From time to time I cycle back to the topic of personal growth. Often.

And sometimes, I forget that I’m a piece of the nurturing growth puzzle. Not growth in myself, but in the kids I see every day I go into work. In the tape and pencil crayons, sparkly wigs and lego, cars and endless board games, sportsmanship lectures and hugs, soccer and Livin’ on a Prayer outbursts, problem solving and water parks.

Some days, I see these things as ways to fill days for our kids. But some days, I really see those things as what they are meant to be: opportunities for growth and development, opportunities to learn, opportunities to develop new skills and moral dissonance.

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From one of our soon to be first graders and his family.

Growth happens inside, but it requires things from outside to ensure all aspects–physical, affective and cognitive development–are nurtured. I need to see these things, these steps we take, for what they really are more often–like I’ve been reminded of today. That we are, many hours a day, helping to build these kids into who they are becoming.

Helping them grow.

So this morning at work, I got hit in the face with a basketball.  I mean, really, that is actually [kind of] awesome, because how many other jobs can you legit get hit in the face with a basketball and be like “Yeah, I was working”.

Really, this is to be expected.  Free play with 43 kids in the gym is absolute chaos, and of course, I threw myself in the middle of it.  I have grown  more adept in a lot of fundamental movement skills myself this year in Movement Ed class, and as always, I like to play. So I was playing catch with a kid and a basketball.

The issue being is that in all this chaos and basketball torpedoing . . . I have a pretty expensive necessity that I barely think about on my face at all times.  Glasses are important, people.  So as the kid took a spin shot of some sort throwing the ball to meI managed to catch the ball . . . with my hands and my face.

It only took me twenty-plus years to kill a pair of glasses. I often wonder how it didn’t happen sooner, because honestly, I have worn glasses since I was eight months old. But today the pair I’ve had for about two years got creamed so bad that they are in a state of temporary repair . . . but are basically on death’s door.

As soon as the ball hit the face, I knew the glasses had an issue. I was at first hoping simply that the impact of the ball on the glasses on the face had just, you know, injured my face. People, when you have the equivalent of what I have learned to be $900 [with no street value] attached to your face, you hope for injuries. The kid apologized. “Did I break your glasses?”
“No worries, bud. I caught it with my face, but give me a minute to see what’s going on.”

Wandered across the gym to my coworker with the glasses still on my face feeling funny. Got her to inspect the glasses because I am pretty dysfunctional visually without the glasses going on. She and I both think it’s probably just the nose pads have bent, which is like, no big deal.

I get off work about a half hour later, and tweet my mom [and the rest of the world].

Get to school and go to my mom’s office, who hasn’t even read my tweet. “So i got hit in the face with a basketball at work this morning, and my glasses are broken and need to be dealt with.”

It’s convenient having your mom working at your school. No sooner do I say it than are we heading out of the office to go to the special glasses store. I have special glasses. They are -18s which means, essentially, i have bad eyes. We get to the special glasses store and they take my glasses and leave me unable to do much except attempt to send coherent tweets from my phone with the screen four centimetres away from my face and play with the mirror.

Apparently it is not just a bent nose-pad. It is a broken frame.  It’s taken me twenty years to break a pair of glasses, and apparently when I made it happen, it happened hardcore. The glasses are now soldered together as a temporary measure but it won’t hold forever. Plus it doesn’t look totally fabulous, but it’s not bad enough to be super noticeable unless you look hard or I tell you. So you all know, so now when you see me you can be like “HEY LOOK ITS THE SILVERY SPOTS ON YOUR BROWN GLASSES.”  I go Thursday for a vision test and to pick out new glasses. This is the issue with having to go to the special glasses store, is that it is literally the only place in the city I can buy glasses, so my choice is expensive and limited. No two-for-one deals for me.

So anyway, the temp solder deal? No fun gym stuff until the new glasses happen. The glasses lady told me basically if I get hit in the face again, the glasses are done-for. And I don’t have a backup at $900 a pop [to reiterate: no two for one deals], and therefore, I cannot afford for these things to be done-for or I literally cannot function.  So I had to go back to school and not be able to participate in Movement Ed. And if we do free play in the gym on Thursday at work, I can’t play in there either.

Honestly, this is a bad thing when your whole life literally revolves around playing in the gym.

