Happy Birthday Travis!!

I can hardly believe it has been seven years since I became a parent.

I've learned a lot in those seven years. I've learned that parenting rarely turns out like you think it will, and the best-laid intentions can be left in the dust when reality sets in. I've learned that it's a lot harder than I thought it would be to watch my kid grow up. I've learned that there's no way to describe the feeling of vulnerability I have when it comes to my kids and their life experiences. I've learned that crayon stains from a melted crayon in the dryer almost NEVER come out of clothing.

But mostly, I've learned how awesome it is to be a mom. Especially to such a terrific kid.

I love you, buddy. 

Beach on Lake Michigan

Carriage Ride

Canada 2006

Favorite yellow hat

First day of pre-school

First Notre Dame football game

Christmas 2006

Kids craft project at Lowe's.

Christmas 2007

Canada 2008

Christmas 2008

With Swoop at the Silverhawks game

Loving the Jeep

At the park with buddy Una

Family Pictures

First day of Pre-Kindergarten

Healthworks Kids Museum

Christmas 2010

Curious Kids Museum

Biking with dad

Happy 7th Birthday!!

That's a questionable profession for a three-year-old.

Sophie's been dancing around the living room with moves that slightly resemble ballet dancing, inasmuch as a three-year-old's haphazard movements can. She spins around with her arms in a circle above her head, or outstretched as though she is contemplating performing a pirouette.

Ben and I were discussing this. Has she seen ballet dancing on TV? Or is she just a natural-born ballet dancer?

Sophie says, "Hooray! I wanna be a belly dancer!"

In other news, we took her to Build A Bear on Friday evening for her birthday. She'd never been there before, which is a travesty given how much she loves stuffed animals. 

She quite enjoyed the experience.

At the urging of Noah, and to his utter delight, she picked out a penguin for her stuffed animal.

Here she is, giving her penguin his heart.

Here, she is showing the Build-A-Bear "stuffed animal creator" how old she is.

Sophie loves her penguin.

Uh....Noah does too.

Here's all the kids helping to give Pengwee a bath.

And, finally, a shout-out to our friend Colin who celebrated his fifth birthday this week. The kids enjoyed the Chuck E Cheese party.

The boys giving a round of applause.

Sophie, of course, loved ol' Chuck.

The birthday boy!

That, my friends, is the look of a kid who's not sure he knows what he's gotten himself into.

Let the ticket blasting begin!!

Happy Birthday Colin!

Happy Birthday Sophie

Sophie,

Today is your third birthday.

Three years ago today, I held you in the hospital, with your little ankle band that read "Baby Girl Davidson" because we hadn't yet decided on your name.

We had gone into the hospital with three possible choices.

Sophie, Hannah, or Ashley.


As soon as you were born, I threw Ashley out of the ring. You didn't look like an Ashley. Not one bit.

I was torn between Sophie and Hannah. The rest of the family was leaning towards Sophie, but I just wasn't sure. I didn't want to make this decision lightly. I wanted the name to suit you.


I was holding you, and you had a little red and green hospital knit hat on. I was still debating, Hannah .... Sophie. I just couldn't decide.

Just then, I took your hat off. I wanted to see your cute little fuzzy head.

In that instant, it became clear to me that you were a Sophie. Don't ask me why. I'm quite certain it was mostly to do with my insanely hormonal post-pregnancy emotions rather than any sort of logic whatsoever. But I was adamant. You were no Hannah.

The nurse, who happened to be in the room at the moment I made this decision, smiled at me and said, "I was hoping you'd pick that name. I like it better."

I'm fairly certain she would have said that either way.

But she's right.

You are most definitely a Sophie.

Happy Birthday.

Gingerbread Run and Santa Train

Last weekend, we headed to the northeast side of the state for some visits with Ben's family, celebration of Sophie's upcoming birthday, and a train ride with Santa.

Since we were over there for the weekend, I signed up for a 4-mile race in Fort Wayne that I had found online.

I've been looking for longer races than a 5K, but haven't been able to find many 10Ks in the area. When I found this 4-miler, a bit longer than a 5K, I decided to go for it. Fort Wayne is about an hour south of my in-laws, and I thought this would be a good entry into longer races.

