2009 Race for the Cure

This morning, we headed to downtown Toledo so I could run in the 2009 Northwest Ohio Race for the Cure. All my boys came to cheer me on and it was so encouraging to have them there. It's been almost 2 years since I last ran in a race and this was a great one to get back into it. Even though I can't really stand big crowds, it's impossible to not get energized and excited when you're surrounded by Race for the Cure participants. I ran with my friend, Jen, and we had a great time swerving in and out of the crowd. I'm still amazed at how dense the pack remained throughout the entire race. It's unbelievable how many people have been affected by breast cancer. I love the passion for the cause.

ETA: My official time was 27 minutes, 53 seconds. My pace was 8 minutes, 59 seconds/mile. Sub 9-minute miles! (Hey - I'll take it.) :)

Jen and I before the race.

The boys before the race.

The boys and I before the race.

Jen and I waiting in the crowd as the last 5 minutes ticked by before the race.

Finishing strong - the last 1/10 mile.

Not sure what our official time was yet, but we know we hit our goal of under 30 minutes.

A Visit to Grammy and Poppy's and a Side Trip to Plymouth Orchards

On Saturday, the boys and I headed up to Ann Arbor to visit Grammy and Poppy. Colin was very excited and woke up around 6 AM, and immediately wanted to leave. Much to his chagrin, he had to wait for the rest of us to get ready. Once we were finally on the road he showed us that he has officially started the dreaded "Are we there yet?" mantra. His version, however, goes something like "Me see Poppy's house? Mama see Poppy's house?" It was cute the first 5 times.

While we were in the area, we also made an impromptu trip to Plymouth Orchards and got the requisite pictures of the kids posing as the worm in the apple. Now, Chris and I had just been discussing how we felt that as much as we love MacQueen's Orchard, we wished it was a little more like Plymouth's because Plymouth's has more for the kids to do such as the big cutouts to stand behind for pictures and the farm animals. Apparently, we were mistaken. According to Colin, Juice-Man trumps all. The kid was so disappointed that he couldn't see Juice-Man and he kept trying to dodge in every open door he saw to try and find someone making juice. We tried to explain that we only see Juice-Man at our orchard at home, and we tried to distract with the animals, but he wanted nothing to do with it. Thankfully, he still enjoyed his donut and cider. Which brings me to an observation I made about the two orchards. I've decided that Plymouth definitely has the better cider, but MacQueen's donuts win, hands-down. Yum!

Raspberries Ready, My Little Thug, and a Cute Baby

As I mentioned in a previous post, one of Colin's favorite activities is to go in our backyard on a daily basis and pick raspberries from our little bush. Every day (usually several times each day) he looks out the window, sees more red berries and announces "raspberries ready!". I truly do appreciate the child's enthusiasm to eat and can't help but indulge his obsession. On one such day, I had Eli outside with us and couldn't resist taking some shots of the boys enjoying one of the last summery days of the year.

Another fascination Colin has is with a particular red stocking cap we have. Even though he usually argues with me when it comes to wearing hats in the summer, he will go and find this stocking cap and choose to wear it as an accessory for the day. Apparently the kid is willing to forgo comfort for fashion - the temperature was around 80 when he wore it to the zoo.

Lastly, I wanted to post some cute pictures of Eli in his exersaucer. I love that he's such a happy baby.

Colin's Music/Movement Class

Before Eli was born, I started enrolling Colin in a gymnastics class at the YMCA. He was a little tentative at first but ended up loving it. After Eli was born, we finished out the class he was currently enrolled in and didn't bother signing him up for anything for the summer because I figured he'd be too busy playing outside to be interested. Well, with Fall arriving, I decided to enroll him in another class at the Y. I also felt like it would be a great opportunity for he and I to spend some one-on-one time together. Since they don't have a kids zone at the Sports Zone where Colin took his gymnastics classes, I decided to enroll him in something music-related instead of leaving Eli 1/4 mile down the street at the Fort Meigs Y kid zone or carrying him around in the Baby Bjorn. So, for the past 3 weeks, Colin and I have been attending a music and movement class on Thursdays at the JCC. I have to admit, I had high hopes for the class because Colin *loves* music and we had such a good experience in gymnastics. Unfortunately, the class isn't as great as *I* had hoped it would be, but at least Colin looks forward to attending every week. Of course, that could also have something to do with the fact that his buddy, Sam, also attends the class. The pictures below are from last week's class which Colin especially enjoyed because they played Playhouse Disney songs for the entire class. Strangely, the more Colin enjoys the music, the less he listens to the teacher and the more he prefers to dance on his own or run around the studio. Hmm, maybe I need to rethink that gymnastics class.

The class starts with some stretching.

Next, the kids were given a balloon and a paper plate and were told to bounce the balloons on the plate, down the mat. Um, I don't think I have the coordination to do that let alone a 2 year old...


Next, the kids play follow-the-leader and pretend to be different animals. Colin has actually gotten a little better at this over the last couple weeks.


Now the fun begins - Imagination Movers songs!!


Getting stamps at the end of class is one of Colin's favorite parts. He really looked forward to this in gymnastics too.


Hurrying through the gymnasium to pick up Eli.

Eli is 5 Months Old

Eli is 5 months old today and continues to grow into an even bigger chunk. On our scale at home he weighs 17.6 pounds and is 26 3/4 inches long.

