Tuesday, December 14, 2010

Work out fairy- where are you?!

A guy that I work with filled me in on what I call pure brilliance in parenting. It started with him explaining the "Elf on the Shelf" to me. Wow, what a great idea. Glad we sell them in Hallmark stores. If you aren't in the loop on this (which I obviously wasn't), there is this Elf that you can buy that has a book with it. I think the story goes something like this: the Elf is sent by Santa into the house to watch the kids and see if they are being good or bad. He reports back to Santa...and can only talk to grown ups, not kids. It's the sweetest story and I love it. To my surprise, I saw one at my sister in law's house the other day and talked to my niece and nephew about it to make sure they were being nice! I love it and I love the childhood belief and everything about it. Brilliant. And a good bargaining tool when/if your kids might be a bit naughty...."You know the Elf is watching you..." and then the "evil mom laugh". JK, but seriously, brilliant.

Back to the story of the guy from work, so in addition to the Elf at Christmas time, he and his wife had all these other fairies that lived in their house for their daughter that "watched" her at different life stages. From the Potty Fairy, the standard Tooth Fairy, the Pacifier Fairy and the Sleep Fairy--- they had thought of it all. If she was good, the fairy would leave a small gift (no more than $1) to reward her! And he said it worked like a charm. He said some people say it's bribery, but I'm with him and agree it's amazing! I had no idea all these parenting ideas existed. We have a lot to learn for someday down the road I guess :)

But this week......I realized........I need a WORKOUT FAIRY. ASAP. This is urgent people. My workout fairy used to be myself who would tell myself every morning when I didn't want to get out of bed and work out "remember how good you felt yesterday after working out? yeah, you need to work out!" and I would do it. Then when that stopped working, my workout fairy was Jimmy who when I asked him in the morning "are you working out today" and he would roll over and say "yes, you should too" and that was it- I would do it. Now his response has changed to "Eh, isn't it your rest week?" and he falls back asleep. He has failed as my workout fairy. So now I need one. Bad. To watch me in the morning to make sure I get up and work out and give me small prize (not over $1....eh....) for actually doing it. Because apparently self-motivation has diminished with the departure of anything you can call "reasonable weather". This bitter cold and wind has just blown all that away.


While Chalene Johnson would be the perfect work out fairy to encourage me to keep up with my wonderful TurboFire workouts, that I continue to love, when I get downstairs to do them....I think this fairy might work out better. She could wake me up by yelling : "HEY, YOU WANT TO LOOK LIKE THIS EVER IN YOUR LIFE- GET YOUR BUTT OUT OF BED AND WORKOUT NOW". And then flash her pearly white smile. Yep, that would do it :)



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