Sip This It Will Sweat and Relax You

Sip this, it will sweat and relax you. She said it twice, which is good because I didn't quite catch it the first time. The other thing I didn't quite catch was, "Take off your towel and get in the tub." I'm sorry, what did you say to do with my towel? "Take it off and get in the tub." Wait, what?

I'll start at the beginning. While we were vacationing in Hot Springs, Arkansas,


also known as the Hometown of Bill Clinton,

I decided to partake of the thermal baths. I like little slices of Americana Pie, so if Al Capone and Babe Ruth have sought the healing powers of the thermal baths, then I should try it too. I later learned that Al Capone may have been trying to cure syphilis, but I was just trying to relax.

People have been seeking the healing powers of the Hot Springs for thousands of years. Or something like that, I think the National Park Brochure is in Luke's room, and the website seems to start with the white people in the 1700's. Anywho, Hot Springs had it's heyday in the late 1800's early 1900's. We stayed in the Historic Arlington Hotel,

which was reviewed highly by Family Fun Magazine. It had a gorgeous lobby, and I guess George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, Yoko Ono, and Barbara Streisand have stayed there. Possibly in the presidential suite? , but probably not in our room, which was very historic. But it had a pretty view.

Know this though: Reserving a crib in advance, and then calling again in advance to make sure you have a crib is a waste of time. Also, asking for a crib 3 more times will get you nowhere. But if you say that you have asked for a crib 6 times, then a manager will call you half an hour later and ask if you have a crib yet, and if you say no, then you will soon get a crib. On the second day of your visit.

But back to the bath! So I read a review in Family Fun magazine about a mom and daughter who went and had the hot springs bath plus a massage for $60.00. And the whole thing takes 90 minutes. I thought it sounded great. Then at the family reunion, a few days before our trip to Hot Springs, someone who had been there said something about how they rub you to get your circulation going. That sounded a little odd. But then I was looking at a brochure for the Buckstaff Bath House and the attendants looked like my grandma, and therefore nice and business-like. And here is a picture from the Buckstaff brochure:
See? So modest! Of course, I went to the Arlington, not the Buckstaff. (And the ladies I met in the sauna said the Arlington is the best.) Baths and massages can be booked 4 months in advance, but when you wait until 20 minutes before you want one, you end up with an appointment at 7:30 am the next day. Jack had been getting me up around 6:30 every day, so this was no problem for me. I checked in, and the people were really nice and they gave me the impression that someone would be there to guide me through every step, etc. I went through the big door and looked around for the attendant. After a while, I found her napping on a couch, so I just wandered around trying to figure out what to do next until she woke up. She handed me a towel with velcro around the top to change into, and a key for a locker. I would classify myself as medium sized, but when I tried to wrap the towel around me, there was only a tiny bit of overlapping velcro. I had to wrap it loosely to get the velcro to stick. I guess the average bather is a lot bigger? Thermal baths are supposed to be a treatment for obesity, so maybe. Then I went to the bath section where I met the bath house attendant, whose name I forgot but she was the Bath House Employee of the Year. (Per her name tag, which I obviously only partially memorized.) I am going to call her Susan. She said, "Head down to tub number 5, take your towel off, leave your key on your wrist." That is where the confusion started with me not really understanding what she said to do with the towel. The baths were in a little private room, and I went in there and was staring at the tub trying to work out the logistics of where to put the towel and how to get in gracefully, since it was pretty deep, and really early in the morning. The next thing I knew, Susan was in there. "Take your towel off and get in." The rest of our conversations were pretty one sided with me either saying "OK." Or "Yes." It helped that she was pretty bossy and business like.

"Drink this it will sweat and relax you." (Hot Mineral Water.)
"Drink this it will sweat and relax you."
"How you feel? You feel good."
"How you feel? You feel good."
"Lift your leg."
"Other leg."
"Left your arm."
"Other arm."
Wait, you are really scrubbing me with a loofah? Weird. At least it will be only my arms and legs. Oh, and my stomach. Hmm.
"How you feel, you feel good?"
At this point I got to put my towel back on and keep it on until the massage. Modesty, restored!
Then it was off to the sauna, where I met three other really nice ladies, one of whom was on the far other end of the towel fitting spectrum.
"How you feel, you feel good?"
Then I laid on a cot and Susan wrapped hot towels around my legs, arms, body, and head and put a cold towel on my face. She continued to replace the cold towels until I cooled off from the bath and sauna. Then off for a massage. I liked Susan, and I really recommend her, assuming that is her name. Just ask for the employee of the year, 2007.

