A bunch of pictures :-)

Here are a bunch of phone pictures from the past month or so. Enjoy!

Oliver proudly displaying his swim school graduation form :-)

Theodore stacking blocks! (I love his look of concentration!)

Theodore talking to the "psshh" [fish] at the Nature and Science Center. :-)

A person dressed up in a mechanized T-rex suit at the Nature & Science Center. It was pretty realistic, and some of the little kids were terrified! One little girl scrambled up the side of the rock overhang to get away from it, and ended up getting cactus needles all over her legs. :-( 

Rwar!

Trying to buckle his own helmet :-)

Anna and I went bowling one night! Beer and bowling don't mix (well, for me anyway)! She won by a lot!

Biking with me at the trail one Sunday afternoon

I love this picture not so much because of how it looks, but because of the memory of what was going on -- Buttercup was being very silly, Theodore was chasing Oliver with a giant pinwheel, and Oliver was dodging Theodore, laughing at Buttercup and trying to throw the ball to her.
One of those sweet moments when they were all having fun TOGETHER. :-) 

We had one of Buttercup's friends over to play one morning, and everyone decided to play dress up. :-)

This is one of my favorite memories! I wanted to go running one afternoon, but we really didn't have time to drive to the trail and back, so I decided to push Buttercup and Theodore in the stroller to the trail near our house, while Oliver biked next to me. When we got to the trail, Buttercup asked if she could get out and run. So I let her run the length of that trail, then she wanted to run more, so she ran the length of the next trail. We stopped for 30 minutes or so at a playground, then headed back home. Altogether Buttercup ran 2.8 miles! It was really awesome because 1) she got to do something she LOVES to do, 2) everyone got plenty of exercise, and 3) I only had to push 35 pounds of kid instead of 80 pounds of kid for those 2.8 miles. :-)  

Riding the carousel at the mall

The 5 of us went bowling last weekend, and Theodore bowled a spare on the first frame! Ha ha ha!

Storytime :-)

We went to a science show at the library, and Buttercup was chosen to be the first assistant :-)

Riding a hovercraft

Hanging around at the playground

Apparently they wore themselves out!

Oliver (in the middle) waiting for his turn at swim practice

Freestyle

Backstroke

Taking pictures of her big brother. She's so sweet!

Hey, it's an update!

Okay, I started this blog post about 4 weeks ago, and today I'm finally going to publish it. :-)

Here are some updates!

Oliver:
He's having a really good year. Just like when he started preschool and he gained confidence from that, kindergarten has been even more of a confidence-builder for him. He's just grown and matured so much in the previous 6 months! He's not as shy as he used to be, and most of the time he jumps into new and different situations with gusto instead of being too cautious to try.

He's doing really well at school. We've gotten 2 progress reports so far, and the 3rd progress report is due some time this week. The first progress report was very complimentary, and I think he was doing mostly "average" in everything, except for reading and math. The second progress report also had a good report, and he got mostly "high" marks in everything, including math. For reading, he is at almost a 3rd grade reading level! I think he's mostly quiet in class, and he seems to have quite a big group of friends! When I pick him up from his art class on Wednesdays, we pass a group of kindergartners on our way out, and just about all of the kids wave excitedly at him and some even jump up to hug him as he walks by. It's pretty funny! Another big thing about school is that he and another classmate were chosen to be the class representatives to talk to the other kindergarten classes about the Living and Learning Lab. He was bummed that he had to miss reading time that day, but he was pretty excited about talking to the other classes. :-)

Oliver is still swimming and doing very well at it! He finally mastered the breast stroke kick, which he had been working on for about 2 months, and he graduated from swim school a couple of weeks ago! Now he's on the wait list for a swim team. He also loves riding his bike on the trail with me while I run. We've only gone a handful of times, but it's always fun and it's nice to have him riding next to me to talk to while I run. :-)

Buttercup:
She is also having a good year. She loves her preschool class, and all of her friends. She has definitely become more of a girly girl recently, and I think it's all due to her classmates. It's fun buying dresses for her, but she definitely still is a tomboy. She always has a great attitude at school and her teachers speak so highly of her! She's their big helper and she is always ready and willing to do whatever comes next. Apparently she saves all of her feistiness for us, which is the way it should be! :-) One thing though, is that she really does want to be in kindergarten NOW. I finally realized that she thought that kindergarten was next year (as in starting this fall), and she was so disappointed when she finally realized that she has another whole year of preschool before she gets to start kindergarten. Poor kiddo!

