Claire and I were sitting around pretending to be movie characters and she chose Dr. Evil from the Austin Powers movies. She went on to quote Dr. Evil......"That makes me angry. And when Dr. Evil gets angry, Mr. Bigglesworth gets upset. And when Mr. Bigglesworth gets upset... people DIE!"
"We get the warhead and we hold the world ransom for... ONE MILLION DOLLARS!"
After plotting to dominate the world as Dr. Evil she went on to show me how to dominate Watty in the mountains. Her idea was to pounce on him like a tiger when he least expects it.
She then did her best impression of Watty crying like a little baby.
Claire taking a little time to reflect on her view of herself and the world as we know it. She spent some time thinking about solutions to world peace, saving the environment, feeding the hungry, and why the heck those bees on the mirror are upside down.
Two pretty ladies getting some face time together.
Claire thought the camera was on the ceiling. She'll catch on.
At the tail end of Claire's 6th week we got some more company from my sister Melissa, her husband Tony, and their ten month old son Ben. They came in on Friday and will be staying for a week. I'll write more about them in a post coming soon. It was quite the contrast to see Claire next to Ben. He's so big! Claire is catching up though and is now 7lbs 11oz. The big change this week is that Claire is now looking at us longer and is investigating things around her with her eyes. This week she has been consistently taking down between 3-4 oz and her longest stretch of sleep at night is around 4 - 4.5 hours.
Melissa and Tony opened our eyes to the fact that our camera sucks. They came into town carrying a brand new camera that made ours seem like junk. Their photos came out so crisp and clear and looked great. Jen and I have decided to buy a new camera so we can look back at great photos down the road......AND to one up Melissa & Tony in the process.
Jen's parents came in to visit and stayed with us this week. Here's Alice feeding her first grand daughter.
Jim and Budinski became fond of each other during the course of the week. Jim also gave me a hand with the deck and gave me some direction on some other projects that I'm looking to tackle around the house.
Claire getting ready for her first walk. The anticipation put her to sleep.
Claire executed the walk flawlessly. Jen did a great job pushing her.
Speaking of firsts......Claire's umbilical cord finally popped off so it was time for her first real bath. Grandma K. delivered the first bath on time and within budget.
We decided to give Claire her own hollywood star for the walk of fame but as you can see that didn't work out as planned.
My two favorite ladies are tuckered out. Jen had to have surgery this week to clean up some remaining pieces of pregnancy.
Jen has been pumping breast milk and we're delivering via the bottle because Claire hasn't quite gotten the hang of the boohah yet. We're going to rent a baby scale next week to see exactly how much she's taking from Jen at each feed.
RECAP:
We had Jen's parents staying with us this past week. During that time it seemed like Claire grew quite a bit. At the tail end of the week she was 7lbs 0oz and looks and acts like a typical newborn. Her due date was supposed to be tomorrow so I guess that makes sense. Her body fat around her arms and legs has finally filled out and her skin color looks great. Her temperment continues to be sweet as can be and very tolerable but when she gets upset she can blow it open if she needs to. She's feeding around 3oz per feed and she's on about a 3 hour cycle between feeds. We've started cluster feeding her at around dinner time and topping her off with a dream feed at between 10pm-11pm. We're working towards getting her to sleep a 6 hour stretch at night. Right now she's been sleeping around 4 1/2 hours so we are still waking up a couple of times each night.
Here's what her typical day looks like for feeds: 7am, 10am, 1pm, 4pm, 6pm (cluster one), 8pm (cluster two), 11pm (dream feed), and 3:30am. The idea is to feed her enough throughout the day that she slowly starts to wake up less during the night.
A typical cycle looks like this for this week:
* Wake with some wimpers and will escalate to a full cry if we're not quick enough
* Eat for 30-40 mins
* Activity time for 30-40 mins of mainly just talking to her, reading, singing, moving her arms & legs, etc
* Sleep for 1 1/2 to 2 hours
* Repeat.......
