My Love/Hate Relationship with Running

So, I'm training for a 5K. I always hated running when I was younger but since Joel, my sister, and her husband have started running a lot, I figured hey, why not? I found a great training regimen called the "Couch to 5K" training (I LOVE the name!) and it's been going very well. However, like most things, there are things about running that I absolutely HATE. Here they are in no particular order:

~My face turns bright red when I get hot. So as I'm running, I look like I'm going to pass out. Some days, that may actually be pretty accurate!

~I nursed 2 children. My boobs are huge and even wearing a sport's bra, I'm fearful the knockers are going to fly up and knock me out. And seriously...why can't sport's bras be a little more attractive? All they do is smash the girls together and give me a uni-boob.

~I hate running on the treadmill next to anyone who is a more serious runner than me (which is many people). I end up running the same speed as them which is not a good thing.

~My knees hurt!!!

~Every slight incline in the road feels like you're climbing Mt. Everest. Not good. Even worse when there's a head wind.

~I hate running through my neighborhood when the neighbors are out in their yard. I'm convinced they're staring at me and wondering if they should be calling 911.

Even with all the things I hate about running, I never thought I'd want to run so it's a sense of achievement after completing every week's training. Plus, I try to remember how skinny I'm going to get. Still waiting on that part though :)

My kids are growing up WAY too fast!

I know every single mother in the world has said that exact same phrase at one point or another. It wasn't until I became a mother that I can actually understand how the little munchkins literally transform in front of your eyes. It's like watching corn grow. One day it's a little seed and the next day *BAM*! Your little seed is a giant corn stalk. Wow, that was a profound statement. Not sure where that came from...

Noah is growing like a weed (there I go with the plant analogies again). He doesn't have another doctor's appointment for a few more months but just looking at how his clothes are fitting, he's getting bigger. That boy can eat like there's no tomorrow! Eating has never been his problem. He has the metabolism we all envy. He eats whatever he wants and doesn't gain weight! He crawls so fast that he burns every calorie he takes in! Don't we all wish we had that problem!? Now he goes through a giant container of yogurt every few days (seriously, not kidding. One of those big tubs of yogurt...every 2 days). He will eat 2 big pancakes for breakfast and still be hungry. Take a big can of ravioli, dump it on his plate, and it's gone in a few minutes. It's amazing to watch. Granted, plenty of the food goes on his shirt, in his hair, some even on the floor. But the vast majority goes down the pie hole. Oh, and pie! He likes that too. The only food he absolutely will not eat is vegetables. I try to sneak them in to other foods and he'll work the food in his mouth until he can spit out the vegetable. He's a smart boy.

Hannah is talking so much better now. She's always been a good talker but she would have a hard time with pronunciation. For example, Wal-Mart would come out "Worm-bert". It was cute for a while but now she's about to start pre-school and really needs to learn her words a little better. So, lately she's slowed down and worked on saying everything the correct way. You can just see her little brain focusing on the word then saying it really slowly to get it right. It's cute. We, of course give her lots of praise which she eats right up. She gets a huge grin on her face and says the word faster and faster until she nails it every time. My little genius. I can't believe she's going to be starting pre-school in the fall! She's attending Small Discoveries Preschool. A neighbor and several teachers I know suggested that preschool. There are a lot of really good ones in here in Ankeny but that one kept coming up as one of the best. She was wait listed for a while but I got a call a while back that she's in. She's guaranteed the afternoon class right now and is on the wait list for the morning class. I'd rather her be in the morning class but it's not a huge deal. I'm just happy she's in! I got all the paperwork in the mail to fill out and have her doctor sign. Man, that's a lot of paperwork! I was surprised. I'm glad the preschool does a good job at making sure the kids are healthy and properly immunized before attending but it's a lot of documentation! I'm sure this is only the first of many papers I have to bring along to the pediatricians appointment. :)

Birthday Party!

Since Hannah and Noah's birthdays are just a month apart, I decided to have one big party for them. I realize that makes me a terrible mother. But since Noah's 1 and doesn't have a lot of little friends yet, the same people were going to be invited to both so why make them all come to 2 parties? So, Hannah really wanted a party at Pump It Up. It's an awesome giant inflatable slide and jumpers. You're in a room with just your own party so you don't have to worry about other random kids plowing over your children. Even though Noah was a little young to really enjoy everything, he still had a great time going down the slide with Joel and crawling all over the place. Hannah had a fabulous time.

