Ethan + Cats + Laser Pointer

I can't tell which is more fun for him - watching the cats or playing with the light.

Crawling!

Of course, he didn't do it as clearly when we were filming, but in true twitchy wind-up toy fashion, Ethan is officially mobile.

Eeeeek! Demon Baby!!!

Click on the pic for full effect. Daddy lookes nervous for a reason...

The most amazing thing happened this morning. I opened the garage door to leave for work, and get this: discovered it was raining. This means that although rain was falling OUTSIDE, it did not drip, drip, drip into the bedroom and wake us up. I'll have Derek feel the ceiling once he is up and running for the day, and if it is dry, we'll actually be able to replace the moldy, stained drywall above the bed and have a decent looking bedroom for the first time in the three years we lived in the house.

Speaking of three years, three years ago yesterday, I took an impromptu half day off of work to hop down to the county courthouse to get hitched. It has been a really wonderful three years!

Finally, but certainly not of least importance, Ethan seems to be getting over his very first sick experience. He still got up a few times last night, but he wasn't too sad when he did, and he was ok sleepig in his own bed. I am keeping my fingers crossed for a full recovery by tomorrow.

How in the world did we get by when Derek and I both were out of the house during the day? Since we have been back from vacation, we have had:

*A fella come to fix the microwave
*A plumber
*The chimney guy to (hopefully) fix the leak in the ceiling in the bedroom
*The HVAC folks to repair the air cleaner that we got when we replaced the AC in May
*A whole team of dudes replacing our roof today

We're broke now. Really.

My Favorite Rock Stars

Yesterday afternoon was the first concert of the rock band Royal Tragedy. You can see my nephews Brian (13) on lead guitar and Andrew (10) on bass and vocals. It was a fabulous concert, but the video and audio quality sucks because it was on my little point and shoot camera.

Can't wait until the next concert!

I hate doing my physical therapy. It is boring, repetitive, and makes me nauseous. It really does work though. Sometime this weekend I am going to have Derek do the exercises and tell me what he sees/feels while he is doing them so I can know what I am striving for. Since my inner ear is so out of whack, I can't tell what is normal and what isn't. It is probably funny to watch me do these exercises, since they're not the standard PT that you think of when you're working on a limb or back injury. Instead they work on my balance and visual perception.

There are 3 components of balance - the visual, the proprioception (what you physically feel - your feet against the ground, for ex.) and the inner ear. If 2 of these are intact, you can still function ok. In my case, my vision and feeling are fine, but my inner ear is shot. The balance portion of my exercises has me disable the 2 working mechanisms and deal with the one that doesn't work. I take 2 pillows, stack them and stand on them (to disorient my feet/ground connection), close my eyes, move my head back and forth, while marching in place. It is HARD!!! If I didn't do this in a door frame where I hit something when I am falling, I would be on the ground in seconds because without my eyes or my feet to tell me, I cannot sense when I am falling.

I also have to do visual perception exercises. These train my inner ear to be in sync again with my eyes. I take a marker, fix my gaze on it, and then move my head back and forth. At this point, I can read the word "Crayola" about a third of the time when my head is moving. This represents big progress, as the inability to visually focus when my head is moving has been one of the most debilitating parts of this (checking blind spots, distinguishing mailboxes from garbage cans from people during a run).

New Approach

Running has sucked for the last year. My speed and endurance have gone downhill significantly and continuously. Whenever I get motivated, the less-than-stellar reality of my current running abilities discourages me. I haven't really, truly enjoyed running for a long time now. After remaining too long in the try/fail/try again cycle, I am now trying something different.

I know that the issue at the heart of my lousy running is my ongoing vertigo. I did the physical therapy thing in December and January, but quit after a while because progress was slow, and real life got so busy that I just kind of forgot about it. If I want to get better with the running, I have to fix the vertigo. As Becky and Alecia know, Dad's approach to any physical ailment, (which has somehow sadly become my attitude as well) was to keep going, push through the pain, and it will get better. In this case (and maybe some others - just ask Mom!) Dad was wrong.