After the 6pm feed we started to give her a bath followed by a book and a swaddle. That's her current bedtime routine. All of the feeds after the 6pm feed (8pm, 11pm, 3:30am) we just feed her in a lowly lit room, re-swaddle her, and put her back to bed without any activity time. We're doing this to try to get her to associate the difference between day and night and eventually sleep through the night.
It was nice having Jim and Alice staying with us. Alice helped out quite a bit with Claire and Jim gave me a lot of pointers on the deck project along with some future projects that I'm looking at taking on. He is quite a riot to be around and keeps things fun. It's always nice to see family!!
Next up my sister Melissa, her husband Tony, and baby Ben will be coming in to stay with us this Friday for a week after Jen's parents head home on Tuesday. We're looking forward to seeing Ben again. I'm sure he's grown a ton since we saw him at Christmas.
The Osprey Talon 22 was just the right fit for my commuting efforts.
My office was relocated to downtown about 18 months ago and since then Jen has been dropping me off and picking me up from work. I'm not exactly sure how we came to the conclusion that dropping me off at work was our best solution but that's what we chose to do. I think we just started to do it and never came up with a better solution. Once baby Claire was born a few weeks ago I knew that I needed to come up with a better solution.
My options were:
* Drive to work and pay $6 per day for parking
* Ride the bus for $3.00 each day
* Ride my mountain bike
* Run to work
I don't like the idea of paying to get to and from work so driving and riding the bus were out. So it was between riding my mountain bike and running. The only problem I had with riding my bike is carrying all of the cycling gear around (helmet, shades, shoes, and locking bike) and since it is only two miles each way for work I couldn't really count it towards my exercise for the day. The only problem I had with running into work is the question of how to tote all of my work clothes, shoes, lunch, snacks, and personal items to and from work. I've tried running with a backpack before and it was terribly uncomfortable.
Last week I did a search for trail running backpacks because I was certain that there had to be someone else out there that wanted to carry a load with them while running and I came across a bunch of backpacks that were designed for aggressive day hiking. Then I came across the Osprey Talon 22 which seemed to have great reviews for day hiking as well as trail running. So I went to REI on the weekend to take a closer look and once I put it on I was completely sold. It fit me like a glove and had adjustable compartments and straps so I could carry a lot or a little with the same comfort. I pulled the trigger and on Wednesday I ran to and from work with it for the first time. I packed 16 lbs worth of my work gear in the bag and ran to and from work with no problems. The bag didn't bounce like I thought it might and was very comfortable. I was able to maintain 7 min pace at my typical easy run heart rates so the additional weight only added about 35-45 seconds per mile to my paces at the same effort. Luckily the uptown YMCA is a block away from my office so I just run to the YMCA, shower, change, and walk a block to work. On my way home I walk a block to the YMCA, lift weights for 30 mins, then run home.
Commuting to work by foot was the perfect solution because it allows for:
* Jen to save 40 mins of her day
* Claire to avoid the car seat two times per day
* Me to get 4 miles of running in each time I go into the office
* My body to get used to carrying a backpack for mountain climbing in the future
* Last but certainly not least...our planet now has one less car on the road
It's a win-win situation all around!!
Summer sending a clear message to the boys.....don't mess with me fool.
Our eight year old niece, Summer, had a swim meet last weekend and due to a mix up in heat times she was thrown to the wolves in the boys race. So what's a girl to do? I'll tell you what she did........she jumped into the liquid jungle and gave those boys the beat down of their lifetime. She beat her personal best time in the 25yd backstroke and laid the wood to the boys in the process. Now that she's elevated her game in the pool I thought it's about time to give her some instruction on other aspects of her game. The area of focus was her trash talking. I've come up with a three step program specifically designed for 6-10 year old girls to improve their trash talking skills for situations like the one mentioned above.