Long story longer, we also went to the Alligator Farm and Petting Zoo,

a Mineral Water museum,

shopping, out on Lake Hamilton,

and Luke went horse back riding. So, so fun. Then we toured the historic bath house and National Park visitor center, which was eerily similar to the actual bathhouse that I had experienced. I was sort of glad that I did the tour last.


There was lots of sweating and relaxing. What more could you ask of a family vacation?

Oh. No.

So much to write about, so little desire to sit in front of a computer during vacation. Alas, I think I start in reverse order and write about our vacation last, Dave's birthday second last, and first I'll write about the total insanity that transpired at our house today. And by "write about" I mean, "post pictures" and comment with lots of exclamation points!!!

I had an inkling this would happen, so I was able to catch it on film! But I wasn't quite fast enough. Jack went from this:

To this:

faster than I could snap a photo and still get his whole head in the picture!!! All my attempts to thwart his progress towards crawling have caused the sublimation of his mild desire to crawl into a burning desire to stand up and walk. Time to baby proof. For reals! For reals. (As Luke would say.)

We're Back!

We are back from our trip to Arkansas! Did you miss me? I scheduled a bunch of posts to appear while we were gone to keep things interesting. I have lots of fodder for future posts, but for now I'll just say that we had a great time, and our road trip went very well. I have lots of great pictures and I even located the card reader, but alas, I can't find the camera. (This picture of Luke is Aunt Audrey's*.)

But, I will just share these two big milestones:
Luke rode a horse!
Jack got a tooth!

(Aunt Audrey is actually cousin Audrey, but since she was Aunt Audrey even in her own internal dialog this week, I'll just go with it.)

Now and Then

Sometimes when I am taking pictures of Jack, I try to recreate poses that I took of Luke. I feel very proud of myself for remembering those old pictures so well. Then after I have taken the pictures I go back and compare. Hmm, not exactly the same. It's funny to see that chubby little face and all that drool though.

Jack:


Luke:

Don't Mess With Me and My Cheerios

Fake Cry

Don't feel bad, he is just practicing his fake cry. It's pretty cute and effective, right? I'm onto you. Jack!

Finally, Some Focus on My Oldest Child

Tired of all the focus on Jack eating in his highchair? So was Bean. "It's baby this and baby that. What about poor Bean? You'd think no one ever ate mashed, strained food before. Oh, now he gets cheerios, whoop de fricken doo. Ooooh. Finally. There is something in this for Me."

Creative Dinner Solutions

I think my day can be summed up like this: I fed Luke dinner at the grocery store while I was shopping. He had most of a chicken tender, a slice of cheese, and lollipop. We had had appetizers at the park that included carrots and apple juice, but I would have to say this may be a new low. And even though I said, "This will be a fun adventure, what do you think we'll find to eat for dinner?" he still said, "What's for dinner?" when we got home. So I made him a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

(The photo is of Luke, probably around 6 months.)

L'eggo My Lego

This morning, it was my turn to do the day care drop off, and before Dave left he helped me make sure everyone was dressed, sunscreened, fed and ready for school. Then as he was leaving he noticed we only cleared half the dinner dishes. From the front porch. Classy! This is important to the story because I think some baby food dripped onto the floor when he was bringing dishes in. I hope it was baby food at least.

Dave was out the door on his bike, and I was making the first trip out to the garage to load up my bike. Pump, lunch, bottles, attach trailer to bike. On my way out the door I heard, "Ewww! Yuck! Ewww! What is that?! Eww!" It looked like a tiny drip of baby food. It was brown and gooey, so let's just all agree that it was baby food. I said I would wipe it up in a second after I got back in from the garage because my hands were full.

