Harper's 15 month Well-Check

Last Friday we took Harper to see Dr. Terry for her 15 month well-check.  She is doing great, as we knew!  She is in the 75th percentile for height, 25th percentile for weight, and 50th percentile for head circumference.

She got a whole bunch of shots, and we decided to get Shyla's flu shot while we were there.  Shyla was literally excited for her shot!  It was kind of really weird!

Harper's current favorite foods are bananas, anything in a squeeze pouch, milk, gold fish crackers, and anything Shyla has. She is also loving the amoxicillin she's on.

She is sleeping well and crawling on (and in, as you can see) everything!  (Yes, that is the dryer.  Yes, I stood right by and watched her do it.  Yes, we are always making sure the dryer is closed when we aren't using it.)

Her favorite things to play with are baby dolls, purses, anything kitchen related, and anything Shyla is playing with.  She is quite the suzy-home-maker.  The other day I literally had to pry a doll out of her hands so we could leave daycare.

She wakes up happy each morning and immediately wants to make the rounds to check on everybody. She is too young to be really talking but I do hear "mama" and "pancake" and I think I even heard "backpack."

She is a doll and a lot of fun and we just love her!

Birthday Week 2012

Birthday week is from October 19 through October 23.  Beth turned 29 on the 19th, I turned 30 on the 23rd and Stevie turned 30 on the 26th.

We are yet to see Beth but Stevie and I celebrated with our families last Sunday.  It was a lot of fun and we had (my favorite) fruit pizza and (his almost-favorite) cookie dough ice-cream cake.

Then Tuesday, the 23rd rolled around.  My 30th birthday.  It was a doosie.

It started out with a lovely gift from Stevie and the girls.  But with this on the envelope:

 Those of you who know me, know that I was not upset by what it says, but I was pissed about how it said it!  My husband is a well-educated man and this was completely unacceptable - especially with a wife like me!

Oh well.  Onto the rest of my day.  I purposefully hadn't told any of my co-workers or students about my birthday because I don't like to make a big deal.  Immediately after school I went for my run around the school.  I've been doing this a couple times a week - I get 2.4 miles in before picking up Shyla.  I was enjoying my run, and was at about 2.3 miles when this happened:

In case you can't tell, I was bitten by a dog!  On my birthday!  By the way, that's my hip - not my butt (I just realized it kind of looks like that in the picture!)  I was just running along, not especially fast,  on the correct side of the street, in a nice neighborhood, when a large boxer-ish (I think) dog starting barking at my uncontrollably and broker free from its' owner (a child).  It crossed the street to come at me from about 15 yards away.  I froze and turned my back, that's when it jumped up and bit me.

To make a long story short, here's the rest of the story:  I cried, talked to the owner (whose child was in 1 of my classes last year), walked the 0.1 remaining, got Shyla and went home.  My parents came over with Eegees and informed me I was required to report the bite to animal control.  So, as if I had nothing better to do, on Wednesday I went to Urgent Care to get a tetnus shot and make the report.  Thursday animal control came by my house to take pictures of the bite and talk about the possibility to filing citations (I declined).  The dog will be quarantined for 10 days and then it should all be over.

And here's what it looked like on day 5:

So, yes, that was my birthday.  Welcome to 30!

Training for Vegas: week 7

With the start of Q2 and the getting back into the swing of things with work, it was not a great running week.  I was also snuggling a sick baby on Tuesday.

As you can see, I was supposed to do 20 miles for the week, and only did 11.9.  On the positive though, I ran Sabino Canyon this morning (to stop 8) and felt really good after.

We are officially past the halfway mark ....

This is how we sleep

Shyla has been in her big-girl-bed for a number of months now.  Since moving her out of her crib, we've never really had the problem of her refusing to lay down.  But she does tend to wander and fall asleep elsewhere.

Our current bedtime routine is this:

7:00 Stevie takes Harper to bed and rocks with her

7:00 Shyla kisses Harper and Stevie goodnight, then picks out 2 books for me to read to her in her rocking chair (she also gets her binky at this point)

7:15 - ish When we are done reading she gets into bed and asks me to pet her back for a few minutes, which I do

7:20 - ish She asks to rock for a few minutes, we do (this is when some of our best conversations occur)

7:30 - ish She gets back into bed but we look at the pictures to a nearby book and tell our own story with the pictures

7:35 - ish I leave, with her light on.  She tells me how many minutes until I can come back and turn the light off.  It's usually between 5 and 15 minutes.

Sometime during the night - I remember to turn off her light.

Sometime during the night - she gets up with her blankies, binkies, an whatever else she can carry, and goes back to sleep either in the hallway or in our room.

Sometimes I think we should talk about her trying to stay in her room all-night.  Sometimes I think we should come up with some reward system when she does stay in her room all-night.  But, most frequently, I remind myself that she is only 3 and she will only be doing this for a short while.  I am most certain that when she is 18, she won't want to sleep next to Mommy's bed.

So, for now, this is how we sleep.  And I'm okay with it.

Buckalew Farms 2012

This past weekend we took our annual trip to Buckalew Farms.  There is a 5K there every October so we take the opportunity to get a fun run in and then spend some time together in the pumpkin patch. 

