White Rock Centennial Half Marathon

In December I told a friend of mine that I needed to get motivated to start working out again. I mentioned something about signing up for a race. She emailed me the next day with a race she wanted me to run with her. I did the 5k. I loved it and in the midst of getting ready for it I started running with a couple of girls that go to our church, and after the 5k, one of the girls suggested we sign up for a half marathon. We did. So we had to keep running. And then a couple more joined us and it turned into 7 cool women who drug their butts out of bed at 6 am every morning to run together. It has been an absolute blast and I have gone from someone who hated running to someone who is completely loving it. I nursed an injury for the last few weeks of training for the half but with the help of some physical therapy, some Aleve, and the race-day adrenalin, I made it through the 13.1 miles without stopping. And you know what? My husband did it too which just made it that much more fun.

The shirts I made for the seven of us who trained together.

Yes, that's a minivan

The night before the race. Our carb-loaded dinner.

Here we are before the race. Me, Cheri, Sarah, Ginger, Kim & Casi.
(One of the girls got injured and was unable to run)

Me and the hubs

Me all sweaty and gross with my finishers medal.

Not an old dog but I can learn new tricks

So I'm taking this online sewing class right now. (I know, how do you take a sewing class online? Videos people, videos.)  Its a 5 week course on learning the basics of sewing kids clothes.  I've done quite a lot of sewing over the last 3 years but I was mostly making it up as I went along (sorry to those of you who received handmade gifts during that time, but its true) and I recently realized that I haven't really done a lot of sewing for my own family.  So I decided it was high time I learned what the heck I was doing and took a class.  I'm really loving it.  The blog style class is a little hard to follow occasionally (like when the teacher loses her voice and has to post pictures instead of videos) and sometimes I want to throw those stupid half-made pants out the window   take a break but overall it has really been good for me.  I've developed a lot more confidence in my ability and learned some pretty cool tricks/techniques along the way,  I've fallen in love with sewing again (I just turned a pile of nothin into the cutest little dress/skirt/pants/pinafore, etc.) and my little Pumpkin is honored and thrilled to sport her made-by-mama duds.  In fact, she frequently tries to sneak them out of the hamper so she can wear them  six 2 days in a row.  She even tried to convince me today that it was, indeed, okay to wear a pinafore to your ballet class. (She's possibly obsessed with the pinafore because a certain hippo in a certain library book is made to wear one throughout the story.)  I now find myself itching to finish up my chores at night (or skip them all together) so that I can head upstairs to create some little something.  I've even been making things not required by the class.  Last night it was a quick nightgown fashioned from one of daddy's old t-shirts and tonight it was a tiny utility apron constructed of some very flowery fabric in hopes of making tomorrows task of bathroom cleaning a little more exciting for the helper.  We'll see how it goes.  As for me, I'm already thinking ahead to the next thing.  Perhaps my "sewing projects" bin may one day get emptied after all.

A birthday gift

My baby girl Charlotte turned one in January and for the last few weeks I've been feeling a little blue about the fact that she's not a baby anymore.  A few months ago she started sleeping in her own bed (as opposed to in my bed spinning and kicking me all night) and sleeping through the night.  I've just been a little lonesome for all those tiny baby things like rocking her to sleep, snuggling her all night and having the alone time with her while I feed her.  Today is my birthday and this morning in the wee hours I heard her cry.  She does that occasionally but usually goes right back to sleep.  She didn't.  She kept crying.  I told hubs to go get her and just bring her to me.  He handed her to me and immediately she snuggled up right next to me, nuzzled her sweet little face into my neck and collapsed into sleep.  And there she stayed for the rest of the night, nestled in close to the mommy who was missing just that.  There was no spinning, I did not get kicked. What I got was a sweet few hours of a birthday gift where I was reminded that though she may no longer be a baby, she will always be my baby.  So happy birthday to me.  What a perfect present.  Thank you sweet C.

Can anyone keep up?

With a toddler and a 3 year old? Or do you all have it under control and I'm the only one that always feels 10 steps behind? And how can I be steps behind when one of them is barely taking steps? This is a reminder to myself in a sense because I think its so easy to forget the craziness that is life with children under 5. Mind you, I know from watching that the craziness continues, it just shifts and changes forms as they grow. But please tell me how I am supposed to get this new house completely unpacked and organized when I have to clean up all the tupperware she pulled out of the cupboard for the third time today (I know they make child locks), and sweep up the food she threw on the floor to tell me she was finished eating each and every meal. I sometimes think about how quickly I could get things done if I didn't have these two rag-muffins at my feet all day. But what fun would that be? No, instead I find myself spending the majority of my time merely "maintaining" the chaos that is our day to day. And every now and again the stars all align and something incredible happens. Perhaps there happens to be number one's favorite show on at the exact same time that number two has collapsed into a nap and I am able to take one teeny tiny step beyond just holding it together. I might actually get those pictures printed to put into the empty frames or I may put those empty frames up on that empty wall that has long been waiting for them or I may find a place to store all those things that are for now being stored on the kitchen counter (which I might mention is probably still sticky from the PB&J we had for lunch). If I'm being really looked out for, that toddler will get herself into an extra deep sleep and that three year old will amuse herself with barbies long after her show has finished and I could possibly have a minute or two to clear a path through that room that will one day be the crafting room of my dreams but is currently a place to put stuff and stack stuff and store stuff that you forgot that you had because, well, its buried somewhere in a pile of stuff. Is today a day the stars will align? We'll see. But even if it doesn't, when all is said and done I'd gladly take a hundred days of "maintaining" over one day without my messy munchkins.