[it is a tough life, I tell you]

On the 12th of each month, a bunch of bloggers from around the world take 12 pictures throughout their day and blog them. Here are my pictures from March 12th, 2012!

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9:37 am – bedroom. Yeah, honestly. Now, where’s my backpack at?

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12:54 pm – kitchen. Forgot to take any pictures at school, but canned pumpkin is far more exciting. Also it looks gross. Also it got turned into something delicious.

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1:25 pm – kitchen. One of my best friends, Donald, making hot chocolate from scratch.

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1:41 pm – kitchen. Baking is done and we didn’t even burn anything down!

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1:46 pm – kitchen. Hot chocolate is done now too!  So. Good.

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1:56 pm -kitchen. Not as good as it sounds.

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2:13 pm – kitchen. Pumpkin Pie Brownie from Chocolate Covered Katie!  Better than it looks. And moderately healthy, too! We even subbed the oil for apple sauce.

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4:06 pm – work. Got called in to work after school because my coworker Jess is sick and Other Kerry [which is what I call her; also known as “Kerry-with-a-Y” and just “Kerry” whereas I get called “Little Kerri”] is in Mexico!  Played NHL Monopoly for an hour . . . my job is hard.

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4:26 pm – work. I owned the Flames for a bit [I traded them], and the Leafs [the second best property, ironically. Yes, I do love them.] for the whole game.

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5:39 pm – work. We have lots of candy and candy canes at work.

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8:40 pm – bathroom. My friend Mike does Mirror Mantras every Monday to fuel him through the week, which I have always loved. So this week, I decided to join in!  I figured my mom was going to take it down as soon as she went into the bathroom, but she actually liked it!

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11:39 pm – kitchen. I have two presentations tomorrow – one on the overhand throw [honestly], and one is group teaching 6 and 7 year olds [aka our classmates pretending to be 6+7 year olds] to dribble a basketball.  We are playing a music game, so I did some fun GarageBand stuff for one of the games in our lesson!  [Kin win? I think so]

12 of 12 was created by Chad Darnell, and is now being hosted here!

On the 12th of each month, a bunch of bloggers from around the world take 12 pictures of their day and blog them.  Here are my pictures for January 12th, 2012!

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6:58 am – bathroom. As you can see, I’m doing the 12 of 12 pictures on my BlackBerry this month.  Here’s one of those “I AM USING MY SMARTPHONE IN THE BATHROOM MIRROR TO SHOW YOU I HAVE A SMARTPHONE!” pictures.

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7:57 am – gym at work. This is my friend Jess!  We work together and take semi-blurry morning pictures in the gym apparently!  We played soccer this morning [by which I mean we WATCHED THE KIDS play soccer this morning].

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8:20 am – gym at work. I spent far too much time deliberating what CAHPERD stood for [I couldn’t remember the R and the D], so I eventually made a mad sprint over to the banner to read it.  Canadian Association for Health and Physical Education, Recreation and Dance.  I think these banners are like, mandatory or something.  Also note the ball thing that looks like a smiley face.

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8:56 am – bus stop. Nothing like being outside waiting for the bus before even technically being off work! [We’re scheduled till 9, but the kiddos are gone at 8:45].

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12:09 pm – cafe. BRAP!  (Can someone enlighten me on the lingo?) The cafe has these nifty clear signs so as not to obstruct windows and fit in with the design and such.  These caused me to abandon Sam in the cafe, run up the stairs to grab my phone which was sitting by Tara, and then run back down to the cafe.  And, I got back before my London Fog was even ready!

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12:26 pm – athletic centre nap area. London fog in hand, time to get a little reading in before class.  Fit & Well seems like way too fluffy of a name for a book for a course called Scientific Principles of Fitness and Conditioning.

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3:47 pm – mom’s office. I took the liberty of putting my mom’s gone for the day sign up in her office

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4:28 pm – superstore. Look at the pretty balloons in the produce section! :]

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4:35 pm – superstore. Frozen pizza for dinner.

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4:41 pm – superstore. I’ve been on this epic mission for Special K Protein Plus. I think it is an American thing, as I cannot find it.  It has 10 grams of protein, and protein is kind of important . . . being a vegetarian, a little bit more focus on protein becomes that much more important.  Unfortunately, Protein Plus still has an edge on this stuff . . . it has 2 grams of sugar while Satisfaction has 13.  Why they’re sugaring up a perfectly good cereal is a mystery to me.  It’s also pretty high in sodium . . . I didn’t realize the sugar content till later, so yes, we bought it. (It’s okay, but that’s probably thanks to the 13 grams of sugar.)

