Running and Kael
I realized I haven't talked about running much lately. Aren't you all disappointed? I'm training for Ragnar once again (the sort of crazy but not really 12 person 180 mile relay race). This time I will a) not sprain my ankle before I start and b) not be lactating. I will then need to learn another lesson to apply to next year. Anyway...
I have also signed up for a half marathon. On Mother's Day. And Geoff and my anniversary. I'm very sentimental. It's important to note that I didn't just decide to do this out of the blue, no: Kurt suggested it. So now, Kurt, a coworker of Kurt's, and I will be killing ourselves in a little over a week because Kurt failed at making it clear his suggestion was actually a joke. I can't wait! :-) As a result of signing up for the half marathon, and the fact that the novice training for Ragnar starts out quite easy, we decided to skip the first 9 weeks of the training schedule. This way we will "conveniently" be running 12 miles the weekend before the half marathon, which means in theory we should be totally prepared. Assuming we don't die on the 12 mile run. I'm so looking forward to that this Saturday! (To be fair, we did the training's 10 mile run two weekends ago and survived.)
The downside of starting training partway through is that I think we run out of the schedule the week after the half marathon, and Ragnar won't be for another (I'm sure you can't guess).... 9 weeks. What we will do in those 9 weeks is up for debate. It may involve cannibalizing the "intermediate" training, which should really be called "insane" (it involves running 6 days a week, rather than 4, maxes out at 18 miles in a run, and has weekdays with multiple runs in addition to weekends). We'll see.
Aside from running, Geoff and I have continued to keep Kael alive. Go us! :-) He's definitely a handful now. Taking him to a restaurant is becoming increasingly less plausible, unless we really want to take turns following Kael around the restaurant while the other eats. Chalk it up to more failed parenting, I'm sure. We don't really have sit-down meals with Kael at home, since when we strap him into his chair, he'll just start throwing food around after a few minutes. Whereas if we let him roam freely, he can graze when he wants, and generally winds up eating more food. And eating more food is good because he needs the calories in order to not eat in the middle of the night.
Speaking of... Geoff and I finally broke down and got a real crib for Kael, and set it up in the library/office. It's a bit crowded in there now, but it's totally worth it. Now we can shut a door on Kael's crying! Now we can talk about whether we should go to him, or let him cry a little longer without him hearing us and flipping out even more! Now we can simply roll over in bed when he's crying without having him see us and flipping out even more! Don't get me wrong - we'd prefer there be no crying at all. However, that's pretty much impossible during training. He's used to us coming to him and walking him back to sleep. He's used to getting milk when that doesn't work. Getting him used to neither of these things involves disappointing him. The good news is that it's going extremely well, all things considered - Geoff never walks him in the middle of the night (almost never, anyway), and I haven't fed him in the middle of the night for nearly two weeks. Kael does still wake up typically once, but Geoff's having more luck with just going in, hugging him, and leaving. More crying ensues, but Kael often falls asleep pretty quickly.
I've made a lot of progress on weaning as well - now I feed him once, maybe twice, in the evening, and once in the morning. The downside is that those feedings tend to become marathon feedings. Sometimes in the morning, Kael can be feeding for an hour before I wind up cutting him off, at which point he'll start crying and signing for milk (for reference, he used to take 10, maybe 15, minutes before falling back asleep). At some point in the nearish future I'm just going to have to stop being lazy and take Kael downstairs for milk of the cow variety, as well as something more substantial.
Have I mentioned how much Kael loves books now? Really, he's loved them for a while now. He'll bring books over to Geoff or I and say "buuuu?" while forcing it into our hands. Sometimes he will accelerate our rate of reading by flipping pages quickly to get to his favorites (like the tea scene in Mr. Gumpy's Outing). Sometimes he'll make the sounds of the animals on the pages. Sometimes he'll point out the things he recognizes. So cute! It gets less cute when we have to read the same book 5 times in a row. But only a little ;-) In addition to books, Kael likes going outside. I'm afraid we don't indulge him in this as much as books. But he'll stand near doors and say plaintively "side?". Followed sometimes with a temper tantrum if we don't oblige. I admit, I sometimes laugh at his tantrums... Especially when there's no apparent cause, he just starts crying, lies down on his stomach and pounds the floor out of the blue. Usually an indication it's getting close to bedtime. It's more sad when he throws a tantrum at daycare when we drop him off. Up till now he's generally been pretty happy going to daycare, but every other day of late he clings to me and cries when I try to put him down. I assume it's just a phase.