The race started at 8:30, but I made it down there about 45 minutes early.

It was freezing.

I mean, sub-freezing. Eighteen degrees, roughly.

Standing outside on the start line waiting to get the race underway was nothing less than miserable. But, by a few minutes into the race, most of the misery had subsided. About a mile into it, my lungs stopped burning, and I felt pretty good.

I was shooting for 36 minutes (9-minute mile pace) and managed to cross the finish at 35:06.  That put me at 52nd place of 206, and 7th of 43 in my category of 30-39 Female. (Plus, I beat the roughly 50 runners that signed up for the race but apparently stayed home in bed, likely because of the frigid temperatures.)

True to form, I slept fitfully the night before the race -- I guess that tradition holds true even if I'm sleeping in someone else's home. I pretty much woke up every hour (at least) starting around 1:15 a.m.; I think I was nervous about oversleeping.

I'm still looking for a 10K to run; then my next big race is a 10-miler that I've signed up for in April.


At any rate, after the race, I drove back up to Angola, showered, helped Ben get the kids ready, then we headed up to Coldwater, Michigan for a 45-minute train ride to Quincy, Michigan and back, along with grandma & pa-pa, Uncle Mac & Aunt Jody, cousins Trevor & Nathan, and Jody's parents. Santa happened to hitch a ride on this same train as well, so the kids got to head back to the caboose and visit with him.

Travis asked for a Nintendo DS.

Noah was too nervous to ask for anything, but he was pretty agreeable to whatever Santa decided to bring him and was ecstatic about the candy cane he got as a parting gift.

Sophie asked for a snow globe.


She loves snow globes.


And people.


And Santa, in particular. I had to drag her off his lap so she didn't monopolize the entire train ride talking to Santa about snow globes and birthday cakes and her friend Colin's upcoming party at Chuck E Cheese that she can't stop talking about.

She's exhausting.

But cute.

Boarding the train

The boys in the "boy square"

Me, Soph & Ben

Nater

Noah

Trevor

Travis, and Santa (not the real one)

Mac & Jo. Mac with a cheesy smile, and Jody not really aware that I'm taking a picture.

That's more like it, Mac.

Pa-pa and Grandma

Halfway through, we got out for a bit to stretch. Wait, who is that exiting the caboose??

Noah was excited. Look who I saw, ma!

Not so sure

Okay, not so bad

On Growing Up

Noah, I don't ever want you to grow up. Will you stay four forever?


Um, nope.



Please? 


But mom, remember, I'm not the person that controls that!



Oh.  Right. Well, who does control it?


Well, God. .....  Or maybe Santa.



What if I ask Santa to keep you four forever?


....Oh, I remember. It's God.

The Naked Guy Post

I promised my fellow Meals-on-Wheeler that I would write a blog post about The Naked Guy.

The Naked Guy is one of the stops on the Meals on Wheels route that my company volunteers for. We run our route on Fridays. We have a handful of volunteers in the office that are signed up for this, and we rotate among ourselves, in pairs. I end up running the route usually every 5 or 6 weeks or so.

Yesterday was one of those days. Erin and I were signed up to run the route together.

We had run the route together sometime in October as well.

That run in October was when I got to experience The Naked Guy firsthand.

Certainly, I'd dropped his food off before. He's always odd, but had heretofore been fully clothed when I knocked on his door. I'd heard of his propensity to be naked, but not ever experienced it.

Let me try to paint this picture for you.

Firstly, you need to know that we usually place the food (which consists of a hot meal, a sack lunch-type meal, and two little cartons of milk) inside a plastic Wal-Mart or similar bag. Otherwise it can get a little cumbersome to make the transfer, particularly when many of the recipients are using canes, walkers, wheelchairs, etc.

On this fateful day in October, Erin and I had no plastic bags.

There's usually some in our office that we grab before we head out. There were none.

We stop at the headquarters to pick up the food, and they may well have had some bags there. But we forgot to check.

