twenty-two months

L on her 22nd monthday. See more photos below.

 Things we love about L at 22 months old:

• She says "Dough?" [Go?] to ask, "Where did it go?" (Besides repeating a word, she doesn't put two words together yet. For example, she'll say "more" or "please," but not "more, please.")
• The way she says, "hmmm."
• Her silent ooh face (sticks her lips out a little -- her Daddy calls it her duck face).
• She gets possessive of her mama sometimes. If Shboogoo hugs my leg, L is not satisfied with hugging my other leg, because she wants me all to herself.
• She hands one of us a book and says, "Ree." [Read.]
• The way she says her sister's name. The parts she gets right are a consonant and the vowel sounds.
• Her high "eeh eeh" monkey sound.
• She likes playing with water and putting her hands in it -- and also, as I think I have mentioned before, rubbing a purposely-spilled drink around on her tray. The one part of a bath that she doesn't like is having her hair washed.
• Her meow. At Papa's the other day she was calling for the cat by using a questioning "meow?!" instead of his name.
• She can climb onto the piano bench, turn the pages in a book of sheet music, and play.
• Her attempts at jumping -- kind of bending and lifting one foot at a time.

In the last month she became comfortable with sitting on the Elmo potty seat, which is foldable and goes on top of a regular toilet. I've made her sit on it probably at least 20 times (I have pictures but have not gotten them off my phone); she has actually peed in the toilet once. She often lets me know that her diaper feels gross by putting her hand on that area and sometimes also saying, "poo." Very soon, I will sew her some training underpants because it seems that the few small Gerber ones we had don't exist anymore, and making them will be much cheaper. (I started having Shboogoo use the toilet, with the Elmo potty seat and wearing the Gerber underwear and everything, when she was 19 months old. For several reasons, I didn't want to start L that young, but she has seen all along how her big sister does it.)

Still on her monthday, she wanted to get in the foot bath with these girls. I let her sit down in it.

my first half marathon!

BACKGROUND:

I disliked running in high school; it was hard because I wasn't in shape. During the year following my graduation from high school, a couple of different girls I was friends with (one at home, one when I was away at college) asked me to work out with them. That was motivating. Before my now-husband went to Basic Training I ran with him to prepare him for that. I remember that when we started it was a challenge to even run for two minutes, walk for one minute, run for two minutes, walk for one minute, etc.

Basically, I have wanted to run a half marathon since my husband really got into running during his first deployment and ran a half marathon in August 2006. I have been training for mine on and off since the end of last summer. The last race I participated in before the half marathon (13.1 miles) was a 6k (3.72 miles) six months ago. By that point the longest I had ever run was probably 7 miles. My 10 km race (6.2 miles) was two years before that.


HOW I TRAINED:

In addition to a long run once a week (usually Monday), I usually ran two or three times a week for at least 30 minutes. I usually ran on the treadmill, either during L's nap or right when I woke up, if both kids were sleeping. For the long run, I did it outside when I could, with my husband watching the kids. I prefer running outside while listening to music, but it's kind of fun watching a movie while I run on our treadmill, and I like being able to look at my pace. A 9-and-a-half-minute mile is pretty comfortable for me, and I like sprinting for twenty or thirty seconds -- sometimes when I feel like I want to slow down I speed up instead. I always skip exercise on Sundays, and I probably always rested the day after a long run. On the other days that I didn't run, I would either 1) walk enough to warm up, and then do strength training exercises or yoga, or 2) not do any exercise, besides housework, of course.

WHAT I ATE:

Since November (when I started reading the book Eat to Live) I have been eating mainly leafy vegetables, other green vegetables, fruits, beans, nuts, seeds, and whole grains. I've eaten meat, dairy and eggs only rarely. I drink water and non-dairy milks.

For dinner the night before the half marathon I ate pasta (the Pad Thai pictured here) -- I found out that runners are supposed to "carb load" soon before the race. In the morning I was up at 5:30 and followed the Medical Director's advice which was in the e-mail they sent to all participants: I drank about 16 ounces of water right away. At 6:00 (one hour before the race would start) I ate; I think it was just almond butter on whole wheat bread. I drank more water while my little family and I drove to the starting line.

THE RACE:

I was excited and a little cold as we waited to start. It was pretty perfect weather, actually, not too sunny in the morning, and we got rained on, but not until 9:20. I liked hearing about the history of this marathon/half marathon. The number of participants has gone up each year -- this year over 1000 people ran the full marathon and over 4000 ran the half. I didn't know anybody around me and I didn't say much, but I listened to others chatting. Near the end I said hello to the three women from my neighborhood who I knew were going to be there running.  I was sad that I couldn't find them for a group picture when we were done (they finished before me . . . and one of them just had a baby 11 months ago!). My step-sister who was born the same year as me also ran the half, and we didn't find out until hours later that the other one was there! She did well, too.

