May 2007

…Slate reports that Americans are leaving beer for wine.

What do you think of the new theme? Let us know!

We bought our home in the city– an eighty-year-old urban haven for our little growing family. As we’ve been doing our spring cleaning and coming across all the simple, uh, pleasures of living in an older home I was inspired to write a few posts about the art of living in an older house.

There are wonderful quirks, and not-so-wonderful quirks. For example, our pest problem. For the two springs that we’ve lived here we’ve gotten a rodent in the house. This spring we’ve had more than one. We get them in the fall, too. We don’t, however, have them year in and out. I think they keep wondering if we’ve moved out yet.

We get some traps, and keep extra clean for a few weeks, and then they’re gone. This year’s guests aren’t gone yet so we’ve gotta stay alert.

It’s kind of creepy, but I think of all country women out on the farm who live with this kind of vermin and find it common place. It’s just the symptom of living in an older house, there’s nothing you can do to change it.

So, that’s my introduction to my series (every time I intend to start a series I only write one post, so I hope this is the exception) on our old house. I’ll also post about upkeep, gardening, the neighborhood, and if I think of anything else I’ll post about that, too.

Happy spring cleaning to all of you, on the Memorial Day weekend!

even though I am not a Looper myself. They’re Lutheran Homeschoolers for those who don’t know.

This week, The Rebellious Pastor’s Wife wrote an excellent post about the Parable of the Good Samaritan. She’s taking a class and these were based on a lecture, I think.

Let me just say that I’m JEALOUS that she is taking a class like this. Look at this quote:

But Jesus is the Good Samaritan. He comes and bandages our wounds, gives us a safe place, and revives us. He is God, so He cannot be unclean, but He takes our uncleanness upon Him. He gives the innkeeper two denarii (two days pay) to watch after us and says He will repay him when He comes back….when? He took care of two days…so He’s returning on the 3rd Day…when He rises again.

I love it! It seems like the kind of text-dissection that went on in my best literature classes in college, but it’s about Christ. I would LOVE that. Suddenly I’m very jealous of seminarians. I bet they get to read this stuff all the time.

Today Olivia asked me, “Can we stay at this park forever? Let’s live here for our house.”

Sorry, Liv. We spent a lot of money on our real house. Too much to just give it up and live at the park.

But I didn’t just finish, I finished in 2 hours, 7 minutes and 43 seconds. I was hoping to finish in 2:20. I am so competitive, which isn’t good when Rob and I are playing cards, but is very good when trying to run a long distance.

The weather was great, about 63 degrees and overcast, which is perfect for running. I was pushing it hard at the end, and right when I thought that I was overdoing it and might not make the end, right after the 11 mile marker, I saw my family at the side-line cheering for me! I ducked through the crowd and kissed Olivia on the head and that was the boost I needed to make it to finish strong.

I was so overextended at the finish-line that I was weaving around, and kind of dizzy. I probably looked drunk. But I drank some Powerade, and ate some pineapple and a Popsicle and I felt much better except for the extreme soreness.

But that’s that. It’s done and I did great. I feel great. My family is already encouraging me to run in the Akron Marathon at the end of the summer…

and ready to drive up to Cleveland. As Murphy has decreed Olivia woke me up at 4:30 for no good reason. I hope that I am rested enough to run well.

See you all after my race!

While all of you happy Lutherans are getting ready to go to church I will be running my 13.1 miles. The whole family will be there to back me up, and carry me away in a heap from the finish line.

As soon as I have pictures, and results I will post.

GO MEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

How exciting. I get to have a handmade vintage styled apron as a prize. I knew that those 4 years of college would pay off somehow!

Honestly though, I’m very flattered.

There’s only so much I can say about running. You just keep putting one foot in front of the other until you’ve gotten where you want to go.

Instead I’ll post about my recent discovery about Olivia’s diet. Olivia has been having these monumental tantrums. These are the kind of tantrum that cause you to walk on eggshells for days afterwards because you can tell another one is just around the corner. I read Ames and Ilg Your Two Year Old and it was pretty much telling me that two-and-a-half year olds will throw fits a lot. I just thought that Olivia was much more intense naturally. She is fundamentally independent and highly will-full so I figured that’s what I get for being me, and marrying a guy who’s got people as intense as me for siblings. It must just be a genetic nightmare, but normal for us, even though it was a sudden change.

Then Rob’s mom saw one of the melt-downs-with-no-end and she asked me if they were coming around the same time everyday. They didn’t seem like normal Terrible Two behavior. So I brainstormed and discovered that they were always happening in between meals or before breakfast.

Mary sent me this article and it described Olivia and her sudden behavior change to a T, she must have been suffering from low-blood sugar. I was relieved to have some explanation for her outbursts, and some hope for resolution to the problem.