Here are some pictures from that day. They're a little backwards since the first picture is of Noah after the party. But that's just the way they uploaded so I'm going with it...

Noah absolutely sacked out on the way home! I think he fell asleep within about 3 minutes.

Enjoying his birthday cake

This was what Hannah looked like after she ate her cake with green frosting

So when Joel brought Noah over to his cake to blow out the candles, Noah just reached his hand and swiped some frosting. If you look closely you can see the frosting on his fingers. He's a boy after his mother's heart when it comes to frosting! YUM

The 2 cakes. Hannah really wanted a Thomas cake; Noah got a Little People cake

Snuggling on the big birthday chair

Noah LOVED going down the slides!

Hannah had fun too

Noah and my mom

Birthday Girl

Birthday Boy

Noah in a constant state of motion!

Here are a few pictures from Hannah's Awana award's ceremony. It was her first year in Awana and she was a Cubbie. She absolutely loved Awana and is already looking forward to being in Cubbies again next year!

Showing off her Awana bear award that she completed her first year Cubbie book!

Hannah singing with her Awana friends. Her best friend, Piper Robie is to her left. Apparently Piper didn't know the motions :)

The difference between Child 1 and Child 2...

With child 1, it physically hurt me to hear her cry in her crib for more than 2 seconds. With Child 2, I'm so busy I don't even notice when he's crying in his crib.

With child 1, if her pacifier fell on the floor, I'd wipe it down with a wet wipe. With Child 2, it goes straight back in his mouth, dirt and all.

With child 1, we took months to decorate her room all pretty and wonderful. With child 2, the poor boy got child 1's old nursery. No change whatsoever to the decorations, including child 1's name still on the wall.

With child 1, she had Huggies diapers because we thought they worked SO much better than any other brand. With child 2, he gets the cheap Target brand (which actually works just as well as the Huggies and are tons cheaper)

With child 1, we started a Iowa 529 plan right away to start saving for her college tuition. With child 2, we completely forgot until he was 9-months-old. Oops.

With child 1, I had the house completely baby-proofed long before she was even crawling. With child 2, I baby-proofed the dangerous stuff and let him figure out the rest.

With child 1, I washed her clothes in Dreft so as to not irritate her sensitive skin. With child 2, not so much.

With child 1, I didn't think I could ever love anyone as much as her. With child 2, I learned I can.

Random thoughts

As I sit here in the relative quiet of my house (both kids are napping and Joel is out for a run), my mind is drifting over the millions of things on my "to do" list. Clean, do laundry, start supper, change sheets on bed. Blah. That's what I think about it all. It's rainy and cloudy outside so it's the perfect time to just sit on my couch a fiddle on the internet. I finally uploaded a bunch of pictures from my camera. Amazing how many pictures just get left on there. I need to finish Noah's on-line scrapbook (FYI. Mixbook.com is an amazing website for scrapbooking) so maybe, just maybe I'll get that done during naptime. Yea, for me if I do.

Here are some random pictures of the kids from around the house. Noah is getting so big! He's finally in the 15%-tile for weight. That was a huge answer to prayer. He got his first ear infection this past week (boo) and he's cutting 2 teeth on the bottom, so he's been a little cranky and not wanting to eat much. At least he was weighed before all that started. I'm sure he's not gaining much right now.

Looking across the street. Probably wishing they could go out and play

After he ate a bite of Joel's apple, he really didn't know what to do with it

Noah found a new toy. Yep, it's a tampon

Hannah loves Noah so much, it looks like she's choking him

This is how Noah's hair dried after bath one day. Looks like a mini-mohawk :)

Funny quotes

My daughter is funny. She is 3, almost 4 years old now and she's said a lot of really funny things in her 4 years of life. I've been told I need to write them down. So, here are some of the funny ones:

Mommy, I need my eyes (wanting her binoculars)

Mommy, why does Noah have boobs?

Hannah's verse for Awana one night was: God made the Heavens and the Earth. After reciting this, she thought for a minute then announced that God should have also made the stars.

