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Music City Weekend

Tomorrow, two lucky people are heading to Music City for the weekend. See Matt’s sister had a beautiful baby girl a couple of weeks ago and they are headed to pay her a visit. We were initially planning to wait until February to go see our new niece and cousin, but we just couldn’t wait. Unfortunately we’re out of vacation time, so a weekend was about the best we could do. Of course taking two kids for a weekend trip (out Friday, Back Sunday) seemed a bit too insane even for us, so we decided it would be best for just half of us to go.

Of course I wanted to be part of the half that gets to snuggle the beautiful Miss Autumn Grace, but it didn’t seem fair for me to go see Matt’s sister and the rest of his family. So I encouraged him to take Tabby with him and proposed that I stay home with Ben. So that is the plan. I know they’re looking forward to some daddy-daughter time – Tabby always relishes alone time with any adults. And of course I am looking forward to some time with just my Ben.

We’ll try not to get too crazy.

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Getting Drunk with Bob Ross

Last Saturday, after our 8 mile run, after a trip to IKEA and lunch with my sweet family and even some nap time, I got to have girls night out. A few months back two friends and myself bought Groupons for a local painting studio, the variety where you get to drink wine and slap around paint on a canvas. Last Saturday was our prescribed evening and another friend decided to come along too sort of last minute.

We got going kind of slowly and ditched our initial dinner plans and ended up at Foolish Craigs, one of Boulder’s sort of hippie cafes. It’s excellent and we had a nice, if slightly rushed meal. Then we went a couple blocks up to Posh and signed in for our painting session. Our Groupons included one glass of house wine each which we converted handily into a whole bottle of group wine and we sat down to paint a pretty moonlit tree. This is one of my favorite activities … it’s super relaxing because it’s just you and tons of like-minded people and some paint and music. The results are always at very least interesting … 30-40 people painting the same thing and they’re like snowflakes, no two alike.

In the photo above, the left-most one is mine, the next is my friend Holly’s that had a sort of starry starry night thing going, next is Jenny’s – I think her hills of trees turned out particularly well – and then last is Nan’s who is a trained artist. Up close you would definitely notice the comparably good technique in hers as compared to ours, but they all are pretty and fun to hang in your house. More importantly of course, we got to hang out and relax and enjoy a nice evening.

I would love to do this with Matty sometime for date night.

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A Treehouse Grows in Ben’s Room

As I may have mentioned before, I’ve never really put much effort into Ben’s room. Well that’s not precisely true. We did FINISH OUR BASEMENT just so he could have his own room, which was Matt’s old office. But after all that was done (a good percentage we did ourselves), we just didn’t seem to have the energy to really DESIGN Ben’s room. So we re-assembled the crib, slapped up a few prints, brought in Tabby’s old dresser and called it good.

So now that Ben is shedding the crib (apparently this is going to be a slow process), we are preparing to get rid of the crib (*SOB*) and really design him room. Our initial idea was a loft bed, maybe with a clubhouse sort of element, but Ben’s room has an AWESOME and very necessary ceiling fan that is cool looking but quite big. So loft bed=bad idea. The type of bad idea where you could get your head/limb sliced up. Of course it took our 6’7″ friend to point this out. Really tall people are useful like that.

So, completely frustrated, we hung around Ben’s room for a while yesterday looking for inspiration. A plain ol’ bed just didn’t seem to suit and we were getting pretty frustrated. Then suddenly I remembered a magazine I stashed away 10 yrs ago (yes, 10). Back then, we were still in college and Matt’s uncle and cousins came to town for a while, sometime after their visit, I found a copy of (the now sadly defunct) Martha Stewart Kids’ magazine that they had left. I loved it immediately and purchased every issue (still have them all!). But in that first issue almost to the back was a feature on a great kid’s room – a treehouse. The bed was just elevated enough (2ft) to give it some height (not much more than the bed in our room and out of fan reach). The room had fun tree-house style details, like a tin-can light, a burlap canopy, simple shelves lined with tin cans and jars of crawly things, a saw-horse desk.

