Home at last!

And, just to toot my own horn a little, here's one more shot of Marianne sporting her first (and so far only) french braid.


I haven't been feeling well for the past couple days, so I can't think of much to write about. But I've been to the doctor, gotten the prescription, and should be on the mend. This weekend we're taking the girls camping for the first time. Marianne went a couple times her first summer when she was about 9 months old, but this will the our first camping adventure with kids too old to be nursed to sleep if they cry in the middle of the night, but too young to really reason with. It should be fodder for some good stories, at a bare minimum.

A good big sister

Earlier this afternoon Ruth was on my bed* and toppled over to bang her forehead against the headboard. She was understandably upset and made sure her unhappiness was heard by all. Marianne was playing in my closet* at the time, but popped out at the cries and ran from the room saying she was "going to get Ruthie something special." A minute later she came back in carrying her very own blankie! She handed it to Ruth, holding it up to her forehead so that some of the magic of the blankie could rub off on the booboo and heal it as quickly as possible. When Ruth showed less enthusiasm about the blanket than Marianne hoped, Marianne ran from the room again. This time she returned with all of her own favorite animals - brown bear, pink bear, horsey, lamby and Lego. Ruth picked pink bear out of the pile and was cured on the spot. Just for good measure, when I put Ruth down for a late nap, Marianne tossed several other of the animals and her blankie into the crib to keep her feeling healthy.

That's one selfless big sister!

* Save your breath on comments about how kids this age probably shouldn't be playing on my bed or in my closet, yada yada yada. I'm well aware.

Shock therapy

I think that there's a sensor under my side of the bed. Whenever I lie down in bed, this sensor responds by shooting electrical pulses into Ruth's crib, causing her to cry. The time of day makes no difference. If I'm trying to take a nap while the girls are napping, the minute I lie down, Ruth cries. If I'm getting ready to go to bed at night hours after the girls went to sleep, the minute I lie down, Ruth cries. There's no good explanation for this other than that somehow she experiences pain when I lie down in bed.

It's a tricky sensor. Sitting on the bed doesn't set it off. Even reading in bed doesn't generally set it off. It's when I've finally set my alarm and turned off the light and I lie down to go to sleep. Boom. Ruth cries. It's not always a big, bad, not-going-back-to-sleep-now cry. Especially at night she will often cry for a just minute and then be back to sleep. Naptime is another story, presumably because she's not sleeping as deeply. The shock that she receives from my lying down is much more likely to result in the end of the nap.

The result of all this is that I have a mild paranoia about getting into bed while Ruth is sleeping. I've all but quit even thinking about naps, because I know that if I clean the kitchen, Ruth will sleep for two hours, but if I get in bed, she'll get 20 minutes tops. I know, deep down, that there's no real connection. The whole thing is some kind of crazy fluke. But still, as I sit on the edge of the bed and prepare to swing my legs in, I cringe and hold my breath in anticipation.

Randomness

Due to some restructuring of the office space my company has, they just moved my very favorite piece of artwork in the office to a wall just around the corner from my office! It's this HUGE Monet-ish landscape. I find it very soothing and pleasant to stare at. I'm thankful they put it around the corner rather than just outside my office, as I might never get work done again if I could just stare at the painting and daydream about being in those hills. It used to be on the other floor, so having it nearby is a happy change.

Hey, I warned you with the title of the post not to expect much.

Sorry, wrong number

Hee hee. Someone recently came to my site from a google search for "rash from goose poo in the lake".

While I have recently discussed rashes, poo and geese, I'm afraid I can't help on that one.

Sing it, baby!

A while back I mentioned that Marianne was starting to sing real songs, and even developing some sense of pitch. Wow, has that taken off lately. For the past few weeks, "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" has been her top requested bedtime song. Then a couple nights ago she requested it, and as I started to sing she jumped right in and sang the whole thing with me, hardly missing a word. With the right tune. When she sings her most common songs - ABC or Twinkle, Twinkle (yes, I realize those are different words to the same song - there's no doubt that she's got the tune down pat. Plus, she learning to perform to a crowd. She likes to stand on her upturned toybox and say, "Okay, everybody! We're going to sing now," and start waving her arms around like she's directing a choir. But she refuses to tell me what we're going to sing as she really wants all the glory for herself. She's the director and the soloist, thank you very much!