Hannah: Mommy, I can't find it!

Me: Find what?

Hannah: The other one (while making hand motions)

Me: The other what?
Hannah: I can't remember. Where is it!?

Me: Uhhh...hmmm

Mommy, if the lions come to get you, I'll growl at them and scare them away.

Mommy, I want to ride a horse. Then I want to be chased by a lion so the horse runs really fast. That'd be really cool! (she had watched The Lion King a few too many times)

Hannah's Awana verse: Serve the Lord with gladness.

Hannah's version: Serve the Lord with the glasses.

Mommy! I can't pee. It's all inside me and won't come out! See?! (as she pulls up her shirt and shows me her underwear)

Mommy, I ate all my food. You can't see it because it's on my bones.

Contemplation

Since learning of my friend Aimee's death, I've been doing a lot of thinking about life. I have such a great life. It's hard to believe how blessed I am. I have an amazing husband, two wonderful children, a great job, and now a mini-van! Woo-hoo! I'll post about that later.

Noah is about to turn 1. It's been such a fast year! He turns 1 on Wednesday. I can't believe that one year ago, I was miserably pregnant, overdue and thinking he'd never come out. And now Noah is starting to walk, talking up a storm, getting into everything and just being a boy. I still remember when Hannah turned 1. It was a really tough time then. The week before her 1st birthday, I was having some pain in my side and figured I had an ovarian cyst. I'd had several before and they're no big deal to me. But being an ultrasound tech, I had to take a look. I remember it was a Friday at the end of the day. My co-worker had already left and I was there by myself. I went into the exam room, shut the door and lay down on the table. As I moved the camera over my belly, it took me a minute to comprehend what I was seeing. I was convinced I was scanning someone else (even though I was by myself and clearly had goo all over my skin). There was a baby in there! Yep, I was pregnant. In all the years it took for me to get pregnant with Hannah, I remember the doctor's saying it would be so difficult for me to get pregnant without medical help. Well, it happened.

Then the medical side of me kicked in and I noticed there was something very important missing from my baby...a heartbeat.

It looked perfect in every other way. It was like looking at a still picture. I would pick out the little arm and leg buds, the head and body. But instead of a heart beating very quickly, it was eerily silent and still. My baby was dead. I remember being so torn between elation that I was pregnant at all and devastation that the baby was dead. I immediately called my husband but he didn't answer his phone so then I called the next best thing...my mom. Mom's are great. I can't imagine going through life without mine. Crying, I told her I was pregnant. Her response "well, honey. That's wonderful!". Then I told her there was no heartbeat. She switched over to "nurse-mode" and made me call my OB doctor. The OB doctor simply said that it was a Friday so there was nothing they were going to do about it until Monday. Go home and rest and call the office on Monday. If I started hemorrhaging, go to the ER. The medical side of me completely understood that they were letting my body "take care of it" on it's own. The maternal side of me was screaming for them to do something to save my child.

The next few days were a blur. It wasn't just Hannah's birthday weekend; it was also Mother's Day weekend. I had to host Hannah's birthday party on Saturday with lots of family and friends at my house. Then Mother's day was Sunday. It was awful. I got through it only because I would look in my baby daughter's eyes and know that she was mine. No matter the reason that God chose to take my 2nd child away, I had a beautiful daughter with me on Earth.

The next week I had blood tests followed by an "official" ultrasound which proved that yes, I was pregnant but no, there wasn't a heartbeat. My body wasn't taking care of it on it's own so I had to have a D&C. I was a wreck. I seriously don't know how I got through all that. I remember thinking that I wasn't protecting my baby since they were going to take it out of me. Even though I knew it was already gone, I still felt like I was doing something wrong by having that procedure. So many people told me that I'd understand someday why God chose to take the baby away. I never thought I would.

A year later, someone very close to me suffered a miscarriage. I was able to talk her through what was happening to her body and what the doctors were going to do about it. She later told me that she couldn't have gotten through that time without me. There was the reason. My baby is in Heaven playing with all the other babies taken from their parents far too soon. If he/she's anything like Noah, he/she's being put in "time out" quite a bit. :)

Noah will turn 1 on Wednesday. This 1st birthday is looking quite a bit different than Hannah's. And that's not a bad thing.