Buttercup is doing great in swimming, as well! She's almost finished with her level, then she'll get to move up to station 1 of the level that Oliver just graduated from. She also started dance class a few weeks ago, and she's doing so well in the class. I love to watch her concentrating in the class and it seems to me like she is trying really hard to do exactly what she's supposed to be doing. When she was in gymnastics, she was always jumping all over the place when she was waiting for her turn, but in dance class she has so much more self-control, and it looks like this is a really good fit for her! She asked me one day how long she had to do dance, and I said that she needed to keep going for the next 2 months until after the recital is over, and then she could try another activity instead. She thought about it for a week, and one day she randomly said, "I think I want to do dance forever! Until I'm a grown up!" :-)

One last big thing about Buttercup is that she ran on the trail with me one morning a couple of weeks ago! She doesn't like riding in the stroller too much anymore, so one morning I said she could run next to me until she was tired, then get in the stroller, then get out, then get back in, etc. She ran about 1/4 mile at first without stopping, then she had a short break, then ran a little less than 1/4 mile. Then we stopped at the park to play for a while, and then she ran the rest of the way to the car without stopping, which was a little over a 1/2 mile! She was super proud of herself, and so am I. :-) And no, she didn't take a nap that day, ha ha.

Theodore:
Of course, Mr. T. is still an adorable stinker. :-) He is so funny and cute! He's been having a rough time with teething and some illnesses, so he's been pretty tempermental lately, but he's still really cute. :-) He parrots just about anything he hears, whether it's someone asking him to say something, or if he hears a part of a song, or a dog barking, or the sound of a wind chime, etc. He'll mimic anything!

He loves swimming, and playing outside, like most kids do, but one thing that we have definitely noticed about his personality is that Theodore loves music. He's the only one of our 3 kids who, as a baby, would sit quietly on my lap while I played the piano for 45+ minutes. Now, he doesn't sit that still when I play, but he still loves to listen! He frequently climbs up on the piano bench and plays his own little tunes. One funny thing is that whenever Oliver and Buttercup are playing in their room and want Theodore to come in, all they have to do is turn on their CD player, and he'll run in their room and start dancing. :-)  

We had a big answer to prayer a couple of weeks ago! We went to see Theodore's dermatologist to talk about the lasering process of getting his birthmark lightened. A friend of mine had her son's birthmark lasered when he was a few months old, because her dermatologist told her that the younger the skin was, the more effective the laser treatments would be. And Theodore's ophthalmologist told me that the procedure would be much more invasive if we chose to wait until he was a teenager or older. So, Dennis and I had decided about a year ago to start Theodore's laser treatments when he was 2 years old. (I couldn't imagine (and still can't imagine) choosing to do that to an infant!!) We were both really stressed out about it. Then we talked to the dermatologist, and told him that we didn't really want to have the procedure done, and he told us that basically between now and 10 years from now, the skin effected by the birthmark will only be marginally thicker, so we do not have to get it done now if we don't want to! We can just wait and see what Theodore wants to do about it when he's 5 or 6 (or older) and let him make his own decision! We were (are!) so delighted to hear that. I love Theodore's birthmark and I can't imagine seeing him without it, and I'm so happy that he doesn't have to go through the pain of laser treatments without knowing why it's happening. Yay!!!


Here are some cute pictures of Oliver doing one of his favorite things, and Buttercup twirling in her dance outfit. :-) (Sorry, no new pictures of Theodore!)

Austin Half Marathon race report

Earlier this year, I had plans to run the 3M half marathon for the 4th time. It's a mostly downhill race and very fast, and I trained hard for 3 months to run it at 1:31 pace. This was the most consistent that I've ever been in following a training plan, and while I skipped some of the easy runs, I did almost all of the hard runs (3 per week) and long runs (1 per week). (Without getting an injury! Yay!!)  