The new plan is to run a little and do the PT a lot. I am committing to 2-3X day with the exercises. As the vertigo gets slowly better, my running will get better, and then my attitude toward running will improve as well. Once I can actually run a mile in less than 11 minutes (hell, I'd settle for less than 14 minutes right now!) I'll feel comfortable stopping the PT.

When it rains, it pours (onto my husband at 4 in the morning)

We got the first good rain in months very early this morning. All in all, that is a wonderful thing, except for the fact that we have a damned roof leak that the three different fixer-folks we have called out have failed to fix. A water stain on the ceiling does not try my patience nearly as much as the water dripping on Derek this morning did. Why is this so difficult?

So after the non-fixes by Kirstan, Chimney Dude, and Susie's boss, I called the roofers we use here at work for our buildings. No deal -they don't repair unless it is a roof that they installed. I hate to just call someone out of the yellow pages, but my list of trusted repair-people has been exhausted, and you can see where that trust has gotten us - an ineffective job by two companies and one that the third company refused to complete, even though they at least think they know what is wrong...

So much for customer service.

Vacation Photos

We now have our vacation photos posted to the Flickr site. To see them, click here.

I think I may go out and get a reflective vest. I am going to sit and think on it a while to determine if it is overkill. I have reflective stripes on my shoes, a reflective armband that I carry my ID and key in, and a blinky LED that I wear on my iPod armband.

This morning, somebody wasn't paying attention and very nearly ran me down. He was speeding and turned in to the wrong lane. He was being lazy - it was 6 in the morning and dark. He just didn't expect anyone to be there, I am sure. I was less than 10 feet away from the sidewalk on the left side of the street. He stopped 3 feet short of me and I had nowhere to go. He was in the wrong, clearly, but when you're roadkill, it doesn't really matter who was right.

What scared me was that I wasn't as visible as I could have been. Todd the iPod wasn't with me so I didn't have my flashy LED. Instead of a white t-shirt, I was wearing grey. My shorts have white stripes down the side, but the shirt sleeve was covering up the reflective armband.

Am I overreacting by adding more to what I am already doing? Maybe if I go back to white shirts only and make sure that all of my other precautions are in place...

At least if he had smooshed me, I had my ID and they would have known who I was and who to call...

We're back from vacation, and hopefully back into the routine. Ethan tolerated the travel and time away pretty well, although he was fussy the last couple of days there. I think he was suffering from a lack of sleep, as he perked up after a full day and night of sleep on the way home. I wouldn't sleep well in a pack-and-play either, even if I was that small. We saw dolphins, walked on the beach, swam, visited with family, and had a great relaxing time. It is good to be back home to our bed and the lonely cats.

Ethan now has his second tooth and does a couple of new tricks. He plays peekaboo by himself now and will also make a kissyface. He doesn't always do them on demand, but he clearly does them intentionally. Too cute.

Running just didn't happen while we were gone. The beach wasn't runnable, and I was just plain lazy. We were active every day - walking, swimming, exploring the area, just no running. I should still be fine for the half mary in October. Long runs start back up this weekend. In the meantime, I have made the mental switch from running to eat to eating to run. It is the state of mind I have been trying to get to for months!

Pics to come once we get them moved around and consolidated.

Cute Ethan pic of the day - this is him in the hat that his oldest cousin Brian got him in Boston last month. Not only is it cute, it is apparently tasty too. He has learned to take it off to chew on it.

Today's run was a failure - I completed 1.5 of 5.25 miles planned, and then the legs just gave up on me. I'll make it up on the beach Sat and/or Sun. Tomorrow I have my long(ish) run of 7 miles planned for before we leave.

I am now in week 2 of training for the louisville half marathon. I am still poky, but I am also looking at my second week in a row of 20+ miles. That is very good news for me. I feel better in so many ways when I am over that bump. Since we're leaving Friday morning on vacation, that means that I am squeezing 17 of those miles into 3 consecutive days, but I figure it will be worth it for 2 reasons. First, hell- it is vacation! Second, I'll be running on the beach next week, hopefully at sunrise if the tide allows, so a little PITA now will be repaid by the candy runs next week.