Before I could finish attaching the trailer to the bike, Luke was at the door sobbing. "He ate it! Bean ate it!" The baby food? Sweet, problem solved. "NO! He ate my green lego! He ate it, and it's gone and now I will never, ever, ever be able to make the castle again! I want you to get it out of him!" Hmm, well, yeah I can't do that. I do suspect that the lego must have had baby food on it too, because Bean doesn't really eat plastic unless it is wrapped around cheese, chocolate, tortillas, cookies, any other type of food, or garbage. And the baby food spot on the floor had disappeared too so at least I didn't have to clean that up. But the really bad part was that I have been reading Parents magazine (aka 1001 ways your kids could die magazine) in the lactation room, so instead of saying, "That is what you get for not putting your toys away" or even "Hey, maybe leaving your legos on the floor is a bad idea!" I had to say, "Wow, I bet you are really sad that Bean ate your lego. I understand how you feel. I don't like it when Bean eats my things either." This was supposed to calm him down.

It didn't work, of course and when we were 3 blocks away he mentioned that his teeth were covered in boogers from all the sobbing. I contemplated my options but I didn't see any soft leaves around, and I didn't want to use my shirt to clean him up, so I road home to get kleenex. Which he used to wipe the boogers off his teeth. Off. His. Teeth. I just threw up a little thinking about it.

Then we rode another block and I started trying to cheer him up by mentioning that today was field trip day! Yea! Field trip day! And that is when I remembered that I forgot the car seat. So I turned around and got the car seat. And then we rode the rest of the way to school and work and I got there sometime just slightly before lunch.

Dun de dun duh, Dun de DAH!

Jack had his first non friend/relative babysitter on Saturday. (Milestone for Mommy.) OK, we hired one of the teachers from the daycare, so it's sort of cheating since she is a professional. Dave and I had dinner, drinks and we saw a movie. I was thinking I could do one of those mastercard, or visa or whatever "Priceless" commercials. But first of all, that has been done to death. And secondly, I can only mentally add up some of the cost without thinking maybe it would have been better spent paying for a year of Jack's college tuition.

Then I keep reminding myself about how I didn't see the 3rd Indiana Jones because I went to the theater at the Great Northern Mall with my friend Kristen, and when we found out that ticket prices had gone up from $5.00 to $5.50, we just couldn't justify that extra 50 cents. That was 19 years ago. If I had seen the movie I am sure I would remember how good it was. Instead I am thinking about all the interest I have earned off those 2 quarters. (At 4% compounded annually for 19 years, it's $1.05, or approximately enough to pay a babysitter for just slightly more than 6 minutes.)

But enough about how cheap I am.

We saw Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull and it was awesome! At first I was thinking it was sort of cheesy, but then Dave reminded me that Indiana Jones is very, awesomely cheesy. I really wish I would have saved that poster I had of Harrison Ford in my room for all those years. Sadly, I was not able to find a replica in 30 seconds of internet searching. OK, I searched for another 30 seconds. I don't think this was it exactly, but it's close.

Happy Fathers Day

Dave had a biketastic Fathers Day today. It started off with my delicious banana pancakes (if I do say so myself.) Then he was off to mountain bike White Ranch. When he came home for Fathers Day Family Time, he wanted to bike, hike and fish, so we tried to come up with a plan that combined all three. (Over achiever.) The way we did this was to immediately cross fishing off the list, even though that is my favorite thing to do. (By fishing, I mean reading a magazine on a blanket.) Then we got Jack all outfitted in the backpack, and he was fussing up a storm, but seemed prepared to nap in there when he got the chance. Once the backpack was all adjusted we got ready to leave. Dave attached the tagalong to his road bike and the trailer to the tagalong. Then the backpack got attached to the trailer. This took about an hour.

All the while I was trying to figure out the best route to our hiking destination. I googled and googled and finally found a bike map to use, and Dave and I studied it and we both memorized the first few turns and then forgot the rest. Before we knew it, we had biked 2 miles to get half a mile from our house. Things like this used to happen to us a lot when we would go hiking and we'd stop paying attention and just start following the dog. Anywho, we got back on track and on our way we ran across the coolest park ever! Dave said, "Luke do you want to stop at this park and check it out?" I think he was running before he even hopped off the bike. It was really fun and I think we could probably find it again. Dave and Luke and I all played while Jack napped.