Not much else to report over the last couple days. We had some good friends over for dinner last night, and have some more coming over tonight. Actually, tonight I'll be at a girlfriend's house with all the female halves of our friend-couples, while the guys hang out at my house with Nathaniel. It should be fun, but it did mean I had to make sure the house was tidied up. Not that the guys would really have noticed.

Thanks for all your thoughts on the outside activity vs. staying home question. I guess I should rest a little easier that even if we do spend the day playing around the house, I'm not actually harming their development.

Clean homes vs. fieldtrips

Yesterday was one of the first (of many, I'm sure) days that I completely scratched some plans because I could not bear the thought of dragging two small girls in such awful moods out of the house. It was going to be fun! There would be animals! And the retrieval of a hat! But it was not to be. By the time breakfast was over I knew I wanted no part in corralling those two screaming balls of tantrum around a public place, let alone dealing with the pre-zoo set up of packing lunches, slathering sunscreen, etc.

Instead, we had a relatively nice day of cleaning house. It's hard to inspire the girls to help clean, but as soon as the vacuum comes out they both get very excited. Marianne, because she knows I'll line all the dining room table chairs up next to each other along with the highchair, so she can climb all over the chairs and reach the highchair to feed one of her babies or bears. Ruth because she loves the noise. As soon as the vacuum switched on she began screaming at the top of her lungs. (Reminiscent of this little number.) She got Marianne's toy vacuum out and tried to push it while screaming. Marianne joined in the screaming fun. As long as they were screaming in a happy way, though, I didn't mind. It was an enormous improvement over the earlier morning.

They were also very excited about the changing of linens in their room. (This may make some of you wonder how seldom I bother to change their sheets. I recommend you not think too hard on that, because you probably won't be pleased by the answer). We took the sheets off the crib and the toddler bed, and, much to their delight, we removed the cover from Marianne's chair. The chair insert consists of four big cushions in various shapes. It was like Christmas had come early for them! We used the cushions to build forts, to throw, to climb on, and eventually Marianne chose to nap on the cushions rather than her bed.

In the end we had a significantly cleaner home, two reasonably happy girls, and one mom who I'm sure was much more relaxed than she would have been had she packed everyone up for a trip to the zoo.

*****

I was going to end there, but it brought something to mind that I'll throw out to my mom-readers. Since I'm only home with the girls two days a week, I make a big effort to DO things with them. If I let myself, we'd spend all my stay-at-home days cleaning the house and running errands, because otherwise I have to use my weekend for that. As much as I love the opportunity to grocery shop alone when Nathaniel is home to watch the girls, I hate to waste the time we have together as a full family unit for that sort of activity. We have our Children's Museum pass and our Zoo pass and our mall has a great play area for the kiddies, not to mention our neighborhood park and the lake with the geese. I want the girls to have fun on our days together. I want them to learn something. They're at an in-home daycare, so it's not like a big daycare center where they'd basically be in preschool classes. They do get outside a lot and I love our daycare lady, but I still feel compelled to get them the big group interaction in learning environments with kids their own age that they aren't getting at daycare. What this means for me, though, is that I don't always enjoy the days at home as much as if I was, I don't know, sitting on the couch watching "The Lion King" with Marianne.

How much organized activity do kids really need? How much is too much? Am I trying too hard? I think that if I stayed home all the time, I'd want to take them out for "playdates" (I'm not fond of that term) or fieldtrips a couple times a week. On the other days, we'd play on our swingset or maybe go to the park, but keep it low-key while I did, indeed, get the cleaning and errands done. Since I only have the two days at home each week, I try to cram a lot in. I'm curious what other moms think. I know several of my friends don't have the luxury right now of any weekdays home with their kids, so this probably sounds exceptionally whiny. But there are a few of you I know who are home all the time or part time. Thoughts? Speculations from those of you with no kids are, of course, welcome.

No more date nights for us

Me: Guess what? We're going to a restaurant for dinner tonight.

Marianne: All of us?

Me: Yes.

Marianne: You won't leave me and Ruth alone?

Me: No. Of course not.

Marianne: We can all go? If you left us alone, we would be sad.

Me: Yes, baby. We're all going to the restaurant together.

Marianne: Because last time you left me and Ruthie alone. And you went to the restaurant without us...

The guilt trip. They learn too early!

