the merry month of may.

may is a big month for us.  huge.  we already have a list of milestones behind us barely at the halfway point and many still on the horizon before we close out and head into june.


as you all know, last week we celebrated reese's first birthday!  how time flies.  we had an official party for him with balloons, cake, and one very large stuffed bear over the weekend, and played it low key day of with a family trip to the zoo (mom and dad both off work and sunshine--yes!).  it's funny, because when bean turned one, we thought she was so big!  of course, she was seriously dwarfing her 3 week old brother, and she was the oldest baby we had.  now that reese is 1, he still seems like such a baby to us compared to his toddler sister.  bringing home a new baby will mature a slightly older baby rather quickly, it seems.































we had a productive few weeks surrounding the big boy's birthday.  a random week off in my schedule allowed ample time to trim a lot of loose ends...reese's hair, for one.  a pair of scissors has still never graced the mystical entity that is bean's halo of curls, so i didn't realize that cutting baby hair is somewhat challenging.  as it turns out, one year olds are no more eager to sit still for a haircut than they are for anything else, except there's a sharp metal object (in this case, cuticle scissors--it was either that or kitchen shears) on and around their face.  eventually i had to cut it one side at a time while breastfeeding him to keep him still, but fortunately it's not too uneven, and hair grows back.





i was also able to do some studying and sit for a certification exam i've been putting off since graduating from nursing school, and submit some materials to apply for a promotion at work.  i've been training as a charge nurse lately, where you have no patients but manage all of the other nitty gritty on the floor.  very different nursing--very different stress, but it's nice to try new things.  i also finished this wedding gift:

and these mother's day gifts

somewhere in there david successfully completed his mock oral boards, and a few warm days allowed us to get outside and stretch our legs.


in our ample down time, david and i continued training for our race.  my last long training run happened to fall on a day of 90 degree humidity and zero cloud cover...so it became a short training run.  distances over 10 miles really were more than i bargained for, and training for this race allowed me to appreciate that if i want to make longer distance running a part of my life, i will have to make some compromises.






you can't really roll out of bed and run a half marathon (unless you are my running buddy jane, in which case you can work 14 hours, go to a concert, work 4 hours, go to a late baseball game, sleep on my couch for four hours, get up, leisurely complete a half marathon, go out again, and then work 14 more hours...ah, to be young).  i was a bit anxious about how this longest distance ever would go, and i'm really happy to report it went GREAT.


as someone who from age 11 onward was up all night in a cold sweat before the annual mile run in gym class and never played a sport after seventh grade, i wouldn't call myself an athlete by any stretch, certainly not a runner.  all previous attempts at running once i got into college resulted in pretty significant injury and subsequent pouting, and never racked up any distance beyond about 5k.  for years i've wondered aloud how it is that oprah can run a friggin marathon and i can't break 3.5 miles.

he's singing here.

still, i came to really enjoy jogging for the exposure to the outdoors, the exploratory nature of it, and the accessibility--bring running shoes, run anywhere.  i picked it up again in chicago, but took a two year time out with the back to back pregnancies.  when reese was 3 weeks old, i begged for the green light from my doctor to hit the pavement again.  as each journey starts with a single step, my running began with a minute of jogging and a few of walking, and progressed into longer and longer stretches.  when david interviewed for his position at kaiser, his future boss, a former ultramarathoner, made a comment to me that really resonated.  i asked her how she could possibly ever run that far, and she said, "well, nobody ever said you had to run fast."

bean is back on the anti-diaper bandwagon.

that comment singlehandedly changed my approach to running, and allowed me to achieve more than i ever had.  instead of being stressful as exercise ironically is so often, now runs provided stress relief.  sometimes david ran with me.  sometimes i took bean or reese for alone time with them, sometimes both of them together as an outing. but as the runs grew, they became my time to think, and be alone.  i stopped using headphones because i no longer needed to distract myself from the activity; i enjoyed the quiet, the sounds around me, and tuning into my breathing or how hard my feet were striking the ground.  my runs grew longer and longer (though never faster), and i explored new parts of the lakeshore.  i started to feel like forrest gump.  and it was awesome.  if i got thirsty, i drank.  if i got tired, i slowed down.  suddenly running was so low maintenance.

two weeks or so ago, david and i overlapped a day in our training, and ran together for the first time in several months through a rainstorm.  somehow, without any guidance or real effort on my part, my rather serious runner of a husband looked at me and said, "wow, you really look like a runner."

months and months ago, before my first 10k, i told david that i really wanted to set some hard goals for myself in running.  it was fall, and he couldn't hide his surprise when i told him i wanted to run a half marathon by the spring.  when i ran my last 10k in february however, my half marathon goal had peacefully fallen by the wayside.  i just didn't have the time to train on top of work, kids and other activities that are important to maintaining my sanity (yes, KNITTING).

but somehow, a perfect storm convened around this forgotten goal...my body responded well to distances up to 10 miles, my friend jane encouraged me to sign up and offered to run with me, the weather warmed up enough to invite outdoor training, and a total absence of injury or even muscle soreness led me up to the starting gate of a 13.1 mile course along my favorite lakeshore.  and through lightening, thunder, and wind blowing rain sideways in to our faces off an angry lake michigan, this saturday i ran every step of those 13.1 miles and crossed the finish line with a smile on my face and gas left in the tank.  i didn't take home any prizes for speed, but i 100% completed my objective of running comfortably the whole way, and of course, finishing.  pretty sweet.

today of course is mother's day, which i'm pretty pumped to be spending neither nine months pregnant nor giving birth.  i awoke (at 7:45!) to this gift (david is very proud of his recyclABLE--not recyclED--wrapping), a subscription to martha stewart living.  i like her crafts, OK?!  

next, i was off to a spa morning to sand off all the rough spots accumulated from my recent uptick in running mileage.  i reconvened with kids back home in time to head out for dinner at our favorite vietnamese place.  i even got away with changing only one poopy diaper.  all in all, a great mother's day.

latest news on the house is that they'll start painting the exterior this week, cool!  we still have princess bean's birthday ahead of us in may, so the celebrations are far from over.  stay tuned...