I brought out the magazine and we looked it over and it just clicked. Everything about it feels right. The boyness of it, the playfulness of it, the simplicity of it. It even works with the owl prints he already has. Obviously, it won’t go up as designed. Ben has no use for a desk at this juncture and he will need some bookshelves (rain  gutter) and some other storage, including a dresser (hello IKEA!). Also, we will move the color scheme a bit more into the browns and oranges for some more interest.

I can’t wait to get started on it. Of course first, he needs to be fully out of his crib. Also, we need to rip out the cabinets that are in there and lay down carpet underneath (hope our attic stock is big enough!). But I couldn’t help myself. I already bought some bedding. What? It was on sale!

Meanwhile, you can follow my Ben’s Big Boy Bedroom Pinterest board.

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My First Trail Race

So Saturday was my first Trail race, the CMRA (Colorado Masters Running Assoc.) Stone House 8 Miler. Unbeknownst to me, I had a great preview of it a few Sundays ago when we checked out Bear Creek trail (photo above). We did nearly the same route, with a few big differences … the last time we followed the paved path since it had just snowed and we didn’t want tons of mud on our shoes or falls from muddy slipping and sliding. We also started a mile further in. We also did not have 6 water crossings – yes, you read that right – SIX water crossings.

The night before I got a txt message from my running  buddy telling me there were 3 water crossings and wondering about carrying garbage bags or whatever for our shoes. I’m not quite sure what it says about me, but this barely phased me. I just scanned some running BBs to figure out strategy and the message was clear – just run though it. Water drains out, feet dry, you move on. So I heeded their advice and brought nothing more than my normal gear to the race.

We ran through almost all trails and, yes, 3 water crossings. I think in my mind I had these as streams that were just about dry and would just get my feet wet, maybe, but I was wrong. I was up to my knees. But just like they’d said, feet got wet, water ran out, feet got dry. All three crossings were in pretty quick succession which was nice. Then we climbed. And climbed. And there was a super annoying spot where I was SURE I was done climbing … and I was wrong. We didn’t start our descent. We had a switchback. Then, happily, we did finally descend. There was about 100ft of ice I tiptoed over, but overall, my downhills were great. Luckily I’ve run trails before and I could keep a really good pace.

Since I didn’t know the course, I wasn’t positive I’d have to ford the streams again, but I did. The second time wasn’t any worse really, but it did feel colder and it fatigued me in a way I haven’t experienced before. And with that fatigue, I took a spill (no biggie – lots of leaves to break my fall, didn’t have a mark on me) and I knew I had to dial my speed back a little so I could pick up my feet more. So I did and I finished in about 90 minutes overall. For a person like me who hates hills, I felt like my pace was crazy good.

The “finish line” was a nice informal gathering … a couple of water coolers, some chex mix and little chocolate chip cookies. One corporate-type person there handing out samples of Honey Milk (yummy!) at a card table. Very chill. A really nice race. And now I think I might just have to join the CMRA.

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Hooked on Phonics

Reading fun is afoot at my house. Tabby, who will enter Kindergarten next year is in the midst of learning a bunch of pre-primer sight words. Every night this week we’ve been drilling her on them (truly a record for us as far as consistency goes). It’s making a difference too as she seems to be learning one or two new ones every day.

Though I know she’s supposed to learn these words just by sight (some of them can’t, in fact, be sounded out), we have been trying to help her through some of the phonics as well, knowing it will come in handy later on and give her clues even now.

So apparently, all the phonics and learning to read stuff is working its way into my brain. This AM at the gym, while doing Turkish Getups, we were listening to Ke$ha’s “Tick Tock,” I made some comment about the song and called her “keeeeesha (long E).” My sister, all-knowing corrected me. “It’s keh-sha (short E).”

