You’re probably thinking I’m scared of the Fourth of July fireworks or crazy people who had too much to drink and are high on smoke bombs driving around, but that would be wrong. Well, the latter is a little worrisome, but not an issue I’ve dealt with before.
Nope, right now, as you read this, my wife and I probably just finished our 5k at a nearby brewery as G-Ma and Avery cheered us on and are sipping on a refreshing craft beer to celebrate. The scary part is what we’re doing for the day; going to G-Ma’s to *gasp* spend the night!
As you can tell, I’m writing this in advance, so I’ll have to fill you in on the details of our race and the rest of today in a future post. For now, I’m just sharing my fear with you. Avery has outgrown her pack ‘n play portable crib which we’ve always used at G-Ma’s and we have been avoiding another visit for far too long.
This time, we are going to make a comfortable bed on the ground since she has no awareness of boundaries and hope for the best. She is never just asleep when we put her to bed in her crib at night, and she usually rolls all over the place talking for a good 20 minutes. I assume this normal for most toddlers, but geez, she’s crazy!
So now, after waking up early for the 5k and being exposed to fireworks, she’ll either be extremely tired and will go to sleep easily, or so tired she’s wired. Parents, I’m sure you know what I’m talking about. We brought her to G-Ma’s last year where she first saw fireworks, but was hardly aware of what exactly was happening.
Now that she is very aware of everything around her, who knows how she’ll take the loud booms and flashy pyrotechnics. Will it be overstimulating, scary, or a joy to watch for her? Guess we’re finding out today!
So, the plan of attack is counting on the accumulation of waking up early, playing at G-Ma’s and swimming at her neighbor’s house, possibly no nap, and staying up later to see fireworks working for instead of against us to get her to sleep good at night. Wow, that was a long sentence!
My nerves are a little frantic, if you can’t tell, but luckily Going Mom is cool and calm. Hope my frantic state is all for not.
Bye for now, and Happy Fourth of July to those of you here in the U.S.! Happy weekend to the rest of you!
Have you had to deal with a tricky sleep situation for your little one?
Ever find a solution or was it just a miserable night for everyone?
Hopefully our 4th of July 5k won’t get rained out like the Mother’s Day race we were going to do this year. I planned on running a half-marathon, but since it was canceled, I ended up rowing the distance in our garage. Yeah, and that’s when the whole staph butt thing happened….
Moving on, I’m hoping for a good, non-rainy run for our 4th of July 5k. A 5k is great, it gets you up and moving for the day, but doesn’t take forever or zap all of your energy to do anything else the rest of the day. Of course, it is at our favorite craft brewery, Martin House, so if anything, it’s the beer that would zap me.
I don’t plan on having more than one drink, and that’s only because it’s good quality beer they are giving for free. Why wouldn’t I enjoy a glass after pounding the pavement for 3.2 miles? I don’t have a set goal, and my best time from way back when being under 18 minutes, so that’s not happening again. I’d like to keep it around 20 minutes if possible though. Last year I pushed Avery in a 5k and made first place with a time in the 19 minute mark, so it’s doable.
Placing 1st in our first race together!
This will be the first race in my Soft Star Shoes which has me excited to see how they’ll perform. If it’s anything like my regular runs, they’ll be great! Maybe Avery will wear hers so we can be Soft Star Rock Stars!
Going Mom refuses to let out anything about her goal time for the 5k thinking she’ll jinx herself or something. I get it, but I know she’ll do much better than she gives herself credit for. She’s make good use of our squat rack at least 2 times a week and knocks out heavy sets of dead lift and squats. The leg strength alone will prove useful as she races this weekend.
Thanks to my wonderful Mom, Avery won’t be subjected to sitting a stroller to get pushed in a race. This time, she gets to hang with G-Ma and watch from the sidelines to cheer us on. Judging from how she runs to her with open arms, I think Avery will be happy to have the company.
Look for how we did in a post next week. I hope to share some good race times and to let you know that we had a good time.
Speaking of good times, we had a pretty crazy family walk the other evening. It was a typical hot day even as the sun was going down, and we set off like normal with Avery in the stroller. Side note: I always keep 35lbs of kettlebells in the stroller just to make it extra work for myself because, stubborn and strength.
We were relieved to have a big cloud cover the sun for us which meant not battling the bright light in Avery’s eyes and giving her extremely tan legs (from sitting in the stroller on sunny walks) a much needed break. Then a little wind picked up, and then a few fat rain drops started to fall.
Meanwhile, we kept walking and I was saying how refreshing and nice it was to walk in a little shower. Because, at that point, it really was nice. I love walking a light summer sprinkle of rain! But then it got heavier and heavier until we were sloshing in our sandals (Yeah, go us) with our clothes completely drenched.
Kelley mocked me for saying how I enjoyed walking a nice shower as we continued our walk watching the streets already accumulates mini rivers (commonly known as streams) of water. We were right in the middle of our walk, so turning around would be the same as continuing. And continue we did. We had a few neighbors standing in their garage watching the rain and looking at us like we were crazy. In retrospect, I don’t blame them!