(Just to set your minds at ease, we did have a friend watching them and she actually took them to a Chuck E. Cheese, so there's seriously no room for Marianne's complaints.)

Like fish

We started swimming lessons for the girls this weekend. I was hesitant to enroll them, because I wasn't really sure they're old enough to get much out of it, but the rec center in our town had a class offered at a good time for us so what the heck! The class is for 6 month olds through 3 year olds, so we signed up both girls and Nathaniel and I get to hang out in the water with them for the half hour lessons. It turns out they're both a great age for this class, and I almost wish I'd signed Marianne up for lessons last year. Ruth is fearless in the water. She doesn't cry if you put her face under for a second, and she's happy to float on her back (with support, obviously) all day long. Marianne, on the other hand, is very skittish about getting her face wet and doesn't like to be held on her back in the water. She's great at kicking and loves to be in the water, but now that she knows we're going to let her head go under for a second if she jumps in from the side, she doesn't really want to jump at all. We're trying to break them in early, since we'll be spending a week at a lake later in July, and I think this was a good way to do it. Next weekend they'll get to hang on to kick boards and practice "swimming" on their tummies. I think Marianne will like that better, since it doesn't necessitate a wet face.

Another happy event this weekend - on Saturday morning the girls slept in till 8:00am! That's pretty much unheard of at our house these days. We've made the recent discovery, though, that if we can coax Marianne back in to bed when she wakes up around 6:00, both girls will sleep significantly later than they have been. I consider anything after 7:00 to be a good morning, but 8:00? That's like a little piece of heaven!

Lastly, the hat was found! I actually heard from the zoo early last week, but only just now am I remembering to set you all at ease about it (I'm sure many of you have been worrying and wondering if the zebras would ever give back the hat). They're holding it for me to pick up, so I suppose we'll have to go back to the zoo before long to do so. Marianne was elated when I told her they'd found it. That hat's going to go down in history at our house.

I dare you not to smile

My friend, Jenni, emailed this picture to me this morning and I can't stop looking at it. Jenni is always a good photographer, but this picture captured Ruth so perfectly - her smile, her eyes, her excitement - that it almost takes my breath away when I see it. She's so perfect, and somehow, even though I don't deserve her, she's mine!

I've mentioned Ruth's very cool eye color before. If you click on the above picture I believe it will come up big so you could see it in detail yourself. Just to be safe, though, here's a close up of the eyes from above.
Can you see how the blue rims the brown? I hope they stay like that. She'll be mistaken as brown-eyed her whole life, but someday, some guy who's totally in love with her will be able to admire those unique eyes and tell her how stunning she really is. I tell her that every day, but I'm sure she'll stop believing me in a few years.

On a different, but related note, I've noticed lately that Ruth shows a strong propensity for tanning. I slather the kid in sunscreen, but she's still sporting an amazing golden brown tint that I can't help but envy. Lucky duck.

Back off, Mr. Goose

This morning I took the girls on a walk to a small lake near us. We had half a loaf of slightly moldy bread to dispose of, so what could be better than to feed it to ducks? (Is that awful? I cut the moldy bit off... Am I single handedly killing off our local duck population by feeding them old bread?)

We strollered it out to our usual location, a small wooden dock just off the foot path, but no ducks, nor geese, were inclined to come and visit. Marianne shouted repeatedly, "Hey! Ducks! We brought you BREAD!" but to no avail. I spotted some species of fowl resting on the opposite shore, though, so we decided to take our bread to them. As we were nearing the shore I'd spotted, I noticed a family of geese walking along the edge of the water toward us. I unloaded the girls from the stroller (with strict instructions that they could NOT touch the water at all, but only throw bread to the birds), and we sat down on the bank.

Much to my surprise, the whole family of geese - mom, dad and four babies - walked right up to us as we started tossing them chunks of bread, and appeared to be seriously considering taking the rest of the loaf by force. This made me more than a little nervous since I had Ruth in my lap and Marianne next to me, and I wasn't at all sure how I'd be able to fend off a daddy goose while carrying both my children to safety. For a minute I thought about throwing the whole loaf at the closest bird's head to give us a minute to escape. Thankfully, I decided first to try luring the birds AWAY from us by throwing small pieces of bread increasingly further from our seats, and that gave us the breathing room we needed for comfort.