And then, the week before the race, I came down with the flu (even though I'd gotten a flu shot!) and I was so exhausted that I could barely walk or stand up for longer than 30 minutes at a time on race day, much less run. ARRRGH. I was pretty disappointed (okay, very disappointed) for a couple of days, and then I got over it and signed up for the Austin half marathon, which was about 4 weeks later.  The only difference is that the 3M course is flat and gradual downhill, with one short but steep hill, and the Austin half marathon course is hilly the entire way! I knew I wasn't going to get a personal best, but I was going to try to do my best anyway. My goal was to finish under 1:40, but aim for 1:37 or faster. 

The morning of the race, I drove downtown with a friend who was also running the half marathon -- which was awesome since she used to work downtown and knew exactly where to park and where the race started. We parked away from the crowds, and only a couple of blocks from the finish line, so we'd be able to leave downtown before the crowds. We walked to the start line and lined up just in time for the national anthem.

The race started and the hills started almost right away! The first 1/2 mile or so was flat, but then the first couple of short, rolling hills started, and it was all downhill (figuratively, not literally!) from there. :-) I took the first few miles very easy since I knew that miles 3-6 were one big uphill climb and I wanted to make it to the 10k mark with some energy left for the last half of the race. Thankfully, miles 6-9 were mostly downhill! I don't know what my splits were since I missed some of the mile markers, I do remember that I went through the first 5k around 23 minutes and my time at mile 10 was 1:16:xx.

It was around mile 10 that the half marathoners split off from the marathoners, and I was ecstatic that the big hills were over (or so I thought!) and only had another 5k left to run. But then, if I'd looked at the entire elevation map of the course (which I didn't!) I would have noticed the several short, but steep hills clustered between miles 10-12. The hill at mile 11.5 or so was particularly steep and my body gave me the choice of 1) walking or 2) passing out. I chose the former. ;-)

I finished the race in 1:41:49, which is 7:44 pace. I didn't come close to my 3M goal of 1:31, but I did run the flat parts of the race around 7:00-7:10 pace, even at the end when my legs were just done.

Next up, a grassy, rolling hill 5k, and a flat 10 mile race. No more big hills for me any time soon! 

Weekend photos

Some day I'm going to do a "real" update post instead of just putting up pictures from my phone. It's been busy over here! :-) But in the meantime, here are more pictures from my phone, from this past weekend.

Theodore has been eating cereal from a bowl, like a big boy!

We went to a birthday party on Saturday and the kids got their faces painted. Buttercup = reindeer, Oliver = black widow. :-)

And here's a cute picture of Buttercup and Oliver's friend's little sister at the party.

Father-Daughter Dance!

Buttercup's preschool hosted a Father-Daughter dance on Friday, and surprisingly, Buttercup decided she wanted to go! At first she said no, but then I told her that her daddy would take her out to eat -- at the restaurant of her choice -- before the dance, and she changed her mind pretty quickly, ha ha.   

She knew immediately which tights and shoes she wanted to wear (pink polka dotted tights and sparkly purple shoes), but it took her a couple of days to decide on a dress. She ended up choosing a short-sleeved dress with a twirly red skirt. :-)  

I asked her if I could take a picture of her before they left for the dance, and she very happily posed and posed (and posed and posed) for pictures. She cracks me up!

This one is hilarious!!

As soon as Dennis got home from work, she ran outside and told him it was time to go! She was so excited and they had a great time!

 

Wow.

I remember being at this very park about 4 years ago, with a barely 2 year old Oliver and a newborn Buttercup. I was wearing the baby and chasing the toddler around, feeling frazzled while pushing him on the swings and just trying to entertain him the best I could with a baby attached to me.

I remember feeling more than a tad jealous of this other mom, who was sitting on a park bench reading a book while her 2 (older) kids played with each other on the playscape. I thought, "When is THAT going to happen?!!"

Today! It happened today. :-)