So how did I do? I felt really good until my legs started to feel sore for about the last mile; I was still able to run some of that mile, though. I ran past my mom and younger sister, who were watching, about a minute before I finished; I found my husband and daughters a few minutes after. I had wanted my time to be 2:10 or less, because that would be a 10-minute mile (in my October race I averaged about 9:43 per mile). I am very happy with my time anyway: 2 hours and 16 minutes, which I suppose counts the time I spent waiting for and using a port-o-potty. It was a 10:24 pace according to the timing chip. I was faster than about 39% of all the half marathon runners, and faster than 41% of those in my age division. I did take fewer and shorter walking breaks than I did during my four or five training runs that were 10-12 miles long.

I think the next time I run a half marathon I will do a few things differently. I'll go to sleep earlier the night before. During the race I'll keep something like GU with me, not just a water bottle. I will do more stretching afterward. Also, I would love to run one with my husband running next to me.

baptism, job poster, and dinner with relatives

On April 9th my father-in-law baptized his youngest daughter. We're proud of her!

 

Shboogoo was so excited that I ordered these photos, which I had taken over a week earlier, and that together we made her job poster. (I wrote her name above the word "Jobs" but I am not showing her real name on my blog.) I love having the poster on her wall to remind her of what she can do each day -- well, to get started, really, because we hadn't been having her do as much as she could. This site is a really cool way to teach children to work, but our child wanted something physical instead of having to go online. We've been better at keeping the house picked up each day. I also am happy that I gave each of her jobs a number, because she immediately started using them: "I've done job number one and job number two." (Thanks to my friend Chelle for the inspiration! At her house I saw they had done the same thing, with a photo of their daughter doing each task.)

My fun cousin Julee was in town for a few days and wanted to have dinner with my mom, my siblings, and me. We also invited my mom's cousin Kirk and his wife. He is like an uncle to me although he hasn't lived in our state for very many years; growing up they had fun hanging out together because he only had a brother and my mom only had sisters. Anyway, it was fun to talk with all three of these relatives. It was Kirk's birthday, and he insisted on paying for everyone's meals. Also, I learned that when he was younger he ran a marathon, and I didn't know (didn't remember?) that he was in the Air Force for twenty years.

 my Pad Thai Tofu

our 7th anniversary

Earlier this month we celebrated seven years of being happily married. This is a milestone, because I know from studying Human Development and Family Studies in college that "half of all first marriages that end in divorce . . . end within the first seven years" (quoted HERE, in the address "Marriage Crossroads: Why Divorce Is Often Not the Best Option" by Brent A. Barlow, PhD).

It was beyond nice that D was able to be here with me on our anniversary (but it was still a special day the years that he was deployed on that date: {'05, '06, '09, '10}). 

We dropped the girls off at his mom's at 5 p.m. When D went to bed at 11:00, I drove back to get the girls since Grandma had to teach a class in the morning. Meanwhile, we had a wonderful date at home. He asked me to go get our take out while he set up the table (his desk with a fancy new tablecloth over it) downstairs, to be ready for our candle-lit dinner. As we ate the delicious food we enjoyed talking about our wedding day and our other wedding anniversaries. We didn't really plan to do that, but he asked what I remember. We watched a movie that he had bought as a surprise, promising that I would like it. It was The Blind Side -- I had told him many times that it's really good and I wanted him to see it, so I was happy with his choice. He wrote on Facebook, "Best. Anniversary. Yet."

Chinese and Thai

our family videos: best of 2010

Shboogoo loves making up songs (this day was about two months after her third birthday).

 Happy L at 8 and half months old.

 Shboogoo and I walking to her friend's house.

When L was crawling everywhere (the one you hear is Shboogoo).

Ten-month-old L partially opening her sleepy eyes a bunch of times.

Short video of L about 16 months old, helping me sweep.

 This is my favorite one of Shboogoo; I recommend watching all of it. She thought our boxes of Christmas lights looked like a podium, and she taught a pretend Primary lesson, basically about some of the bad guys in Jesus' life. Her voice and her wording are adorable as she acts like she's an adult teaching children.

our family videos: best of 2009

I think I started this post a week ago; it was a busy week. . . . I want to share some posts containing videos. I may print my blog, and by having posts that are videos only, I can exclude them from the blog books without having to also exclude photos and writing. It had been way too long since I watched some of the videos I made in 2009. A lot of them my husband had never seen (even though I often intended to upload them for him, because I had Shboogoo and other people saying hello to him -- via the camera -- while he was deployed). I chose several of the best ones. Enjoy!

Shboogoo's first haircut, March 2009 (she was tired, but maybe that helped her sit so still!) (it's probably too boring to watch the whole thing).

With each of my pregnancies I felt the baby hiccuping. I know this doesn't happen to every mom, but I knew they were hiccups! The video shows my belly moving as L hiccuped about a month before she was born (this is my most popular video on youtube).

 

Shboogoo holding her sister (who someone swaddled in a weird way . . . you mostly see her legs and not her face) for the very first time!

This is one of the sweetest and saddest things ever, because it was a Monday or Tuesday night and D left for Afghanistan on Wednesday morning.

Shboogoo's pronunciation and imagination were funny, and I captured how she sang like Ariel.

"How you doin'?" (L about two months old)