So we're on the route, with no plastic bags. It wasn't the end of the world, by any means, a tad more difficult maybe, but we made do.

We were nearing the end of our stops, when we made it to the apartment complex where TNG lives.

In this apartment complex, we have two stops fairly close to each other, in two buildings about 50 yards apart. We normally split up the drop-offs, one of us takes TNG, the other one takes Erma, the elderly lady on the bottom floor.

I headed over to TNG's apartment building.

TNG is an older African-American gentleman that lives on the second floor of his apartment building.

I made my way up the stairs, and knocked on TNG's door.

"Coming!!!"


Moments later, the door cracks open, and TNG peeks his head around the door.

I realize that he probably is, in fact, naked; thus the reason for positioning himself so oddly behind the open door.

I say, "Meals on Wheels," and start to hand him the food.

He responds, "tee-hee-hee-hee-hee-hee-hee!"


I can't describe his reaction in any other way except that it sounded like a nervous pre-teen girl tittering about some guy she's got a crush on.

I keep handing him the food, one piece at a time. I just want to get out of there so I don't risk seeing too much of him in all his naked glory.

"Tee hee hee hee hee hee!"


He just continues giggling. I'm not sure how to deal with that.

Finally he says, "You don't have any bags today?"


I respond, "Nope, we ran out of bags. Sorry!"

"I have some bags in here; I'll go get some for you."


I did NOT want to wait around for some type of plastic bag exchange with The Naked Guy. I laughed nervously and said, "Oh, no, don't worry about it, we're just about done anyway...."

"Tee hee hee hee hee hee hee hee hee!"


It seemed to be taking forever to make this hand-off, mostly because I could only hand him one piece at a time, and he could only accept the items one-handed because his other hand was strategically holding the door in place, and then he had to twist around behind him to put each item down as I handed it to him.

Finally, the food had been transferred.

I stammered, "Have a nice day!" and bolted out of there.

I could hear him giggling behind me.

I ran for the safety of Erin's car, got in, slammed the door, and regaled her with the details of my TNG experience.


Fast forward to yesterday, when Erin and I were assigned to run the route together again.

My first words to her as we started the route were,

"It's your turn to do The Naked Guy stop."

When we made it to that point in our route, I dropped off Erma's food, and was waiting in Erin's car for her to finish up her TNG experience.

I see her darting down the stairs as fast as her boots could carry her, she hopped into the drivers seat, and we sped away.

Laughing, she regaled her story. She had knocked on the door, and TNG had yelled, "COME IN!" She hollered out, "Meals on Wheels!" and he had yelled again for her to come in.

Not wanting to know what on earth might be awaiting her if she had cracked that door open, she instead left the food outside the door and ran away.

She asked me, "Would YOU have gone in?"


Not a chance. I'll make sure TNG gets his food, but THAT, my friends, is where my obligation ceases.

The dance is over: A Video

And now Noah joins in:

Talk about working overtime.

We were with family over the Thanksgiving weekend, and my sister-in-law told me something that her son had asked her that I find absolutely hilarious.

They had been talking about Christmas, when Nathan, her five-year-old, asked her,

"Do Santa's slaves like making toys?"

Of course, she informed him that they are elves, not slaves, and they went on about their business.

My nephew Nathan -- well, he's well-known for his quips. This kid comes up with some humdingers.

But I can't stop laughing about Santa's slaves.

And truthfully, he may be on to something there. I mean, how much free will do these elves really have? I don't know that the job market is really that plentiful for elves. If they wanted to leave the North Pole, where would they even go? As far as I can tell, Santa's pretty much got a monopoly on available livelihoods for persons of the elf persuasion.

I can only assume they are treated fairly up there. Who knows, by now they may even have a Toy Workers Union (Local 1225), whereby they negotiate fair labor standards including holiday pay and benefits.

Otherwise, I'm just not sure how an Underground Railroad from the North Pole would even work.

A new Thanksgiving tradition

I've got a pretty established routine going.

I have nervous dreams before race day.

