·:[ The Healthy Mom ]:·
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On Thursday, I took the boys over to Grandma & Grandpa’s for lunch as usual. Then Doug’s mom called to say that Zevan was complaining of a tummy ache and that his stomach was really hard. I figured he was gassy and suggested she do bicycles with his legs to help him out. Some time later she called me back and said that he threw up twice and had 2 dirty diapers and feels much better now.

Skip to later that evening, I’m at the climbing gym bouldering on my own (May’s out of town), and when I finish up to get ready to meet the girls at Marigolds, my phone rings. It’s Doug.

“Zander just threw up all over the place.” He asked for laundry advice, and said that Zander was losing it. I did not want to come home just for that. I suggested he put Zander in front of a movie or something.

When I got home Zander was asleep. He threw up two more times in the night. Both required linen changes. It’s so sad to see him kneeling in front of the toilet, throwing up. He said, “I wish no one ever had to get sick.”

Poor little guys.

I’m so inconsistent. I did not work out at all yesterday. In fact, I sat on my butt most of the day working.

In fact, I was up until 3:30 AM last night/this morning working.

I finished up some work on Dani’s Baby Cotton Bottoms website around 2 AM. Then, when I scanned my inbox, I realized I forgot that Previews comes out today and I needed to take down the old Previews and process the new pages.

Sigh.

About 5 minutes into that, Zevan came out of his room crying hysterically, “Mom, I can’t find my mowf”

What?

Sob. Sob. “I can’t find my mowf”

You can’t find your mouth?

“No!” Sob. Sob. “I can’t find my mouse.”

Uh. Okay. So on my lap he sat, and I worked with him there. Until 3:30 AM.

Ugh.

Did I mention that the next day is my run day? And that I am hosting the playdate? And I have a meeting with a merchant account processor afterwards? And the house is kind of a wreck?

Here’s my morning:
7:30 AM - wake up, but stay in bed with the Zboys
8:15 AM - finally roll out of bed and call my dad to see if he can take the boys to breakfast so I can run
8:50 AM - my dad shows up
9:00 AM - I go for a 30 minute run. Up and down hills. Down Mesa Rd to Uintah and back up. Then down 19th (killer hill) and back up. Then on Mesa View Court, in a hilly version of running suicides until I hit the 30 minute mark. Whew!

10:10 Drove down to King Soopers to pick up a veggie tray.
10:27 AM Vacuumed the main level and wiped down all the bathroom surfaces
10:35 AM Megan and the girls came while I was showering, and I was greeted by a “Hi Miss Maida” from sweet little Anna’s voice.

Let the playdate begin. Roll call! Megan, Silvia, Anna, Jamie, Avery, Jennifer, Bradley, Joy, Dominic, Paige, Matt, Max, Chase, Charlotte, Candy, Misha, Lindsey, Diego, Kristi, Kylie, Kaitlynn, Julie, Zoe… I *think* that’s everyone.

1:30 - 1:45 PM. Most everyone left.

Diego, Kylie, Misha, Zander and Zevan got a little trampoline time.

One by one, the kids started melting down.

2:45 PM everyone went home. The boys even went down for a nap!
3:15 PM My dad showed up to pick up the boys, but they were sleeping. So I worked on scanning and fixing an old photo for him
4:15 PM The person I was meeting had not shown up, so I called him. He forgot! So he said he’d come down now
4:25 PM We have a good meeting. The boys wake up and we finish up.

Doug’s going out with the other dads tonight, and I think I’m going to take the boys out to eat. I’ll call my dad. And Tiffany. And Candy. And Megan. See who wants to join us

Start at Cog Railway, up Barr Trail from trailhead and down through actual route

Monument Valley Park run… pushing Zevan in the double jogging stroller

I drove up to Castlerock today to meet Berni so I could get the nebulizer that we borrowed from Wendy for Ash.

While I was there, we went bra shopping, and I got measured by the fitter. She measured me at a 36 A. I had a 36 nearlyB on, and it was too small. She gave me different styles. And after a while it became apparent that my left breast was noticeably larger than my right one. Great. So I’m between band sizes (actually 35), and one cup needs to be bigger than the other. Wonderful.

I did find a bra that fit, so I bought 4 of them! My sister found some, too.

After that ordeal, we comforted ourselves with caramel apples from Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory before we had to head home.

Now I need to get some work done before the boys get home, and before I head to the climbing gym tonight!

My sciatic pain kept me from running this morning. I brought Zevan over to my parents house and did the BWO+ workout.

