Recovering Well

It's most likely a bit premature to be writing about the wonders of the personal trainer my neighbor and I are working with.  But after only two sessions, I have lots to say.  And most of it includes the words, "ouch," and "ow."

If you looked up the phrase "impressive physical specimen" in the dictionary or on Wikipedia or on Google Images, you would see a picture of this guy.  He's a tall, black man with shoulders almost too wide to get through a standard doorway.  And he is a hell of a nice guy.

My neighbor had told me she heard he was a large, intimidating looking man and she was right, he was.  When she introduced us to him on Monday, to me she seemed to be almost stumbling over her words.  It was like she was a little nervous if he would consider taking us on as clients.  He had heard we were coming though and yes, he said he would be glad to help us.

He asked us what we did for exercise and when we told him we ran he waited and we said we just ran and that was all.  I seriously think he looked at us with a bit of disdain at that point.  I am not sure if he was mentally reconsidering if he wanted to work with us, but then he walked us into the basketball court area and started putting us through some exercises.

That first day we only did thirty minutes with him.  He said that was enough.  He made us do bear crawls across the court, situps, pushups, wall stands, planks, high step running and kick step court crossing.  And if you don't know what those things are, don't worry, I made some of the names up.  We did alright I suppose because he said to come back on Wednesday.

We ran on the treadmill for another half hour and then went home.  And then, the next morning, we were both more sore than we remembered in a long time.   Muscles that hadn't been worked before were angry and were telling us about it, loudly.  But we came back.

He had us do a ten minute warmup on Wednesday and left it up to us.  We don't know how to stretch or what else to do that would constitute a "warm up" so we went over and ran on the treadmill for ten minutes.   Then he put us through an entirely different set of exercises.

Let me stop right here and say that most of these exercises he was having us do were from thirty seconds to two minutes each.  Most of them were thirty seconds.  "Hell, I can do almost anything for thirty seconds," I thought.  And I could, but there are some things that make thirty seconds seem like ten minutes.

We did pushups again and it was very clear I needed a lot of work in that area.  We did modified jumping squat jacks (or that's how I thought of them) and we also did the "ropes."   When he told us to do the ropes all the people in the gym that were working with him (and knew we were new) suddenly were cheering us on, before we'd even started, which should have been a sign.

The ropes are two ten foot ropes about two inches in diameter.  They are heavy.  You pick them up and try to flap them up and down, thus making sine waves down the length of the ropes.  Guess how long you do this for?  Twenty seconds.  That's right, twenty seconds...of pain.  I almost called for my mommy one time my arms were so sore.

Twenty seconds of one exercise, ten seconds rest, twenty seconds of a second exercise, ten seconds rest.  Repeat that four times.  Four minutes.  Easy, right?  Ugh.  He sent us home after forty-five minutes yesterday.    I appreciate now how much he knows about what he's doing.  He knew we'd had enough before we did.  Because I am sore, people!  Very sore.  Super sore.  Major ouchie in places I didn't know had a right to be that sore. 

He's a fun and funny guy and he makes it interesting.  And as we were finishing for the day he said, "You both recover well.  That's enough for today."  I hadn't thought about that.  We aren't great at these new activities and exercises, but we do have good stamina from all the running.  After sets he'd ask us "Are you okay?  How are you doing?" and we'd always be ready for the next thing.  So at least we've got one thing going for us, even if our muscles are all rebelling at the new regime.

The Big Boy Update:  Doorknobbed.  Not a word, I know.  But we had to put a child-preventing door knob device on the bedroom door so my son couldn't escape.  He not only can open the door, he can climb over the gate.  We had to up our game.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  Potty with her pants on.  Or in the bowl.  She tries to go all the time.  She doesn't know how or understand that she's suppose to take her pants off and she usually has a diaper on, but she goes an awful lot, in her diaper, while sitting on the potty.  She then takes the insert, dumps the non-existent deposit into the big toilet and then flushes it.  This morning, she got a salad bowl out of the kitchen cabinet, sat in it and made a royal mess in her pants.  

Someone Once Said:  Government! Three-fourths parasitic and the rest stupid fumbling—oh, conceded that man, a social animal, could not avoid government, any more than an individual could escape bondage to his bowels. But simply because an evil was inescapable was no reason to term it “good.”