Not "so cool"

The other day my 3 year old asked me why her dad asked me to marry him. In earshot of my husband I told her it was because he loved me and thought I was so cool. To hubs' amusement she replied "but you're not so cool mom." With dramatic, shocked expression on my face I asked for an explanation. I got "you're not so cool because you don't do fancy tricks like daddy." She then turned to hubs and said "show her your fancy tricks daddy." Hubs looked back and forth from her to me trying to decide exactly what she was referring to and not wanting to disappoint because, after all, his parental coolness was on the line. Said 3 year old then stood on one leg to provide us an example of what she deemed a "fancy trick." In the end, a 3 second hand stand was enough to reinsert myself into the "so cool" category.........for now. Phew!

I voted

I voted today.  Isn't that cool?  Isn't it great to live in a time when voting is not a privilege only awarded to those of a certain gender, race, land-owning group?  I for one am grateful for the opportunity and for all those who fought to give me that right.  Regardless of the outcome, I've had my say.

She's stressing out?

Being a parent is hard. I know it's such an overused joke to talk about the lack of instruction manual but really, where is mine? Do you ever feel like you're totally screwing up your oldest child because they are your guinea pig for learning this parenting stuff? I do. I'm afraid I'm raising an uptight little one who won't be able to think for herself because we do all the thinking for her. And while I am constantly changing little things about my parenting as I see what I think will be better for her, the best changes usually come after I am praying for inspiration because I've done something horribly wrong. I just pray that she won't suffer for my well-intentioned, yet apparently poor choices. I was just woken up by a sweet little 3 year old voice saying "mommy? mommy?" I, of course assumed (you know what that does) that she was telling me she couldn't sleep or something equally unimportant so I just said "go get on the air mattress" (which we keep set up in our room because every night she ends up there for one of a myriad of reasons) This was followed by an almost apologetic voice stating "but I need a new pull-up because I peed mine all over me." I sat up and she was holding out a diaper to me (meant to fit her 7 month old sister) that was apparently all she could find in the basket in the dark. So as I got up and took her hand to lead her to get a new pull-up, I realize that she is not wearing the pajama top that she wore to bed. Almost as if she can read my thoughts, she sweetly starts telling me "and I peed all over my pajamas and I got a pajama top but I couldn't find the bottoms but I found the Christmas striped bottoms and it's okay to wear Christmas stuff right now." When I get upstairs to her room I realize that just as she has said, her pull-up has leaked through to her sheet but what surprises me is that the blankets on top of the sheet are not wet. Upon further explanation from her I see that she took off the wet blanket and then laid two blankets on top of the pee spot ("so the pee pee wouldn't get on my legs") and I also notice that Christmas striped pajama bottoms at the foot of the bed that she was talking about. So basically, my 3 year old (who is scared of the dark and hates being upstairs by herself but tolerates it to go to sleep) got up and on her own tried to clean up her wet bed, replace her own pull-up and put on new jammies and only came to me for help in desperation when she couldn't get the diaper she'd found on all by herself. And she says to me as I am removing the wet sheet "I peed my pull-up and then it was stressing me out." Why does this make me wanna cry? Maybe because I'm afraid that she was scared to come get me for help because I haven't always responded so well to being woken up in the past, or that I've possibly reacted too harsh over things that are an accident, but a pain to deal with nonetheless, and so she was attempting to deal with it herself (in complete darkness I might add). It's common to hear the little saying "you've got to pick your battles" when talking about parenting. I'm really feeling that now as I sit here and replay in my head the past few days, weeks and years with her. I think it's easy to expect our kids to be little adults and forget that they have yet to learn all the tools/lessons to act as such. I find myself saying to my 3 year old "why would you do that?" and on the days I'm thinking clearly, I hear my own self answer in my head and say "because I'm three mom and because three year olds are supposed to wonder how much toilet paper they need to wrap around their hand to make the roll not break off when they run through the house with it trailing behind them." Sometimes I wish I had a pause button so that when life got crazy and I found myself feeling overwhelmed, I could press pause and think about what a good response would be to a certain situation instead of just responding in the moment to the situation coupled with the stress I'm feeling. Oh how I love my children and I hope they know that despite my blunders. The good thing about feeling upset over something like this is that it does give me renewed energy to try harder to be a better, calmer, more patient and understanding parent and to figure out different ways to do things that may be a better fit for my kids. I just hope I'm not ruining my daughter while I learn.