making it up as i go along
This weekend, we went to Egypt.
No … I kid, I kid.
We went to the Great Sand Dunes National Park. It’s an incredible spot, about 4 hours from Denver. It is caused by a very rare natural phenomenon that traps the sand in this valley and creates the beautiful dunes. But I like to think of it as God’s own little practical joke: dropping tons of sand in the middle of the Rockies. Tee-hee.
Hard to believe our girl is half way to 5 years old. She seems like such a big girl in so many ways. She has gotten to be incredibly independent and I’m always quite proud and slightly wistful when I see how capable and self-assured she is. She does so many things all on her own … brushes her teeth, puts away her dirty laundry, makes her bed, picks up her room, writes letters, washes her plate, buckles her carseat, gathers her stuff for school, etc. etc. We have to spot-check some things of course, but it’s less and less. She is hugely social and pretty much nonplussed with new social situations. She truly enjoys being with people and likes to chat up people in public who interest her. And she’s forever asking who we’re going to see or who’s coming over.
She loves to help with almost anything we’re doing. Cracking eggs, stirring batter, chopping veggies. She helps me fold laundry and set the table. She is incredibly good with her little brother. She likes to teach him things and as much as she enjoys that because she enjoys being in charge, she truly enjoys helping him become a big kid. They play a game where she sings some words and he fills them in and she is super proud as he learns new bits of her favorite songs and new words for this and that.
Of course it isn’t all sunshine and roses. She has been testing us in some frustrating ways, relentlessly pushing for what she wants (now now now!) until I’m liable to snap that she won’t get it EVER if she doesn’t stop hounding me. She loves to push the limits of established rules for her own benefit but is quick to point out when rules aren’t followed – if it’s to her own advantage, that is. There are also moments of fake crying and SCREAMING that earn her time outs. We also had a lying incident a few weeks back that earned her a very early bedtime. The naps are fading away. More often than not she resists so thoroughly that I just give up. But she’s still required to be in her own room, playing quietly and not waking her brother up. It’s really lasted much longer than I might’ve thought.
We find that she really loves her little routines … movies on a Friday night; going to the gym on Saturday morning; samples at Costco. And she remembers things that absolutely amaze me. I really have to watch myself and not make any idle promises or threats because she will remember and call me on it. Good training for me, right? Say what you mean and mean what you say. She is less into TV than she once was. She loves to play her leapster or gameboy though and movies are still a hit. But she will spend hours writing in her workbooks or playing believe or coloring. I want to start getting into doing some more crafty projects with her. She really enjoys them.
She is a real joy to be around and we feel so very lucky to have her in our family. Every day is a joyful adventure with Miss Tabby.
I took Labor Day a bit too literally this year and started off the day with a 10 mile run with a couple of my girlfriends. We did the Park to Park 10 miler. We all signed up for it pretty late and it felt to me in many ways more like your average weekly long run than a race, but it was a nice course and there was good energy the whole way.
The course was nice with lots of shade and went through four downtown parks. It was a good mix of hilly and flat and none of the hills were too killer. The worst hill we went up had a great downhill afterward though as you were going down it looked like it would be another hill (possibly worse than the first) right afterward, but to my surprise it was actually flat! I can get behind that.
The after-party was good too. They had a pretty decent band and a good selection of tasty food … Panera muffins, Wahoo breakfast burritos, popcicles, even fondue from The Melting Pot and not a stale bagel in sight. Yay. And there was pretty good swag … a nice Brooks tech tee, a mini first aid kit, some Clif Bars and a collapsible reusable tote.
Best of all I had a good race … 10 min miles the whole way which I’m very happy with considering the hilly course and a mid-run potty break. Of course it’s always super fun to run with some of my best girls. And Matty very generously drove us and put up with our craziness. He rocks.
Yesterday, while at his sitter’s house, Ben got a time out for playing in the toilet … right after Tabby had peed. Yea, lovely, I know. So while serving his time out he got a little bored … and hungry, apparently.
Lucky for him, sissy had done an art project at school where she used fruit loops to make her initials on a paper plate. I might add that she GLUED these (apparently stale) fruit loops on the plate.
School glue, however, is no match for Ben. He made short work of Tabby’s art project.YUM.
Tabby was pretty kind about it, actually. I think, though she wouldn’t admit it, that she thought it was as funny as the rest of us did. She said what she always does when Ben does something like this, in her best exasperated voice, “Little brothers!”
After having my kids in my car for over 4 hours this weekend, it is a bit … disgusting. I found pieces of quesadilla and a chunk of mushed (and then hardened) banana this morning. I really need to clean it, but that thought is almost as unappealing as the mess, especially since we would have to move the pop-up to pull my car into the garage.
Once again we abandoned hearth and home and headed for the hills this weekend. My uncle’s family had our family, my mom and sister, and a couple of other families we work with up to his lake house for the weekend. You could have not asked for better company or a more beautiful location to spend the weekend. We had a wonderful time.
On the way up we drove through Rocky Mountain National Park which is just sheer gorgeous everything. We took in amazing vistas (the kids slept, so we did not stop for photos) and heading out of the park (the kids were awake by this time) we had a couple of moose encounters.
Once at my uncle & aunt’s house, the big fun began. There were five kids altogether and they spent the whole weekend running amuck in the back yard
… That is when they weren’t out on the water. We went tubing and canoeing and it’s hard to say which Tabby enjoyed more. Ben was all about the big boat.