As we turned a corner, we faced the heavy rain head-on as the wind whipped it into our face. This set Avery off and she began to cry in fear and probably pain. Despite having flip-flops on, we knew we needed to run to get back as fast as we could, so run we did. It was at this moment when I cursed myself for having those damn 35lbs of weights in the stroller.
Then we hit what I call “the big hill” part of our walk and I seriously questioned what the point of the weights were. Screw you, fitness, I don’t need this! It didn’t help that I started cracking up while trying to breathe when as I watched my wife practically doing a high knee run through a giant river of deep water. Seriously, the view was priceless.
We made it up the hill, increased our speed as the rain poured on and Avery wailed, and finally made it back to our garage/safe haven.
Of course we took the obligatory crazy family picture afterward. Avery quickly calmed down, as you can see, with the help of a towel thanks to Going Mom. We both kissed her and asked for forgiveness too.
And just to be really annoying, we took turns taking a picture with our drenched little girl. She was not that amused.
Still cute as a button though. A really really really cute button! I pretended to hold her back out under the rain because, dad jokes, and she actually gave a little smile. But just a little pity smile.
After our soaked family photo session was over, we went inside for dinner and laughed about a rainy walk we won’t forget any time soon.
Have you even been caught in the rain?
Do your kids love getting drenched in the rain or despise it?Avery loves the water, just not when it’s stinging rain in her face as she sits defenseless. Can’t blame her!
I know what you’re thinking. After my butt issue just a few days ago, why in the world did I run?! I’ll tell you, but first let’s talk about the two celebrations on Saturday.
This past weekend, one of our neighbors had a birthday party for their one year old girl, Seneca. Avery and Seneca are exactly 6 months apart, and I expect they’ll become good friends as they grow up together. I never got any pictures of the two together, or the birthday girl at all, but Avery had a great time with Mommy in the bounce house at the party.
Two beauties smiling bright! Avery was a little shy at first, but she warmed up quickly and even played with her peers. From the looks of it, she’s really good at sharing with one of the neighborhood boys, Connor.
“Sharing”, it’s a loosely defined term, right? But “Cuddles”, now that’s fairly straight-forward, and she’s happy to give them when Mommy or Daddy (and sometimes strangers, yikes!) asks.
We had a great time at the party and made it back home for a family walk and then nap time before heading back out again. We were meeting Kelley’s family as well as my mom and her boyfriend at a restaurant for a belated Mother’s Day celebration and it was great to see everyone.
When we meet up with family, Avery just makes her rounds being held and we get a little “freedom” for half an hour as others get their cute kid fix. It’s a win-win for everyone! We all had a good time talking with each other and Avery was very well-behaved……almost too well.
Before we knew it, we were on our way back home to get Avery to bed and wind down the night with 3 Walking Dead Season 5 episodes. Thank you, internet!
The half-marathon I talked so much about that was cancelled from severe weather last weekend (so I rowed 13.1 instead), was rescheduled for yesterday, the 17th. The venue changed twice from the original location and we had already checked out of even considering trying to go after my ER visit.
“Butt” (ha ha, get it?), I found myself having trouble sleeping and woke up earlier than usual on Sunday morning. This usually means I make my grocery shopping rounds early and be done with it, but this time, I had another perfect idea instead. Go to the race and then to the store!
True, I was specifically told not to run, and I’m still hurting a little down there, but when I pay for something it gets under my skin when I just give it up. That something would be the nice technical shirts and finisher’s medal you get, as well as a surprise Mother’s Day gift the event organizer mentioned. So I told Kelley, as she went to nurse Avery back asleep, I was leaving for the store and would be back soon.
I didn’t officially decide to drive to the race until I got in my car, then I figured why not, and thought it would be cool to bring back the Mother’s Day surprise gift for Kelley. Husband bonus points for me! I arrived right after the race started, so I gave the coordinators my spiel and they happily gave me a shirt for both my wife and I and agreed to give a Mother’s Day gift if I finished the race.
So I raced. But not the half-marathon, just the 5k, and I walked most of it, which was very muddy from the never-ending rain.
The nice thing about walking is you get to see more and take in the nice scenery. For example this really long worm along with dozens of his friends were on the entire course.
Yeah, so it wasn’t that great of scenery. I ended up running the last mile, but I was sorry for that later….stupid butt. At least it looked like I saw some action with a little mud splashed up my leg.
I didn’t wait around for my first place trophy (joke), just took a banana, which happened to be attached to several bananas…
…got my finisher’s medal….
…and Kelley’s Mother’s Day gift.
A freakin Fuel Belt. They are nice, but I was thinking something more motherly. But what could I expect from a runners club? I actually think it will be great when out all day with Avery since it has a hydration pack and some storage.
Overall great weekend and I’m happy to say my ass is hurting less! I go in for check-up (no jokes) on Tuesday, so hopefully I have more good news to report then!
Do you feel like you have to get your money’s worth at events you sign up for?
Ever walk a race before?That was a first for me and it felt weird, but not that bad.
An at-home dad on a mission to keep it real when it comes to food, fun, and raising a healthy, happy family.
