Exercise Alone or With the Kids?

After dropping off Zoe at daycare and Maya at her first day of preschool, I spent some time, alone, thinking about what I want to do during those 3 hours 2x/week of alone-time. I listed all the things I do, divided into groups of things I can do with the kids vs. alone.

I’d always thought I needed to exercise alone, yet I felt I was wasting my alone-time doing it then. Confusing contradiction there. Once I broke down “exercise” into specifics, it became clear that I could do it with my kids around. For example, I can bike with the girls in the bike trailer. I can do toning exercises at home while the girls and I watch a 30-minute video. Maya gets a kick out of watching me exercise and enjoys trying to “help” me by sitting on me or pushing me up from underneath while I do a plank. My other option with the kids is to put them in the HBC daycare while I work out, which costs much less than their babysitters do. Really, the only exercise that I need to do alone is running.

So now I have fewer excuses not to exercise, and I realize I can do it with my kids, saving my precious alone-time for things I really need to do alone.