Burst of Sunshine

We had a wonderful warm weekend, and we took advantage by getting outside some. The sun was plentiful today, temperatures hitting 70 and yesterday was in the upper 50's. We decided to test out the jogger with Piper sitting in it without the carseat. She seemed to enjoy the change of scenery:



Then we headed to the playground and tried out the bucket swing. She didn't know what to think of it but we had a good time, even testing out the sunglasses:




I managed to get out for an 8 mile run and EZ got out to the driving range too. What a great nice warm weekend! (Too bad the forecast is showing snow and 30's for Friday!)

Odds and Ends

We had a nice weekend with some friends coming up from Charlotte. They have an 11 month old and Claire and Piper had a fun time together. We had lots of competitions egging on our own children to take toys away from the other or knock each other over (Piper took down Claire in one blow)...all in good fun of course! Piper definitely won the who can sit the longest with the best posture and Claire won the how many toys can you collect contest. Fun times watching the two interact a little, but mainly they both just did their own thing not caring too much that there was another little person around.

It was impossible to get a picture of them together...here is our best one:


I think Piper learned from Claire how to really get crawling and so we are full speed ahead. Last night she ventured into the dining room and had her first taste of trying to crawl on the hardwood floors. On the way there she stopped at a floor vent that was blowing out heat and thought it was really funny. She would just put her face over the air and laugh...too cute:

Grains

I had some mixed feeling about trying a cereal for Piper since I was just diagnosed with Celiacs (more to come after my appointment this week). And Amelia was allergic to rice, so I debated and debated on to what type of grain to try. I also was worried about iron levels as they say that babies use up most of their iron stores at 6 months, and since I am anemic, I was looking for something that had iron (like the iron fortified cereals).

I ended up choosing millet. I had never heard of it until I was diagnosed with Celiac's, but it is a gluten free grain. Turns out it is like a super grain loaded with lots of vitamins and iron too, so great for babies. Piper seemed to like it just fine, and loves it if we put pears in it. She isn't quite as big of a fan with peaches, but that is fine. After the millet, I tried gluten free steel cut oats to and ground them down with a coffee grinder. Again, she was happy to eat those too, with pears.

I think I am going to hold off on other grains for now and stick with these two. I have read some recipes for combining them which is similar to cream of wheat, and so we will see where it takes up. Plus, I want to see if we can try some more fruits and veggies. I am trying to stay clear of the constipating ones since Piper has some serious constipation. We have been giving her some prunes every day and it really hasn't seemed to help. I think we are going to up the prune intake and see how that goes.

I am making most of my baby food, but buying the prunes and apples in the store. Since she loved the sweet potato, butternut squash and pears so much, I mass produced those and have them frozen in ice cubes in the freezer. So far we haven't had any reactions to anything we have tried and she likes everything except she isn't a fan of the peaches but will eat them. Our list is currently: butternut squash, sweet potatoes, bananas, avacado, peaches, pears, millet, oatmeal, prunes, and apples. Next up: acorn squash, peas and mango.

Training

This blog started out as a triathlon blog which has turned into a Piper blog. I thought it would be nice to come back and talk a little about my training.

I have been running a little since Piper has been born but nothing too dramatic and not fast. I have lost all of my pregnancy weight but still feel very heavy and sluggish running. My knee pain is still there so I guess I have to really work at keeping it under control. I though maybe things would be better after all that time off. I really wanted to run some more races this year and I looked into lots of different marathons/half marathons. I felt like a marathon was a little out of reach right now so I decided to train for a half. It isn't too much time commitment and I thought my knee could hold up.

I signed up for the Tobacco Trail 1/2 Marathon towards the end of March. I picked this one because this happens to be close to where we lived before moving to Burlington and I ran most of my runs on this trail, especially when I was training for the marathon I did back in 2006. I feel like I am honoring the place that treated me so well for the 3 years we lived in Apex and I loved running on that trail.

Currently my long runs are only 6 miles, but that is ok. I have no goal for this race but to run the whole race hopefully with no pain.

Then I plan on running another half marathon with my sister and dad in honor of my mom something later this year (tentatively June). It feels good to getting back to some sort of resemblance of my former athletic self.

Happy 1/2 Birthday!

Wow! Piper is already 6 months! How crazy time flies by! Here are a few 6 month stats.

She is eating pears, sweet potato, applesauce, and prunes now. Next up is peaches and rice cereal. We have yet to try a grain yet but I have decided to try rice first and stay away from any gluten stuff first. I am making most of my own food though, or try to at least.

Here she is acting like such a grown up in her highchair (this photo just makes me laugh):



And a couple action shots:





Sleeping is going great. She goes to bed sometime around 7pm and sleeps until around 5 or 6 now and wakes up to eat a little and then goes back to sleep for another hour or two. We are extremely lucky now that we can put her to bed and she goes to sleep on her own.

As far as breastfeeding, I started my own weaning this week. I feed her in the morning at 5 or 6 and then again around 8 when she gets up and then I am only pumping around 2 and then around 9 at night and that is it. I had some problems in the past couple weeks with some blistering and serious pain and I just can't do any more. Either way, with the supply in the deep freezer and me still pumping twice we should still be able to go quite a bit longer on just breastmilk.

We say lots of ba ba ba ba all day which is cute. Can't really get her to do any sounds or mimick me though. She doesn't have much interest in trying to talk.

On the other hand we were getting really close to crawling and just in the last couple days she has figured it out. So just shy of 6 months and we have a crawler. Granted she isn't great at it yet, she can get where she wants. I guess it is time to start baby proofing! Here are a few videos (taken at daycare):

Cali

We decided that a trip to California was in order to celebrate my mom's passing. So my dad and my sister and her family and all of us headed back to Cali for a nice mini vaca. It was a whirlwind of a vacation though as I wanted to see a few of my friends from high school.

Piper did great on the plane both ways and adjusting to the time difference and she was a trooper being moved from place to place. I only hope that now that we are finally back after 2 weeks of trips, we can get back into a routine.

Our first night in CA was a trip to one of my mom's (and my) favorite restaurants overlooking the ocean in La Jolla. Our whole family met there to eat on the terrace (it was freezing too) and celebrate. Then a trip down to the ocean where my dad walked into the water and to pour my moms ashes in. He got pummeled by a wave while doing so which was quite fitting. We then set off a wish lantern into the sky as well. It was a nice wonderful evening celebrating my mom's life.

Here is my dad in the ocean (sorry the picture quality is poor as it was pitch black out):


And my dad and Amelia watching the lantern go up in the sky:



The next morning, we had a mini swimming reunion of my closest group of friends. 5 of us with our families and it was a great time. Monica and Sumner were kind enough to let us crash at their house and hang out for a while and Tenley and Piper had fun too:



Mommy and daughter:



After a quick stop to see my old coach and our old neighborhood, we headed up to my grandparents house and settled in for the night. Just one night though before heading out to Palm Springs area for a few days since we had a condo out there too for all of us to stay at.

We spent a day a Joshua Tree NP (more on that in another post) which was great and very cold (even snowed coming home that night at dinner) and a day at a place called the Living Desert (like a zoo) and then back to the grandparents house to help get it all cleaned up and ready to go for them. They arrived that afternoon and we we got to spend just a few short hours with them before one last trip to my good friend Matt's house to watch Arkansas lose to Ohio State in the Sugar Bowl. Then we flew back home. What a whirlwind trip it was but a great time too.

Here is Amelia being a great fun cousin with Piper. She was constantly making Piper laugh!


And here is Miss P having fun:


Last but not least...Piper and Grandpapa:




What a wonderful trip!