Lily Who from Whoville

It's been about a month (2 1/2 months old to 3 1/2 months old) since I last blogged about my own progress as a Mom to Lily. I think the best way to sum up my progress is to simply say that my heart has grown wiser. There was definitely an obvious turning point at 3 months; It was a combination of Lily adapting to our environment and me gaining a healthy supply of experience to more confidently handle what Lily throws my way. It feels like my heart has more room these days to cherish whatever the day brings instead of seeking out and cherishing only the really good moments....like the one below of Lily looking like she came from Whoville (Dr. Seuss).

As for some examples of why it became easier around the 3 month mark, I have a few. 1) I can now put her down in her rocking chair for as long as it takes to cook dinner and eat it which means Nate and I now eat dinner together again. 2) We're putting her down to sleep awake but drowsy so I no longer pace the house with her in my arms. 3) She doesn't mind the car seat now (Montana trip was the turning point). 4) We don't go to bed with Lily anymore so it's nice to get some down time to ourselves. I'm reading books again! 5) She smiles so much now, she doesn't have as much time to cry.

Her nap routine isn't quite there yet but I'm starting to see signs of it. She might have a day full of 30 minute naps and then the next day have a solid 2.5 hour nap. Lily is usually awake for about 2 hours between daytime naps.

We have a consistent bedtime routine now which seems to be working. We tried including the bath as part of her bedtime routine but we're already giving that up; we're too lazy. At this point, I feed her, we read to her, and then we sing Eternal Flame by the Bangles to her. Yeah, you read that right. We sing a cheezy 80's song to our daughter to help her fall asleep. It worked well to calm her when I was pregnant so why stop a good thing. Just in the last few days, we stopped swaddling Lily at night. We were so scared we'd ruin a good thing but Lily didn't care, no effect whatsoever. As I type, Lily is sleeping away in her new crib (thank you Craigs List). We thought we would be able to keep Lily in a cosleeper for 6 months but she's getting too big for it and we'd like to not whisper in bed, tiptoe around her, and stumble around in the dark anymore.

I do have one quick funny story to share with you. This afternoon when Lily was napping in the next room, Nate and I were putting together her crib as quietly as possible. Nate accidentally hit a toy that started playing music that doesn't turn off until the song ends. To muffle the sound, Nate decided to put the toy down his pants. Things parents will do for their kids.

I'll leave you with one more picture of smiling Lily beginning her bedtime routine. Pay no attention to Gigi licking herself inappropriately in the background.

Rocker Lily

In our previous video post, Lily was wearing a onesie that says "Future Rocker" on it. Who knew it would turn out to be true so soon. Lily loves her Rocker Chair these days and no longer needs our help to make it move.

Copy Cat

After seeing Nicole do a great job with her tri earlier this month, I figured I should do one too. So yesterday I did the Portland Triathlon (sprint distance) and I'd say it went pretty well. Originally I had planned on doing a sprint tri in early May before Lily was born, but when I went to sign up a couple of weeks before the race it was sold out. So I was bummed and figured I wouldn't do one this year. I didn't train much over the past three months, maybe averaged a run and a bike session per week and swam three or four times total since Lily arrived.

When Nicole asked me Saturday why I wanted to do it (from a motivational angle, not a "what the heck are you thinking" angle) I think my response was "I don't know". Thinking more about it, I think I just wanted to show myself that even though my free time has changed in a really radical way, I can still keep doing what I did before. Sure, maybe my results could have been better if I had trained more. But I was pleasantly surprised with how well I did anyway, finishing fourth out of eighteen in my division. And I'm starting to think triathlons may be like golf for me. You can have fun and do pretty well by training on a somewhat leisurely schedule, but to take a real leap in results requires significantly more effort and dedication. I'm not saying that someday I won't take the next step, but for the moment I'm happy with where I'm at.

I mentioned my sparse training regimen earlier, and it actually mapped pretty well into my results. I ended up doing the backstroke for most of the swim because I was hyperventilating a bit and wasn't enjoying it. So my swim was about two and a half minutes longer than the past couple of years. My bike pace was about the same as last year, but this year's bike course was five miles longer, so I'd say my bike improved. And my run pace was almost :30/mile better, probably because this spring I was running a lot and training specifically to get faster 5k times.

So I guess I did end up showing myself that I could still do pretty well even with limited training. Maybe that'll be the way I do this for the next couple of years - run, bike, and swim when I can and then do one event a year. Training my butt off to try and win my division just doesn't sound that interesting to me when it involves a trade off of time with Lily and Nicole. So that's that.

In Lily news this week, she's figured out how to make herself rock in her rocking seat. She bounces her legs in the right rhythm to keep it going. Of course when we realized that she had done it, we thought it was a sure sign of genius. We'll post a video of it later this week.

Video of Lily at 3 Months Old

Lily is now 3 months old. The main changes we've noticed are that she is absolutely mesmorized by her hands. She does this Tai Chi meets The Matrix with her hands move, sucks on her hands a lot, and she smiles and talks more than ever before. I haven't heard the obvious giggle but we're assuming her fake coughs while smiling are her early attempts at it. Here's a typical video of Lily at 3 months.

PS We recommend Huggies over Pampers for superior blowout protection.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FX2MsNpnOVc

Road Trip!

