Blogging for Graham's Foundation!

I've been getting the itch to write lately. Maybe it's the more regular sleep patterns? The feeling that my writing is getting rusty? The desire to do a little more outside the realm of motherhood? A few weeks ago, I applied to be a blogger for a nonprofit foundation that supports families of preemies. It's something that I'm passionate about and have experience with (and that I can do from home - bonus!), and apparently they agreed too. My first post went live today...

http://grahamsfoundation.org/blog.html?fb_18405866_anch=32861311

I'll be posting something about preemies, preemie parenthood, or related issues once a week. You'll get to see lots of embarrassing photos of me in a hospital gown, so stay tuned!

Pillow talk

Scott just put Phoebe to bed. This was their conversation....

Phoebe: Will you marry me?

Scott: No, I'm already married.

P: Someday I'm going to have a babysitter come over every day.

S: Why?

P: To watch my kids while I'm a firefighter. My husband will have a job doing something.

S: How many kids are you going to have?

P: Probably just one. You have to have a band-aid on your bum when it comes out.

Interesting.

A little more conversation

This week at the Raymond Residence:

1) Oliver found his vocal chords. He babbles more than ever now, and has plenty to say to his siblings (seen in the above video). His tongue is almost always hanging out of his mouth; either he just discovered it or he's trying to get some relief from teething pain (still no teeth visible). Oliver throws a fit every morning when I stuff him into his snowsuit for our walk to school; he is so done with winter. We all are.

2) Phoebe told me that ballet tights were too itchy, so she wants to do T-ball instead. This will be our family's second attempt at T-ball; Bruce tried it a few years ago and hated it. I forced him to go to two practices and he still hated it, so we quit. Is it worse to force your children to do something they don't want to do or be a quitter?! We will see how Phoebe likes it.

3) Bruce is building a car for the Cub Scouts' Pinewood Derby, prepping for the MCAS (Massachusetts' standardized testing) next week, and is currently in first place at his school's 100 Mile Club. He just passed the 50-mile mark, which is pretty amazing considering the horrendous weather we have had.

4) I just got my Boston Marathon bib number (13844) and assignment (wave 2, corral 4). It is getting real! This morning I ran seven miles and totally ate the pavement. I tripped on some metal wiring (it's still dark out - I didn't even see it!), did a not-so-graceful somersault, and landed flat on my back. My hands and elbow are bruised, but my legs survived - yay!

5) Scott has been busy in the chest imaging division. He reads chest films all day, then comes home and protocols future studies all night. Every once in awhile, he will take a break to watch a ski movie and then comment on how he needs the mountains. He must have had fun on that Montana trip.

Nine months later.

OK so it didn't even take nine months to have this baby, but he has officially spent more of his existence outside the womb! Oliver weighed in at 17 lb 7 oz last week at his latest doctor's appointment. That puts him in the 15th percentile for 9-month-olds and 50th percentile for 7-month-olds. I've never been so thrilled to have an average child.

Oliver's hair looks a lot like Bruce's did, but people still comment on his strawberry blonde hair. Oliver still has those baby blue eyes, so they appear to be a permanent fixture. He looks like his siblings, but this guy has his own look too.

Oliver is my clingiest baby by far. He has a strong preference for me and will even cry if Scott holds him while sitting next to me. He loves to eat, but still doesn't have any teeth. He can scoot backward, push up and and get in crawling position, and launch himself forward a bit. He isn't crawling, but is getting closer every day.

He was sleeping well for awhile, then I must have bragged about it because he regressed. He seems to be getting back into a normal sleep routine again, but I'm not going to brag about it anymore.

Marathon Training

Now that it is March, Boston Marathon training is in full swing! January saw a slow start to training for me. I missed every Tuesday night Greater Boston Track Club practice because of a sick kid or working husband or sick me. In February, I made it to practices and started getting in substantial mileage. I even forced myself to jump into a race and sort of accidentally won.

It was a set of two races actually - a 5-mile race and a 3.7-mile race that started together and shared the same finish line. I entered the 5-mile race. When we started, there were a zillion people in front of me. And since it was my first race in a very long time, I figured I wouldn't be in the mix for the win so I did not pay attention to how many pony tails there were in front of me. It probably wouldn't have mattered because a mile or so into the race, the course split and the 3.7-milers turned while the 5-milers plodded onward. I could see one woman ahead of me, but I was sure there were more ahead of her.

I purposefully did not glance at my watch for fear that it would reveal that I'd only been running for five minutes or something when it felt like much longer; there were no mile markers in this race, so I didn't have any sense of pace. I resisted the urge until I recognized a street name from the course map and assumed we must be within a mile of the finish. I glanced at my watch, confirmed that I must be nearly done, and picked up the pace. I caught the woman ahead of me, but by now we had joined up with the 3.7-mile racers again so there were women everywhere. I finished strong, crossed the line without fanfare, high-fived Bruce and Phoebe, and went for a quick cooldown.

The woman that I'd chased caught up with me and cooled down with me. She said she thought I had won! I returned to the post-race party, fed Oliver while chugging a few waterbottles, and collected my prize: a box of chocolates and a gift card to a running store. My time wasn't super impressive, but considering the previous month's training and the current inconsistent sleep it wasn't bad either.

That seems to be the theme of my training this time around: not impressive, but not bad considering blah blah blah excuses blah blah blah. Most days the victory isn't the number of miles I racked up or the amount of time it took me to do the miles but it's the fact that I got out of the door (or even out of bed...) after 4 hours of interrupted sleep. I realize this is likely going to translate into my personal worst marathon time by a lot, but it is going to be a victory in itself. I am already excited to toe the line in Hopkinton and run all the way back to Boston - even if it takes me hours longer than it usually does.