Eli is such a sweetheart and has a great sense of humor. It is so easy to make him laugh - just make a funny face or a silly noise and his little chuckle will turn into a deep, belly laugh. He's also very ticklish, especially on his belly, his feet and along his rib cage, so we hear lots of laughing coming from him most of the day. He's continuing to eat rice cereal in the evening, but his sleeping is still not that great. He has a hard time settling down at night and is usually waking up twice to eat and sometimes thinks it's OK to start the day at 5:00 AM. We're playing with his napping and still haven't quite figured out the best schedule for him. But we're still keeping at it.

Eli loves attention and would prefer to be held all day than explore on his own. Although, there are times when he's very content playing in his exersaucer or on his activity mat and he seems to enjoy facing forward in the stroller instead of looking up in his infant car seat. This is especially true if Colin is around to help entertain him. Sometimes, if Eli is having a fussy moment and Chris and I run out of tricks to soothe him, we just ask Colin to come over and make him laugh and if Colin agrees, he's always successful. Yay brothers!

Colin is 2 1/2...

... and 3 days today. Since I'm doing monthly updates of Eli and Colin is always there to help me take pictures, I thought I'd do a post for him to document him being 2 1/2. He had a lot of fun picking out who he wanted to pose with. He had to have the classic Bananas but couldn't leave behind his side-kick, Blue. He was funny because he wanted to do "normal" pictures and silly pictures.

Colin is a lot of fun at 2 1/2. He's learning new words everyday and often surprises Chris and I with the new phrases that come out of his mouth. Some of his cutest phrases are "no way", "gotcha!", and " 'sup dude". He's unfortunately a bit addicted to the TV and loves to reenact the shows he watches. His favorite show right now is The Imagination Movers on Disney. Everyday he pretends to be one of the Movers and let's the rest of us know who we are for the day. He asks us to sing the songs all day long too and we are all dressing up as Imagination Movers for Halloween this year. He has also become a back-seat driver and loves to tell me to slow down or stop and go at red and green lights. When in the car, he is constantly asking me to play "Linger" by the Cranberries. I used to like that song... Some of Colin's favorite things to do include mowing (preferably with Daddy), playing Imagination Movers, picking and eating raspberries from our bush, playing with his friends, and reading/going to the library. Another funny thing about Colin is his propensity to be a ladies man. I workout at the Y a couple times a week and leave the kids at the Kid Zone. Since I like to workout with friends, there's usually at least one of Colin's friends in the KZ at the same time. However, on those occasions when none of Colin's friends are there, I often return from my workout to find Colin playing with older girls. Never boys and never younger kids, always older girls. They love him!

It's amazing how quickly he continues to change and grow up. He's such a great helper and so much fun to be around (unless he doesn't nap ;) ). I measured him at home today and he's grown over 1 1/2 inches since he turned two and is now 37 1/4 inches and at home he weighs 30.2 pounds. We love you, Colin!

A Trip to the Apple Orchard

The Ring Fam made our first trip of the season to the apple orchard today. Mmm, early-season cider and fresh-baked donuts. Yum!! The highlight of our visit, at least for Colin, was watching the cider being made. Colin has officially dubbed the guy working the press as "juice-man" and proceeded to play "juice-man" for the majority of the afternoon. The only thing that could drag him away from watching juice-man was the sugary nectar produced by his hard work. We're looking forward to many return visits this Fall.

Chris and Colin watching "juice-man".

Colin sad that I dragged him away from "juice-man" to take a picture with me.

Cheers!

All smiles once given the sugary goodness of the juice-man's nectar.

Mmm, donuts!

Eli's excited about his first trip to the apple orchard.

Lucky Daddy got a nice shot with both boys. ;p

Double Appointments

Colin and Eli both had doctor appointments this week that I thought worth mentioning. Crazily, they were both on Wednesday - and when I say crazily I mean I was crazy for scheduling two doctor appointments for the same day.

Colin went in to see the pediatrician for a 6 month weight check. When he went in for his two year well-child appointment, he had actually lost almost a pound since his 18 month appointment. The doc really wasn't concerned and the only thing he suggested was keeping him on whole milk a little while longer. Well, back in April I changed him over to skim and he still managed to gain 6 pounds in the last 6 months. It shouldn't really be surprising if you've even seen the kid eat. The doctor said the weight loss was probably just a fluke and he obviously made up for it since then.

Eli went in for his 2 week follow-up with his surgeon and is healing nicely. More importantly we have officially started the dilations (aka, anal probe; aka, the violation). At the appointment, the surgeon started him off at 6 mm and worked his way up to 10 mm, at which point Eli started crying. He then had me practice on Eli under his supervision so I knew what I was doing. I appreciated the hands-on tutorial but didn't really think it was fair that I had to probe the baby after he was already crying. We're currently using the 8 mm dilator and thankfully, after a couple days, Eli doesn't seem to mind the dilations that much anymore. Although, that might change when we move up a size. Next week we will move up to 9 mm. The following week we go back to the office for another follow-up and will move up to 10 mm. We'll continue to go up 1 mm per week until we reach 12 or 13. We'll go to see the surgeons every one to two weeks until then. At that point, they can schedule his final surgery. However, this surgeon wants the urologist to do his surgery first so the perineal area can stay cleaner while healing. Makes sense, but we can't even get in to see that doc until mid-October. At this point, we're considering changing urologists and will be looking into that more next week. However, if the new urologist can't see us before mid-October, we might just stick with the old guy so Eli can get everything over with.

Here's some cute pics of the kids. They're completely unrelated to the post so please don't think that's a look of joy on Eli's face while getting the anal probe. ;)