I signed up for a 5K Turkey Trot this morning, and I tossed and turned all night long, dreaming random nerve-wracking race-related dreams, like I drove my father-in-law's police car to the race, but then I locked all my race gear inside of it and didn't know how to get it unlocked.

And another one where I forgot my iPod, and then I found it, but the earbuds were gigantic and there was no way to fit them in my ears.

Then a brief glimpse of a dream where my shoes started falling apart during the race.

And another one where there were two different race courses and they wouldn't tell you which one was which so you just had to guess if you were following the right path.

Finally, after a restless night of unsettling dreams, I woke up. It was nearing time to get up and get ready to go, and Noah and Sophie were both awake already.

Ben grumbled to wakefulness, then started telling me about how he had a nervous dream about my race. He dreamed that he was in charge of the technology for the whole thing and somehow it kept getting screwed up.

Apparently my restlessness is contagious.

Anyway, my running buddy picked me up, we went and picked up our other running partner, and the three of us made our way to the race.

Thankfully, the weather was decent for a Thanksgiving-Day run, and overall I felt pretty good. Plus I've been working really hard at interval training over the past month to build up my speed.

The course was decent, a couple tough hills, but it felt good.

My previous 5K best was a month ago, the Fall Frolic, at 28:31.

This time, I timed myself with my heart rate monitor, and after fumbling with the 'stop' button after crossing the finish line, the display showed 26:41 finish time. Final results will be posted soon, but I'm thinking my training paid off pretty well this month. I'm no super-star, by any means, but I'm happy with it and feel like it is a respectable showing.

Getting in some fresh air? Burning some calories? Beating a personal record? That's a pretty good way to start a day.

I've been unfaithful.

It's true. I've cheated.



On my running partner.

My four-legged running partner, to be exact.

You see, Canada and I used to run together quite a bit. But it's getting harder to run with him. He gets tired too quickly. And I'm faster than I used to be.

The other day, one of my human running partners came over to run with me.

Canada saw me putting on my running gear, and got ecstatic.

He ran in circles around me, ran to his leash hook, ran to the front door, then back to me. Tail wagging, tongue hanging out, super excited, ready to run.

When Melissa came to the door and I walked out with her, leaving Canada behind, he stared after me, utter dejection and betrayal displayed on his doggy face.

How COULD you?


What's so special about HER? 


She doesn't even TRY to get into the neighbor's flowers. What fun is THAT?!?




Today, I went on a run by myself. I didn't take Canada. He slows me down.

It was the same routine. As I slipped on my knee brace and laced up my running shoes, Canada bounced around me, never for a second considering that I might not be taking him.

Again, he was betrayed.

I feel guilty. I really do.

And I do run with him occasionally. I did last week. But sometimes I just feel like, you know, not having to yank someone out of the pile of leaves along the sidewalk, or pulling someone back from chasing after that kid on the bike.

And luckily Melissa only jumps into the leaves occasionally.

Spalling Rear

"I want some spalling rear!"

This, from Sophie, in the back seat, as I drove all three kids home from taekwondo practice.

We normally never take all the kids to taekwondo, but I had no choice because Ben was out of town. 

My initial plan was just to drop Travis off and then come pick him up in an hour, but now that the weather is so miserable, it is literally easier to keep my two- and four-year-old in a confined space at taekwondo school for 60 minutes than it is to bundle them up, load them, unload them, unbundle them, then rebundle and reload. 

So Noah and Sophie plopped themselves on the floor next to the taekwondo mat and watched Travis practice his form and technique and all sorts of good stuff.

Sophie also showed Mr. Adams some of her own taekwondo moves, which is a sight to behold, trust me. I've not done my duty as a blogger by not yet uploading a video of this gem. I'll do it, soon, I promise. 

Anyway, in practice, the kids practiced sparring.

Most of the kids have their sparring gear.

Travis....not so much.

We haven't made the commitment to buy the sparring gear, mostly because I'm not 100% sure Travis is ready for this stage, and we just haven't had the time to devote as much time to taekwondo as I think we should.

Those two things are probably related.

Anyway, Travis can still participate, even though he doesn't have sparring gear, but his experience is admittedly somewhat limited, given that he's kicking and striking at pads and fake targets, and not at real people like most of the other kids.

