Accomplishments

Tuesday was our first 'bring your daughter to work day.' Michael watched Leah while I was at my eye appointment.

He's been trying to teach her to shake her rattle for a while. Grasping it and shaking it was a difficult task. As he was driving along her heard the rattle shake, she'd accomplished her goal.

This morning Whitney attached the pulley system for us to try swimming against resistance for part of practice. The first time I tried this, about 1 month ago, I made it about half way. After that practice I promised myself I'd get to the other side at my next attempt. A few weeks later I swam to the other end with a 8 lb weight attached to the pulley.

Today, I had a new challenge: 10 lb. It might not sound like much but getting myself across that pool took a lot of energy. I managed to scrape my finger tips at the other wall 4 x this morning. I was toast for the rest of practice but I'd made progress.

I should probably thank Leah for this. I suspect my arms are getting stronger as I continue to pick up my good eater.

Keep working at those seemingly impossible tasks, every little accomplishment is a sweet reward for the effort put in.

A good quote from Vince Lombardi for all those football fans out there (although I doubt any of them have ever read this blog) :

"The greatest accomplishment is not in never falling, but in rising again after you fall."

Everybody Poops

The last time we went to the pediatrician's office he told us, "Don't be surprised if she only poops every couple of days."

"What? Did you say every couple of days or every couple of diapers?"

Apparently some babies go as long as a week without pooping. I want to find out what those moms are eating (or not eating) to cause this. We were excited when she was no longer pooping every couple of hours. It's pretty exciting when you get one of those surprise poop-free diapers; less cleanup is always good.

Which brings us to the topic of the day, diapers.

As some might know, we use a combination of cloth and landfill diapers. The landfill at night is a compromise to make things a bit easier for my wonderful husband, who is nice enough to change most of those diapers.

Why did I want to use cloth?

My initial reasoning was to reduce my carbon footprint a bit. Although I must admit, my brother and one of my old co-workers seemed to think I would give in after about of week of using them. Proving them wrong was enough incentive to use the cloth ones.

Some people use cloth for the money savings. I haven't had the time to do a full cost / carbon footprint analysis on the topic. If so I'd have to consider the processing of the landfill diapers and their waste versus the processing of the cloth and the increased water consumption for all the laundry we now do. There are many other things to consider, but I've let my six sigma certification run out so I'm not going to bother with that. For now, I'll just share some observations...

There are many types of cloth diapers and a lot of jargon to confuse the novice parent. The best thing I did was talk to people who use the cloth diapers and try to absorb some of their knowledge. Biggest thing I learned, every kid is a bit different and those varied body shapes seem to have an effect on what diapers you will prefer.

The cheapest way to cloth diaper is to use prefolds and covers. Although pictures of Leah are appreciated she prefers not to be seen in only her diapers.

(Leah's reaction to the idea of pictures in her diaper)

Therefore, Mr Blue Hippo has volunteered for the job of showing you some of the different ways to fold your prefolds.


The prefolds are what most people think of when they talk about cloth diapers. Thing is, people have been inventing a lot over the past 50 years. Not only do we have phones that take pictures, we have cloth diapers that go on just as easily as the trash diapers (easier if you ask me). My current personal favorite are the BumGenius one size and BumGenius 3.0 all-in-one diapers.



As I said earlier, there's more laundry to be done with these diapers and a baby. For decades my laundry has consisted of a load of lights, followed by a load of darks, and maybe a load of towels or sheets. Sometimes we managed to create a non-dryer load during peak ironman training. Now we have something new: a load of diapers followed by a load of pinks. You don't even realize pink has it's own load until you have a baby girl.

(the load of pink and white clothes)

Snowing in Austin

For those of you living in Austin I'm sure you've heard about the potential snow all week. From the way people have been talking you'd think we were going to get some huge storm that would shut down the city for weeks.

But all those people buying up the bananas and water were correct, it has been snowing in Austin today.

Look at the neighborhood kids who got sent home early from school...

No, of course that's not Austin in 2009! Don't the moon boots give it away? That's western New York in December of 1984. Yes, the dorky one with the big glasses is me.

Here's what it was like in Austin (complete with some commentary from Leah)



If you watch again you might actually see the snow flakes. Seriously, they are there. We were lucky enough to have 3 min of snow while Michael was home for lunch. We almost missed it because it took almost that long to get Leah bundled up enough to venture out into the frigid weather.

Being in the right place

While we were flying the other day Michael and I were having a conversation about relativity. It was a very interesting discussion about the velocity and acceleration of airplanes and bugs within the airplane. Lucky for you, that is not what this blog post is about.

Instead, a brief recap of my lucky coincidence today...

Text message from RY: " [my license plate ID] I think I'm parked next to you"

We were both running some errands mid day and some how ended up parked next to each other on the almost_roof level of a parking garage.

It sounds like a funny coincidence but I have somehow run into Rich in many random places; the airport, Barton Springs, races, etc. The first encounter (while he was a tour guide at Carnegie Mellon) has been a huge factor in shaping the past 15 yrs of my life. Had he split the tour group differently I might not have gone to CMU, might not have met Michael, and probably would not be living in Austin right now. Thank you Rich for inadvertently shaping my future.

We, on the other hand, deliberately shaped his future by introducing him to Kelly.