I am looking forward to taking Ethan to the beach. Seeing his cousin Jonah's (that is Jonah in the pic above with Ethan) beach pics from last month makes me feel pretty confident that he won't eat too much sand or get too crispy burned. He travels well, and will have 2 of us there to trade him off as needed, so it will be a good vacation. His second tooth has been struggling to come in. It has been this big grody and painful looking blood blister for a couple weeks.

We took him to the zoo last Friday and he had a good time. He didn't notice the non-human critters there, but really loved watching all of the kids. he really loved the cement turtle, as you can see.

It has been over a year since I did my last half mary. I think I am ready to train for another one. There are 8 weeks or so between now and the 21st of October. All I have to do is add back my weekend long run to my existing running schedule. I can do this.

Maybe next year I'll do the full...

Here are some of the photos we're sending to Ethan's birthmother this month. I would like to point out the copious amount of drool on the exersaucer picture and note that Rosie's eyes are actually green and not demonic red. The red eye repair function doesn't work on cats. It also, incidentally, doesn't work very well on Ethan's deep brown eyes either. That is another story altogether.

Ethan is 5 months old today. I am amazed by how much his personality has come out in the past month or so. He is a happy, and giggly and busy all the time. I put together pics to send to his birthmother last night, as we do every month, and will try and remember to post some new ones in the next day or so.

Last night Mr. UPS dropped off the new running shoes that I ordered from shoes.com. Their warehouse is in Louisville. I was going to have them shipped to work, but that would mean that they would charge sales tax, so to save 6 bucks, I had them shipped home instead. Interestingly, the package was sent from Louisville to Indianapolis, and then back down south to Jeffersonville. Distribution logistics are tough to understand.

Either way, it is great to:
a)run in new shoes
b)have decent looking regular tennies now (my former running shoes)
c)demote my former regular tennies to yardwork shoes (the pair before that)
d)pitch my falling apart crappy yardwork shoes (three pairs removed)

Being a runner is complicated.

Aargh!

I finished coursework for the MSSF degree in May. I still haven't received my degree in the mail. I e-mailed the department in June and she said to wait another month. I e-mailed the department yesterday and received a reply back this morning that says that the registrar deals with this, not the MBA/MSSF department.

This morning, I called the registrar's office. There is no notation in my transcript that I have been awarded the degree. She said I should talk to the department. I told her the department told me to talk to her. In that case, she said, the person I needed to talk to was away at a doctor appointment. I was promised a call-back this afternoon.

In the meantime, the registrar person called the department person and determined that they did not have an application for graduation on file. I called the MBA/MSSF person and told her that we had e-mailed about my graduation application on 1/29/07. She found a copy of the e-mail. Sometimes it is good to be anal about keeping e-mails. She will research and call me back soon.

Everyone I have spoken to has been kind, helpful and gracious. I am frustrated, but remaining patient. I have 2 e-mails from 2 heads of the department saying that my course schedule would indeed fulfill the requirements for the degree. Now I just have to wait.

Guess who got his first official tooth Friday! I don't have any pics yet, but it looks like the next-door tooth will be coming in within days as well. He isn't sharp yet, so I continue to let him gnaw on my jawbone as he loves to do.

I am amazed at how much solid food Ethan eats. He will eat a whole container of baby food in addition to 2 oz. of formula blended in with rice. He seems to have enjoyed every food he has tried so far, even the grody ones like peas and carrots. He is even getting the hang of opening his mouth for the spoon. No shoving and prying is required.

Every day for the past week, I have expected to find Ethan sporting a new tooth or teeth, but we're still not there yet. He has the low grade fever, the slobbering, the swollen gums, the fussiness - all the classic symptoms. You can see where they're just straining against his little gums, but they have yet to poke through. Last night, he was bleeding a little bit from one side and you could see where the gum had split a little, but still there was no telltale white poking through. This morning, that side was actually less swollen that the next-door tooth-to-be. I feel bad for the poor little guy - I hope he can get it over with soon so his little mouth won't be so sore...