To give Kael a little credit, he's teething right now - in addition to the first set of molars (bicuspids, whatever you want to call them), his canines are coming in. And the molars are huge! For his little mouth, at any rate. They started peeking out a while ago, but now they're really coming in force. There are little near-islands of gum surrounded by four points of tooth that just make me wince over how much that must hurt (or will soon hurt).
Other defining Kael characteristics of late... If he's feeling cooperative, he'll climb into the car and into his car seat, then sit down. All on his own (though he needs us to open the door). He's even started buckling the car seat belt. A game he loves so much that I sometimes have a hard time getting him out of the seat, because he'll rebuckle himself every time I unbuckle him. And he'll cry if I stop him... He's also doing a reasonable amount of imitation. The other day he saw us drying our hands on the hand towel, started miming drying his hands, then grabbed the towel when offered in order to mime more effectively. And - cutest of all - he put the towel back on the rack when he was done :-) He likes to "vacuum" with his ball popper, and "sweep" with our Swiffer mop thing. I saw him "cleaning" a surface (okay, so it was the toilet lid, but it was the only thing in reach) with a washcloth. And then there's his love of the Wii. He'll wave around the remotes a bit, then hand them to us to play. Then sometimes grab them back to play some more :-)
His language skills continue to expand (including the ever popular "mine"), of course. We're not counting the number of words, because that seems too tedious, plus what's the point? Our usual audience is hardly going to be impressed with "now Kael knows 20 words!", and we're not the sort to brag anyway. Not to mention we have no reason to believe that he's advancing at a particularly rapid pace (I actually don't believe that's the case, though I have no evidence either way).
Maybe some other stuff, but I'm a little distracted by Kael, who has a sock on his hand and is crying pathetically for milk though it's not yet time (and he's of course turning down cow's milk). Hard to take a baby seriously when he has a sock on his hand...
Oh, one last thing: Kael has figured out how to feed the rabbits. He grabs a handful of goldfish crackers (a baby staple, though not exactly great for rabbits), and holds it out to the bunnies. Hazel has consequently learned Kael is a provider of food, and has actually managed to scare Kael in the past in her enthusiasm :-) Awful parent that I am, I laugh when Hazel (a barely 3 pound rabbit) practically climbs into Kael's lap, and Kael starts "Eee! Eee! Eee!"ing in fear :-) At least Kael has learned to be more gentle with all the pets, most of the time. And he loves to put his face down on the cats' sides, we think to listen for their purring :-)
I have also signed up for a half marathon. On Mother's Day. And Geoff and my anniversary. I'm very sentimental. It's important to note that I didn't just decide to do this out of the blue, no: Kurt suggested it. So now, Kurt, a coworker of Kurt's, and I will be killing ourselves in a little over a week because Kurt failed at making it clear his suggestion was actually a joke. I can't wait! :-) As a result of signing up for the half marathon, and the fact that the novice training for Ragnar starts out quite easy, we decided to skip the first 9 weeks of the training schedule. This way we will "conveniently" be running 12 miles the weekend before the half marathon, which means in theory we should be totally prepared. Assuming we don't die on the 12 mile run. I'm so looking forward to that this Saturday! (To be fair, we did the training's 10 mile run two weekends ago and survived.)
The downside of starting training partway through is that I think we run out of the schedule the week after the half marathon, and Ragnar won't be for another (I'm sure you can't guess).... 9 weeks. What we will do in those 9 weeks is up for debate. It may involve cannibalizing the "intermediate" training, which should really be called "insane" (it involves running 6 days a week, rather than 4, maxes out at 18 miles in a run, and has weekdays with multiple runs in addition to weekends). We'll see.
Aside from running, Geoff and I have continued to keep Kael alive. Go us! :-) He's definitely a handful now. Taking him to a restaurant is becoming increasingly less plausible, unless we really want to take turns following Kael around the restaurant while the other eats. Chalk it up to more failed parenting, I'm sure. We don't really have sit-down meals with Kael at home, since when we strap him into his chair, he'll just start throwing food around after a few minutes. Whereas if we let him roam freely, he can graze when he wants, and generally winds up eating more food. And eating more food is good because he needs the calories in order to not eat in the middle of the night.
