Eve

I decided to wait until I really missed blogging to write again, and that day was today. I missed updating on 3 running races I did in November. First there was the 17k trail run, with which I reached my goal of doing a race that I wasn't sure I could finish. The 2700 ft climbing made it more of a hike/run. The whole thing took us 2:50. It was a figure eight course, and when we reached the rest stop after the first loop I briefly considered turning back with all the 11k racers. But we finished and enjoyed some great views, and I was glad we did it.

Then I had another 3.2 mile race at work a week later and a turkey trot 5k on Thanksgiving day. That race had 10,000 people in it!!! I couldn't believe it. The fun part was that they started the 5k and 10k at the same time so my training buddy P and I ran a lot of it together since our goal pace was similar. I was about 30 sec slower than the Trailblazer 5k back in Sept but that was okay considering the congested start.

Since then I've been slacking off and giving myself a rest. I've occasionally been running and sometimes throw in a few push-ups. Sometime last month I also reached one of my goals of being able to bench press two sets using the 30lb dumbbells, which are the lightest ones on the "big rack" at the gym. There's the small and the big rack, and I've been wanting to graduate for a while. :)

So I'm now on my vacation week and enjoying it thoroughly. I know stay-at-home moms will probably roll their eyes at this, but this is the longest stretch of time I've been at home with Bubby where we haven't been traveling (since maternity leave of course). So it is exhausting at times, e.g. today in the last 6 hours we've already done a dozen different activities, gone out to do errands, and I "cooked" two meals. But I'm trying to take advantage of it. We made a trip to a kids museum which he loved. You can see in the pic he was concentrating really hard at a table with various switches. Yesterday we all went to the dog park and he felt like he was in charge of the water station. Today we went to the car wash and pet store, and tomorrow we may do another museum. I've been rewarded with him starting to shift his preference ever so slightly away from daddy. I mean, daddy's still the favorite, but not by a mile anymore, and I've been getting a lot of spontaneous hugs too.

He also just turned two, and he talks up a storm, so we've been having some fun discussions. A few days ago in the car he heard some Christmas carols, then said "Happy Birthday baby Jesus!" He also spent a few days saying "Eve don't come inside" and I had no idea what he was talking about. Then we realized he was referring to the story of Adam and Eve in Genesis, but he was calling the snake "Eve" and was thinking it/she lived outside in our yard. It took a while to convince him that Eve was the nice lady with the flower in her hair and the snake is now referred to as the "sneaky snake" and that we definitely wouldn't allow any snakes in our house. This is the first time he has seemed afraid of something too. It's a little hard not to laugh at times.

Other funny things he says now:

"How about..." (if you ask him to do something and he would rather do something else)
"Thomas tank engine in dvd player"
"no like that one song" (when he wants you to switch songs)
"What that man doing??"
"All done driving" "go that way" "back to my new house"
The ABC song emphasizing "next time won't you sing with me"

And of course there's a lot of random, high-pitched screaming and general 2-year old behavior.