Anyway, after class, I asked Travis if he wanted us to get him some sparring gear. Last time I asked him, he was a little hesitant, but now that he's seen it more in use, I think he's more excited about it.

His response was an immediate "yes!"

And then Sophie chimed in. For the remainder of the trip home. Repeatedly, and loudly.

"I want some spalling rear! Mom! MOM! I WANT SOME SPALLING REAR!"

This kid. She doesn't know what she is talking about 90% of the time, but she is certainly passionate about it nonetheless.



----------
Edited to add Sophie's taekwondo video. You are welcome.

Speed Reading

I was an early reader.

I learned to read by watching my older sister read Serendipity books when I was three.

When I was five, I read Charlotte's Web.

What can I say, I was a prodigy.

So, I am delighted to see how hooked Travis is on reading.

Every night, he reads a few chapters from a Junie B. Jones book. He gets through a book in about two or three nights. We always pick up a couple from the library every time we go.  Two weeks ago, I bought him a set of six in a bookstore sale.

He's already through them all.

We went to the library tonight, turned in our other Junie B. books, and picked up two more. Since he's flying through them, I suggested we check out some other chapter books for him.

I picked out a book from the "Freddie Fernortner, Fearless First Grader" series and showed it to Travis.

I'd never heard of this series before, but I picked it because, well, it's about a first grade boy. And Travis is a first grade boy. He looked at it, gave it a nod of approval, so we added it to our stack and checked it out.

That was two hours ago.

Two minutes ago, he finished the whole thing.

All 89 pages. All fourteen chapters and even a bonus chapter from Book 2 in the series, which was included at the end of the book.

He soaks this stuff up like a sponge. He just can't get enough.

He's his momma's boy, all right.

Now, let's just see if he turns into a spelling champ as well.

Or a laundry-phobe.


Either one seems pretty likely.

Mommy brain? Over-35-brain? Whatever it is, I've got it.

I've sunk to a new level of idiocy.

I forgot to put peanut butter in my no-bake cookies.

The worst part was, I had already measured out the peanut butter, so it was sitting in my measuring cup on the counter, just awaiting its addition to the cocoa-y sugary buttery goodness that was boiling next to it.

And then, it was done boiling, and the kids and I dumped in the oats, and I plomped them down in overflowing spoonfuls onto some wax paper. At the time, something seemed off with the consistency, but I was too busy keeping Sophie from grabbing handfuls of the glop and making off with it, so I just moved on.

Ten minutes later, I spotted the measuring cup of peanut butter on the counter.

Luckily, the cookies had not set yet, so I was able to salvage them by dumping them all back into the bowl, adding the forgotten ingredient, re-mixing and re-dropping. The taste seems not to have suffered from my lack of attention.

Then, at the gym this week, I changed into my gym clothes and realized I had no gym socks.

Thinking back to that morning, I even explicitly remembered grabbing the pair of socks from the chest at the foot of the bed where I set out my clothes each night. I remembered because they were separate from the rest of my workout clothes, which I had actually loaded into my gym bag the night before, sans socks.

My first thought was that I KNEW I had those darn socks. I emptied my entire gym bag and handbag. Nothing. I unfolded and refolded my work clothes that I had just removed, thinking they maybe got caught in there somehow.

Nope.

I patted down my locker, making sure they hadn't rolled into a corner.

Still no luck.

I glanced up and down and around, on the floor, the bench, thinking perhaps they rolled out of my bag, I even checked the bench on the other side of the aisle in case they had gathered some momentum and gotten some actual distance.

Nothing.

I had to come to grips with the fact that, although I had grabbed my socks in the morning, I had not actually followed through with depositing them in my gym bag.

I've got lots of crap going on in the morning. It is not terribly surprising that this level of distraction might occur.

I worked out sockless.

Luckily, it was weight lifting day, which is decidedly less impacted by Naked Foot Syndrome then, say, running.

It was uncomfortable, but not horrible.


BUT.

This isn't the worst part of the story.

When I got back from showering, I came back to my locker.

