Prepare for way too many exclamation marks and a joke that will make you groan

On June 8, I ran the Utah Valley Half Marathon! I will spare you pictures because I look like I am dying/being tortured/contemplating punching someone/having my toenails ripped off one by one/regretting my life's decisions during every single one of them. Just imagine me running with the most contorted face possible, hair wisps billowing in the breeze and sweat dripping down my face. Times 10. Good times!  

Really, it was great. I shaved 13 minutes off my previous time and finally ran it in under two hours (1:57:03), which was my goal. And I felt amazing afterwards...mentally. Physically, I may or may not have crawled from the front door to the bathtub and begged my husband to meet me there with a giant glass of ice water.  

It's funny that I pay to wake up at three in the morning and put myself through excruciating pain and love it!

I'd also like to give a shout out to my bladder for staying strong and not having to use the bathroom, because the porta potty company pooped out on us and there were NO bathrooms on the entire course. Good job, Big B. for not making me squat & desecrate one of the biggest roads in town.  I owe you one.

Random thoughts for a Wednesday night

I just ran for an hour on the treadmill.  I'm pretty sure I thought, "Being bored is not the same as being tired," over and over again for the entire sixty minutes.

Creepers who make it unsafe for me to run in the dark, I shake my fist at you.

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Sometimes I wear my husband's sweat pants to feel skinny, cozy, and like a gangster at the same time.

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Dustin is always getting up to mischief when I'm not around.

Afternoon routine

My baby used to want to cuddle all the time. Now she has far more important things to do than cuddle with her mama – like staring intently at anything that pleases her, drooling, and trying to stand while I support her. However, there is one exception. Every afternoon, after I feed and burp her, she will snuggle up against my shoulder and we enjoy a minute of quiet bliss.

And then she gives me her love poops. Once she is done, she is back to her wiggly little self.

But a girl's gotta take what she can get. Love poop time is one of the highlights of the day.

Awkward

At work today, a partner told me that I was looking really skinny.  He then got very concerned and asked if it was on purpose, and if I was okay.  Uh...I had a baby?  I certainly wasn't planning on hauling around those 25 pounds forever.

The scary thing is that he said almost the exact same thing to me last year, just days after I found out I was pregnant.  This better not be a sign.

Speak Up

It's official, I am getting old. I no longer understand technology.

At work, I begged to get Windows 7 two (or was it three?) years ago because I wanted the bubble screen saver and the snipping tool. (I have excellent priorities.) And I got a new personal laptop with Windows 7 last summer.

Yet I still do not understand how this newfangled operating system works. What the heck are Libraries and where are they stored? Should Libraries even be capitalized? Was My Documents not good enough? And perhaps the real question, why am I too lazy to spend the 30 seconds to figure it out?  When will I stop saving all of my documents to my desktop and finally give in to The Man?

And why does Blogger only send me email notifications for some comments posted to my blog but not all of them? (Really...does anyone know?)

Sugar rush

Last night I was overcome with a pregnant-sized craving for cereal, so I ran to the grocery store and came back with four boxes.  I may have problems.

This morning I had Honey Nut Cheerios (my favorite) for breakfast.  Which reminds me - anyone who says Honey Nut Scooters are as good as Honey Nut Cheerios is lying to you.  But Choco Chomp? Vastly superior to Cocoa Krispies.   There are nuggets of clumped-together cereal...it's like eating vitamin- and mineral-fortified candy.

I might have gone a little crazy eating Chomp clusters straight out of the bag last night.  The husband had to cut me off so that I would finally wind down and go to bed.

And while I may have had too much sense to eat chocolate cereal for breakfast...it's lunch time.

Future ballerina

I was not kidding about Kayla being long and skinny.  At her two-month appointment on Friday, I got her official stats:

Weight: 10 pounds 7.5 ounces
Length: 24.5 inches

This puts her in the 99th percentile for height (up from the 92nd)  and only the 24th for weight (down from the 42nd).  My doctor is not too pleased with this development.  We are now commencing Operation Chunk!  Eek.

(In other news, she has a ginormous head - 82nd percentile.  I hope she grows into it.)

Better late than never

So newborn photos didn't quite happen.  Seven-week photos are almost as good, right?  Right...?   (What can I say – the whole having-jaundice thing for the first few weeks of her life kind of threw a wrench in my baby announcement/newborn photo plans.)

And you know I can't resist posting a few of my favorites:

She is a charmer...you can't even tell she fussed through most of the photo shoot, hah.