Sadly, Dave was paged while we were there and we had to go home so he could work. Boo! But we still had a nice dinner, went out for ice cream and got everyone to bed on time.

Happy Fathers Day!

Yellow Pine

I have finally uploaded camping pictures! Last weekend we went to Yellow Pine Campground, which is in Wyoming between Laramie and Cheyenne.

The mountain biking was exactly what I like, which is to say, the scenery was pretty and interesting, and there were some challenging uphills, but I wasn't afraid for my life at any point in time. But it was cold and extremely wet. I did my best to avoid widening any trails, and but I also didn't want to fall over in puddles that were knee deep. I think maybe a little later in the year it would be dryer and warmer? We had fun anyway. But I am so mad that I forgot to take a picture of the Happy Jack sign!

Gosh, the weather has been so nice, but I am starting to see clouds!


Just hanging out by the campfire in my Little Devil costume.


The Hills Are Alive...


Flowers for you, mommy! (aka ridding the area of noxious weeds? I let this happen even though I have a strict "don't pick the flowers" policy.)



It's raining and I am cold!


Rain does not phase me one bit!


Warmed up and happy in the van.


Cooking breakfast in 30 mile and hour winds? How about we get the heck out of here and head to our favorite breakfast place in Laramie?

Cheerio-ios!

This was about the 17th take of this picture. I have a bunch of sound effects on my camera, and every time I would focus, Jack would hear the camera, look up, and smile. It's impossible to get candid photos of him! But finally the allure of the cheerio won out, and I was able to capture the intense concentration required to match a forefinger to a thumb to pick up something small.

Trashing the Place

Today our good friends and neighbors returned from their first of many summer vacations and called to say, "Are you going to the park today? We'll meet you there." But what I heard was, "Please come over and let me cook dinner for you and your family while you break things and bleed everywhere." I said, "I'll bring the french fries!"

My knife is dull, which may have caused it to skid off the potato and cut my finger. Or maybe the dullness prevented the tip of my finger from being chopped off. Who knows?

We almost reached a new milestone: Meat for the baby! From a jar! (Organic of course.) But instead of opening the jar of baby food, I picked it up and then dropped it on the floor where it shattered. Sorry, it's sweet potatoes again for you, little baby!

Then as we discussed how plastic is slowly killing us, and how we are slowly getting rid of our plastic plates in favor of plates that could kill us with lead, (or other unknown ways) Little M dropped her ceramic plate on the floor and it shattered and cut a gash in Luke's toe. I was right there, so I probably caused that to happen as well.

That may have been a graceful time to just leave and hope to be invited back again someday, but we decided to wait until Luke had been bitten by the puppy twice. Just nips, no blood.

Yea! Welcome back from vacation! I hope we (and by this I mean you) got all the glass cleaned up!

(The picture is just another example, in case I wasn't clear, of how messy Jack gets when I feed him. Of course the rice cereal is hard to see in the picture, but it covers 87% of his exposed skin.)

Blog It Out

Monday night I was live blogging our first attempt at crying it out while simultaneously googling "crying it out". Who knew that allowing your baby to cry causes most of the problems in our society today? Probably lots of people. Of course it wasn't as easy as letting Jack cry for 10 minutes, as I reported, and the next day I sighed, and rubbed my eyes, and commiserated at work with my fellow mommies about how I was up until 12:45, when I finally gave in and nursed my little baby to sleep. And then we were up again at 6am. Poor me. And then I was banished from the club, stripped of my complaining rights, and that was that.

Since other people have it worse, I did not volunteer the fact that Tuesday night, Jack slept from 8pm to 6am. So it seems that our evening of crying it out was totally effective, just what the doctor ordered, and the answer to everything! (Probably not.) Or maybe Jack was just having a hard time adjusting to the crib after sleeping so close to his mom and dad and brother all weekend on our camping trip. (Oh, the guilt.) Regardless, the damage has been done and Jack is now as ruined as his older brother.