Once we were settled in and used to just how close the birds felt compelled to be, it was a very cool experience. It's not that often (unless you're picnicking at our zoo, where geese and peacocks will eat practically out of your hands) that you get a chance to be so close to the fuzzy little goslings. Marianne loved every minute of it, and Ruth was perfectly content to stay in her place of reasonable safety in my lap while watching the birds have their snack.

Still, every once in a while, the bird I took to be the father (though it may well have been the mother - is there an easy way to tell with geese?) would come within a foot of Marianne's little flip-flop clad feet, and I'd be forced to tell him to back off. Marianne got a huge kick out of that, so every time she'd throw bread his way she'd say, "Back off, Mr. Goose!" Talk about mixed messages.

What I saw on my nature run

Last night, at Nathaniel's suggestion, I crossed into some designated open space near us for my run, rather than sticking to the sidewalks around the neighborhood. Here are some of the things I encountered on my run (pictures scammed from assorted sites via google images, unless otherwise noted):

Okay, so there's no snow right now. But in this case I opted for a real picture of the scenery near our place, rather than some impersonal mountain shot. When I was there yesterday, it was sunset and 85, so adjust the image in your mind. (Thanks to Ginny for shooting this picture when she was here back in March).


Ah, the arid climate we live in. Home to the lovely yucca plant. I've hated this plant since I was a child and we had one in our frontyard that I seemed unable to avoid bumping into. Nasty, mean plant!


There were a ridiculous number of these little beetles (or some relative) crawling around on the path. For the sake of my shoes, I made every effort to avoid stepping on them.


I had to focus a lot of my attention on not tripping in a prairie dog burrow, though there were actually surprisingly few of the little guys showing themselves last night. I was less surprised by their absence and wishing I'd been looking a little further ahead than the next burrow after I nearly stepped on this...


It's possible that what I saw wasn't actually a rattlesnake (or at least not this species of rattlesnake, but this was the best picture I could find that was similar to what I saw). I had my headphones on so I didn't hear a rattle, and I didn't really stop to look that closely. However, I do know that rattlesnakes have been spotted in our open space. So when I saw a three and a half foot snake sticking out onto my path no more than a couple feet away from me, I didn't stop to check him out. I jumped away from him and did all I could not to scream. Then I ran away. Unfortunately I've been nursing a knot in my calf since Sunday, and the sideways lunge away from the snake didn't do much to help that. The rest of my jog was done with a slight hobble.

Note to self: When running in a space where rattlesnakes are known to live, take your cell phone just in case you need to make an emergency call. Or maybe don't run there at all.

The consequences of our actions (or: How quickly we forget)

Marianne went from her pull-up yesterday morning to a diaper as soon as she was up and around. Then she spent the day in diapers. Shortly before 5pm she came to me complaining that her "body" hurt (that's what she says instead of "bottom", as best I can tell). I knew what was coming as I lifted her onto the changing table, but was surprised to see the extent of the damage in just 9 hours. She had diaper rash all over and was in tears as I got her cleaned up. We were due at our neighbors house for a birthday party, so headed over, but after several complaints of her body hurting and looks of obvious discomfort on her face, I took her home to the tub.

Marianne has suffered from chronic diaper rash since she was about 2 weeks old. I still remember the first time it hit. Thankfully my mother-in-law was visiting so she gave us some good tips on how to soothe her in the near term, but no ointment or lotion we've tried has ever really managed to make it go away. For the most part it's mild, but the rash flares up dramatically when Marianne is teething and at random other times. There was a time when she was a few months old and Nathaniel had gone out of town for a conference, Marianne's rash was so terrible to look at and her cries so real that I couldn't bear to put a diaper or any clothes on her little bum. Instead, I layered her crib with thick towels, brought in a space heater, and put her to bed in nothing. I didn't sleep much that night, as I was in and out of her room every hour or more to make sure she hadn't made too big a mess, but she slept like the baby she was, and it did help the rash to subside.

I can't believe that in our discussions of putting Marianne back in diapers, this never came up. It had totally slipped my mind (or maybe I was just hoping it wouldn't be so bad). I swear we changed her diaper during the day - it wasn't like we let her spend all day dirty. Had I remembered the rash issues, I still would have voted to go back to diapers, but I feel awful for the kid. Maybe this will be the impetus she needs to potty train, though. Not that I recommend letting your children hurt to motivate them! We're doing everything we can with A&D to ease the discomfort. Still, if I was in her place, this would certainly convince me that the big girl pants were more fun!

