Neighborhood Watch

Our neighborhood has a yahoo news group which seems to be used primary to make complaints (regarding neighbors with tall grass) and report on the wrongdoings of teenagers in the area.

Lately, the neighborhood safety and break-ins have been a hot topic. Although it's a serious issue there is a bit of humor when I read all the reports of "suspicious vehicles" in the area. My favorite is when (1) neighbor A reports a suspicious vehicle in front of someones house and says they are about to call the police and (2) neighbor B writes back not to call the police because that car belongs to their visitor.

There are signs posted for the neighborhood watch program and the local police are often called into the area when a problem comes up. As I was crossing the street at the beginning of my walk on Friday a Policeman called over from his car, "Excuse me, do you happen to recognize this dog?" As he said this he held a brown chihuahua out the window.

"Of course, wasn't he in the Taco Bell commercials in the 90's?!"

No, I didn't really say that. Instead I answered with a less sarcastic remark, "No, Don't know the dog. Are you really sitting here to see if someone knows the dog?"

"Yes."

Good to know the police are monitoring the important things, I thought they were just out to give people speeding tickets. Note, I saw four people pulled over on my drive home from the pool.

Later on in our walk, Leah and I came across a suspicious vehicle. I was tempted to report it to the neighborhood news group but I wasn't sure if they'd see my humor. Maybe they would have been more understanding if I also reported on the suspicious men hopping out of the vehicle in camo clothing. Obviously, they were trying to sneak around the neighborhood unnoticed!

Good thing the keen eyes of the 3 month old spotted them.

Understanding

Sometimes I wonder how much Leah understands. I'm sure every parent would love to think they are raising a little genius, a future Olympic medalist, or just a great person in general.

Some parents seemed to be convinced they have a rock star at a young age and try to tell everyone about it. It's funny what things can lead parents to believe their child is exceptional. Last week some people showed my brother how well their 3 month old could stand... they were holding onto the kid at the time. There's always the parents who brags about the size of their kid: my kid is in the 100 th percentile for head size or my kid has an abnormally large femur (some of you may know who that kid is but I'll keep him anonymous until he gets chicked by Leah in a few years).

What makes me think Leah is so special? I think it's this remarkable ability to understand what I'm saying to her. Or... just my impression that she understands me and seems to listen to my requests.

Here's how my day went today:

Michael joined a friend to run at City Park and I slept in, a long time, due too a few months of cumulative sleep deprivation. I woke up at 9:30 and thought it would be real nice if Leah would stay asleep long enough for me to eat some breakfast. I checked on her and asked her to wait a few more minutes to wake up. Somehow she managed to wake up just after I finished the dishes.

I fed her and played with her a bit. At that point I wanted her to take a nap for a while so I could hop on the trainer and get in a good ride. I was hoping for 2:45 ride which seemed a bit unreasonable since she would probably want to eat in 2 hrs. But why not try, "Hey Leah, can you take a long nap so I can get in a 2:45 trainer ride?" Almost like clockwork, she woke up minutes before my ride was ending and Michael held her while I took a quick shower.

I fed Leah and got ready to burp her, "Okay Leah, mom just took a shower so let's try not to spit milk all over her."

At this point Leah gave me a smile as she was laying on a pillow in my lap. She opened her mouth and spit out a huge stream of milk. I burst into laughter, "No problem mom, I didn't get it on you."

We then laid on the floor to play a bit. When Michael came over I told him to take a picture of us, "Wave to the camera Leah" (see picture above).

I know it's quite impossible that she could actually have the cognitive ability to understand me but she just keeps making me wonder. Maybe I do have a genius. Or maybe I'm still sleep deprived and have dilutions of a genius.

Mine

Leah has seen her cousin a couple of times in the past few days. Rylee is turning two next month and is therefore quite a bit more interesting than full grown adults. Leah has been very curious about Rylee and seems to be quite content watching the little giant at play.

Rylee's favorite words of the week appear to be "No" and "Mine." She's getting herself in good position for the terrible two's.

We've decided to disperse the negative characteristics of that year over a larger time frame. Therefore, we will be teaching Leah about the concept of possession (mine) at a young age. To help in our plans, Leah has been sent more personalized items.

Hopefully the new towels will allow us to fully explain the concept of mine, yours, and ours.

Only trouble is... how to we teach her about sharing? Do we get her a library card so she can learn about sharing books with other kids? This could be dangerous if she takes after me. When I was younger I defaced the library copy of Harold And The Purple Crayon by drawing all over it with my own purple crayon. You may wonder how I recall this... my mother made me go apologize to all the librarians for what I'd done. It was probably a good call on her part because it ended my graffiti career at a young age.

Here's a picture of me sharing Leah's skoot with her. You may notice a couple of things about the bike: (1) there are no pedals - this allows us to teach Leah balance (2) there are disk wheels - this implies Leah is stronger than her mother since D.W. let her have disk wheels and told me I was too small


A picture of Leah asleep in my arms at the Austin Children's Museam. After about an hour of watching shadows, lights, and the other kids she was passed out. I'm sure it had nothing to do with my attempt to get her on the bike that counted pedal strokes


Lastly, another picture in a Hungry Catipillar outfit. I think these are guite fitting for our good eater

Yawning is Contagious

I've heard many times that yawning is contagious. I've seen the effects before yet I just can't seem to make Leah yawn when I do. She has the power to make me yawn. She's so good at it that I even began to yawn when I looked at this picture again.

It's pretty interesting to observe Leah's personality evolve. I've begun to call her "Curious Leah." It might not be the most catchy nickname but it's a lot better than some of the other ones her father has tried; Porker, Bugger, Goober, etc.

Here's a few pictures for those of you watching Leah grow from your computer...

Curious Leah watching her airplane mobile:


Leah comparing herself to the measurement worm:


Blowing spit bubbles:


Getting ready for a birthday party:

A few people have asked me how the workouts are going lately...

Last week went pretty well. There were some solid arm workouts with dumbbells (a.k.a. rattles) and we managed 3 sets of 10 baby crunches. Leah is learning her multiplication tables as well as developing her core.

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.