In other sleep related news, I will now begin getting a lot more of it because we watched the last episode of Deadwood this evening. That makes 36 episodes in about 6 weeks. I will now go into withdrawal, and to get through it I think I'll try to get to sleep before midnight a few time a week.

Now to sleep - last night I dreamed of a skunk eating all the vegetables in my garden. Possibly as it was actually happening. Darn that skunk and it's zucchini, melon, and pumpkin leaf eating!

We Try, Not Very Hard, But We Try

I took a picture of this little tableau before our dinner on the way to Wyoming for our camping trip this past weekend. We try to eat healthy meals as often as possible, but we can's seem to get it together when we are frantically leaving work and heading to some camping destination on a Friday evening. Since we have been camping about every other weekend... blah, blah, blah, the guilt, etc.

So I tried to feed Jack his whole grain, organic, baby oatmeal and his organic, strained carrots while I ate my crispy chicken sandwich. It didn't work out for many reasons.

1.) Gross high chair - had to be wiped down with two wipes before we started and I still shudder to think of it.
2.) Hmm, in what, and with what should I mix the organic, whole grain oatmeal? In a tiny paper ketchup holder? With ice water? Yeah, that'll work! Except Jack wasn't too happy with the freezing oatmeal. And when I left the spoon in the tiny paper cup it tipped over. And when I accidentally dipped one of my fries in the carrots I gagged a little. But Jack loved it when I fed him ketchup by accident. (Kidding!)
3.) I am not sure if I have posted enough pictures of Jack eating to get the point across, but let's just say his very involved in his meals. So we both got sort of covered in food.

Here's an aside - When you have a baby whose face, hands, arms, bib, and high chair tray are covered in food, where do you start the clean up? My strategy is to do the face first, then the hands and arms. Then I whip off the bib and use it to get the majority of the tray. Is there a better way? Where do you start and finish? I guess I don't really finish at all right now, because I sometimes find a spoon stuck to a bib stuck to a tray about 5 minutes before I am about to serve dinner, and that is the worst.

Anyway - back to fast food. We are going on a big road trip soon and we are planning to avoid fast food as much as possible. Wish us luck!

Cry Baby Cry

I wish I was in the middle of writing a wildly creative post right now, but Jack and I are crying it out. Well, Jack is. I am just madly searching google for reassurance that I am doing the right thing. And feeling like I should be crying, but eh, I am ready for this baby to start sleeping more. Dave is acting blasé . Luke is sleeping. I hear Bean checking in on Jack and can feel him silently reproaching me from upstairs. So are you deaf or what Bean? I'm on to you.

I put Jack on notice last week that he had 7 days in which to get it together and start sleeping through the night. He did it once. OK, I am sure we messed up his schedule with our camping trip, but seriously! So after the 17th time that Dave and or I went in to soothe him this evening, it was time to get down to business.

I went in and said, "Jack, I love you. It's time to go to sleep." And I turned on his aquarium and hoped that would do the trick. I set the timer for 10 minutes and went downstairs.

After 10 long, agonizing, google searching, ferber reading minutes the timer went off. Dave said, "That was 10 minutes?" No, it was an eternity.

I went back in to his room and put my hand on his tummy. I put the pacifier in his mouth, and I said, "I love you Jack. It's time to sleep." Then I wiped the little tears from his tiny, furrowed brow. I left his room and I set the timer for another 10 minutes. But I guess that was unnecessary because he stopped crying right away and went to sleep! Time for a Pear of Panties! And then straight to bed because I haven't yet figured out exactly what I am going to do in half an hour when he starts crying again.

Sitting Up!

I haven't posted Jack's stats from his 6 month appointment because I lost track of the sheet of paper from the Dr's office. They said 10% for weight (15 something pounds?) and 50% for height (some amount of unknown inches).

But as you can see, he is sitting up like a big boy these days! I have to do a lot of hovering and propping, but he is doing well. All this new sitting up and growing interest in the world around him have made nursing quite a challenge. I can see why 6 months is a common time to give up on the whole process. Hmm, is it possible that Jack now prefers to nurse a lot in the middle of the night because he is too distracted during the day? Hopefully his 11 hours of sleep on Wednesday night will become more common then the 2 hour stretches we got last night. ZZZZzzzz. Can't keep typing... falling asssllllleeeeeep.

