at similar times. And there were times when the baby would cry and I just couldn't figure out what he needed and then I'd be crying too.

But as the time draws to a close, I know I will miss the days of getting to spend all our time together. Watching my little boy experience something for the first time or make progress toward a milestone. He's such a serious little boy sometimes, who concentrates so hard on whatever toy he's holding or whatever new thing has caught his attention. 

I'll miss some of the little routines we've fallen into like spending 20 minutes sitting on the porch each morning to get some fresh air and sunshine, while I drink my tea and he either studies the patterns of the bricks in the wall or watches the cars go by or intensely studies one of the electrical outlets covered in a water-proof box. 

I already miss some of the early stages when he was just a few weeks old and would fallen asleep on me easily. So many times when it happened, I remember being frustrated that I was "nap trapped," and couldn't go to the bathroom or get more water or eat some food. I wish I had realized how short that phase was and did a better job just enjoying those very fleeting moments. Now my kiddo pretty much won't sleep anywhere but a crib or if we're lucky a car seat while we're on the road. 

But it's hard when you're in the thick of it, and you just desperately want a minute to yourself to regroup or meet one of your own basic needs. 

Maternity leave for me had a lot of struggles. My initial recovery was hard given all the hemorrhaging I experienced in the hospital. I was lucky to have parents and in-laws who came and helped in the first two weeks after we were home. And my husband was able to take four full weeks off of work right when we got home. 

I had a great support system, and pretty much always had another adult around to chat with when I wasn't napping in those early days. 

As I started to heal more from the C-section and my husband went back to his day job, I found camaraderie with two friends who also had babies over the summer. I started attending a weekly mom and baby yoga class in the neighborhood with one of my friends, and it was so nice to have a sliver of normalcy and a reason to get out of the house once a week. 

I relied heavily on my daily walks, which were such a lifesaver when the baby would nap the entire time. I could put on a podcast and walk for easily an hour or hour and half and feel a bit like my normal active self. 

The news that I'd need another surgery at around 12 weeks postpartum because I wasn't healing well from the C-section was a huge blow -- physically for sure, but mentally more than anything. I know I wrote a whole post on this, so I won't spend too much time here on it, but it was hard to start recovery all over again, and it wasn't until maybe mid-December that I felt like I was maybe, finally full physically recovered from childbirth. For those counting, my child was over five months old at that point. 

Before I gave birth, I had all these visions for fun little outings I wanted to do with the baby while I was on leave -- reasons to get out of the house and also chances to show him new things and have new experiences together. 

Some of these things I eventually got to do -- a short hike in Rock Creek Park with another friend who was also on maternity leave, weekly story time at the library, exploring at the Arboretum, saying goodbye to the pandas at the National Zoo (snuck this one in the day before my second surgery).  

The one outing I was most bummed to have to cancel was apple picking and visiting one of our favorite farms this fall. The timing of my second surgery basically meant I was laid up for the bulk of the picking season. 

As the baby got older it started to become a little harder for him to fall asleep any time, any where, and I spent a lot of time trying to establish a somewhat predictable nap schedule. Figuring out sleep was probably the hardest, but most worthwhile thing (and perhaps the thing I'm most proud of baby-raising wise) from my maternity leave. 

We got very lucky in that our child was always a pretty good night sleeper from the beginning, but we also worked hard to establish good sleep habits. By like week four or five, we'd introduced a "bed time routine" basically just a set of consistent things we did each night to send the message it was time to sleep -- bath, PJs, feeding, book. 

The first time he slept for more than a three hour stretch overnight, I obviously panicked and thought something horrible happened. But by the time he was three-months old, we were fairly consistently getting 8 hours of sleep each night. 

Naps were a different story, and I swore I read to the end of the Internet on how to help get better naps so our kiddo wasn't so overtired all the time. I tried a million different things, that all got disrupted with that second surgery, but eventually, eventually we found a system that worked. I now consider myself a minor expert on baby sleep. Ask me about wake windows, sleepy cues and linking sleep cycles and I can talk your ear off. I was happy when I got us onto a consistent four-nap schedule around 3 or 4-months old, and life has become tons more predictable now that we're on a three-nap schedule. I feel like I can actually plan things that won't totally mess with nap time and I'm not as trapped in the house. 

But boy that feeling of being trapped and isolated really permeated a lot of my leave. I loved getting to spend time with my child. Every time I managed to get a gummy smile or a giggle, my heart would melt. But I missed interacting with adults, and using my brain to solve more complex problems than why is this child crying now. There's only so many times I can do the same activities with the same toys or dream up a new game to play when we're bored after 30 seconds. 

And for all those reasons, I'm sometimes so excited to go back to work. I have a job I really enjoy. It plays to my strengths. It lets me problem solve and be creative. And I work with some of the best people, several of whom I consider friends outside of the office, and I miss them. There have been a handful of times over my leave when I've popped in and looked at a few work emails, and I'm excited to get caught up on everything I've missed the last few months.

But holy heck, the minute I think about being excited to go back to work, I feel slapped down by some major guilt, and then I get nostalgic for this uninterrupted time with my child that I'll never have again, and woof that swirl of emotions is tough. 

I'm grateful that my husband still has some of his paternity leave left and he will be staying home with the baby while I transition back to my salaried job. If I had to juggle my transition back to my day job with a daycare transition too, I'd be emotionally spent. 

Despite the fact that my maternity leave was not a walk in the park, I am so beyond grateful that I had this time. I got so lost, but learned so much and it was messy and hard, but also really beautiful. It's a privilege that many people in the U.S. do not have, and I'll forever be thankful that I had this time, and that as it comes to an end, I'm not feeling forced back to work, but prepared and a little bit nervous to take that next step.