"Lets put her in a basket down the river, like Moses!"-Dustin

How do you turn pajamas into adorable outerwear?  By adding a headband, of course.

I think I am going to try it the next time I am tempted to leave the house in sweatpants.

But really, I currently dress my baby in sleepers almost every single day.  They are warm and she is currently going through an awkward stage where she is too tall for newborn clothes but too skinny for 0-3 month clothes.  I told her that if she feels awkward now, she better brace herself for middle school; if she is her momma's daughter, it is going to get ugly.

The pantless wonder strikes again!

My daughter's favorite spot to be in our entire apartment is on the changing table.  The second  I put her on there, she is all smiles.  I'm not sure if it's because (a) she's excited to get clean, (b) she loves the feel of the plush changing table cover, or (c) she's thinking, "Woo!  My pants are coming off!"

Why do I feel like it's the last one?

I can almost taste it.

Kayla has terrible acid reflux, and a few days before Christmas my doctor told me to go off dairy. (Look kid, we need to talk. First you make me miss Thanksgiving dinner, and now this?)

I will not lie – it has been really, really hard. You don't realize how many foods have dairy until you can't eat them. I was incredibly close to giving up on nursing, but luckily for her, I am an accountant and the thought of spending $100 a month on formula makes me die a little on the inside.  Also, I quite enjoy eating Nutella straight from the jar while still losing weight.

I am crossing my fingers she will outgrow her sensitivity by three months like many babies do. But you know you have hit a low point when you stare at the leftover pizza your husband brought home from work and then eat the crust off of a slice. Oh cheese, why have you abandoned me???

Technically, we still need to throw him out.

We have now killed Javier the Third. I don't want to talk about it. (What, you didn't even know we killed Javier the Second? You are so behind the times.)

No, I kid! Of course I want to talk about it!

He actually got fatally injured on his first day with us, and we have been watching him suffer and life slowly bleed out of him ever since. I think we are too smart to try Javier the Fourth.

Life tip: do not leave your newly purchased plant in the car on a hot summer day when you decide to peruse furniture at the store next to Ikea just for funsies. It will burn to death. Just like Javier the Second. And no amount of water will save it.

Thing One and Thing Two

Dustin and I have what we call our Things. His Thing is leaving his crumbled up receipts everywhere in the house instead of throwing them away. I know, I know - I do not understand it any more than you do.

My Thing is spilling everywhere. On me, on the couch, on the floor. It just happens. Dustin has graciously accepted it although for some reason I am no longer allowed to eat crackers in bed.

I might have taken my Thing a little too far though.

It is Kayla's third outfit of the day and my second. The first wardrobe change was not my fault. Two words: explosive poop. I will leave it at that. (Three posts in a row mentioning poop! I like to keep it classy.)

But while I was eating some peanut butter toast for lunch, I miiiight have dripped melted peanut butter all over her clothes. Parenting fail. It's a very good thing a peanut allergy doesn't run in my family.

"Numbing spray...I'll let you figure out what that is for."

[Warning: TMI post about childbirth unpleasantness! Not for the easily embarrassed or squeamish or my dad!]

So labor? Piece of cake. Not a particularly delicious piece of cake, mind you, but at least once it's over, it's over.

But the recovery – nobody talks about the recovery!

My friend said it best when she told me, “You will lose all dignity in the hospital.” Labor is bad enough – you bleed, tear, get stitched up, and parts of you which are better left unseen are front and center. (But for the record, I did not poop on the table! I've never been so proud.)

But afterward, I still had a shred of dignity left. Even after a nurse put one-size-fits-most granny panties and a diaper-sized pad on me, I still had dignity. But then I was wheeled down to recovery, and told that a nurse was required to help me use the bathroom.

I held it for a long time. Oh yes, as long as I could muster (which, post-childbirth, was about 30 seconds after the urge came). But that fateful moment came when I got the required help. She walked me to the bathroom. She sat me down on the toilet. She proceeded to instruct me on the 10-step process on going to the bathroom, and then she watched. And then I flushed my remaining dignity down the toilet.

I will never have a clean shirt again.

It's hard to believe that my baby is almost eight-weeks old! Her favorite things to do are being held, looking around, and chewing on my shirt. (An honorable mention goes to pooping and then staring me down defiantly.)

Earlier this week, I had a huge wet spot on my shirt. This, my friends, was not caused by Kayla chewing on me, or even drooling on me. No, no. It was caused by her licking me. Over and over and over. She is adorable...but oh so very odd.