P.S. Luke got his summer haircut

Not Reading

I haven't been able to add a lot to my list of Books Read for several reasons:

1.) Watching too much Deadwood
2.) Work
3.) Can't get through A New Earth Awakening to Your Life's Purpose
a.) I feel sort of bad about this, but according to an O I read in a waiting room, it sounds like your Life's Purpose is to not obsess about your weight. I already don't do that.
b.) So boring
4.) Can't get through Free Lunch: How the Wealthiest Americans Enrich Themselves at Government Expense and Stick You With the Bill
a.) This book puts me right into a nightmarish sleep
b.) Last time I picked it up I thought, "Just tell me what to DO!" Then I turned to the "What you can do" chapter and fell asleep.
c.) Free Lunch has already cost me $0.30 in late fees from the library

Time to cut my losses and head back to the fiction section.

Customer Support

I have been working on installing a new piece of software for about a month now, on and off. I finally gave up and put in a ticket with the vendor. We went through three rounds of "actually that documentation is wrong, try this" until the issue was escalated up to the next level. A conference call was planned between Level 1 guy, Level 2 gal, and me. It started at 1 p.m. and first, Level 2 gal validated everything I had done so far. She found one error and we fixed it. Still didn't work. Then she started instant messaging Level 3 guy and got one more suggestion. We got one step farther, but it still didn't work. Then Level 2 gal got two co-workers to look over her shoulder and we went through the whole thing again. No good. So by the end of the 2.5 hour call, it was me, Level 1 guy, Level 2 gal, Level 3 guy on IM, and Level 2 gal's co-worker 1, and co-worker 2 on the call. (And I could hear some of them looking for answers on google.) Oh, and Jack. Did I mention I was working from home and that Jack was also participating in the call? During this call I nursed Jack, burped him, put him down to play, where he screamed happily and then unhappily, then I put him in the sling and set my laptop on the counter so I could stand, sway, and work. Then I put him down for a nap. When he woke up, I changed his diaper and fed him again. He played with books in my lap. All the while I was troubleshooting this problem, and if Jack had been silent I don't think anyone would have even known. Of course, we was very vocal. And there was one point where I had to put him down so I could type with two hands and he screamed. SCREAMED. Level 2 gal begged me to pick him back up. I am a fast one-handed typer, but sometimes I need to be twice as fast. I picked him up and he was fine.

I wish the problem was solved, but this was just a necessary step on the way to solving the problem. A long, 2.5 hour, headset-less, one handed, baby-holding phone call. And usually I don't get anything done when Jack is being fussy!

Photo Credit

Pear of Panties

Today I stray briefly from the usual standard topics of babies, five year olds, work, and lactation, to the more unusual and eclectic subjects of alcohol, underwear, and magazine gluttony.

Over a year ago, I was reading a magazine and I saw an add for pear vodka. I am not sure what magazine it was, maybe InStyle, or Vanity Fair, or maybe Living, but probably not. I suspect it wasn't in ReadyMade, or Cooking Light, and definitely not Shape. (I have a slight magazine addiction, made worse by my desire last year to exact revenge on my mailman by subscribing to heavy magazines.)

Now, I am not a flavored vodka drinker, and not easily swayed by magazine alcohol advertising. I am mostly a wine drinker; occasionally I have beer. Although there were a few years (way back) when we declared a Drink of the Summer. Such as the Summer of Corona, the Summer of Vodka (unflavored), and Dave claims we had the Summer of White Russians. The fact that I don't remember that at all, leads me to believe it might be true.

So it was odd that over a year ago, I saw an advertisement for Pear Vodka and thought, "Yum!" But before I could put down my magazine, hop on my bike, and ride to Liquor Mart, I found out I was pregnant. Shortly thereafter, while fake drinking and pretending to have a back injury that would preclude me from mountain biking during a trip to Fruita, I was introduced to a drink called A Pear of Panties. Or maybe Pear O' Panties. Pear a Panties? Regardless, it looked and smelled delicious. Sigh, it was not to be at that time.