With everyone pitching in on meals and cleanup and the like, it was pretty low stress and maximum chill. My cousin and her friend (both gifted musicians) treated us to a mini concert and the wine flowed freely. But of course, we had to head home and back to reality. The kids were glad to see their beds and we were glad to pick up Loki.
Happy Valley
August 25, 2011
A friend sent me a text (at 9:30 PM, no less) last night, wanting to see if I want to run a 10mile race with her on Sept 5 (i.e. less than two weeks from now). And of course, I said yes. I’m probably slightly mental and a bit sleep deprived, or maybe bolstered by the excellent run I had yesterday (4 mi). Or perhaps I was drunk on the chocolate frosting I nicked out of the bowl while making b’day cupcakes for my dad. Take your pick.
Anyhow. The kids started gymnastics last night. The class officially started last week, but we went to a going-away party for my cousin instead. Tabby is probably the oldest kid in the class. I put her in level 1 so I could just take them to one class. There’s not a LOT of difference, but there’s some. Mostly in how the kids behave. Ben is one of the youngest. He just runs around in circles and makes excellent use of the bouncy floor. And spring board. And anything to climb on. He genuinely seems to WANT to listen and “be good” but the urge to MOVE is great in this one. And even if Tabby is a bit advanced for the rest of the class, she’s having a great time being with her brother and advising anyone who will stand still long enough to listen.
I have been reading a lot. I am working my way slowly through JD Robb (Nora Roberts)’s “In Death” series. They are nice kind of fun reads, but formulaic enough that they don’t really stand out in my mind. The two most awesome books I’ve read recently are Nurture Shock and Bossypants.
Nurtureshock is about all the findings over the last 20 yrs or so about how kids learn and grow and develop. It is incredibly interesting and useful information and I highly recommend it to ALL parents and caregivers. We also learned that the curriculum our public schools use for the preschoolers and kindergartners is a really really well respected curriculum with amazing results and bragging rights. It’s called Tools of the Mind (check out the website, it’s got great info) and I’ve started implementing some of the ideas it uses with Tabby when we’re at home, including play plans (where the kids write out what they’re going to do during playtime) and buddy-reading (we read a book to Tabby and then she “reads” it back to us).
Bossypants on the other hand is its own kind of great information. It’s Tina Fey’s extremely funny book. Sort of part biography, part show-biz anecdotes and part life lessons (many learned from Lorne Michaels). It’s short, sweet and made me laugh out loud at least 10x as I read it. Excellent photos as well.
I have about 6 actual paper books in my queue right now, one on running, two dealing with nutrition and kicking the sugar habit (see reference to chocolate frosting drunkenness above), one about two society girls who came to the CO frontier to teach around the turn of the century, and a couple of new cookbooks plus about 10 magazines I haven’t cracked yet. I plan to drag them with me this weekend and see if I can make a dent.
This is crazy Back-to-School week for us (and most of the rest of the country, it seems). Tabby starts school Thursday and as coincidence would have it, our sitter is off this week, so we are farming out the kids to various helping hands throughout the week, including my mom, my aunt, a family friend and Matt, who has today. We are also heading out of town this weekend and have to get ready for that. The kids are also starting gymnastics (tonight).
But compared to last week, it’s an easy one, so we have lots simmering on the literal stove rather than the metaphoric one:
And like that, August is almost over. I would have to say that my month-long meal plan was a decided success. It was a big time-saver knowing to just jump over to a list to find out what’s for dinner each week. And mostly, we followed the plan. Last week was an exception … I didn’t even grocery shop. And we had to add in here and there for unexpected events, but mostly, very successful. I want to try it again for the next few weeks before the next wave of crazy starts.
Sunday Matt and I were supposed to run the Heart and Sole Half Marathon. This would have been our 3rd Half Marathon of this calendar year, and our 7th overall, but due to the insanely crazy lives we lead, we have not been running much. My longest recent run was an 8 miler with my GFs and it didn’t go awesome (didn’t go terribly either). So Sunday morning, we found out we could drop down to the 10K, which is the other event that Heart and Sole offers and we gladly did so.
Still at less than half the distance, I had a terrible day. I felt sluggish. I felt like I couldn’t fully bring air into my lungs. I felt like my limbs were super heavy, particularly my arms. I felt hot. I felt cranky. I couldn’t find a song I liked. It was torturous, the way 6 miles hasn’t been for a long time. My chip time was over 1:06, and I should easily have been able to run this sub 1:00 or better. That may not seem like a big deal/difference, but it was more the way it felt.
I felt inept and slow, like it was my first race. I didn’t have fun. But it did do one important thing for me: it totally motivated me to get off my arse and start running seriously again. I have never stopped working out. From July 11 thru Aug 10, I was attending BootCamp every day. I barely had strength enough left to play with the kids let alone do any more than my bare-minimum runs. But now I’ve acclimated somewhat to the intense workouts of BootCamp and I have started going just 3 days/week. That should leave me ample time to run.
And run I will. I have a new training plan, one I am not going to allow myself to get sidelined on just because I’m out of town (I am out of town for 3 of 6 long runs). My do-or-die training plan. Because if I don’t do it, Oct 9 is going to feel REALLY REALLY bad.