mommy’s not walking! mommy’s running! yeah!

it has become clear to me that i am not going to magically find my waistline anytime soon if i don’t make some sort of effort. i mean, i’ve been limiting myself to no more than two desserts a day, but apparently that is not enough. so i’ve decided to re-enter, at long last, the sweaty world of the exercising.

no mean feat, though, given that two weeks after eamon was born i realized that my feet hurt. badly. all the time. and that the culprit(s) were my shoes. it seems that birthing a boy has finally done me in: my feet, troupers through years of teaching aerobics, running, and having babies, have at last expanded. after realizing why i was in pain, and then complaining to shannon about the continued pain, i finally wised up and bought a pair of kick-around pumas that fit. they’re the same size i’ve always been wearing, but they’re nice and wide from the arch up, and boy-oh-boy do they feel good.

not so my old running shoes. and since they are hardly worn out from sitting alone in my closet for so long (lonely, perhaps, but not worn out) i can only attribute the pain to their smallness. so off i went in search of a pair of running shoes that fit.

i landed at bob roncker’s running spot, the “it” shop for all things running in cincy. there i was schooled first by ashley (who just that day was expecting her loot to arrive from nike, her new sponsor for the heptathlon — turns out ashley placed 7th in last summer’s olympic trials) and then by none other than bob himself on the fine art of shoe fit. i tried on a variety of lengths and widths until i found the pair that made my feet so happy that i could actually envision myself running.

later, once at home, i loaded mairin in the jogging stroller. it was a crisp autumn evening and i was geared up in my new shoes! yeah! as well as my favorite brooks running jersey — the one with sleeves that unfold to cover my hands, mitten-style, so very important for those cold north-midwestern runs of yore — and we headed out. it was glorious from the beginning. it felt good to move my legs. it felt good to feel my heart pumping, my lungs stretching to pull in enough cool air. my feet were cushioned but hugged, making them feel a bit like they were seatbelted to the world’s best feet-pillows. after breaking a gentle, just-starting-out sweat i picked up the pace. and that’s when mairin started with the squealing: mommy’s not walking! mommy’s running! yeah! and so i ran, and ran, my  heart starting to really pound, blood moving hard in my ears, my lungs hot and bursting. and still i ran, and mairin squealed, and the orange and red leaves blew in the breeze, and the jack-o-lanterns stared back at us from the neighborhood porches. it was  heaven, i tell you. heaven. and when my calves started to ball up and my chest started to burn, deep and tight, i called it a good run, and warned mairin, and slowed down to walk.

not bad for four blocks, huh?

who loves ya, baby!

journey, circa 1981

if you were looking to hire a nanny, and you called a candidate during a time period when she said she’d be available, and instead of getting her actual voice you got her voice mail, with these lyrics –

don’t stop believing
hold onto that feeling
streetlight people

– and then when she called you back and you made a comment about her “interesting voice mail message” and she said “oh, my journey? [laugh] yeah, i get a lot of comments about that” but she didn’t mention why she has journey on her phone…

would this count for her or against her?

discuss.

one more time, with feeling!

mairin’s toddler version of repetition has fully re-energized what i have previously considered to be the exceedingly dull experience of hearing myself repeated in an endless loop.  true, i could put forth the effort to be more interesting or say things more worthwhile, but really, i just don’t have it in me. lucky for me, then, that mairin’s take on repetition earns accolades for its gusto and panache: she repeats the final words of phrases or sentences, and then squeals her approval. so when i say a new word (ocelot YEAH!) or when i point out something she likes (umbrellas YEAH!) or i promise a trip to the store (errands YEAH! mommy i need new shoes YEAH!) i am rewarded with the joyous musically-rendered repeat of whatever i’ve just said (just said YEAH!) like this:

i have never been so much fun to listen to. YEAH!

i need my friends!

a few weeks ago shannon and his teammates had an evening meeting to plan the cyclocross (that’s the non-motorized version) race they sponsored two fridays ago. all evening mairin paced the house, poking her head into room after room, saying “daddy with friends? daddy with friends!” the next day, when she discovered that it was possible to go see your friends one night and still be home the next morning, she started saying “i need my friends too mommy!”

turns out mommy also needs her friends.  and so we spent the weekend with them.

on saturday, our hip columbus friends drove down to spend the afternoon with us at the zoo.  this was my maiden cincy-zoo voyage, but mairin is a practiced — and to date, uninterested — zoo-goer. this time, however, with “my julian!” at her side, mairin loved every minute at the zoo. (almost.) only a few stroller-strides in she was hollering “where are you elephants?” and then pursing her lips and blowing like a trumpet and waving her arms up and down in perfect approximation of a toddler pretending to be an elephant. happily, we finally did see the elephants at the end of our visit.  well, they were not at the very end… that was the long-awaited face-painting adventure, which i suspect will send both families to the nearest theatre-supply store for more regular face-painting fun (and perhaps, in our case, to salvage the halloween costume fiasco.)

