My Current Predicament

I was so excited back in early April for the weather to improve so I could get outside on the roads and enjoy a good long run. Well, the weather has been great (except for right now--raining buckets), and my bedside shelf has been piled up with books about running for several weeks. You'd think I'd be outside and training for my next race or at least taking Norah out in the jog stroller every few days.

Unfortunately, I have had to give up running for the past few weeks. The stiff, "zombie-like" state that I found myself in after the race I ran on May 1st turned out to be a pulled hip flexor. Do you know how much you use a hip flexor? I didn't, until doing all these normal things like getting out of a car and going up or down stairs didn't work like they used to.

I saw my doctor and explained (embarrassingly) how I hurt my hip in the fun run (It was only 3.5 miles--come on! I wasn't marathoning or anything!). He prescribed 3 times the amount of ibuprofen I was taking, along with rest and an icing regimen. I resigned myself to a few weeks of rest, and a lot of medicine, as long as it would mend my hip.

Last week I was finally able to go outside and run! Phew, it felt great, even though I limited myself to a 1/2 mile walking before and after my slow mile of jogging. I was itching to do more, but I didn't want to pull something again.

Which brings us to last Friday. I had run three times that week, just the short jogs. I bought a new swim suit and went to the pool (for the first time in forever) on campus and swam laps. All activity checked out, and I was only needing meds once a day, if any. Then what happened?

I think Toby broke my toe. It wasn't on purpose, but it hurt like crazy. I was wearing sandals and he wasn't paying attention to where we were walking and he basically jumped on my little toe. My whole upper foot at the base of my toes is black and blue (still), and I've been icing it and popping tons of ibuprofen for the past week. Swimming still seems to be fine (which is fantastic and really relaxing), but even normal activity sends me to a chair with a pack of ice by the end of the day. Ugh!

Now I sit and wait for a healed toe, after sitting and waiting for a healed hip. Not the great summer season of running I was hoping for!

My Simple Life

This is my favorite time of year. Each day brings simple pleasures, joys to be shared.
Today we bought new pajamas for the kids. We've been very blessed with outfits for the kids for the summer, but one thing they both lacked were summer-season PJ's. This need was emphasized the last two nights when Norah chose fleece footed pajamas to wear to bed. And Toby's been sleeping in last summer's athletic shorts.
We looked around online first and then headed out to Target after nap time for the big event. The kids were so excited to pick out their own pajamas, I just might take them with me in the fall!
Toby chose some Star Wars PJ's and Norah picked out some that had whales on them. So cute!

On the way home Norah was playing with a little rubber snake she found in the car. We started talking (for some reason) about how snakes smell. I am probably very wrong on this, but I told Toby snakes use their tongues to smell. Toby said, "God sure did make snakes different from people." I felt like we should go into more detail, but he seemed content with that, thankfully!

My Recent Pictures

I've updated the slide show to highlight pictures from April and May. Click on the pictures to make them bigger. :o)

My Lost Post...Found!

I was going through my posts this morning and realized that I had one saved from a month ago that I never posted. And it was kind of a big deal. From May 6th:

We registered Toby for Kindergarten yesterday. And now I'm completely freaked out, to say the least. The days are counting down (too quickly) until we send him off to "big kid school"!

We decided that we would register him for school now and then have the summer to determine whether we should send him to full day, half day, or another preschool program in the fall. He'll be entered into the lottery for all-day Kindergarten (our school has 3 sections of all day), so that might be one option that we lose if he doesn't get chosen for it.

Our neighborhood school is an in-district magnet school, and it's relatively brand new. I asked a teacher that we met at Kindergarten parent night last week what the school was a magnet for and she listed off about six things, including technology and music. It seemed like a lot of things to be focused on as a magnet school. My ears perked up at the technology piece, though. Every classroom has some kind of interactive white board (they have Promethium boards)--Oh, to be back at Bates where it was a really big deal that we had 3 Smart boards and 2 document cameras! But technology is going to be such a big piece of Toby and Norah's lives that it makes sense to start their learning with the most state-of-the-art technology around.

The teacher who assessed Toby yesterday told me all about the activities they'd be doing in an all-day program, and she felt that it would be good to send him for all day. In the assessment he was able to do everything she asked of him, including counting to 20, writing his name, showing he knows how to hold a book and look through it, identifying colors, and drawing a picture of himself (he drew himself with a big smile on his face, long hair, hands and feet). I was so proud of him--he did great!