Skip to my Lou

For various reasons, I have recently been trying a bit more seriously to lose some weight, and have succeeded in so far getting 9lb off since Christmas.  I am now back to pre-mr moo weight (only took me 2 and a quarter years!)  Inevitably this has involved getting more active.  It's surprising how hard it can be to exercise with a toddler around - the buggy is now protested against most of the time, so I can't do a brisk long walk very often - more a slow short walk while restraining a small person with one hand, and with regular breaks to look at stuff like other people's gardens, snails, diggers etc.  Swimming - well that involves me standing in one spot while mr moo "swims" and I hold onto him, exercise DVDs cause boredom before we've got through the warm up, jogging...well jogging has never happened and probably never will.  So recently I've taken up skipping.  Apart from the obvious disadvantage of looking a little like I'm about to put pigtails in my hair and break out into some kind of rhyme about banana splits or double dutch, I think it may be the perfect exercise for mums of toddlers.  The rope cost me a grand total of £2.99 for one thing, so the cost per use will hopefully be pretty low.  The exercise itself is very high intensity so quite an efficient use of time - currently doing 60 jumps at a rapid rate will have me panting for about 3 minutes, although hopefully that will improve.  The skipping rope can easily be put down to go and retrieve a ball, break up a fight, wipe a nose etc and picked up again 2 minutes later.  The best advantage of all, though, is that the skipping rope can easily be used in the playground, the garden, my consulting room at work when my patient is late, etc etc.  I started off with a mum friend in our local park playground while the boys played together and we took it in turns to skip and run around after them.  It worked really well - I can see us starting a craze.  Maybe it can become the latest "yummy mummy" thing to do and I can work out some way to sell super stylish skipping ropes and motivational DVDs and somehow make my millions.  Or maybe the whole schoolgirl with pigtails image is just too much to get over?