on sunday, our hip milford friends (that’s for you, cara) took mairin, eamon and me to the blooms ‘n’ berries farm to visit the pumpkin patch. to hell with pumpkins, said mairin — i want to SLIDE! eventually we played all the kitschy games we could play and wandered through as much of the pumpkin patch as we could with one needing-to-nurse infant and two adorable if needy toddlers. we gathered our pumpkins and headed for home.

mairin has it right, as usual. playing with friends is where it’s at.

cousins at the pumpkin patch

i am too dull-headed to write an interesting post about our trip to the pumpkin patch, and too tired to download my own pictures from the adventure…so uber-thanks to auntie ‘ra for this fab photo.

i gotta wonder what was going through emmet’s head….

of man-boobs and other post-partum surprises

my body is making a valiant effort to return to normalcy, which includes jettisoning some hormones…and passing them straight on to eamon. and so i am able to write off his little baby-acne, which i know will pass, as well as the inflated, er, privates, which provided no end of delight to his proud papa until we were reminded that we were seeing swelling that would eventually go down (it has, and all appears to be normal, thank you very much).

but all the while i was passing on chemicals to the little man via my breastmilk, the little bugger was taking things into his own hands. or mammaries, i suppose.

perhaps mairin has been whispering to him at night that i’m not be trusted and at any minute the thing he loves best might be snatched away. perhaps he’s been listening to the news and is simply stockpiling his own apocalyptic food supply. whatever the reason, the kid is ready: mama, or shrub, or the oil conglomerates, or the whole damn global village might be about to let him down, but he is ready.

he’s got milk.

he’s making milk.

which i would never have known, were it not for his pediatrician’s experimentation. “how’s he sleeping?” “what are his diapers like?” “how is his general demeanor?” — all asked while the mister mister was poked and prodded and then BAM! out of his little nipple shot some milk. “wow! didja see that?” his peed asked. “here, look, let’s do it again!” the doctor squeezed, eamon wailed, and i stared in shock and awe as my son’s breasts produced beautiful little gobules of perfectly white, fatty-looking milk.  “don’t do this at home!” the doctor warned. “you could give him an infection.”

there are some things even a mother doesn’t need to see more than once.

i doan wannit!

or, another brilliant plan of mine bites the endless dust bunnies.

for a few weeks mairin’s favorite book has been “edwina, the dinosaur who didn’t know she was extinct.”  edwina is a perfect role model for mairin, since she is big and strong, she bakes metric tons of chocolate chip cookies for the neighborhood, she is genuinely friendly to everybody (and god knows she won’t learn that from US), and she is impervious to logic, all the while carrying a purse. edwina is, in short, perfect.

so it seemed only appropriate for mairin to dress as edwina for halloween, in this cute t-rex costume (she’s already got the necklace and purse and hat to finish the look):

the costume arrived in the mail yesterday, and when mairin’s best friend leo came over dressed in his knight outfit, we thought it a perfect time to try on the edwina outfit. which mairin wants absolutely nothing to do with. indeed, she so strongly wants nothing to do with it that she wouldn’t let up with the plaintive cries: i doan wannit, mommy, i doan wannit.

and then? she wouldn’t even let me read her edwina last night.

damn kids.

one month

jingle all the way

i know, i know. all the experts say that the best possible way to enhance your child’s IQ, ability to get along with others, chances of making it through the day without a nerve-shattering meltdown, and odds of attaining an ivy league school at the precocious age of 16, is to give her a regular bedtime routine. we read the experts. we believe them.

but mairin does not. so her bedtime, you know, varies.

one reason for the variation is that she likes to test our imaginative capabilities, despite increasing evidence of their ongoing diminishing nature. which brings us to “the noodle song.”

oh, she can sing her ABCs, and “Twinkle Twinkle” and most of “The Owl & the Pussycat” along with us. like us, she appears to be growing bored with our limited repetoire. unlike us, however, she thinks this problem can be solved. so when i asked her the other night if she wanted songs or stories and she chose songs, prompting me to ask her what song she wanted, she told me “the noodle song.” certain i’d misheard, i asked her back, “the noodle song?”

“yes please mommy.”

“can you sing the noodle song for mommy?”

“MOMMY sing it.”

so, er, um, the noodle song goes like this:

ooooohhhhh, i LIKE noodles.
NOODLES with pepper and CHEESE.
ooooohhhhh, i LIKE NOODLES.
NOODLES with PEPPER and CHEESE.

and when i come HOME at the end of the DAY
i ask for my noodles in a SPECIAL WAY.

ooooohhhhh I LIKE NOODLES!
NOODLES WITH PEPPER AND CHEESE!

she liked it. (hey mikey!) and so the noodle song has slipped into its slot in our rotation.

eat your heart out, barry manilow.