This year I got to do the run while Stevie stayed with the girls.  Unfortunately, I suspect the run was a bit shorter than 5K because my time was 28:10, which is substantially faster than my normal 5K time of 31 minutes.  But I felt great the whole time!  Like I was cruisin'; I wasn't tired at all and I never had the urge to take a walk break.

After the race, we spent some time climbing on hay bales and looking at the animals at the petting zoo, then we took a ride on the tractor to the pumpkin patch.  Shyla picked out two little pumpkins, one for her and one for Harper; she dropped hers about 10 times though.  And we got 1 family pumpkin to carve together.

All-in-all it was a fantastic morning! 

Shyla's First Soccer Game

About 2 weeks ago Shyla started playing soccer.  This past weekend was her first game and it went just about as expected:

She posed for a cute "before" picture.  Notice the shin guards?  She refused to let us pull her socks down over the top of them as you are supposed to do, instead she insisted on wearing the socks over her thighs.

 How cute is it that their names are on their shirts?  She got #11.  Not bad ... it's not 13, but at least it's an odd number.

 Before the game started, she had fun running around with Dash.

She kind of got into the pregame huddle.

There is a little boy named Luke on her team.  He is a rock-star.

Then it was her turn to get in!

This is the one play she was in for.  As soon as the action started and the crowd started cheering, she ran off the field crying and then stayed like this for the rest of the half:

She refused to play in the second half.  And only half-heartedly participated in the postgame cheer.

She did enjoy the snack, but I refused to take a picture of it.

I was disappointed in the game, although not the least bit surprised.  Here's hoping next week is better.

Training for Vegas: Week 6

Wahoo!  A week that I am really proud of!  You will notice that I exceeded the number of miles for the week and I even completed a 5K race (with a PR!) during the appropriate week.

And actually, Friday's 5 miles was truly over 6.  My Nike+ doesn't seem to be working well lately.  That run was at Sabino Canyon - I went all the way to stop 8 and looked up the distance when I got home.

It is back to work tomorrow so hopefully I will be able to keep the running going.  I am doing another 5K this Wednesday evening to benefit the son of a co-worker who was in a horrific rock-slide in the Grand Canyon.

This also marks the half-way point to the half-marathon!

Mexican Dress Pictures

While in Mexico, we bought the girls the sweetest Mexican dresses.  To our delight they both fit perfectly and both girls loved them!  So, of course, I had to get their pictures taken!  Here are the best pics we got - unfortunately you can't really tell how precious the dresses are, you'll just have to take my word for it.

Training for Vegas: Weeks 4 and 5

I didn't do my week 4 update because I was too busy enjoying myself on vacation!  So here are weeks 4 and 5:

I added a column after Sunday for the week's total.  That way it's easy to see how many miles I was supposed to do that week (yellow) and how many miles I actually did (blue).

Weeks 4 and 5 were not terrible.  Week 4 was a fairly normal week - I was on Fall Break but of course the girls were home with me so I couldn't run during the day.  Week 5 was the week of our cruise.  We did manage to fit some exercising in while on vacation, which is probably why I only gained about 1 pound.  As you can see, I counted our hike; even though we weren't running we were working really hard and I suppose it could be considered a cross-train day.

Week 6 starts tomorrow!

Green Monster Smoothie

Stevie and I have been discussing ways of being healthier and feeding the girls more nutritious meals and snacks.  This evening we decided to try a Green Monster Smoothie.

Here's the before picture:

There are numerous variations of Green Monster Smoothies.  

Ours consisted of:

1 banana

6 strawberries

1 C. Greek Yogurt

2 C. Spinach

1 C. Kale

1/2 T. honey

handful of frozen berries

Here's the after picture:

It wasn't as green as I had hoped, it was a bit more brown, but it tasted really good!  Tasted just like a berry smoothie, but supposedly with many more health benefits.  It's a keeper - stay tuned to find out whether Shyla likes it!

Swings!

We spent some time at the playground this morning and I just had to share some pictures from the swings.

And my favorite:

Side note: Shyla now does a great job of leaving playgrounds, after the necessary countdown of course, but now Harper is the one that throws a fit when it's time to leave.  Oy vey!

Anniversary / Birthday Cruise! {just the two of us ...}

We are back!  Last week Stevie and I took a vacation (by ourselves!!) to celebrate our 5 year anniversary and our upcoming 30th birthdays!

We are extremely fortunate to have the means to do something like this and even more fortunate to have the grandparents who are both willing AND able to take care of the girls for a full week for us.  Without them, our lives would be much different.  More on how their week was in a minute.

In the weeks leading up to our trip, which we planned about 8 months ago, I started having a lot of anxiety about being away from the girls, on a ship in the ocean nonetheless.  But I worked on reminding myself of two things: the time together would be good for Stevie and me, and the time the girls would have with Grandma and Grandpa would be really good for them.  In all honesty, I knew they would be having more fun with Grandma and Grandpa than they would with us - I was just scared of what I would do without them!  