Then I had a client meeting for Tillie Designs at Starbucks with Tracy and Tiffany.

I raced over to pick up Zander from school after the meeting, and then picked up Zevan so we could grab lunch at Wendy’s. As we were driving over, both boys decided they wanted to eat at the park.

Zander had one of his “I don’t want to eat anything” pouting, near tantrums because he saw KFC from Wendy’s and “changed his mind.” UGH. I still bought his lunch from Wendy’s. I told him that he could just sit in the car while Zevan and I had a picnic lunch at the park. He continued to complain and pout. I ignored him.

After we hit the drive through and I ran inside to see if anyone from the mom’s group was there. I didn’t, so we just went on to the park.

As we unloaded, Zander was still pouting, so I took the picnic blanket, sand toys and food to the park with Zevan. I told Zander he could join us if he changed his mind and decided to be cooperative. About 5 minutes into my picnic with Zevan, Zander came out and proclaimed “I changed my mind.” Zevan and I gave him a hearty welcome to sit and eat with us.

The stage coach returned to the playground, a little bit sleeker (less to stick out, but a little less easier to climb on the outside), with green paint on the body and an odd choice of orange for the wheels. The Park & Rec guys who fixed it up were out there, taking pictures of themselves in it. Sweet. The kids were all over it after lunch. Zander missed some of the parts they took off - so did I because it gave him less surfaces to put his feet on to climb down.

Otherwise, it was the hit that it was before. It was nice to have that back.

I got a call on my cell phone from Matt and Lara. They were in town during their Colorado visit (they live in PA now) and wanted to see us if we were around. So I asked them to meet us at the park.

The day went on as usual, until the incident. Apparently, Elijah went down the notoriously “fast slide” head first. All I saw was Shanyn carrying him, blood everywhere, coming from near his mouth, all over her shirt. I grabbed a box of tissues from my car, another mom pulled out baby wipes and Wendy had an ice pack in her car. It was frantic, but controlled. After a few minutes, the bleeding stopped, and after about 20 minutes, Elijah was back up and playing with his friends. Pretty amazing.

Zander and Zevan decided they wanted to go home earlier than usual. I didn’t want to go, so I stalled a bit. Zander was gathering up his sand toys, and wanted to head to the car. So odd. Then he convinced Zevan that Zevan wanted to leave as well. Matt & Lara weren’t there yet, so I stalled some more.

When they arrived, we were packed and ready to go, and then the boys decided they wanted to stay! UGH. So, I redirected them home by asking them if they wanted to show Uncle Matt their trampoline. Of course they did.

We had some trampoline time and hang out time. It was nice. After they left, I tried to work, but I couldn’t keep my eyes open. My allergies are really bad lately (particularly bad pollen count lately), and it’s wiping me out. We all laid down on the big bed to rest. We fell asleep for a long time - almost 2 hours.

So I got this weird pain in my left butt cheek while working today, and didn’t think much of it. Pretty much a dull ache, weird twinge kind of thing all day.

After I got back from driving to Chipotle, I sat down to eat. When I got up, I got a shooting pain from my butt all the way down my leg. Any time I put weight on my left leg, the pain was unbearable. YOWCH!

I figure it’s some kind of sciatic thing, so I did the usual stretches, but it’s not feeling any better. It’s fine when I’m sitting down, but if I try to stand or walk, it really hurts. WAH! I was going to run early tomorrow morning before my client meeting, but I don’t think I can do it now.

So, I took Zevan to ArtSports today and he wouldn’t get on the floor. So I went with him and he wouldn’t sit with the other kids. He wouldn’t do any tumbling, and he wouldn’t get on the trampoline. He didn’t even go with them to get a drink from the water fountain.

Sigh.

After 30 minutes, we left.

It was VERY disappointing. I am not paying for an 8 week session if it’s going to be 8 weeks of this.

We did our 2nd annual Carpio family trip to Summit County this past weekend.

On Thursday afternoon, everyone arrived - Fran, Kimmie, Tyler & Ash, Jon and Hal, Lea & Halea.

After bringing everything in, each went off to do their things: buy snowboarding equipment, and German chocolate for Tyler.

They were all gone for a while, so I went to my usual climbing night with May, and met up with the girls at VI for a piece of pie before my dinner.

I came home to a full house, most everyone had finished eating and were hanging around the table talking.

The Strongs and Jon stayed with us, and Fran and his family spent the night at my mom and dad’s house.

