School Pictures Fall 2015.

Reading and Writing. And "What's it called again?"

Lily's been in pre-K for about 6 weeks now and it's amazing how much she's learned already.  She is starting to pick out words she can read.  The other day, she saw "YouTube" on the TV and excitedly says, "That says YOU!  Y - O - U spells you!!"  Then she looks at you with this sparkle in her eyes  and a huge grin on her face because she's so proud of her accomplishment.  And of course, I'm proud too.

When we read her books, she's starting to figure out how to recognize the characters' names.  "Jasmine.  Juh-Juh-Jasmine.  That's a J sound so I'm looking for a J.  There it is!  JASMINE!"

I can tell they are working on math too.  She'll randomly tell me, "One plus one is two.  Two plus two is four.  Four plus four is eight.  Eight plus eight is.....What's eight plus eight?"  She's starting to add small numbers on her own, mostly 1s, 2s and 3s, in her head without counting on her fingers.  I grin from ear to ear when she does that.  I hope every day my kids love math as much as I do.  (Particularly since I hear the STEM commercial at least once a day on the radio - promoting science, technology, engineering and math in our "young people" because that's the jobs of the future.)

As for Tyler, his teacher tells me he's the best one of the bunch (most days).  She probably says that to all the parents.  But she said that Tyler is the best listener in the class.  He always cleans up when he's told and helps her without being told.  Such a sweetie.  Except when he's not.

My favorite thing about him right now is that he'll just talk and talk and talk to you about all kinds of random things.  And when he's searching for a word, he cocks his head to the side, scrunches up his face and says, "What's it called again??"  I die.  Every. Single. Time.

These kiddos are so smart...the other day, Lily heard something outside so she grabbed this chair and was trying to look out the peep hole.  Ol long legged Lily was shy about an inch from being able to see out.

Meanwhile, Tyler's like, "I'll just open the door and LOOK Sissy."  They crack me up.

Tyler - such a boy - can't take serious picture with this one.  Always has to ham it up.  But I felt compelled to try because he was laying with me on the couch and that happens like once in a never.

We're still hard at work trying to get the kids to eat what we eat.  We are having small, teensy victories here and there.  Lily pretty much won't touch any kind of meat AT ALL, but she's been good about trying veggies.  She found she loves asparagus and cucumber.  She tolerates bell pepper.  She's been eating cheese quesadillas.

Tyler is kind of the opposite - he'll try the meat, but most often won't touch the veggies.  I've been trying to get the kids to help me cook, hoping that will get them interested in what we're having.  Mostly that just accomplishes a bigger mess in the kitchen and less likely that I can sneak veggies and/or meat in something without them noticing...

The biggest challenge I have with Tyler right now is that he claims to be "done" eating about 5 minutes after we start.  He plays around with his plate and climbs all over his chair and then eventually just leaves the table claiming he's done.  Then as soon as we get everything all cleaned up, he's like, "I'm HUNGRY!!"  So now we just leave his plate on the table and if he wants to come back to it he can.  We've just kind of stopped making a big deal about it but do put our foot down that he can't have any other snacks or treats if he didn't finish his food.

One night last week, Lily was having a meltdown and I was trying my hardest not to lose my mind and throw the child across the room.  So I decided that I need to "get my negative energy out."  So I threw on some work out clothes and started doing sit ups in the middle of Lily's room while she was throwing a fit.  I kept telling her that she should do them with me so she could get her negative energy out.  She wouldn't.

So I left her screaming and bawling in her room and headed to the living to get my negative energy out without a 4.5 year old screaming in my ear.  Now I've moved on to push ups and Tyler thinks it would be a great idea to climb on my back while I do it.

Full disclosure, I got down without face planting, but I couldn't get more than about 2 inches back up!  Maybe this will be one of my new fitness goals.  A pushup from my toes with my 3 year old on my back.  I better hurry before he gets much bigger.

Anyway, about that time, Lily's comes out of her room and decides she wants to do some push ups too.  And after that, all our negative energy was expended.

I also got to go with the kids to Touch-A-Truck this past week.  Joel's been a couple times, but I've never been able to go until this year.  They had a pretty good time climbing in and around all kinds of vehicles.

Also, I realized that I never posted about Tyler's stats from his 3 year check up.  He came in at 39 inches tall and 34.6 pounds - both 95th percentile.  My giant kids.  We also just now got around to taking a family picture in front of Tyler's Happy Birthday Sign.

Half Marathon. Sleepover. Hell.

Last weekend Joel and I ran in the Mill Race (Half) Marathon here in Columbus.  We signed up with the intention of doing at least a little bit of training - but that never happened.  Joel runs a mile or two every now and again during this breaks at work and I pretty much don't run at all unless I'm being chased.  Let's face it, I just don't have time - particularly given that I exercise 6 days a week at Farrell's.  And I wasn't about to trade that in for running.