And THERE WERE MY SOCKS.

On the floor. Under the bench.

Pretty much half way under, where it was possible to miss seeing them from either side without bending all the way over. But still, hard to believe I missed them, given that I'd been so reluctant to actually believe I didn't have them and had spent so much time looking for them.

So, not only am I apparently easily distracted, I'm also a blatant idiot.

Awesome.

A surgery story

Ben had knee surgery today, to repair a torn meniscus and clean up his ragged patella.

I took today and tomorrow off of work to tend to Ben's every need.

And by "tend", I mean begrudgingly throw a ham sandwich in front of him when he complains of being hungry.

Just kidding, I'm not quite that bad, but I'm admittedly not super high on the doting-wife scale. I'm somewhere between "here, let me clip your toenails for you" and "sure, I'll get you that bag of ice for your knee after I've finished this here glass of wine".

At any rate, surgery was scheduled for noon today. We had to be at the hospital at ten.

We got to the hospital, and they shuttled us back to the pre-op prep room pretty quickly. They told me I could stay with Ben until he left for surgery, and that if I left the hospital, to make sure to leave a contact number so they could reach me.

Ben and I had agreed that, since I wouldn't have time to work out on my normal schedule (which, on Tuesdays, is usually my lunch hour at work), that I would run to the gym during his surgery. But when we got there, we realized it would take me about 20 minutes each way to get back and forth across town, and his surgery was probably only going to last 30 minutes or so, and I really wouldn't be likely to get back before the end of surgery to be able to talk to his doctor unless I left right away.

So I did.

It's seems maybe a little heartless, now that I think about it, me leaving my husband alone in the hospital to go to the gym, but what can I say.... I'm really excited about my new workout routine and it's possible I'm getting a little obsessive.

My plan was to get back by 11:30, so I could catch Ben before he went in for his surgery.

On my way back, I was doing pretty good on time, so I stopped by CVS to pick up some crutches. We used to have some years ago, but they must have up and hobbled off by themselves somewhere, since we couldn't find them anywhere.

CVS?

Out of crutches.

So I went to the Wal-Greens (naturally, just across the street).

And they? were out of crutches.



I was not aware of the sudden crutch-shortage crisis in northern Indiana.

I didn't have time to shop any other drug stores, so I just gave up and went to the hospital.

Ben was hospital-gowned up and ready to go....but the doctor was running about an hour late. He finally got wheeled back for surgery and I went back out to the waiting room to check my e-mails and read books on the iPad with a bunch of elderly people who eyed me and my fancy "computer thingie" suspiciously while they rattled their newpapers in my general direction.

After the surgery, the doctor called me back to talk about how it went.

I walked into the room, still wearing my workout gear, including knee brace because I mistakenly didn't wear it when I ran intervals yesterday and paid for it all night last night, and the doctor looks at me, puts his clipboard down and says, "So what's wrong with YOUR knee?"


Seriously, doc? You're trying to recruit new knee surgery candidates in the hospital waiting room?

Maybe the economy is worse than I thought.


So, surgery went well, I was taken back to the recovery room to wait for Ben to show up.

He did, a few minutes later,  wheeled in on his gurney. I could tell he was still a little 'stupored' by the anesthesia. But don't tell him that. He will DENY it. Vehemently.

The nurse was asking him how he was doing.


" Hungry."


"Yes, you told me that already. We'll get you some food soon. What I meant was, are you having any pain?"


"..... Hunger pains."


They got him some muffins, and he was mostly appeased.

We got to leave shortly thereafter, and we drove to another CVS to get his script filled and pick up those crutches.

They had one set of crutches.

But they were out of Percocet.

They made me wait fifteen minutes to tell me they didn't have what I needed.

I'm getting a little tired of dejectedly stalking out of drug stores empty-handed.

Now we're at home, the kids and the dog did a remarkably good job of not jumping on Ben's leg for most of the night. Since leaving the hospital this afternoon, Ben has eaten a Chick-Fil-A meal, two slices of pizza,  a cheeseburger, and some pumpkin pie.

Yup. Totally back to normal.