“Ahh,” I said, “well actually that makes more sense. I guess I thought the $ made the E long.” It was probably a mark of how early it was, as opposed to my wit, that we al laughed like mad.

That would have been a bitch of a phonics rule to teach to Tabby, alright!

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A Few (New) Good Android Apps

I have some new apps for my Android that I am totally obsessed with … and I thought I’d share. If you have any recommendations, please let me know! There are so many out there it’s hard to find the really good ones.

My buddy Mikey found this great app called “Our Groceries” which allows multiple people to share grocery lists, or really any kind of list. You just have an account linked to an email address and it syncs in real-time with all users. SUPER COOL. We are actually going to our phones to add things to the running list instead of the pad on the fridge.

Another one I’m loving is DropBox. I’ve known about DropBox for a while … basically it’s a cloud drive. You get 2GB of storage in the cloud for free and can pay for more. Then you can download a DropBox app on any computer or now your phone and your files are all there. This is super useful for tons of things. I print our plane tix to PDF and access them on my phone. Budgets I edit at both home and work and access on my phone.

My friend, Nan, sent me a cute thankyou card (in the mail!) straight from her iphone. So I wanted to know if such-a-thing was possible from my Android. I wasn’t disappointed!! Postagram allows you to send real postcards from the photos on your phone, including, it seems to ones I’ve linked from Flickr. This would be great for vacation, since you could send your own vacation photos! $.99/card. I haven’t used it yet, but it shows great promise.

HIIT, high-intensity training, deserves a mention. You can set up intervals for workout, including warmup and cooldown and it keeps track of them for you with little “work!” and “rest!” reminders and still lets your music play on.

Last but not least, I must give a mention to Overdrive Media Console. This is an app that syncs up with your local library and accesses their collection of digital media: audio books, e-books and even e-children’s books. Instant, FREE access to digital content. I swoon.

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The Death Star (Composter)

Woot is my best friend and my worst enemy. Excellent deals on stuff. Stuff we even need! Or at least want! Like a composter. We’ve been talking about building or buying a composter for a while now to take advantage of our scraps. We didn’t want to build because we wanted superior smell protection (our house is pretty close to our neighbors) and the ones to buy were all so expensive!

Enter WOOT … which has a new home section, by the way. They were selling a composter for about $80 last week and we bit. It showed up on Friday and sometime on Sunday we decided to assemble it and get it out of the house. At first we were calling it R2D2 because as it was being assembled, that’s what it looked like. Once fully assembled, we agreed … this was no R2D2 … we have a death star!!

Ben was (and is) a big fan. He spent a lot of time rolling the giant ball around the house and playing with the key that opens it. Tabby was very interested in the whole composting process and managed to bust Matt not 10 minutes after he’d explained it to her when he tried to put a banana peel in the trash. Silly Daddy!

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Mo Protein

A bunch of the girls at my gym, my own sis included, are in the midst of a month-long nutrition challenge where they follow The Zone Diet or The Paleo Diet. One of the theoretical benefits of these diets is improved athletic performance. It’s not like I’m an Olympic athlete or anything, but I wouldn’t mind cutting my running pace down and bringing my endurance up and heck, I’m always up for trying something new to see how it works. Both diets are big on cutting carbs and adding protein and while I don’t feel like following either (they’re pretty strict) I thought I’d try cutting some carbs and upping my protein to see what happens.

I track what I eat on a semi-regular basis at MyFitnessPal.com. I am pretty good about it during the week, but not so good on the weekend and sometimes I give it up altogether for a while. It is nice because you can set your calories wherever and then do percentages of the calories for each macro nutrient (protein, carbs, fat). I picked Zone, which is 40% carbs, 30% protein, 30% fat and based on that, it looks pretty doable. I thought for sure I’d hit the right ratio with not too much change to my eating habits.

WRONG. I tend to eat vegetables and fruit. No fat, no protein (with some exceptions, of course). I can easily max out my carbs by lunch and I can go a whole day with only about half of the protein required under this scheme. So now I’ve started trying to find better ways to get more protein. And it ain’t been easy.