I began feeding her around the clock. I put food out that she can access herself when ever she felt like she needed a snack. In less than 24 hours there was a dramatic change for the better. My sweet little girl was home again and the Terror-Beast was no where to be seen.

I am so glad that we kept working on this until there was an answer. For a few days I really thought that Olivia was just trying to test my limit. I was trying so hard to put the boundaries down firmer and firmer and all I got was more and more tantrums. I’m ashamed that I had so little faith in Olivia’s relationship with me. Next time something like this happens I won’t be so slow to suspect a medical cause, and for the time being I’m going to be monitoring Olivia’s food intake and the resulting behavior. Hopefully this won’t be a continuous concern.

So instead of a post about persevering in the race, this is a post about persevering in my parenting. Being steadfast in my search for a resolution and refusing to let the bad days get the best of us, or worse, come between us. I love my kids too much to let them down like that.

Sure, running is great for me. In fact one of the reasons that I kept going when the training first got difficult was that while I was out on the road or trail no one was touching me. Moms get touched-out quickly, especially with a new baby in the house. It’s also been a great to watch my pants size drop from 8 to 6 to 4 (and getting baggy in the 4s). So, this race and all of the build-up has definitely been for me.

But in my last post I mentioned that I’m running this race for my family as much as I am running it for me. So how is it that mom abandoning her family up to 4 times a week is beneficial to them?

For starters I come home HAPPY. Like, high-on-endorphins-happy. And I have a ton more energy, so I am less likely to be taking naps all day long (or sitting at the computer which is more likely than a nap). My house is staying straightened up more often. Plus, we are learning discipline together when I suit all the kids and the dog up and plop them in the stroller so that I can get my 2 miles in during the week. It’s not easy, but it has to get done.
But even more so, it’s good for them because it is good for me. I feel so much better about myself because I am doing something. It has helped me forget about the fact that I dropped out of college. I am confident that I can finish what I start if I want to, and I really want to finish this race. And a happy, confident, excited mom rubs off on the whole family. I can be proud of me, and so can my family.

I had always liked the idea of meditating on something peaceful to get me through hard situations. I would have thought it would be easier for me to do since I am an extremely visual person, but I could never slow my brain down enough to think on one scene or topic long enough to relax. I’d often end up feeling even more stressed out as my head either jumped franticly from image to image, or I’d end up thinking some really random depressing thought and that is not at all helpful.

But since I began running I’ve been able to train my head to visualize through a scene and calm down with it. We keep running our 6 mile training runs on the same wooded path so the scene has become familiar to me. Especially the homestretch– that last mile that is so easy to run once the endorphins kick in around 4 and a half miles or so that we gradually gain speed until we hit the finish.

I’ve seen this wooded path of Sand Run Parkway over and over again during training, and now I find myself visualizing it while I’m exhausted and washing dishes. Or while I’m trying to calm down during a certain Two-year-old’s temper tantrums. When we have ventured off the home turf and ran longer courses of 8, 9 and 10 miles I zone out on this image when I get exhausted. It reminds me that I am almost at the finish line.

I can’t wait to be running that last mile in Downtown Cleveland, through screaming crowds of people as Jacob’s Field approaches, and my mind will wander back to the trees on Sand Run Parkway, just as my knees are about to give out underneath me. I hope that I’m not so inwardly focused that I miss seeing my family cheering me on at the sidelines. I’m running this as much for them as I am for me.

The discipline I’ve gained from this endeavor has helped me in many ways (though I still can’t easily wake up before 7am). I’m calmer. I’m more likely to finish what I’ve started. And I’m confident that I can do something fantastic, especially when I take a moment to relax, focus, and keep my eye and my mind looking toward my goal.

There are only seven days left until my big event. I haven’t bothered to write about my training because most people find running boring, so I doubt any one would find reading about running much more interesting. But since this race has been my main focus since January, I thought I’d write a little series about it in the upcoming week, followed by pictures from race day as soon as I am able to post them. I hope you enjoy it, and I hope that it makes you as pumped as I am!

I have a vivid memory of my mother taking me to KB Toys. I wanted a something-or-other and she told me I couldn’t have it. I then proceeded to fake cry all about it up and down the aisles while my mom ignored me. I used to think she was cruel for ignoring me. “How insensitive,” I’d think.

Now that I’m the mother of a two-and-a-half year old, I think that she’d stumbled onto a very effective parenting technique.

HAPPY MOTHER’S DAY MOM. Thanks for teaching me the art of selective hearing. I love you.

It’s about 2 weeks old now. Elise has since learned to crawl forwards (and not constantly backwards!) so I’ll have to take another diveo soon. It’s so hard to keep up with the photos and diveos when I’ve got two kiddos to catch. Yikes!

Olivia pretending that Elise and she are “2 dogs”