The Great Big Little Lampshade Replacement

Your mind builds filters.  It ignores all things known, processed, not necessary and understood so that it can spend time on the things it needs to work on like writing this blog post or cleaning up the mess your son just made all over the potty because he's not yet skilled at getting his pants down in time.

It can become acutely apparent when you make one change in environment or routine because your brain notices, even if you don't want it to.  About a year ago we had a comforter incident.  That incident involved the early and unexpected death of our current comforter.  I went shopping and found a replacement comforter that was reasonably close to our prior comforter.  It wasn't exact, and yet to this day, we've only had one person notice.  However, my brain complained for several weeks that the color and patter just weren't "right."

We had a lamp issue which turned into a lamp shade catastrophe yesterday.  The lamp was fixable, but the lampshade wasn't.  We went in search of replacements and just like hemlines and bell bottoms, it appears the lamp shades we had were in fashion some time ago and completely out of fashion today.  We needed extra wide, super width, as large as a manhole lampshades and there were none to be found.  The largest we were able to purchase were a full eight inches less in diameter, and that eight inches looked like a little, tiny, gnome-sized lamp shade instead of one that would be going in a large, vaulted living room.   But that's the best option we saw.

We got the new lampshades home and the color looked close.  Did I mention there were two lamps and while only one shade had met it's end, it's lamp mate across the room would be needing a matching replacement as well?  The new shades seemed to go well with the lamp bases and overall, they were good replacements.  Only my eyes and brain protested.  They complained that something had been changed, and changed for the terrible.  Terrible because it was different.  Not bad, not wrong, not inferior, just different.

I had to tell my brain to go to hell until next week and see if it even noticed then and if so it could take it up with my "reasonableness center" because like it or not, those new lamp shades were our new living room reality.

This morning, I didn't even notice the new lamp shades.

The Big Boy Update:  Over the gate.  I'm not surprised.  He can open the door.  This morning to buy time I put up the gate.   In ten minutes he was out, much to his sister's dismay.  It looks like child-proof doorknob covers for the interior of his room door soon.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  Who taught her Peek-a-boo?  She know the whole routine of hiding her eyes behind her hands and then pulling them away, grinning and laughing when you say, "peek-a-boo!"  I didn't teach this cute game to her.

Fitness Update:  Sex Man.  Okay, seriously, if you're going to be working out in a gym with lots of other people around, you need to control your personal huffing and puffing and grunting and moaning volume.  Everyone else was exercising vigorously and not making a huge audible scene of things.  This guy, whom I dubbed "sex man" to my neighbor, sounded like the typical sex scene in movies—for a full hour.  He was working hard, there's no doubt about that.  He was also his own coach, yelling at himself for "one more minute, you can do it!" which was interesting too.  Sex man aside, my neighbor and I did our second workout with the fitness trainer today.  He pushed us harder.  I wonder how sore I'll be tomorrow?

Someone Once Said:  The truth of a proposition has little or nothing to do with its psychodynamics.

The Blog Alignment

Some days this blog is my nemesis.  Writing my daily blog entry is a lot like winding down for the day to go to bed.  It's the winding down, or cleaning up, or putting everything in order part that does me in.  And yes, I know when you read this you're going to think, "that lady has issues," and I can't say I'd completely disagree, but then again, don't we all have our issues?

Okay, so let's say I want to write a blog post.  That's something we can easily say, because it's something I do every day.  Let's reword it to, "It's time to go write that blog post."  I've asked my husband to take care of the children, or ideally they're asleep napping or maybe I got all my other commitments done that morning and they're not yet out of school.  Either way, the first thing I need to do is get to the computer.

I like writing blog posts at the computer.  I have a nice monitor and, and I think this is the bigger reason, I have a full-size keyboard.  I really like typing at the speed that it seems you can only achieve by having your hands on a keyboard with physical, individual keys that is sized to fit your hands instead of the commonly small device they have to be wedged into.

I have sat down.  But my desk contains many things.  It has paperwork: bills, correspondence, receipts, things to file, lists of things to do, etc.  And there is my computer, which is the main storehouse for everything I need to take care of from a business, school, family and personal perspective.  And that's where I get bogged down.

I can best write a blog post when I'm not being mentally sidetracked by stacks of paperwork and an overflowing inbox of unread and possibly urgent emails.  So every day, before I can get started, I have to take care of all things "other."  It's not that bad, I don't do everything that needs to be done, I do some, and other, longer-term things get planned for or scheduled or, in some cases, just put off.  Emails are read, deleted, filed, responded to or put on hold for when I have more time in the future.