Back to the story... We both got done at the same time and decided it would be fun to head to lunch. RY had never been to EZ's so we made the short walk over there and enjoyed a good chat. Mid way through our meal the kids at the next table decided it would be fun to dump their glasses of water and ice. Crash, a huge spill all over and a water fall pouring off the table.

"That's what you have to look forward too," Rich said with a laugh.

I quickly reached over to cover Leah's eyes, "You don't see anything."

When we were growing up my brother spilled his drink about 9 of 10 meals. I honestly think it became a game of 'try to wreck Michelle's dinner' instead of a mere accident. My brother seemed to love spilling milk and OJ onto my food too see how much liquid was required to keep me from clearing my plate.

It should be fun to see what sorts of messes Leah gets into as she grows. I suspect there will be many of them. I also suspect a certain person (who will remain nameless) will burst out into laughter and therefore encourage this type of behavior.

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A few more Leah pictures

Wishing a happy B-day all the cool people born at this time of year:Encouraging mom riding the trainer, after a stellar 20 min nap:

For those of you wondering about the picture at the top of this post, that was my failed attempt to take a self portrait with my iPhone. It didn't quite work as planned.

Leah is much better at taking self portraits with the phone:

Television

Whenever family comes to visit it seems there is an inevitable conversation regarding our television and / or lack of television watching. Let's just say I don't know which remote control turns on the television and have no clue what numbers to punch in to bring up the stations we get.

"Have you seen the preview for X?"
"Did you watch Y?"
"Are you going to watch Z game?"

Simply put, "No, I have no clue what that is and most likely won't be blasting out of our 10 yr old television."

Maybe it's a case of not knowing what I'm missing but that does not bother me much. Besides, how in the world would I find time to watch television? It's not like I'm going to skip my workouts to watch The Biggest Looser... I think that would be oddly hypocritical although I'm not sure since I've never actually seen the show.

Funny thing... my mother told me the other day about reports of children getting injured from flat screen televisions. Apparently there's been a high rate of the top heavy screens toppling over onto kids. Next time I field a question about our old television I'll just say it's for Leah's safety.

I'm actually wondering what the conversations might be when she returns home from a friends house in a few years...

"Mom, they had this thing called a television and they had all this strange food."

Correction: it won't be a friends house, that will be the conversation when she returns home from visiting my brother ;)

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A couple weeks ago we stopped off at Einsteins for breakfast. I overheard a comment from someone near by, saying some people are too focused on their kids. I'm not sure if that was directed towards us or if it was merely a coincidence. Either way, I think I've become one of those people who focuses on their kid.

Could be worse, I saw a lady walking at Town Lake, with her dog in a front carrier on her chest. I might offend someone by saying this but I think that was a bit odd. Is the dog stroller not strange enough?

For the Leah fans out there, we've got a few videos from the past couple of weeks to share

Yogi Leah turns into a WWF ref once she gets tired:



Leah's first time on her Dad's shoulders, including some great commentary about the experience:



Leah's reaction to every race we've gone to watch:



(Apparently our hobbies are boring to her, can't wait for the teenage years)

Recharge

It's been a while since a post, needed some time to recharge the batteries


Leah is good at recharging, sometimes better than we are! She's a bit smarter about it, when she's tired she sleeps. Her parents are slow learners, when they're tired they ignore it. When she sleeps they start running around.

Last weekend we did the Dirty Du as a relay. Leah slept the entire morning, she didn't seem to interested in the useless play of the adults. But the second we packed everything back into the truck she started to fuss. Apparently the sleeping that morning spurred a two month growth spurt. The next few days were filled with A LOT of eating.

Good news, apparently turkey makes babies tired too. Leah has been slept 8 hrs straight for the past couple of nights. After a few months of getting less sleep, 8 hrs seems like a dream.

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Here's a picture I sent to Michael last Friday at 5pm:

"Dad, look how cute I am. Come home and play."


It makes a huge difference when the smiling begins.

And of course, a Thanksgiving day picture:

Leah is thankful for her airplane mobile, clothes, milk, people to hold her, Pandora (on the iphone), and her pacifier. She is not thankful for baths, diaper changes, or bright lights.

Memorable commentary of the weekend:

"Leah looks so much like Michelle," says Michael's mom.

"Yeah, for a while I thought she had my legs but they've gotten chubby," replies Michael.

Thanks Michael, I appreciate the reminder that I have quadzilla legs ;)

... more pictures and some better posts to follow

Altruism

I once read a commentary on altruistic acts. It stating they are almost non-existent because people feel a sense of pride or joy when doing a good deed for someone else. In that case, your reward is feeling good about yourself. Therefore something can not be defined as truly altruistic unless you are unaware that you have done it.

Today I dropped off my first donation to the milk bank, about 170 oz of liquid gold. It took a little over a month to collect this stash of the liquid gold and it would take a premature baby less than half that time to drink it all.

Yes, I feel good that I was able to donate the milk. Our mother's did not have the opportunity to do this, they didn't have all the fancy pumps we have today. I consider myself lucky to have the extra milk to share and I'm happy that it will go to someone who needs it.

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A couple of pics of Leah dancing on Sat morning when I told her we were about to visit the farmer's market...