Over the past weekend we drove to Helena, Montana and back to celebrate our good friend Sara's wedding. It was actually the longest road trip the two of us have done together, much less with Lily. We weren't sure what to expect from her, whether we'd be stopping every 1/2 hour, or face driving through screaming, or whether she'd just zonk. It turned out to be much more the latter than anything else. I think there was a bit of a "can we do what we want to do?" element about taking this trip at all, and we were happy with the result.


We hit the road at 8:30 Thursday morning, as soon as Lily was done eating and ready to go. By the time we got on I-84 she was taking a nice nap that ended about 170 miles and many wind turbines later when we stopped to get gas. We thought there was a good chance we'd have to pull over within Portland city limits to deal with a wailing Lily, but all was good. We pulled into Coeur d'Alene a bit after 3PM, way before we thought we would.



Coeur d'Alene was beautiful, a nice resort town on the edge of a big lake surrounded by rolling hills covered in evergreens. We had a nice dinner featuring local Huckleberries at the resort on the lake and called it a good first day.

We rolled through wet weather, mountain passes and found that famed Big Sky on Friday, with Lily again taking long naps and being very agreeable. We hit Helena in plenty of time to relax before the Hawaiian-themed rehearsal dinner. We had a great visit with Sara and got to meet some of the friends we'd heard about and see some people we hadn't seen in a while, including Tavia's parents who were incredibly friendly and welcoming.

We wandered the streets of Helena Saturday before the wedding, and decided it was like Hood River minus the river. We stumbled into a quaint farmers market and crashed wedding pictures at the 8th-largest cathedral in the US.

The main event was fantastic, the setting was beautiful and the bride outshone everything around. Stetson, her dog, was even the ring bearer, running down the aisle when he was called for an on-time delivery. We had a nice visit over dinner with Shana and Stefan, and convinced ourselves that a return trip to Montana is in order sooner or later. I had hoped to be able to squeeze in a visit to Glacier National Park during this trip, but it would have taken an extra day and about 10 extra car hours, so we saved it for next time.


Sunday we joined up with the wedding folks again for breakfast at Sara's Dad's house, enjoying the beautiful views and hearing the tales of the post-wedding carousing before resuming our journey. This pic is where we stopped Sunday afternoon for Lily's lunch.


The biggest (mis)adventure of the trip happened about thirty miles from the Idaho border, in a construction zone with one lane in each direction. We blew a tire. I yanked everything out of the trunk and put on the spare (a donut) and hoped we could find somewhere with at least a full sized spare to continue the journey. But of course this was Sunday late afternoon, and there aren't much of any population centers in Western Montana or the panhandle of Idaho. So we plodded along at 50 miles an hour with our caution lights, not able to enjoy the 75 MPH speed limit... all the way to Coeur d'Alene. Ugh. At least there were sunny skies so we got to fully appreciate the wonderful landscape. It made me want to live there until I thought of why I like living in the city.


Monday morning I was near first in line at Les Schwab (alas, no free beef) and we were on the road again by 9:30 with a new set of tires. Let's just say it wasn't debris that caused our flat. Our final driving day was again pretty smooth with lots of long naps from Lily and nice scenery. We passed quite a few flatbed semis hauling massive parts for wind turbine construction.

We made it home in one piece, and overall I'd say it was definitely a fun time. The only downer was spending such a long time in the car without much talking, since Nicole was sitting in back and with the road noise we almost had to yell to hear each other. Not conducive to a sleeping baby. But I guess the upside to that is, as Nicole said, she could sit and think for once. Unfortunately this was in comparison to today, when Lily was back to half-hour naps and crying to get to sleep. Back to the grind I guess.

We'll post more pics from the trip in Picassa over the next day or so... link in the upper right of this page as usual.

Blue Lake Sprint Triathlon - Aug 1, 2009

I had been toying with the idea of doing a sprint tri this summer but kept talking myself out of it. I kept going back and forth between how strong I would feel to finish after recently having a baby to not wanting to have any kind of pain after just experiencing so much of it. Thanks to dinner with the Glumbiks a few nights ago, I decided to commit and just give it a go. Feeling strong won out. Maybe someday, Lily will find out I did this and be proud of me even though I'm the uncool mom who embarrasses her and doesn't let her do anything she wants.

So, let me give you the details on my training plan....uh...there was none, zilch, zero. I hadn't run or bike since last September during the Black Diamond Tri when I was 5 weeks pregnant and didn't know it. I did keep up my swimming because I love it so much, especially when I was pregnant. Leading up to my previous tri's, I thought about the details a lot, what gear to use, transition efficiency, and technique. This time around, I didn't. I thought more about where I could pump before starting the race and whether I'd leak through my bathing suit.


I really enjoyed the race. It's obvious because I'm smiling in all the action shots. I was curious to see how my body would do with no training, wanted to have that great feeling of crossing the finish line, and remind myself of my pre-baby me and that my body can do more than be a boob tap for Lily. The thoughts that crossed my mind were comical. While on the bike, my butt got sore quickly on that eensy weenzy seat. I kept telling myself that this pain is nothing compared to the hemorrhoids I had to deal with after giving birth. Anytime I had discomfort or light pain, I kept thinking "please nicole, this is nothing now, I had a flippin baby with no epidural." My pain threshold is at a new level. The sore throat I used to rate as a 10/10 would now be a meager 4, ok maybe 5. I do hate sore throats.

I couldn't have done this race without Nate, no way. A friend calls him the All American Hero for taking me off the market but I call him my hero because he supports me, pushes me, tells me when my bike helmet is on backwards, and knows how to change a flat tire. It was really motivating to make Nate proud of me too.

I posted an album of pics from the race too.