Ideally this shouldn't take long, and it mostly doesn't.  But it does take some amount of time.  It's a good thing, because every day now I do a quick review of what needs to be done.  Historically, pre-blog, I might have ignored everything for days on end, only to find out I should have taken action on something and now it's too late.  But it still can feel like a mental weight on me that I have to get my mental desk organized before I can settle down to the business of blogging.

Is it that creative work is more difficult when I have other things, little things, lots of little things, niggling at my mind; worrying me that I haven't taken care of something or did I miss that date for the RSVP or heck, did I already tell Patrice that I wanted to buy more of those chocolate cookies from her daughter?  But if the only thing unhandled, undone, unfinished is the blog post, I can focus on it and try to be funny or interesting.

And yes, on most days I fail on the funny and interesting parts, but I haven't given up trying.  I think I was born with a rather small wit and while I've been trying to exercise it, it's been slow going.

Well would you look at that, all morning at the computer doing all those things in life that take up your time electronically and paperworkally—I made that word up, I needed something to rhyme with electronically, pretend you didn't notice—and now it's time to go get the children.   I am not surprised.  The amount of things you have to do always expands to fit into the time you have available.

The Big Boy Update:  Heel walking.  He's figured out how to walk on his heels.  It takes extra balancing, but he's got it down now.  Or, at least until he gets distracted by another toy or distraction.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  Tip toe walking.  I remember that my son went through this phase.  She's figured out how to walk on her tip toes recently.  She looks like a little dancer moving around the house on the balls of her feet.

Fitness Update:  Okay, ow.  I'm glad the new trainer didn't work us for a full hour because I have bits of me that are so sore I woke up and had to find an anti-inflammatory and I was still so sore I didn't want to roll over.  Tomorrow, we're back for a second helping at 5:15AM.

Someone Once Said:   Logic is a way of saying that anything which didn’t happen yesterday won’t happen tomorrow.

Mid-Life Fitness Crisis?

You're young and you can eat anything you want and no weight goes on.  You don't even know any people who are even in their twenties because those people are just old, boring grown-ups.  You go to college, graduate and get a job and start to work with people of different ages.  That "really old" age turns into those severely mature and boring people in their thirties.

As you keep working and the years drag on, you realize those thirty-something people are pretty nice and you even like hanging out with them.  They talk about how they used to be able to eat anything and never put on a pound but now they have to not only watch what they eat but exercise too.  Not me, you think.

Then you hit your thirties and for a while it's not clear why your pants are fitting tighter than they used to.  "That's strange, I must be drying them on hot or something," you think because it appears the waist band has shrunk on pretty much all your pants.  You think it could be time to get a scale, after all it's been thirty years and you've never paid attention to your weight before.  It could be time.

Hmm, it seems you've managed to add on some stomach fat through overeating and sloth-like activity levels at your comfy desk job.  It should be easy to get rid of, you assure yourself.  You've never dieted before, but how hard can it be.  "I'm sure I can drop this weight in a week or two" you think.  And suddenly you encounter hunger that taunts you.  Hunger that insists you must eat now and eat far more than you need to eat, just because you told yourself you had to eat less.  That's when you realize weight-loss is a long, slow and difficult journey with a high rate of failure.

Time goes by and suddenly you're pregnant.  Hooray, you can eat everything you want because you're suppose to be gaining weight now.  Two babies in a row and the fun food fest doesn't stop for two years.  And then, oh my, you weigh more than you've ever weighed and it's just got to go.  And this time, you're serious about it.

Weight lost, body back to it's original adult size and as it turns out, you're liking this exercise thing.  You do more running, even train for a race and succeed.  And you still keep running.  "What do I do next?  How can I look better and feel better?", you ask yourself.  Is this, wait a minute, hold on, is this a ladies-version of a mid-life crisis you suddenly think?

In my teens and twenties I never even thought about fitness.  Boring stuff those older people did.  Now, I'm one of those older people and I suppose, if I think it through, that I'd like to regain some of my youthfulness and one way of doing that that's also healthy, is through exercise.  I think I'd prefer that route over plastic surgery at any rate.

My neighbor heard about a personal trainer that works at a gym close to use during early morning hours.  Today was our first day with him.  He ran us through some exercises for a half hour to see what our level of fitness was and I hope we did fairly well.  He said to come back and he'd be glad to work with us.