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5:03 pm – kitchen. My beautiful friend Sara Brown in TO sent me some info on Visalus shakes and some samples — gonna try one tomorrow I think!  And as I’ve told Sara, while I believe that nutrition should come primarily from food, I know that sometimes that’s tough–especially with that protein factor as mentioned above.

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8:53 pm – kitchen. Here’s my Fitbit! (Review to come in a few days as requested by Mike!)  While my steps have risen by a few since taking this picture, I am definitely realizing how much harder it is to get the 10,000 steps in without working out — even if I did take sixteen flights of stairs today!  I actually LOVE this thing.  [To compare, yesterday I was at 12,084 . . . so basically double what I’ve done today].  Today was a rest day, fitness gains come in letting the body heal!  Back at ‘er tomorrow!  Also, how cute is my belt?

 

12 of 12 was created by Chad Darnell — and even though Chad is no longer hosting 12 of 12, it doesn’t feel right to end without giving him some credit!

The past is important in telling our stories, to understand where we’re at and why we’re there.

But tonight, I am not celebrating what’s ending . . . i am celebrating what is coming.  I don’t “do” new year’s resolutions, because a resolution is simply a goal–and goals need to be set and re-set frequently to make progress.

Today I closed off 2011 with my friend and former coworker, Sara, just one of many amazing people I experienced the joy of meeting in 2011.  We ate too many crepes and had an amazing time, and were ironically wearing the same Hollister hoodie in different colours, pink t-shirts underneath and brown jackets!  [I took mine off for the picture].

sara and i!

After making a final pharmacy trip for the year (gotta love breathing, yeah?), I came home to do a final workout to hit 800 kilometers for 2011.  To give some perspective on how much I’ve grown in regard to exercise and fitness in 2011, my total on December 31st, 2010 was a tiny 100 kilometers [which was upped to a legitimate 106 as I found later on that I had forgotten to count an April race in there].

That. Is. Huge.  The big change in 2011 came in September through the amazingness that was Physical Activity: Promotion and Adherence, definitely my favourite university class thus far, and really gaining the understanding that the SMALL things make a BIG difference!  Though an unintentional success attributed to making small changes and regulating physical activity, since mid-September [at my highest ever weight which may have been some sort of weird fluke] I have lost a total of 17 pounds.  I can’t say I felt “bad” before or anything, but comparatively, I feel totally awesome both physically and emotionally with the GOOD changes that have happened!

I’ve walked 213 km, stationary biked 143, and racked up hundreds of kilometers in commutes. I walked one race, went on a few short hikes, went on an adventure rock climbing this past week.  I played hockey both in my skates and in my Sauconies and skated down rivers.  I’ve played in concrete jungles and playgrounds.  This has been the most active year of my life, and I plan to strip that title away from 2011 and give it to 2012.

This year, I have reached farther than I thought I could, pushed my lungs and my body in bigger ways.  I started thinking about things differently, relationships changed and growing happened.  I did things I couldn’t believe I would or could succeed at.  
I got a new job at an amazing daycare.  I worked one-on-one at camp for a week, which was one of the biggest challenges and biggest joys simultaneously.  I have met so many amazing people in “real life” and online.  One of my best guy friends for a time became my first boyfriend and even though it mutually didn’t work out, it definitely did not damage our friendship, which was the most important thing to us.  I returned to Chicago.  I watched one of the girls I do inclusion with grow so much in where she’s at, while simultaneously realizing the growth in myself through her.  I have fallen more and more in love with the subject that is applied health.  I have changed my perspectives on health advocacy, become more involved, and continued to learn how to OWN my asthma and encourage others to do the same.  I have learned to better live with what I’ve been handed.  I have learned more deeply that health and wellness is a choice.  I have learned to see things differently, engage differently, and not just make goals, but meet goals and ENGAGE in these goals to use them as learning experiences.

I want to continue that next year.  Continue moving forward, continue proving myself wrong, continuing to grow and learn and thrive, not simply survive.

There is more goodness coming.  There is a year of hope, joy, change, growth, learning, and love ahead.

Bring it on 2012. GOOD THINGS!