I was pretty nervous leading up to the thing.  I figured I could finish it - even if it meant walking most of the way - so I don't think that's why.  I think I was mostly nervous that I would get hurt from lack of training.  

Aaannnnyywaays...  Joel and I had dropped the kids off with Josh and Marie the night before the race because we had to be downtown by 6:45am.  More on the overnight stay in bit...

We got downtown and then got stuck in traffic for about 20 minutes trying to make our way to the parking garage.  I was glad we got there early - helped keep my anxiety at bay.  We took a before picture in the parking garage because neither one of us wanted to carry our phones the whole way.

Then we made our way to our coral (after peeing once and then Joel had to pee again - nerves I reckon) and waited.  And waited.  And waited.  Ok it wasn't that long but it always feels like forever when you're ready to just GO.

And then we went.  And we did pretty good.  We did a run/walk combo - mostly to help with the mental side of accomplishing 13.1 miles.  Run 2.5 minutes, walk 1.5 minutes.  I think this served me really, really well.  It was tough in the first couple miles to make myself stop running after 2.5 minutes because I felt like I could keep going.  But the key is in pacing myself and I'm really glad we did it this way because I felt good - pretty good - right up until about mile 10.

And then I decided the last 3 miles was going to suck no matter which way you sliced it.  Everything was starting to hurt, but particularly my hip flexors and my left achilles.  Cue 'no training regret!'  

But we pushed through and then mile 12 hits and I'm getting super excited to be almost done.  And then Joel gets a wicked bad cramp in his quad.  And he has to stop.  And I stop for a second to wait for him and very quickly realize I absolutely CAN.  NOT.  STOP.  Or I will not finish.  At this point, I can't even walk.  Jogging is easier than walking.  So I keep going and leave Joel behind to suffer alone.  But he's tough and somehow mentally overcomes the pain and catches back up to me, pushing himself to get to the end.  

I can see the finish.  It's about 1/4 mile ahead.  I'm nearly weeping/hyperventilating with joy.  And then, out of the corner of my eye, I see this woman blasting past me like I'm stopped on the side of the road sitting in a lawn chair.  She has on a blue number tag which means she's running the marathon.  So here I am practically hobbling my way to the end and this woman has covered TWICE the distance in the same amount of time and she's about to cross the finish line like she's just on mile 1.  Sick.  

But then we DID cross the finish and I forgot about that woman and I grabbed up my medal and my water and my banana and my granola bar and my cookies and my pretzels and I collapsed on the curb and ate.  Best oat's 'n honey granola bar I ever ate.

And then we hobbled / limped our way back to the car - taking the elevator to the 3rd floor of the parking garage.  Took our "after" selfie.  I think we look pretty good.

So how did we do, numbers wise?  According to FitBit, we actually ran 13.37 miles.  Did it in 2 hours and 44 minutes - so that's a 12 minute 15 second mile pace.  I'm pretty sure I could BARELY run at that pace when I was in high school.  Also, for the record, when I did the Indy mini-marathon back in May 2010, I trained for 8 months to do it.  And I completed it in 3 hours and 15 minutes and was never more proud of myself.  But now, I shaved a whopping 30 minutes off my time.  THIRTY.  MINUTES.  That just blows my mind - if I had the time to train today, like I did back then, I can't imagine what I could have done.  My state of health is just so different these days.

How did we feel the rest of that day?  Like hell.  Sore.  Sore.  Sore.  But it didn't last long.  By Sunday, we were about 70% better and by Monday, felt back to normal.  

How did the rest of the weekend go besides physical recovery?  Like hell.  Hell.  Hell.  Hell.  

As I mentioned, the kiddos hung with their Basham cousins on Friday night and into Saturday.  Where they were spoiled rotten and had the time of their lives playing with cats.

Here's Lily pouting when I told her that she couldn't take one home with her.  You'd have thought I just told her that I was going to run over the thing with my car.  She was seriously depressed... 

...and pissed.

After leaving Josh and Marie's, the kids promptly fell asleep in the car.  

We headed back to downtown Columbus to see if Joel or I were the lucky winner of a new truck (all finishers of the half and full marathon were entered).  We were not.  

And then, out of nowhere, Lily decides to throw one holy hell of a fit.  And it took us over 30 minutes just to get her in the car.  With half the police department and Columbus SWAT team watching in the distance as our 4.5 year old stood on the side walk screaming bloody murder.  It was awesome and not at all embarrassing.  

And she pretty much screamed and kicked for the next 2 hours until she finally just passed out.  Just what we wanted to deal with after a day of running 13.1 miles.  Scuze me...13.37 miles.