Days and weeks and months past until this past weekend: pear vodka reentered my life. We had friends over for dinner, the same friends with whom I concealed my pregnancy many months before by fake drinking, yet mysteriously turning down the enticing Pear of Panties. I said, "Don't bring anything! We have everything we need." But my eyes lit up when I saw that green bottle.

All this is to build anticipation, what, what, you ask, what is the recipe for the Pear of Panties? Well, I don't really know, having not been paying attention when the drinks were made, nor did I ask for details after the fact. But I do know this: Ice, Pear Vodka, 7-Up. And for a Pink Pear of Panties, add a splash of cranberry. Yum. Enjoy.

The Race is On

On my way to work today I managed to get over the really big hill without using my granny gear. Over a year ago I stopped exercising due to major first trimester fears, which were followed by second trimester heat exhaustion, followed by taking it easy to prevent pre term labor, which inevitably led to actual labor and recovery, winter weather combined with a newborn and going back to work, and then finally, laziness. But after a couple weeks of riding my bike to work occasionally, I may just be coming out of my year of sloth.

And that means the race is on. I like to race people on my way to and from work. Especially people who are all dressed up in lycra with really fancy expensive road bikes. I think my cruiser and my skirt with heels ensemble can take them. Most smart people pack a spare inner tube and a bike pump. I have a pump, but at 15 pounds it's more likely to contribute to a flat tire than fix one.

When I pass someone going uphill on my fabulous pink bike, and the someone I pass has the look of a serious biker, then it is makes my day. Or at least I assume it would, it's only happened once. Six years ago. And the gentleman said, "Whoa, do you have a motor on that young lady?" He was about 105 years old. But the point is, it could happen again!

Bike-tastic

Today I had many adventures while biking the kids to daycare, then biking to work, back to the daycare, back home with the kids, down to Pearl street to meet my friend Laura, and then back home. In my mind it was 18 miles, but google maps said 15 or so. I thought about plotting my travels on gmaps pedometer and then posting a link and then I thought, why share a map to my house and the daycare with the internets? Trust me, it was 15 miles that felt like 18.

The first thing that happened was that 3 blocks from home, the trailer came part way loose and got lodged in my wheel spokes. I don't know what I would have done if an kind, older, handsome gentleman, lazily driving to work, hadn't stopped his car to help me. (Thanks Dave!)

Secondly, there is a serious down hill section where Luke usually gets going pretty fast. So fast that he can't quite keep up with the pedals. Today he was really flying when he got to the sharp left turn and he slammed on the brakes, skidded out, rode it out into the grass, and then jumped off and flew through the air with an "Aaaaaaaah!" and landed 4 feet away in the grass. I could tell by the "Aaaaaaah!" that he was enjoying himself, but even so, it was risky for me to allow myself to laugh hysterically. (He tends to be quite sensitive.) But it was so funny. And I was glad that he laughed too. (And of course we were both glad that he wasn't hurt.)

Play Date with Pinchy

Jack had a play date today with his friend Katie, who as you can see in the picture, was all over him. Jack likes to roll to his tummy, play for a while and then scream bloody murder. This is the reason that I have not been keeping up with the section called "Hours of Sleep for Mommy." It's just too depressing to keep track of the fact that I get up every three hours to flip my baby over onto his back. Katie, on the other hand, only rolls from front to back and never gets any tummy time at all. She is supposed to sleep on her tummy, so her mommy gets up periodically in the night to roll her from back to front. So, I had the brilliant idea to make coordinating velcro outfits for them. I figured if I attached them back to back, they would be an unstoppable rolling machine. We put Jack down on his back so he could show off his skilz and Katie was on her tummy. They just stayed there happily not rolling at all. There was a lot of "seriously, this never happens!" from both mommies. And now I have to find a receipt for a bunch of velcro.

Also, we biked all over town this afternoon, and I have a picture of the Dave-Luke-Jack train - the best I could do while we were all in motion. (This picture was taken last week - I should have taken one today since part of our trip was to Target and we returned with a box of diapers bungee-corded to the back of the trailer.)