In the morning, the snowboarders left early, and the rest of us slept in a bit, and planned to have lunch before heading out of town.

Then my dad called me in a panic. “The dogs!” he says.

“What about them?” I ask, thinking the worst - they ran away, etc.

“Who’s going to feed them and let them out?”

Sigh. Doug’s parents are out of town. I wrack my brain to figure out who is close by and likes dogs. I call Dani. She is happy to help, despite the fact that she is busy with her life and her new business. Whew!

We were ready to head out, but my parents weren’t. Then, they said that we needed to pick up Ash to ride with us. So, we made one more stop before lunch to pick him up.

My parents took their car, and we picked up Ash and took the 3 boys to lunch at McDonalds in town. We looked like a family of 5 - with 3 young boys 4, 3 and 2. I can’t even imagine that!

The drive went well. The boys watched a movie. Near the end, Ash started getting fussy, but it was manageable.

We rented the same house we stayed in last year. When I got there, I called Fran for the entry code, and entered it on the garage door opener, but it didn’t work. I called Candy, and she did an internet search for me to find the rental property manager’s phone number. He gave me the same code that Fran did. It was then that I noticed the keypad on the front door. I entered the code, and it worked! We were in like Flynn!

Friday night, Doug and I sat in the hot tub by ourselves. It was awesome to relax there.

On Saturday morning the four of us went sledding in Breckenridge, along with Halea and Lea. After some searching, I found the plastic sleds that came with the property. Then we stopped in town and picked up 2 more sleds/slides on clearance.

The sledding was fun. Except for one run where this dog, who was supposed to be in the dog park, went chasing after Zander and Doug down the hill, nipping at them all the way. Zander was very upset by it, and declared he didn’t want to sled anymore. Stupid dog owner.

After a while, Zander agreed to do a few runs, if he could go to the playground afterwards. For my last run, I took one of the fast sleds from the very top of the hill. That was exhilarating!

We had lunch at Extreme Pizza in Breckenridge, which was very yummy. Then I got a call from Dani telling me that the dogs wouldn’t let her near the house. They are growling at her and won’t let her in. Great. I call Georgiana and Tom, but they aren’t home. I’m guessing they are out of town as well. I leave messages with them and with Doug’s mom and dad, to see if they will check in on the dogs when they get back in town. Dani says she’ll trying throwing food over the fence so they don’t starve.

Saturday night we went out to the Snake River Saloon. That was an odd evening. Lester and I got schooled at the foosball table and the bar ran out of green beer. We were sitting at a table right next to the door, which were those swing out doors typical to western saloons. We had a chair on the outside of our table, and amused ourselves by watching people walk into the chair as they came in.

Sunday was a crazy morning of packing and clearing out. I got up early and did a 4 mile run around Lake Dillon. 9600 ft - just that altitude change was making the run much tougher. That, and the ice on the trail.

After I got back, I got in the hot tub one last time.

While we were packing up to leave, the property owner showed up and pointed out that the screen door on the deck was damaged. Of course, we didn’t know if it happened before we came or not. It was irritating because we were trying to pack, and he’s pointing the door out to me, but not getting to the point at all. I finally had to say, “Well, what do you want to do about it?” He said he would fix it as cheaply as he could and take it out of the deposit. Whatever.

On the trip back, I got sleepy - from the early morning run, I guess - and asked Doug to take over. When we got home, I took a long nap before unpacking and going to my parents house to check on the dogs. I’m wrecked and exhausted, and they can wait a little while longer before I head over there. Before I leave, I put one load of laundry in to start.

I head over there after my nap. I walk in to one pile of poop in the living room (dry, thankfully) and a big puddle of urine in the kitchen. Crap. I let them out, pick up the poop, flush it, spray down the carpet with pet treatment, rinse off their food/water bowls (they are sitting in the urine), fill them with food and water and put them outside. I call my dad to see if he has a mop. Nope. Great. So, I grab a bunch of rags, and mop and clean the kitchen floor. Then I vacuum the living room and hallway.

Done. I let the dogs in and head home.

I unpack all our clothes and start on the pile of laundry. And watch my shows from the weekend.

I’m watching GH, it’s after 10:30 PM, and the garage door opens. It’s my dad. And The Strongs.

“I didn’t know you guys were coming back tonight.”

“Neither did we.”

I put towels out for them in the morning, and they headed to bed while I finished my show.

Ash had been coughing and congested all weekend, and it was getting worse. He has a history of respiratory illness, so Kimmie wanted to take him to a pediatrician and get him on a nebulizer. I put a post out to the West Side Moms to see if anyone had one we could borrow. They came through! Gotta love ‘em!