I don't know if I'm excited or scared, because he had us doing some hard things already today.  But it was good fun so we'll see.  When it gets tough my neighbor and I think about our summer bathing suits and how we want to do our best so we can look good in them.  Teenage-me never thought about that.  Bah, age. 

The Big Boy Update:  Environmental control.  He's in that trying two's age where he needs to have control over his environment, and if you let him have his way, he will run right over you.  We know he's frustrated but it comes out as anger at anything and everything.  That's not the food he wanted.  You're taking the food he didn't want away so it is now the only thing in the whole world he wants.  You moved his apple slice to the other side of the tray.  What were you thinking, momma?  That is the only place in the whole universe where that slice of apple can be and there is a major tantrum about to happen if that slice of apple isn't returned stat to it's original, random location.  There is a lot of ignoring on our part so that he can work through it himself (which is more helpful to him than any actual help we might offer.) 

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  No!  I've written about this before, but it's even more distinct now.  When she doesn't want something she has a three-way attack she goes for.  First, she would shove the item (bottle of milk, for instance) away.  Second, she says "No noooo noo" very clearly and quite emphatically.  And now, she's started shaking her head in an exaggerated no gesture.  If you don't get her message, you are seriously not paying attention.

Fitness Update:  New personal trainer try-out with thirty minutes of him evaluating us and seeing how well we performed his fitness tests.  Thirty minutes on a treadmill because we didn't think to bring running clothes. 

Someone Once Said:   Force is an argument to use when nothing else will do and the issue is that important. Instead, I’m going to go limp on them.

The Lone Party Guest

Having lots of people at your party doesn't necessarily make it a success.  Less can be more and it should be about the quality of the time more so than the fun of the event.  Just look at New York's Time's Square on New Year's Eve.  Do you want to be there smashed together with tens of thousands of other fools, er, celebrating people just to say you saw it in person?  I know I don't.

We hosted a social last night for the parents of each of our children's classes.  We helped coordinate a school fundraising babysitting event so that the parents had a spot their children could be taken care of while we socialized. 

As the responses for who would attend and who couldn't make it came in, I must admit there were less overall responses and yes replies than I had hoped.  Was our party to be a flop?  Was it an indication of how people saw us?  Did no one like us?  Were we mean or rude to the other parents?  And lastly, but not least, was the sky falling?

You've been there before, watching your mind blow things way out of proportion when there was little or no evidence to support the spiral of doom and gloom you invariably felt coming on.  And that's when I remembered my mother's story. 

She told me about a lady from the college she worked at.  I may know who the lady was, but I'm not sure.  Regardless, I envision a poised, kindly elegant woman who invited many people to a dinner party.  Or maybe it was lunch.  I don't remember.  My mother arrived.  There were tables set and food prepared and they waited for the other guests to arrive.  

They waited until it was fairly obvious that no one else was coming.  What did the hostess do?  She said it was time to start the meal.  My mother and she had a meal in which they talked about many things and had a lovely time both eating and talking.  Did the hostess say anything about how disappointed she was in the turnout?  No.  She never said a word.  She was a gracious host and it was never brought up.

My mother may not remember the food served, but she remembers how her friend handled the situation.  And when I was looking at the RSVP's I remembered that story too and I thought that it didn't matter how many people showed up, it only mattered what you did with the people that did arrive.

So we had a smaller turnout than I initially expected we would (and eighteen instead of thirty isn't that poor a turnout, really.)  And we had a tremendous time.  Can I just say I love our children's school?  We have the best parents.  We have wonderful teachers.  And we have a positive atmosphere for not only the children's educational environment, but for us as parents and teachers and school staff together.  I couldn't have picked a better group of friends if I'd tried.

The Big Boy Update:  Beware the hand washer.  He got a stool today and pulled it up to the sink in the bathroom.  Thus began the hand washing cycle of never-ending soaping and rinsing.  It was not necessary to have your hands clean, it was only important to add more soap and rinse it off under the stream of warm water.  There wasn't a need for a towel to dry your hands, because more iterations of soaping and rinsing were sure to follow.  We had to drag him away from the sink after the seventy-eighth round of washing.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  More of those words we haven't been paying attention to.  She knows so many more words than we give her credit for.  That, or every day she's unveiling another dozen, casually, as if she's been saying them all along.  I need a little baby girl notepad to keep track of them all.

