New start

I have not blogged for over 3 years but I have decided to give it a go again so i can look back at this time in my life in a few years.
It seems that not much has happened in those 3 years.....that's what happens when you work/live in small town in rural Illinois. But there has been some changes so let's recap the last few months.
I bought a house in 2015- I never lived in a house, my parents and I and my sister lived in an apartment but my grandparents lived in houses and I always prefered that. I live living in a house although it is a lot of work. Because I dont want to put too much money into this house be ause I know I will move eventually (3-4 years) I (yes, I me myself) sanded and refinished and stained my hardwood floors, took one wall down, repainted and rearranged the kitchen caninets (well, my sister helped when she came visit on Christmas), build a deck, build a fence (again my sis and a cousin helped me with this). I am impressed by myself:)))
I found a wonderful guy who moved in with me in summer 2016
I was supposed to go on a work assignment in India starting in 2018 so we decided to start a family before we go.
We found out I was pregnant in November, due July 2017
Everybody told me not to go to India with a tiny little baby so we decided not to go. Instead, I decided to change jobs. I have worked as a plant controller for a tire manufacturing company the last 3 years and I decided that it was time to try something different and I have been playing with the idea to move closer to production process. Everybody has been very supportive and when I go back to work after the maternity leave (November 1) I will be going into Industrial Engineering. I am super excited!
Baby girl Alexa was born on July 4. My firecracker baby! She is adorable and we cannot get enough of her!
I signed up for Madison 70.3 in 2018.

And this is where this starts. I would like to document my journey about getting back to training and racing  (I did stay active during pregnancy but not as much as I would have liked , esp first 6 months when I was puking my brains out daily, even ended up in ER one night on IV for fluids), losing weight (I gain weight very easily and I gained close to 50 pounds), while raising my sweet little girl and working a new job.

I started running 2 weeks after giving birth and saying that it was horrible is an understatement. I did not have any physical birth-related pain (well, it was as painless as it can be after birth and episiotomy). Finally after 3 weeks I started feeling little better and i could actually use my core while running! I ran 6 miles today and it has been my longest run since....forever. I ran at 10' pace these day and my interval workouts (I did 400,800,1200,800,400) are at 8' pace. It makes me super sad and mad how slow I am but I think that after I loose more of this baby weight (I was at 215-220 pregnant and am down to 193, still loooooot of pounds to loose to get to 150ish) and am consistent with running it will come back.
Because of the episiotomy I was very cautious about biking and I started after 4 weeks and no pain at all. I have mostly been doing easy peasy pedaling. I need to start some real biking.
I have not swam yet......I swim at college that is 20' drive and their summer pool hours suck, they are only open in the morning and Nathan (my soon to be husband:)) goes to work before 6 so I have noone to watch Alexa. But now summer is over and school started so I need to find out new hours.

And on a baby front....Alexa is a happy easy going baby. She is super alert and moving all the time. She smiles a lot, especially at her dad, and she gets frustrated when I talk to her and she is not able to talk back. She tries very hard! She changes very fast. Every day we discover that she does something new!