My program revolves around the BIG THREE: Intimidation, Annihilation, and Humiliation. They all go hand in hand so if your skills are lacking in one it will definitely affect the total package. Below are the specifics that I gave her for her next swim meet:
INTIMIDATION:
The intimidation factor doesn't even have to do with talking at all. It's all about appearance and "the staredown before the beatdown". I suggested that Summer go out and buy some MMA fighting gear for walking up to the starting blocks. Specifically, camo TapouT shorts and t-shirt. I also suggested that she get a tattoo that says "Thug Life" on her stomach for when the warmup clothes come off. To top things off we worked on her "prison look". Basically a real hard looking face that says "don't mess with me fool". The ace in the hole only comes out if someone looks at her funny in which case I've instructed her to bark like a dog with her teeth showing. With that package her competition is sure to be intimidated before the gun goes off.
ANNIHILATION:
For annihilation to work she has to work hard in the pool and with her dry land program. She's got to be willing to do the things that other 8 year old girls just aren't willing to do. I can't list all of the techniques for this but I based the program off of the Navy SEALS BUDS training program so you get the idea. After 6 weeks of that program the last part of annihilation is at the finish line. Basically, we don't finish strong in races. We stick it to the competition and grow a massive lead only to slow down to a near stop at the finish to point out that it was too easy.
HUMILIATION:
Humiliation is the fun part of the program. This is where we use our vocal cords and body language to squash any self confidence left in her competition. The first thing I suggested was to get out of the pool and get dressed before her competition even finishes the race. This way she's got her camo TapouT shorts and shirt on when she gives them any variation of the six shooters or double throat cutter accompanied by an arsinal of verbal badgering.
By following the big three above I think Summer will be on her way to not only dominating the competition but scarring them for life in the process. It's important for her to learn these skills early in life so I figured it's my duty as her uncle to give her a head start on the competition.
The similarities are endless between Macho Man Randy Savage and Watty.
This is what happened the last time Watty ran his mouth before camp. The photo that I'm not showing is the one of me melting down at the top of this same climb....
Watty hosts the toughest training camp in the NC mountains each April that I commited to helping him with before I decided to hang up my triathlon shoes. The camp is very demanding so it's not something that I can go into untrained without getting dropped and left for dead. There are going to be some strong cyclists up there so I've got 8 weeks to work myself into shape. I'm currently not in any kind of aerobic shape and I've only ridden the bike (mountain bike) three times since racing Clearwater 70.3 in November. Watty and I have been bantering back and forth about who was going to lay the wood to who. He left me a voicemail this morning taunting me in a Macho Man Randy Savage (ex-pro wrestler) voice. The end result from all of the trash talk was that we're going to see who makes it to the top of three selected climbs during the weekend but we're taking vastly different approaches to our training. I will be limiting my training to under 100 miles per week on the bike and Steve will be riding between 300-400+ miles per week over the next 8 weeks. It will be fun and interesting to see the two training styles collide in the mountains. Of course this is all in good fun but it's something that will force me to get into some kind of aerobic shape to stay fit and healthy. Along with that, I don't like to lose, so it's a good challenge for me. Here's my plan for the next 8 weeks:
* 3 cycling sessions per week consisting of:
* Two hour long interval & LT workouts in our basement
* One Saturday mountain bike ride building from 1.5 hrs to 3 hrs
* 5-6 short run sessions building to 40 miles per week
* Three 30 min strength sessions
* Drop about 5 lbs of unnecessary body fat
The training days at the camp will be long for Steve and me since we'll be taking the long course each day. He's got each course broken down with optional bailout routes that can make them shorter if need be. The long routes are 103 miles with ~13k ft of climbing on day 1 followed by 102 miles with ~18.5k ft of climbing on day two and we'll finish off with a ride out and back on the parkway on day 3. The toughest day will be day two. We'll be riding "the loop of truth" which was a course hand picked by Steve and me a year or so ago in our attempt to come up with the toughest course we could find in the Blowing Rock area. I think we've succeeded.
My only concern for camp will be my body's ability to utilize fat as the primary fuel source. Since most of my training will be high octane and I will have no foundation laid down I'll be interested to see if I'll be blowing through my carb stores faster than usual. If that's the case, I'll be stocking up on Mountain Dew at the gas station stops!!
There are still a couple of spots available for camp so here's the link for info if anyone is interested in joining the group.
Camp Details Here