I am NOT much of a meat person. If I had to decide between going without meat and hunting/cleaning/dressing/skinning, etc. I would be a vegetarian. Though I guess I wouldn’t give up fish. Love fish and procuring and cleaning a fish would be OK. So the protein thing is not super easy. Hard boiled eggs are my fave. They’re still low in calories, but pretty high in protein and for $4/2 dozen, I can get them all ready to go at Costco, peeled and everything – I don’t like the yolks, so I just eat the whites. Cottage cheese is also a big win. Half a cup has the same protein as 3 egg whites and it’s good with fruit. Lastly, I have added some whey protein stuff to my diet. It isn’t my favorite, but it really does have a lot of protein and it is supposed to be well-absorbed protein. Between these additions and some carby subtractions and some obvious things, like a bit more meat, a bit less bun, I’m getting closer to the 40/30/30. Now if I could just do it for more than a couple days in a row, I might be able to tell if it’s actually making a difference or not.

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Ben’s Big Boy Bed

OK so Ben is (and has been) able to climb out of his crib for a while now. He still almost exclusively climbs IN, but knowing, as I do, a couple of people whose little ones have had broken limbs (one from climbing out of a crib!) I have some anxiety about continuing to allow Ben to sleep in a crib when he is capable of climbing out. But we were not ready to do his big boy room. It will involve a loft bed and without a bit more cognitive development, I’m not sure it’s a good idea for him to be too far off the ground. So with that in mind, we endeavored to find him a temporary big boy bed (toddler size) this weekend.

We first tried Walmart/Target. Their beds were around $60 but the only choices were dark wood and white. Neither suited and we wanted to find something a bit more to our taste. So we trekked down to IKEA and purchased their SNIGLAR bed which looked perfect. It wasn’t. It was longer than a crib mattress (though the same width??) and on top of that, the single rail was all but useless since the crib mattress came almost to the top of it. Frustrated, we disassembled and got it ready to take back to IKEA (a 40 minute drive, AWESOME).

This morning, I decided to do a last ditch Craigslist search. I’d searched before but found nothing suitable or priced reasonably, but this morning around 7:30 I found one posted less than an hour earlier, for $20 that was perfect. Blonde wood, rails, good condition, for $20. I wrote immediately and within an hour we were cleared to pickup and the pickup was on the way back to IKEA!!

We picked up the new bed, returned the other one and brought it home. Ben was super excited to assemble it and really really pleased when he saw the robot sheets I purchased for him over a year ago. He climbed right in for some photo ops, but by bedtime, he wasn’t so interested and opted for his crib over the BBB. Which is OK … he’s got the option now and we’ll work towards that. I don’t want him growing up too fast anyhow.

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A Funny for Your Friday

It’s bad/hilarious when you hear your own words coming out of your kids mouth. I’m not talking about the stuff you meant for them to parrot, as in yesterday’s post. I’m talking about the *ahem* adult language that sneaks in. Like the day over a year ago when Tabby, trying to figure out how to fold a small stool, uttered, “What the devil??” (one of my favorite phrases).

Anyhow, yesterday we were heading from our sitter’s house to Target (because it’s a day ending in Y, of course). And the kids were in the back seat. Tabby, contrary to the norm, was pretty quiet and Ben was taking FULL advantage of the situation to ask us what everything from a tree to a bicyclist to a car “says.” Suddenly, Tabby saw something that intrigued her and started talking loudly in order to get our attention. Not happy with the change in focus, Ben became quite upset.

“NO SISSY, NO! I MAD AT YOU!! <pause> GOD!!” He was completely exasperated.

Of course we burst into laughter immediately and he kept repeating, “SISSY! I MAD AT YOU!!” over and over. Eventually, he must have realized we were dying of laughter because then it turned to, “NO, MOMMY! IT NOT FUNNY! NO NO MOMMY!”