Friday, November 29, 2013

Thanksgiving Week

I'm so slow with blogging because one of my three blog readers was in town visiting-- Mom! :) She came last week, along with Megan and Annie! Hunter loved it. Annie would get out of sight and he would start asking where she was. 

This short week has flown by. Wednesday Jeremy was off as usual so I got to do some cooking: Mom's squash casserole, dressing, and sweet potato casserole, and my Nana's pecan pie, all to get ready for Jeremy's mom and aunt to come for Thanksgiving. Jeremy is on call and working mornings Friday and Saturday, so we got to celebrate our first Thanksgiving in our new place. 

Wednesday I started my mission to get rid of my SI joint pain. I went to the chiropractor who twisted me around and then did some ART on my hips. I'm not feeling much different so far but I will actually go back next week. She did not seem to think I was crazy for blaming a torn hip labrum for all my ailments. Of course I am not letting her take X-rays. I just do not put that much trust in them; they would not pick up a labral tear anyway. I do not need any more radiation than I already get, and I can always use the excuse that I do not know for sure that I am not pregnant. Ha. I'm not. 

Thursday morning I picked Jenny up and we headed to the midtown area for a turkey trot. It was more of a group run than a race, and it went winding through the neighborhoods and some trails I would have never known existed. Fun!

Today was all about playing with Hunter's Mammo and Nanny, and tonight will be Christmas decorating. 

The cold has hit us hard here. I am still getting used to the sun not coming out from behind the clouds some days. I swear I can look at the forecasted cold temperature and gain my 5 winter pounds. Then I get sleepy and want to just hibernate until spring. 

But some days are still beautiful, especially when I can go out and run my 6 miles on the Rock Creek trail in shorts. That was today. And then tonight I made Megan's apple pie. Got to build up the winter fat stores. 


Happy Thanksgiving!

Tuesday, November 19, 2013

20 months

I do not know if it is because this is the month of giving thanks or what, but I have been incredibly thankful to have my sweet toddler lately. I have to start by admitting that the time from when he was about 4 months until 14 months were some of the hardest days of my life. The first thing that changed was our location, which did help a lot on its own. But he has also become such a happy, pleasant little one recently, and I enjoy his company more every day. He has his own inventive ideas and he makes his own hysterical jokes. Of course he still has his own strict agenda, but we do a much better job of communicating with each other, so that cuts down on frustration. He says many words and signs even more. The cutest thing I've ever seen is when he makes his Mickey Mouse do sign language. Everybody in the house needs to be on the same page!

He likes a lot of the same things that I like: gardening, hiking in the woods, finding interesting leaves and rocks, coloring, squishing playdough, chalk artistry. He is still asking to get in the stroller, and we have running races up and down the driveway. If we could only love sleeping to the same degree (one way or the other we need to meet in the middle). But I have a new activity that I'm starting, which is getting on the trainer when he naps. Knocking on wood... he will sleep reliably for the first 40ish minutes of his nap right now, so I'm just praying he does not decide to give it up any time soon! You should have seen my sprint the other day when I heard a noise through the monitor. The trainer is in the playroom downstairs, so I braked, got out of my shoes, ran around the couch, up the stairs, hopped the baby gate, and slid sock-footed around the corner in the living room then down the short hall to the bedroom. And he was still zonked out. Must've been a cat. 


our hobbies include drilling

I realize that he's getting big and doesn't need me there within 5 seconds like he used to, but I also know that he really trusts me to be there since I always have, and I do not want to go messing that up now. It was hard work getting a good secure attachment (especially in those particular 10 months), but I am thankful for it. I know the effects. But I imagine a lot of people would feel sorry for me if I told them that we have never left Hunter with anybody other than my sister, and mom once, and I couldn't dream of leaving him overnight. I am definitely not feeling any wistfulness that he would be perfectly happy without me. That time will come too fast anyway.


At 20 months, he is tall enough to be mistaken for a two year old frequently (and has been for several months now), at almost 3 feet. His blond curls keep growing and getting bushier, and I keep trimming and hoping I don't cut off any babyness. He understands and responds to every question asked of him, even if it's rhetorical. He is forgiving of me when I make mistakes during his games, politely telling me "uh oh" when I get it wrong. A lover of all animals, he kisses them and hugs them, and puts them to sleep. Mostly gently. Except when he needs an excuse to kiss them, and then they might get stepped on and "hurt." 

Sweet, attentive, observant, funny baby Hunter.