*****

On a less painful note, I'm sure I've mentioned that Ruth is 100% walking now. She's not just walking, she's running and climbing and pretty soon I'm sure she'll start doing flips from the furniture with her sister (Marianne calls it "doing tricks"). Yesterday I had Ruth in our sideyard, and before I had noticed anything at all in the grass, she took off running after a baby rabbit. Admittedly, this was not the smartest bunny I've ever seen when it comes to escape, but it was still a fast little creature. Ruth managed to chase it all around the yard and corral it through the gate into the backyard before it got away! She was laughing and wobbling the whole time, but she managed to keep her feet. She's hitting one of those life-stages where every day brings new skills and understanding. Every day I'm in awe of her.

I quit!

No, not my job (I should be so lucky). It's this whole business of potty training. For those of you who don't remember, we started potty training Marianne in earnest in March. It's been nearly 3 months, and while we've made progress in some areas, in other areas, we're just as bad or worse off. At the beginning, Marianne wouldn't poo anywhere but in her pants. She'd hide in a corner or under the table to go. That has been the most dramatic change. Up until the past few days, she'd seldom had a poo-related accident in the past month or so. But we can't leave the house without a pull-up on because she's totally unreliable if there's much around to distract her, and recently she's gotten worse and worse about wetting herself. The most frustrating part is that it doesn't seem to bother her! She'll wander around in wet shorts for who knows how long and we only realize she's had an accident when we pick her up. Sometimes I'd swear she has a good sense of when she needs to use the potty, but other times she seems completely clueless. She'll go on the potty, then not five minutes later she'll go in her pants. She's significantly better at using the potty at daycare than she is at home, though she does have accidents there as well. Argh.

The truth is, I've been wanting to back off for a few weeks now. When I'd bring it up to Nathaniel, though, he'd say he didn't want to lose all the progress we've made, and we can't just go pack to diapers now... The little angel on my right shoulder agreed with him, but the little devil on the left thought that perhaps his attitude had a lot to do with the fact that he wasn't having to clean up after nearly as many accidents, and he's not the one folding the couple extra loads of laundry every week. Either way, when he mentioned last night that maybe we should try switching back to diapers and then trying again in a couple weeks, I jumped all over that idea. This morning, I had a little chat with Marianne about whether she'd like to try one more day to see if she could do a really great job of using the potty, or whether we should pack up the big girl pants and pull-ups and switch back to baby diapers for a while. The minute she heard "baby diapers" she all but danced with glee. That level of excitement makes me question things one more time - are we giving in and giving her what she wants when really she had the ability? Or are we doing the right thing because she's truly not ready, and this has been just as frustrating for her as for us.

Everyone says that when a kid is ready, she's ready, and you can't force the issue. Still, I feel like a bit of a loser. We tried so hard this time. I really think taking a break is the right thing to do, though. Last night Nathaniel said to me, "You can't prefer the idea of having to change her diapers all the time, can you?" The truth? YES! I can prefer that. I DO prefer that to mopping up puddles all over the house before Ruth toddles through them, and I DO prefer that to dealing with stinking soggy big-girl pants numerous times a day. Bring on the diapers. I'd love to have her out of them, but it's better than the mess and laundry I've been dealing with. And who knows, maybe she'll miss her mermaid underpants and be inspired to do a really good job of potty training before we know it. Or, given how excited Ruth is to sit on the training potty these days, maybe Marianne will be my second child potty trained. There's just no telling.

Pool mom

I'm sure by now all of my friends who live near me have noticed... I have a strange obsession with the idea of taking my kids swimming. Every time I talk to any of my mom-friends in town, I ask if they happen to have a pool within their HOA, or at their apartment complex or whatever. Our neighborhood has a pool, but it's a public pool that you have to pay to get into. And we're not talking the $1.25 entrance fee of my childhood. It's something like $5 if you have a city resident I.D. to get a discount! That's no good. Plus I can't really see myself attempting to take the girls to a pool by myself. Even with a kiddie pool that Marianne could move well in, it would be too high risk for my taste. But with another mom, even if there's one or two more kids thrown into the mix, I LOVE the idea of taking the girls to the pool.