Fitness Update:  It only hurts when you stop.  I was fine after the fourteen mile run yesterday.  I was having a good time through the toddler house families party we hosted last night, including cleanup and I didn't notice anything as I crashed into bed last night.  And then I woke up.  And there was ow.  All over ow that was louder than a good workout ow should have been.  I was mostly asleep, thinking of taking an Advil when I got to the bathroom, got some water, almost swallowed to go back to bed in the hopes that the ow would diminish.  And that's when I realized I was imaging taking an Advil.  If I really wanted to take one, I'd better keep that sip of water in my mouth and find the bottle or my hopes of relief might not come to fruition.  I suppose I need to train back up to fourteen miles and beyond in the coming weeks.

Someone Once Said:  Climate is what we expect, weather is what we get.

Underpants

You've been wondering but were too shy to ask; or maybe you've been busy and didn't realized how much time had passed.  But either way, I know you've been desperately awaiting a potty update.  How is it going?  Are they making progress?  What color underpants does he like the best and what books does she like the most during her private potty time?

I haven't forgotten you folks, honest.  I was just waiting for something other than, "We're still plugging away with minimal successes other than drenching underwear and pants and other sundry household items, and I don't wanna talk about it yet."  But yes, there has been a breakthrough, or maybe I'd say a slow, daybreak dawning on a cloudy, humid day kind-of thing instead of a real breakthrough.  And by that I mean it was slow going for a good while.

My son now wears underwear--not the training pants padded kind and not the pullups that are really just thinner diapers without tabs--every day.  He is dry most of the time.  He knows how to pull his pants and underpants down and he knows how to go both ways in the potty.  He is particularly proud of himself when he goes the second way, and he likes to run out and tell us.  And we don't mind that one bit.

He is not good at managing his time and making sure he gets to the potty on a regular basis.  We have to remind him, "it's your turn to go to the potty" often.  Although he's gotten over resisting going and even likes, I think, to stay dry.

My daughter has successes that add up to failure most of the time.  She will go if you put her on the potty, but she doesn't have the skills to take off her pants and underpants yet and she definitely can't get off a diaper.  She seems to want to go and has an idea that she needs to go because she is regularly going over to the potty, sitting on it, getting a book, getting up in a few minutes and going over empty-handed to flush the big toilet.  We think it's at these times that she's going in her diaper.

So hey, let's let her run around the house in easy-to-remove underwear.  Surely she'll keep up this good work now that she has easier access.  But no, that's a tried and confirmed recipe for five underpants changes within two hours and not one success at the potty.   So we have compromised.  We have her in diapers a lot of the time, but we still sit her on the potty and things do happen when we do so.  We've decided she's not ready to move into the true "training" portion of potty training quite yet.

And underpants, let me not forget to mention we got a smattering of exciting packs with pictures of Disney characters and the Pixar movie characters.  It's fun to see which pair they each pick out to wear.

The Big Boy Update:  Self-dresser?  We put him to bed for a nap.  He had a hard time settling but eventually got to sleep.  When we got him up, we realized he had changed underwear.  He had taken his pants and underpants (dry) off, selected a different pair of underwear, managed to get them on albeit backwards, and then get his pants back on before falling to sleep.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  Mad dash runner.  We were helping out a friend as she volunteered at the marathon across the street in the park earlier today.  My daughter was so excited watching all the runners go by.  When the field was cleared, we'd let her out onto the path and she'd run after the last runner waving her hands in the air and giggling.

Fitness Update:  Double Calorie Day.  It's my neighbor's birthday today (and my sister-in-law's too, Happy Birthday Adrienne!)  My neighbor asked if her parents could watch her four girls so she and I could do a long run.  I don't think we've run a half-marathon distance since we did our race in November.  It was particularly interesting as the park we run in was hosting a full marathon today as well.  We ran earlier than that marathon started and she had to head back before we made the full distance, but I kept running and ended up back at the house at fourteen miles.  My heart-rate monitor said I burned over seventeen hundred calories during the run, which is about what I'd burn in a normal day.  So it's double eating for me today.  And this is good news as we're hosting a party tonight and are having some of my favorite food catered.

Someone Once Said:  If I sell a horse I won’t guarantee that it has a leg on each corner; the buyer must count them for himself.

Nook and other Milk Matters

My son calls milk, "nook."  We call it milk, or rather we call it milk some of the time, the rest of the time we've adopted his mispronunciation even though we probably should be encouraging him to say milk.  We're in the middle of another "milk evolution" here at the house.  It's one of those transition items that keeps transitioning to the next stage as the children get older.