Speaking of... Geoff and I finally broke down and got a real crib for Kael, and set it up in the library/office. It's a bit crowded in there now, but it's totally worth it. Now we can shut a door on Kael's crying! Now we can talk about whether we should go to him, or let him cry a little longer without him hearing us and flipping out even more! Now we can simply roll over in bed when he's crying without having him see us and flipping out even more! Don't get me wrong - we'd prefer there be no crying at all. However, that's pretty much impossible during training. He's used to us coming to him and walking him back to sleep. He's used to getting milk when that doesn't work. Getting him used to neither of these things involves disappointing him. The good news is that it's going extremely well, all things considered - Geoff never walks him in the middle of the night (almost never, anyway), and I haven't fed him in the middle of the night for nearly two weeks. Kael does still wake up typically once, but Geoff's having more luck with just going in, hugging him, and leaving. More crying ensues, but Kael often falls asleep pretty quickly.
I've made a lot of progress on weaning as well - now I feed him once, maybe twice, in the evening, and once in the morning. The downside is that those feedings tend to become marathon feedings. Sometimes in the morning, Kael can be feeding for an hour before I wind up cutting him off, at which point he'll start crying and signing for milk (for reference, he used to take 10, maybe 15, minutes before falling back asleep). At some point in the nearish future I'm just going to have to stop being lazy and take Kael downstairs for milk of the cow variety, as well as something more substantial.
Have I mentioned how much Kael loves books now? Really, he's loved them for a while now. He'll bring books over to Geoff or I and say "buuuu?" while forcing it into our hands. Sometimes he will accelerate our rate of reading by flipping pages quickly to get to his favorites (like the tea scene in Mr. Gumpy's Outing). Sometimes he'll make the sounds of the animals on the pages. Sometimes he'll point out the things he recognizes. So cute! It gets less cute when we have to read the same book 5 times in a row. But only a little ;-) In addition to books, Kael likes going outside. I'm afraid we don't indulge him in this as much as books. But he'll stand near doors and say plaintively "side?". Followed sometimes with a temper tantrum if we don't oblige. I admit, I sometimes laugh at his tantrums... Especially when there's no apparent cause, he just starts crying, lies down on his stomach and pounds the floor out of the blue. Usually an indication it's getting close to bedtime. It's more sad when he throws a tantrum at daycare when we drop him off. Up till now he's generally been pretty happy going to daycare, but every other day of late he clings to me and cries when I try to put him down. I assume it's just a phase.
To give Kael a little credit, he's teething right now - in addition to the first set of molars (bicuspids, whatever you want to call them), his canines are coming in. And the molars are huge! For his little mouth, at any rate. They started peeking out a while ago, but now they're really coming in force. There are little near-islands of gum surrounded by four points of tooth that just make me wince over how much that must hurt (or will soon hurt).
Other defining Kael characteristics of late... If he's feeling cooperative, he'll climb into the car and into his car seat, then sit down. All on his own (though he needs us to open the door). He's even started buckling the car seat belt. A game he loves so much that I sometimes have a hard time getting him out of the seat, because he'll rebuckle himself every time I unbuckle him. And he'll cry if I stop him... He's also doing a reasonable amount of imitation. The other day he saw us drying our hands on the hand towel, started miming drying his hands, then grabbed the towel when offered in order to mime more effectively. And - cutest of all - he put the towel back on the rack when he was done :-) He likes to "vacuum" with his ball popper, and "sweep" with our Swiffer mop thing. I saw him "cleaning" a surface (okay, so it was the toilet lid, but it was the only thing in reach) with a washcloth. And then there's his love of the Wii. He'll wave around the remotes a bit, then hand them to us to play. Then sometimes grab them back to play some more :-)
His language skills continue to expand (including the ever popular "mine"), of course. We're not counting the number of words, because that seems too tedious, plus what's the point? Our usual audience is hardly going to be impressed with "now Kael knows 20 words!", and we're not the sort to brag anyway. Not to mention we have no reason to believe that he's advancing at a particularly rapid pace (I actually don't believe that's the case, though I have no evidence either way).
Maybe some other stuff, but I'm a little distracted by Kael, who has a sock on his hand and is crying pathetically for milk though it's not yet time (and he's of course turning down cow's milk). Hard to take a baby seriously when he has a sock on his hand...
Oh, one last thing: Kael has figured out how to feed the rabbits. He grabs a handful of goldfish crackers (a baby staple, though not exactly great for rabbits), and holds it out to the bunnies. Hazel has consequently learned Kael is a provider of food, and has actually managed to scare Kael in the past in her enthusiasm :-) Awful parent that I am, I laugh when Hazel (a barely 3 pound rabbit) practically climbs into Kael's lap, and Kael starts "Eee! Eee! Eee!"ing in fear :-) At least Kael has learned to be more gentle with all the pets, most of the time. And he loves to put his face down on the cats' sides, we think to listen for their purring :-)