5 months

Jack seems to be as surprised as I am that he is already 5 months old.

He likes long walks in the stroller. Likes to stand and see everything and hates to be held like a baby. Likes peas and green beans - baby style of course, with rice cereal on the side.

The second we lay him down on his back he rolls over onto his stomach and is itching to crawl. He likes to put everything in his mouth. Most of all he seems to really like his sister the best. She makes him smile and laugh and she provides him the most entertainment.

He loves his pacifier and will only go to sleep with a blanket over his eyes. He pulls the blanket up over his face to fall asleep. Don't worry, I pull it back down the minute he is asleep.

He falls to sleep pretty quickly in his crib and is really only waking up once a night now.

He likes singing and reading but mostly enjoys being cute.

My story: Part 1

I was going to make my blog private because I was paranoid about child predators, then my sister explained to me that it's just the crazy in my head. So privatization of my blog is on hold.

What is not on hold is my effort to get back into shape. I have been walking, jogging, and occasionally lifting heavy things. I decided that all of that effort puts me into a category to do a triathlon. Right? So I got out my trusty awesome road bike today to take it out for a practice spin on those 16 miles of race course only to find that walking and jogging (sometimes) do not make you a biker. I went a solid 1.8 miles before I collapsed to the ground convinced that I had developed asthma during the 10 minute ride and some sort of other burning lung disease.

Jim tried to make me feel better by reminding me that I had not biked in almost 5 years and that you can't ride anywhere in Pennsylvania without hills. That made me feel better for a minute. Here I am over an hour after my bike ride with my lungs still hurting and my legs still feeling like bricks.

Why do I share this story with you and publicly humiliate myself?? Because, I want to not suck it up so bad on the bike. I am going to be like those people who couldn't walk around the block but worked their way up to a marathon.

So if you see me biking slower than you can walk, don't worry. It's all part of my success story.

P.S. Triathlon is on hold until I can bike farther than 2 miles without collapsing. I did just have a baby (oh and by the way, how long is that excuse good for????)

Never as easy as you think.

One of the things we need to replace in our "new to us" home is a stove. I have been pricing ranges and looking at various circulars for the best deal since last June. The oven is original to the house, which was built in the early 1970's. At least I am assuming it is original to the house, it might have been replaced in the 80s, not sure. Either way, it is high time for a new oven.

Luckily my mother in law made that possible this week. She came to stay with us for a few days and was very kindly making us dinner one night. She told me she needed a cooking sheet, and since she had recently emptied my dishwasher for me (yes, she is a great help) I figured she knew where it was. I walked out of the kitchen while she grabbed the cookie sheet.

The fire alarm kept going off while dinner was cooking. This is normal, the fire alarm goes off pretty regularly when we use the oven. I think we have a very sensitive fire alarm and a really old oven. Lilly also kept calling from her room "what smells so bad?" I told her to be quiet because Nanna was cooking.

At the end of the 40 minutes we opened up the oven to remove dinner only to find that my mother in law had used my silver plastic cutting board instead of a cookie sheet. There was melted plastic covering the entire oven floor, the racks, the heating elements, and of course dinner. Jim tried to scrape the plastic off and out of the house because of all the fumes. But it was no use. That plastic was molded onto the heating elements for good.

My mother in law felt terrible about it, but I was actually excited. It was a reason to force us into buying a new oven...AND there happened to be the best deal online that I had seen since June. Worked out great.

I ordered the oven and it was scheduled for free delivery and free haul away of the old oven the very next day. Wow, how easy.

Of course nothing is ever easy in this house. The old oven was hard wired into the floor and my sister in law ended up having to take apart the old oven to un-wire it so the delivery guys would take it away. Because of liability reasons they are not aloud to unwire and or rewire ovens directly to the floor.

Seriously, only in Pennsylvania are ovens hard wired into the floor and not simply plugged into an outlet. Nothing is ever easy in this house.

So now sits our brand new oven in the middle of the kitchen with crazy wires sticking up out of the flooring.

Jim is working on it and promises to have all order restored tonight.

Distracted

I have been very distracted since my last post, hope it's not my brain getting hazy with old age. Jim insists that we are middle aged and I insist that his comment is completely hateful and that I am NOT middle aged.

I had a couple of posts started, but got distracted (like I previously said). So in my favorite blogging style I give you a random update via numbered highlights.

1. This is often how I find my children:

2. Jack started eating rice cereal and Lilly caught many extremely unflattering pictures of said event:

3. These two pictures were taken within a week of each other in our front yard. Thus illustrating that Pennsylvania has crazy weather:

The second picture was taken after Lilly begged me to let her wear my "married hat"

4. These two quotes from Lilly made me laugh:

3/10 - "Why do you get to tell me and daddy what to do all the time? Why don't you just let me do what I want to do and let daddy do what he wants to do?"

3/10 - "Can you make me an appetizer? A tortilla with stuck cheese in the middle and another tortilla on top?" aka quesadilla

5. My most favorite parenting moment in recent history (i.e. the past two weeks or so) happened tonight. Jack was starting to roll over and move around and I found him in a different spot than where I had left him. This is the first time that it had happened. I started to praise him and Lilly chimed in at an appropriate time by saying "Indeed Jackson!" This made me laugh and I asked her where she learned the word indeed. She told me she learned that word from the book I was reading to her. (Beaming pride on my face)

6. We went to a local preserve that has beautiful trails with some friends. We stuck the kids into a hollowed tree trunk that is along the trail.

7. Today I tried to explain Easter to Lilly. The conversation went like this:

Me: Lilly, Easter is a day when -

Lilly: We get stuff.

Me: No, Easter is a day when we think about and remember -

Lilly: And we get stuff.

Thanks a lot commercialism of Easter, I really have my work cut out for me this year. Check out my friends blog for her ideas on a Christ centered Easter.

8. Jim ran a 7.1 mile race through the snow, mud, and mountains of our town. Then he had to slide down a snowy slip-n-slide to cross the finish line.

9. We spent the weekend with my dad and went to my favorite location - The Baltimore Aquarium. Jim got amazing shots of the dolphin show (I love dolphins and marine life. My friend emailed me and told me for my birthday she would give me shark week if she could - perfect gift Melissa).

10. My sister had her gallbladder removed and emailed me filthy pictures of the gallbladder still attached to her and the gallbladder removed with the countless stones. It is a disturbing image that is burned into my brain that I cannot look away from. If you want to see it, check out her blog.

Have a happy week.

March 1 - Happy Elizabeth Day

The Olympics are over along with February. Good riddance to you February. Next year I am going somewhere sunny and warm for February.

How did your Olympic project go? I didn't finish both of my mittens, but I really did try hard. I am like all those skiers who kept wrecking. I am the Lindsey Vonn of knitting - didn't finish the way I wanted to but still rocked for most of the time. I give myself a gold and a bronze medal for the mitten and the lining of the mitten.

I am not committing to that second mitten until I feel emotionally prepared to go down that journey again...maybe in another 4 years. 2014 - Sochi, Russia here I come!

I have a new secret knitting project for my 30th birthday that I am going to embark on and I will need help. Details to come later.

In the mean time my goal for March is to actually finish the projects I started: Lilly's leg warmer #2 and Brian's hat.