Wednesday, November 13, 2013

Little Annoyances

I have been dealing with some sort of niggling injury since I was in college, it seems. Not to say I am always injured, because rarely does something stop me from training or even running, but I seem to have some type of pain most of the time. I would say it is because I am getting old, except that like I said, something has been going on since college. That darn hill in Shelby Forest -- Ballbuster, or Group Camp Hill, whatever you call it-- it is parallel to Jackson, and we used to run repeats on it weekly in cross country my senior year. That started the hamstring tendonitis, which still bothers me. I've gone through Achilles injuries, one so bad that I took off 6 weeks from running. And after a half marathon 5 years ago, I was sure I had a stress fracture in my femoral neck (but the x-rays were negative), which I have since self-diagnosed as a torn labrum. Lately it is the right side of my body in general. My calf gets tight and my hamstring bothers me some, sleeping on that side with an arm around a toddler makes it hurt more than the left, but the real problem seems to be my SI joint. Chiropractors will "fix" me temporarily, since I always seem to be out of alignment, and I get some relief, but a month or two later, it is back with a vengeance. I do not understand why they cannot give me some rehabilitative exercise to keep it all in alignment (ok, maybe I do -- $), so I try to do some of my own. Hopefully I am making some sort of slow progress strengthening the areas connected to it. In addition, I am doing lots of deep massage on my right quads. Not only is this supposed to help release the SI joint, but my Osgood-Schlatter's is acting up, and my tibial tubercle is quite large and painful. This is not a new issue either, but seems to be most relieved by manual therapy to those knotty quads.

Some days I go limping along for a while at the beginning of my runs, alternately digging a fist into my right glutes and doing weird looking drills for all the neighbors. Sometimes, kind of like when I was pregnant, I get a heaviness on that side, or even a sharp pain. As long as I don't look like a wounded animal in front of the wildlife on the trails.

OH! The wildlife on the trails... I feel somewhat satisfied to report that I had a bobcat sighting on my favorite trail a few days ago, in broad daylight (I don't run the trail in the dark when I can help it). He was only about 15 yards ahead of me, crossing the trail, and I looked up from the rocky footing in time to see him, all but his head, quietly disappear into the brush lining the path. His tail was most definitely bobbed, whew. My heart rate skyrocketed, and I stopped momentarily, then gathered myself and stomped by, not daring to look in the direction he had gone. I thought of getting a picture, but I really could not manage to get it together in those 2 seconds I saw him. So while there is no proof, I have now actually seen a medium sized predatory cat, and not just a track. As far as I know, bobcats are completely harmless to humans, but I seemed to have gotten more nervous about it than I was in New Mexico when I ran right up to a coyote who trotted along side of me for a bit. Now if I could just see one of those cougars who supposedly live out near Roland, just a few miles from Little Rock.

 Running on my trail

Anyway, I need to get rid of some of my annoying little pains, mostly so I can sit on the floor all day without my back yelling at me. And ride my road bike, which is set up quite differently than my tri bike, says my back. Massage seems like more of a luxury than a necessity, but I might break down and use that in place of a chiropractor session. It's cheaper and more enjoyable.

While on the subject of annoyances, I'll just make a quick tangent. Can we all come to an agreement not to use the word "amazing" anymore? Should we agree that if you're not "comfortable in your own skin" that you are never comfortable because you are always in your own skin? Could I just take a "guess" or make an "estimate" and not ever "guesstimate"? I mean, "it is what it is." Isn't it? Or is it sometimes not what it is? NO, it is always what it is, so let's stop saying it and being redundant! And, by the way, that many people do not love fall and pumpkin everything. Whew, it feels good to get that off my chest.

Now for things I do love about fall, these people, and the beautiful fall colors!






Whatever it is, it's obviously a little scary.

We sure love Bunny

Sunday, November 10, 2013

A Quick Baby Clip


This sweet baby makes me laugh! Here he is reciting one of our newest books, Moo, Baa, La La La. I was surprised how fast we had it memorized.


Monday, November 4, 2013

Halloween

We practiced being a dragon with the towel (there are so many more pictures of this that I just can't post online -- one video where he admits to an "accident" on the rug :))...

then a real costumed dragon, with pants on even.

But once warm, humid Halloween night came, there was a bit of refusal. And anyone who knows a toddler knows there's not much reasoning going on with them. So cupid it was. Until the sash came off, then it was just a toddler in a red cloth diaper with running shoes on. Eventually I got a superman t-shirt on him.


We did a bit of partying, a small bit of trick-or-treating (who needs all that candy anyway? I do!), and much handing out of candy.

I'm not sure anybody really noticed Hunter and me (dressed as Hunter's current favorite thing: a black cat), due to the hilarity of Buddy. Pictures by random onlookers were snapped! Jeremy couldn't have been more perfect for the costume. Next year we must coordinate the rest of the family.