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...

The Secret Weapon

Here's Leah on 11/15. If you look closely you'll notice she is happily sleeping atop her airplane blanket. She's already trying to impress her daddy.



Leah getting ready to follow the Austin folks racing IM FL.

I know this one is a bit lame but it's much more creative than the baby holding a remote and a beer version.

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After swimming on Friday one of the girls asked me how my stomach was so small after having a baby. If I'd been a bit more awake on Friday morning I may have realized how to answer this question.



Pilot research (n=1) has shown minimal pregnancy weight gain in women who consume Ghirardelli brownies at least once per week.

Some of you might be fooled into thinking brownies are a bad thing. Most of them probably are but the Ghirardelli ones are free from the evil ingredient; high fructose corn syrup.

Tomorrow I will be drafting a letter to the Ghirardelli chocolate company to ask them if they would be interested in funding my research study. Of course, I'll probably need a larger sample size so feel free too consume large amounts of brownies and report back with your results.

Junk Mileage

Quote of the day, "Maybe you should have been doing more yoga." (commentary on Leah's need for constant motion)

Apparently it's not uncommon for a small child to prefer constant motion. I might have influenced this characteristic by moving too much while Leah was in the womb but I'll never know that for sure. For now, I just know she hates to sit still.

Question:

The weather in Austin has been mainly sunny and 70's for the past 2 weeks, what have Michelle and Leah been doing in their spare time?

A) surfing the web and writing blog entries
B) catching up on some television watching
C) shopping
D) walking over 1 hour per day
E) cleaning the house

Answer: D - if you didn't know the answer you probably stumbled upon this blog in a random search.

Given the choice to catch up on much needed sleep or tire myself out with more activity, I pick the later almost all the time. I'm hoping all this walking (i.e. junk mileage) will transform into increased run fitness. After all the time off my body has not been setting any records in my workouts.

This is not the case with some of my friends, they have been setting records and accomplishing a lot over the past few weeks. There was an age group course record at IM FL, some other great race performances in FL, an engagement, and a doctoral candidacy to name a few. I am quite impressed with all of my friends, they are some amazing people.

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Today I had an experience I was wondering about, someone in utter shock when they spotted me with a baby. As I was walking around the farmer's market I saw a girl who I hadn't seen this summer.

She looked at us with a mixture of disbelief and confusion, "You have a baby? Is that yours? I didn't know you were pregnant. Did you ever look pregnant?" --> Priceless

Growing

When's the last time you've ever outgrown your clothes? Unless you've been pregnant recently it's probably been a while since that's happened. I think I stopped growing in about 5th grade. I'm not joking about that either, until recently I still had some t-shirts from 5th grade that I fit into.

Tonight Michael was telling his mom about the traumatic event of the week, "We had to retire some of our favorite outfits. She's already outgrown all of her newborn clothes."

Leah is now 7 weeks old, I'm glad she's grown enough to be wearing the 0-3 month clothes, especially considering the amount she eats.

For all of Leah's fans we've got a few more pictures (and some bonus commentary)...

Me and Great-grandma Jeanette:


I've got mommy and daddy wrapped around my fingers. There's no way they'll put me in my crib when I look these peaceful in their bed:


Look, I'm sitting up, No hands! How many babies can do that at 6 weeks?


Dad, hold still. I want to see if it'll hurt when I hit you with my 'nerd toy':


Happy Halloween. When do we get to go get the dark chocolate?