At 8 AM, I called our pediatrician. After SEVERAL busy signals, I finally got through and got an appt at 2:40 PM. I tried our former pediatrician’s office, and they don’t take one time visits. I decide that Zander doesn’t have to go to school, since Halea is still here. So we all got to sleep in a bit, then we headed to my mom’s house for breakfast. While she cooked, I picked up the Nebulizer from Wendy. Kimmie called her pediatrician in NJ, and got a prescription sent over to King Soopers.

After breakfast, we walked over to Thorndale Park, where some of the West Side Moms were having a mini-playdate. The kids played, and we hung out until lunch time, and went to McDonalds before Ash’s appt, which we all went to.

By this time, King Soopers STILL hadn’t gotten the prescription filled! They said they would transfer it to Walgreens and it would be ready in an hour. An hour later, Walgreens had still not gotten the transfer. Unbelievable. Fran came down from Denver, and the prescription finally arrived at 7 PM! Unbelievable. My mom brought it over from Walgreens.

After dinner from Everest Nepal and Chipotle, Ash was nebulized and the kids were headed to bed. Zander was pouting about Halea leaving, and said, “I don’t want to say any kind of goodbye.” Instead, he said, “I want *you* to tell him that I love him.” So we went down and I told Halea, and they hugged. It was very sweet.

Then they all left.

We now return to our regularly scheduled life…

My run around Lake Dillon… sucking wind at 9600 ft!

Between climbing, running and dieting, it’s really hard to find a balance. In fact, I’ve never acheived one.

So, I knew once training for the Ascent started, that my climbing skills would suffer. Whenever we (May and I) concentrate on one goal, other physical endeavors suffer.

Last week, we had a pretty good climbing night. Lots of 10s and 10+s, and even a few attempts at 11.

This week, not so much. The same 10s that were clean last week were a huge struggle this week. It was not pretty.

But I did get a workout, so that’s good. I’m going to go do BWO+ right now. I think I’ll try and get a run in while we’re in Breckenridge tomorrow - at altitude

My cycle is making me feel all crampy and wonky. BLEH!

It’s too cold to do anything today.

I took Zevan to ArtSports and a couple of things of note:

This mom pointed Zevan out, and asked the coach how old he was. I replied and said he would be 3 next month. Then this mom complained to the coach about how there were too many kids and not enough coaches. I just concentrated on Zevan, and shrugged it off, although it did bug me. Normally I would feel confrontational, but I just wanted Zevan to have a good time and not be affected. Then the mom came over and said that she didn’t have anything against Zevan, just that they have been adding kids to this particular class, and there is usually 2 coaches, blah, blah, blah… I just smiled and nodded. I did explain that I would love to have Zevan in Diaper Gym, but the timing doesn’t work out with Zander’s preschool.

Then another coach came. His name was Mr. Z! He took over the littlest ones, Zevan, Micah and Edie(?). Zevan took to him really well. Mr. Z actually touched him when coaching Zevan on the trampoline and for once, Zevan didn’t get all weirded out and do his “Only my mom” routine. What a relief! Mr. Z took his “team’ over to another part of the gym to do a mini obstacle course. Zevan did great. The whole time, Mr Z would take some time to explain how they work on skills and build on them. Also, he took into consideration Zevan’s age and size for all the activities. It was really, really nice.

So the next session starts next week, and I’ll sign Zevan up for the 8 weeks, twice a week and see how it goes. It’s exciting.

I’m climbing tonight and feeling unmotivated to do much else.

May and I did our first training “run” today on Barr Trail this morning. 45 minutes up, 30 minutes down.

I briskly hiked up, and cautiously ran down (except for the snowy/icy patches).

My Nike+ iPod lost the signal somehow during at least one part of the run. I thought I had started it at the beginning, but when I checked later, it hadn’t started (about 0:03:48 into the hike/run).

Thank God I’ve got months to train because I definitely need some altitude adjustment.

It’s official, by the way, I am on the Confirmation List.

I’m a geek, so here’s the numbers thus far.

70 women have signed up in my 35-39 age group. This is the first time for 42 of the women. 27 women (including myself) entered a predict time of 5:15:00 or longer.

My goal? To not be the last in my age group.

While we talked about finishing in time to qualify for Wave 1, this was under the assumption that the qualifying time is 4:30:00. Not so. Its actually 4:15:00. I’ll admit that my resolve has weakened on that goal.