I would say that over the past 10 years I've gone to a swimming pool maybe as many times. I'm not really a pool person. (This doesn't count tropical vacations, as that would be a whole different ballgame in my mind - I've been on beach vacations a few times in the last 10 years and since I'm not much for saltwater, I spent the majority of each of those weeks in a pool). I don't want to be seen in a swimsuit (even if it did cost $82) and I don't love all the prep work it takes to be ready for a trip to the pool - towels, sunscreen, floaty stuff, clothes to change into later, toiletries to freshen up if you're not going straight home. Now that I'm toting around stuff for the girls in addition to myself, I end up with three bags full of pool supplies for the 45 minutes we'll spend there before someone gets cranky. It's as likely to be me as one of the girls, so I'll leave that open-ended.

So why the sudden infatuation with the idea of going to the pool?! I don't have a clue. It's the same as the running thing. It just hit me and I can't seem to shake it. Am I morphing into a totally different person? Very strange.

Make it easy!

Here's a quick question for all my loyal readers - What is your favorite kid meal?

By that I mean a meal you associate with childhood. Foods that your kids, if you have any, love, but that you also still love to eat as an adult. And make it easy, please. I'll be playing single mom for a week before too long, so I'd love ideas of foods that my girls would be happy to eat, and won't be hard to throw together.

Here are my top three:

1. Baked mac and cheese
2. Pigs in Blankets
3. Beannie Weannie Casserole (layered franks and beans with canned biscuits, crushed Fritos and cheese, in case you're not familiar)

I realize two of those involve hot dogs and biscuits, so that might be cheating. But it's my question, so I get to make the rules.

Please don't feed the animals

This is Marianne with her best friend, Morgan. They don't know they're best friends, maybe, but Morgan's mom and I do. The picture is from last Friday when we took the girls to the zoo, hence the monkeys in the background. Notice Marianne's adorable hat! She loves that hat. One of our neighbors gave it to her, along with a matching one for Ruth. A while after this picture was taken, the girls were checking out some zebras and Marianne's hat was unfortunately dropped/blown/knocked into the zebra pen. I can't, in my memory, recollect just how the event happened. I know Marianne was playing with her hat... there may have been a breeze, or she may just have been careless. Either way, the hat is now the property of the zebras at the Denver zoo. It would actually be very easy to retrieve from inside the pen. It's not in a pit or anything. The sad little hat is lying on the ground near some logs. My hope is that a kind zoo-keeper will pick it up and they'll call me, because I left a nice description with the zoo of the hat, along with a note on where it was lost. However it's been nearly a week and I have yet to hear from them. That seems odd to me. There were no other hats that I could see within the zebra pen, so it shouldn't be hard to determine which missing item report correlates with that particular hat... And I wouldn't think they'd want to leave the hat in the pen, once it's noticed, since it can't be healthy for the zebras to eat that kind of heavy cotton, to say nothing of the beading along the edge.

After the hat-dropping incident, Marianne was dejected. I put Ruth's hat on her, since Ruth was in a shady stroller, but she was sad, and walked around for most of the rest of the day slumped over with her "I'm too sad" face on. Morgan was very concerned as well, so felt compelled to ask Marianne repeatedly why? oh why had she dropped her hat? This only caused Marianne to make a sadder face yet, and keep walking.

I understand from Morgan's folks that this story has become quite a legend at their house. Morgan now loves to retell it, complete with an imitation of Marianne's sad act. I'm looking forward to seeing that next time we're together. For now, though, I'm just hoping to get a call from the zoo so we can pick up the hat. That should put a smile back on Marianne's face, even if she has to watch her best friend mock her. But then, really, what else are friends for?

Swimsuit shopping - ick!

I intended to post yesterday, but blogger was acting up and wouldn't let me in. If it wasn't a free service, I might complain...

On Sunday night, my neighbor came running with me. She saw me coming home from a run on Friday and asked if she could join me in the future, as she's training for the Avon Walk for the Cure which is just a few weeks away. I said yes, but I wasn't really sure I liked the idea. I like to crank up my music and have some alone time to think/pray/reflect/relax. It turned out to be nice, though. We talked some during our warm-up walk, but once we started jogging, neither of us was compelled to say more than a couple words now and then, and she'd brought her music along as well. Having her there helped push me to a faster pace than usual for sure, and maybe to a longer distance. I had planned ahead this time for how far I wanted to go, but I was not loving the last quarter mile. Without her there, I may well have quit. We made it though - 2.25 miles run. Straight through! Plus almost another mile walked at the front and back end. (I actually only planned to do 2 miles, but when I checked it on the pedometer site, it was longer than I'd thought - no wonder I didn't like the last quarter mile!) I'm very happy about all this. It's nice to feel some inspiration to get in shape.