First, you have nothing but nursing going on.  That milk is, by virtue of its source, warm.  The first transition we went through was to move to formula.   Getting them to suck from a bottle is fairly easy and as long as you make the formula fairly warm, they don't mind.

The next transition is to remove formula and replace it with milk.  And that's one of those "sneak it in gradually so they don't balk" situations.  One-hundred percent formula goes to seventy-five percent formula with twenty-five percent milk and so on until they don't realize the formula has been eliminated.

Then there are the bottles.  At about a year, they really don't need a bottle any more.  The child has the manual dexterity to hold a sippy cup and drink from it.  But which nozzel-type thing is the best way to go?  My two children have their preferences.  There are also the tippy sippy cups and the slurpie sippie cups.  The tippy ones you have to hold up and tip so that the liquid will flow into your mouth.  The slurpie sippie cups have a straw that goes to the bottom, so tipping that type up only gets you air.  The children have to figure out which one you've given them this time, and adjust their drinking habits accordingly.  Oh, and not get annoyed at you for giving them the type of cup they dislike.  Unless that's what you intended to do, because they need to be beverage-flexible--so cry it up, you'll figure it out eventually, kid.

Did I mention temperature before?  How the milk starts off warm and you have to work at it to get a child accustomed to that nice, cold drink of milk because they pretty much think cold milk is something to be thrown on the floor with big tears and a tantrum when you first try it.  So you have two choices: first, you make it a bit less warm over time (say ten seconds less in the microwave every week) and eventually they adjust.  Or, you can add chocolate powder or syrup or blend regular milk with chocolate milk and it becomes a different drink--a different drink they don't mind being cold like they don't mind their juice or water being cold.

There is also the nightcap situation to contend with in our house.  The "last thing I consume before going to bed that my parents love because it causes me to drop off to sleep instantly when I'm done" milk.  We've been working on getting this one out of our routine for a while now.  My son, who has been drinking bedtime "nook" for almost a year longer, is having more of an issue.  He runs out of the bedroom with his bedtime clothes on yelling "nook, nook!"  He knows where to look for the milk and he can even reach up on the edge of the counter looking for it.

And lastly, there's the re-introduction of milk at other times of the day.  If you're getting a large bottle or cup of milk at the end of the day, you're getting a good quantity of that bone-building calcium and milky goodness just before bed.  If that final drink is removed, do you reintroduce it at another point in the day?  We're working on adding milk, preferably cold, to breakfast again. 

So at this point where do we stand and how much further do we have to go?  Bottles?  Gone.  Warmed milk?  Gone.  Chocolate added to the milk in lieu of warming it as a sneaky parental trick?  Done only for my son now.  Milk at bedtime?  My son still needs his nighttime "nook" but gets less than he used to.  Implementation of milk at breakfast?  In progress.  Interestingly enough, they associate juice with breakfast now so we've got another transition to go it seems.  But hey, no more bottles in this house!

The Big Boy Update:  Socks on?  Yesterday morning he was coming down for breakfast and my husband said, "I just left those socks on him from last night."  I said, "I didn't put them on him, did you?  We don't send him to bed in socks."  My husband said he didn't put socks on him either.  He can reach the sock drawer, likes to pull out the socks and has been taught to put on his clothes at school.  Did he get up in the morning, select and put on socks?  It's the only explanation we have.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles: "Buh dah bah baby"  My friend gave me a bag of hand-me-down toys last night.  On the top was a realistic baby doll that had no clothes on.  I put her in the chair in the living room to see what would happen this morning.  As soon as my daughter walked into the room she said a few babbling syllables that very clearly ended in the word "baby."  She picked it up and carried it around rather carefully until it was time for school.  She surprises us regularly with words we didn't even know she could say.

Fitness Update:  Possible run at one with my neighbor.  It seems she may be getting out of clinic early.  I'm going to see if she wants to do the art museum to pedestrian bridge route.  It's a beautiful run through outdoor art at our nearby art museum and ends with a nice run across a newly built pedestrian bridge over one of the highways.

Someone Once Said:   I will accept any rules that you feel necessary to your freedom. I am free, no matter what rules surround me. If I find them tolerable, I tolerate them; if I find them too obnoxious, I break them. I am free because I know I alone am morally responsible for everything I do.