So, last Sunday we dropped the girls off at my parents and left around 11AM for the 7 hour drive to Long Beach; into the sun.  After getting checked into the hotel we went to dinner at Islands in the “happening” part of downtown.  I was pleasantly surprised by Long Beach - it was not at all what I remembered.

Monday we boarded the Carnival Inspiration and set sail that evening.  We had a lovely cabin with a big ocean-view window.  We made a pact on Monday to never take the elevator on the ship and we stuck to it!  I definitely missed the balcony that we had for our honeymoon cruise but this particular ship only has balconies on suites.  Hopefully for our next cruise, because (yes) we are already discussing it, we will have the balcony again.

Tuesday was a port day at Catalina Island.  While eating breakfast on the ship we saw about 50 dolphin swimming and playing near our ship!  When we did this same cruise 7 years ago with my parents, we rented a golf-cart and let my dad drive us around like a crazy person!  This year, knowing it would just be the two of us, we decided to hike.  When all was said and done, we probably walked over 8 miles.  The hike part of that was over 4 miles and it was much more strenuous than I anticipated.  It was beautiful!  We hiked to the very top of the island where we could look over and see both sides.  It was also wonderful time together - just the two of us.  I had a couple “almost falls” during which I managed to hurt my shoulder somehow, but overall it was a huge success. I think I may have caught a hiking bug - I really enjoyed it and hope to do some hikes in Tucson too.

 Wednesday was a port day at Ensenada, Mexico.  We debated just staying on the ship since it’s not that much different than Nogales, but decided to get off and just walk around.  I’m glad we did!  We bought some cute things for the girls and had some yummy tacos and a pina colada.  And it felt good to walk.  Together.  We also ran on the track that day.  The track so small that you have to do 11 laps to equal 1 mile, but I did 3.5 miles nonetheless.

Thursday was a sea-day.  We tried to run on the track but it was way too windy, so we went to the gym.  I did the treadmill for 31 minutes, overlooking the beautiful ocean.  The rest of the day was spent doing activities on the ship.

Some highlights:

•  Winning the “Ship-on-a-Stick” trophy a bottle of wine for knowing the answer to this trivia question, “Which rock group was formed before the 1960s, with 4 members, 1 of which was assassinated, but not the Beatles?”
•  Leaning to fold a few of those Carnival towel animals
•  Two comedy shows
•  Stevie doing pretty poorly at the Michael Jackson trivia
•  The “Love & Marriage” show with the could celebrating their 70th wedding anniversary.  When asked what the secret to a long, happy marriage is, she quickly replied, “He keeps his mouth shut and his wallet open.”
•  Everything about Catalina Island
•  “Pooh Bear” pole-dancing during dinner
•  The magician at dinner - to whom I gave my wedding rings and they ended up attached inside a zippered pouch in his pocket
•  Sleeping in, although most days I was still awake at 5AM
•  The time together
•  Did I mention we won a “vessel-on-a-tressel?”  dingy-on-a-thingy?
•  Stevie would want me to include NOT buying any artwork as a highlight

Friday was debarkation day.  This takes awhile but we were in no hurry so we just hung out on the deck.  Together.  (We also both enjoy people-watching, and there’s a lot of that to do on a cruise!)  When we finally got off and got through customs we made our way to our hotel and hung out for awhile before heading about 45 minutes north to a mall to meet Kirsten and the babies for lunch.  I’m really glad that worked out - we don’t get to see them very often so even short visits are worth it.  Then we headed back to our hotel and about an hour later headed 1 hour south to meet up with Dan and Erin for dinner.  Again, I’m so glad that worked out!  We rarely see them too and when we do there are usually small, beautiful, energetic children running around so it’s hard to talk.  And Erin and I LOVE (and need) to talk!  The food was yummy when they finally allowed Dan to eat his fajitas!  If it weren’t for those 2 visits, we would have driven home Friday, I was missing my girls like crazy and it was a lot of extra driving, but both visits were really important to us.

In conclusion, it was a wonderful time.  I am so lucky to have the family that I do and to have these opportunities.  

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So, what did grandma and grandpa do with Shyla and Harper all week?  From what we have heard, they mostly had fun and changed tires!  We wanted the girls’ schedules to stay as normal as possible so we had arranged for them to both go to Harper’s school (since Shyla’s is closed) all week.  To make the transportation “easier” we left them the trailblazer with both car-seats.  Turns out we also left it with 2 different nails in 2 different tires.  One my dad discovered and got it down to Big O.  The second my mom discovered when she was taking the girls to Target.  Aye!  What’s that they say about the best laid plans?

Otherwise, it sounded like they kept to a routine and had a lot of fun.  They read a lot of books, did some puzzles, smiled a lot, did a lot of cheers with cups, played outside frequently, and just got to enjoy each other.  This makes my heart happy.  As hard as it was to be away from them and as much as I missed them, I was also thrilled that they got such special time with grandma and grandpa.  Shyla also had her first soccer practice while we were gone.  I hope to blog more about that later!

A thankful shout-out to my sis for taking care of Pancake while we were gone!  It makes trips so much more enjoyable to know that my family are all taken care of and happy.

I am excited to have another week of Fall Break to spend with my girls, we are looking forward to some more fun outings and more happy memories!