The swimsuit shopping I've been doing lately is definitely helping to keep me motivated. I found a couple I like (currently I have no swimsuits that fit me and are not falling apart, and since we'll be spending a week at a lake this summer, I figure I need to have two so I can wear one while the other is drying...), but it's tough. Anyone have ideas for decent ONE-PIECE swimsuits for less than $60?! I tried Target and some other low-end places, but they all offer maybe 3 one-piece styles, and even there they run up to $50. It's ridiculous. The ones I like are $62 (in black) and $82 (it's a simple blue one-piece, but I couldn't find a picture online). That's a lot to spend on swimwear!

Updated to clarify: I currently have four swimsuits costing $62-$82 in my possession that I've purchased either online or at stores, of which the two mentioned above are my favorites. I intend to return at least two of them. Maybe more, if I can find something suitable for cheaper elsewhere. This whole shopping process is frustrating, to say the least. So thanks for the suggestions so far!

I realize I've pushed off all the pictures of my kids now, and since they're a big part of the reason I started the blog, I promise to catch them doing cute things and post more pictures soon. We went to the Children's Museum this morning with some friends. It was all fun and games until we stayed a little too long, and super-tired and -hungry Marianne decided to throw herself on the ground and cry and scream about how she wasn't tired or hungry and didn't want to leave. I know I was completely convinced that she didn't need rest or food by that performance. I'm sure all the other parents there were as well.

I'm so proud of me, Part 2

Sorry!! I had no intention of leaving you all hanging that long. Work was crazy the last couple days and the evenings have been full. This morning I met a friend and her daughter at the zoo with the girls and we had a blast. But it's hot out there today... if I didn't know several people were waiting for me to end this story, I'd be asleep right now.

Sadly, this won't be the exciting info you might have hoped for after the dramatic pause, but here's the second reason I'm proud of myself - I've started jogging! (I'll wait a minute for my parents to pick themselves up from the floor, either from shock or laughter). Okay, so it hasn't been going on long, just a little over a week really. But I've been running several times and I'm actually enjoying it. That's what inspired my big purchase last week - I knew I'd never get moving if I didn't have the right equipment.

If you had asked me before now, I would have bet you a million dollars I would never run/jog of my own free will. I blame it on the combination of the iPod Nathaniel gave me for my birthday and the beautiful Colorado evenings. I'm making no big promises to keep up running once it's hot enough that the evenings are no longer cool and breezy, but for now I'm enjoying the activity. As soon as we get the girls to bed, I pull on my shoes and head out the door to take advantage of the last 30 minutes before it gets too dark to feel safe. Plus, on the nights I haven't run, either because Nathaniel's not here to be in the house with the girls while I'm out or because I'm too sore from the previous day to even consider going again, I've been doing some Pilates floor exercise videos. So I've done something active pretty much every night for a week and a half. It may not sound like much, but that's HUGE for me!

Just to toot my own horn for another minute, I checked out an awesome site (discovered a while back on Kris's blog, but I only just put it to use) where you can plot the path you traveled and it'll tell you how far you've gone. It's part of Google maps, and it's sweet because you can use their satellite images rather than road maps so it's easy to see where the bike paths I run along are. On my last run I changed from doing intervals of running 3 minutes with 2-3 minutes of walking in between to flat out running till I couldn't do it anymore. Get this... I ran for 1.5 miles! I don't know that I've EVER done that before. I can promise that I never once ran the whole mile while in gym in high school, that's for sure! You add on the extra mile of warm up/cool down walking, and that's a pretty good workout in my mind. I'm no marathoner (and have absolutely no plans to do that to myself), but I am proud. Of me. So there.

*****

On an unrelated note, no one could hate the ice cream truck more than I do at this moment. The girls were just settling down after their transition from car to house in the middle of naptime, and here comes the obnoxious ice cream truck with its plunky music. If that doesn't wake them up, I'm definitely grabbing a nap. But now I don't have much hope.