Lately

I guess less blogging is a good thing - life is fairly calm right now, just the way we like it.

Nora: just the usual... I’ve been worried about her learning to swim. We halted swim lessons right before Hannah was born. She has used a floaty vest and doesn’t want to get her head wet - afraid of water up her nose.

This past weekend we went to the Blue Ash Rec pool with some friends and I predicted what would happen [which did]: Nora would see her friend without floatation, diving and dunking under water which would influence her - and it did! Nora stripped her floaty vest [the water was under 2' deep] and began dunking under water and going down the kiddie slide by herself! :: fist pump :: So proud of her.

The sitter’s kids are also starting up lessons at the new swim facility down the road - all the kids had to go along and Nora now wants to start again. This is a good thing! After swim season, we’ll look into signing her up again.

Hannah: Signing just took off about two weeks ago! Hannah signs please, more, cracker, dog, sing, bath, sleepy. She tries to say “dog,” “this,” and “that.” Now that she has two front teeth [which we can never quite see under her lip], she’s trying new sounds. She’ll point and say “ths, ths” - good stuff!

We keep working on pulling to stand - it’s work. No crawling even though she gets on all fours. I’m being patient for now.

No update on eyes - follow up the first week of August - hoping these patches do the trick...

Nutrition - last week the sitter chose not to tube feed Hannah two times because she ate so well! We give her full freedom to make the call - she knows Hannah just as well as we do. I also talked to our Speech Therapist about the calories the Nutritionalist wants us to force into Hannah. She basically said stop tube feeding Hannah - ! We know her, how she eats. Hannah has no trouble eating. She may dip down a bit in weight or plateau, then will re-adjust herself and most likely gain weight. Our ST said she has another family who did just this and it played out well.

I’m a little nervous but Tim’s wanted to pull the trigger on this. If Hannah does drop drastically in weight, we can go back on as needed. The only hesitation is her fluid intake - at most she drinks 1c milk and 1c water a day. We still flush Pedialyte through her daily.

Once a kid is independent of their tube, the medical professionals wait at least 3-6 months before removing it to truly make sure they are independent.

Me: Starting up training for my fall half - the Queen Bee. My last larger race was the Heart 15K. I haven’t run past 6 miles since then. I should be okay - I really need to get a bit stricter on my food, sleep and strength training. I’ve slacked on my food a bit with summer indulgences. I need to get to bed earlier on Friday nights so I have a good Saturday long run.

I try to do a little yoga at least twice a week but need to incorporate more strength in my core and legs... I have a bunch of short workouts I just need to DO.

Tim and I also went to see Phish over a week ago with good friends - it was fun and strange to be gone for two nights from the girls! It takes me a few hours to shift my focus from the girls to myself. Two days gone was plenty - so ready to be home!

The regular Phish Crew!

Post storm - rained on us 2/3 of the show!

Our camping neighbors - ! Turns out they were older than us!