I’d *love* to finish under 5 hours, but to finish at all, within the cut off time of 6:30:00 and NOT LAST in my age group, without injury is the main thing.

I went the whole day with no work out (maybe 5 minutes on the trampoline, but mostly I laid on it and let the boys bounce me around), and thought, No, don’t do that again!

I vacillated between ” Don’t do T-Tapp, it will hurt your running tomorrow (our first Ascent training run)” and “You can’t NOT work out today.”

I decide to work out, late, after dinner, after 8 PM. Except I can’t find my BWO+ DVD. I ransack the house and car and can’t find it. I call my parents, and sure enough, I left it in their DVD player.

Okay, maybe I can do it from memory. Uh, nope.

The website can job my memory and they have videos. But not the ones I need.

It finally dawns on me that the Total Workout is the BWO plus hoedowns. DUH. I can watch the first half of that and add hoe downs. I know how to do hoe downs.

So I did. Right before bed.

We sat in on another class at Art Sports today.

There was a mixed age class with one coach because two of the other coaches were out sick or unexpectedly out of town.

So, Zevan didn’t get as much attention from the coach (there were 9 kids!), but I walked Zevan through all the exercises (he was shy about doing them, although he found Mr. Joshua quite funny and engaging with this enthusiastic description of the stretches/exercises/positions).

This class was structured much differently, probably because the older kids were there. After the circle of stretches/exercises/positions, we “airplane-walked” over to the obstacle course area, and Zevan made some really cute attempts at donkey kicks over the big mats.

He also got to run and get on a trampoline/cushion type apparatus and bounce, go around the doughnut and come down the stairs.

After a water fountain break (he is getting better at using it, but still could use a taller stepstool), we airplane walked over to the next obstacle course, backwards roll off of the mats. I wasn’t sure if he would do it, since he still refuses to do forward rolls, but somehow, he was very interested in doing these.

Basically, you lay on a foam block, with your head hanging off, reach your hands over your head and scoot until your hands touch the ground. Then you kick your legs over. Voila! Backwards roll! He did all the foam block ones, (we skipped the wedges, as they were “advanced” and he bounced down the trampoline track and attempted a backwards roll on the giant wedge. He ran that circuit 3 times. I was VERY proud of him. Lastly, he did trampoline work. He even made attempts to do the seat drops, and dog bounces. Again, super cute (yes, I’m biased). At the end, he sat on the bench and got his hands stamped like the other kids.

Next week the session will actually start, so these intro classes are a good warm up, I think. If the coaches let me stay with him for the next couple of weeks, I think he could actually eventually go it alone. We’ll see…

Bee beep, bee beep, bee beep

That was the sound of my Palm Pilot waking me up at 5:55 AM.

Bleary-eyed, I walked upstairs, plopped in front of my computer, and logged into www.active.com on the first Firefox tab. I had 9 other Firefox tabs preloaded with the correct URL. Enter. Servers busy. Enter. Servers busy. Enter. Register online.

Oh crap! I see the May is online - as I fill out the registration, I IM her “I’m in!”

“I’m not” she replies.

I slow down briefly as I type, not wanting to run this damn thing by myself. I go through the registration form, even do a quick 3 sentence story about why I am running the Ascent

I started running in 2005 at age 37. I want to run a marathon before I turn 40. See www.thehealthymom.com to see my training so far

Filling in billing information. Why didn’t I get my credit card out last night?!

As I wait for each successive screen, I am reloading my other tabs to see if I can get another registration form for May.

I get the “You have successfully registered” type message.

What? I’m in? Seriously? I IM May again, ” Do you want me and try and register for you?”

“No, I’m in. Brad’s still registering.”

Whew!

I’m going back to bed.

Even though I have to get up in 30 minutes to get Zander ready for school.

Sigh.

Did BWO+ this morning, followed by a .5 mile calibration run and a 45 minute, 4.01 mile run at the park.

Gorgeous weather today.

I am sore, sore, sore in the quads and my hips. Yowch!

I did do some trampoline jumping with the boys

So I get an email from May at 8:36 PM tonight:

My neighbor sort of talked me into doing the ascent — so do you want to do it too ? ? ? ? Register is tomorrow at 6:00 a.m. www.active.com.

Huh?! So, naturally, I will try and register tomorrow morning. It took me 40 minutes to even view the damn event page on Active.com and their servers already bogged down on the original registration day, so we’ll see what happens.

If I get in, and she doesn’t… well, let’s just say, I better believe that she tried!