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?
We all know what happens when a groundhog sees its shadow, we get six more weeks of winter. But what about when a toddler sees their shadow? Well, I mean when they first acknowledge they are the ones making that silhouette on wall or any other light-colored surface.
Avery recently discovered her shadow and seems to get a kick out of her dark twin. I’ve been pointing it out to her when changing her diaper for a while, but just the other week she finally reacted to it and made her hand move across the wall. She’ll say something in toddler talk and smile, and I smile too because it keeps her occupied while changing her.
Now anytime we are somewhere that her shadow is visible, I can say look at your shadow and it will keep her busy at least for a minute. I love watching her learn something new and can only imagine what’s going on in her head as I explain how the light casting down on her creates that dark object called her shadow.
Just the other day, she was busy removing every item from her basket when I asked if she could find her shadow.
She seemed stumped and maybe a little hesitant at first.
But then she turned right around to come face to, ummmm, face? with her darker, less detailed self.
I asked her if she could find her shadow again and she immediately pointed to the dark figure. Still working on getting toys out of the basket, of course.
She closed in to investigate further with an almost accusatory point of her finger.
Hey, what are YOU lookin’ at?
Squatting down, she was amazed at how her shadow followed suit.
Back up and a little hand movement just to test the boundaries and she finally accepted her shadow was there to stay.
That’s when she looked away and saw there were more toys to take out of her basket and drop behind me as I cooked in the kitchen.
That’s also when I politely asked her to stop everything! To which she replied with….
Yeah, heart = melted. Oh, and look, she has a heart! Then I offered her a green smoothie which she happily accepted.
It makes me so proud when she enjoys drinking the healthy green smoothies I make. What doesn’t make me proud is when she then proceeds to climb on the couch, throw the pillows off, and eat the rim. green mouth and all.
But I digress, she’s hard to stay upset with for long. I guess those days are coming though, huh?
Can you remember when your little one first started to notice their shadow?
Do you find random teeth marks with food on furniture around your home?
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!
An at-home dad on a mission to keep it real when it comes to food, fun, and raising a healthy, happy family.
