Yoga

Timothy loves to bake with me. I like to think it's because he enjoys hanging out with me and shares in my love of cooking, but really, it's most likely because he likes to lick the spoon. And put his entire hand in the batter when I'm not looking. He has a particular affinity for fistfuls of bread dough. Oh, and sugar. I mean, "woogah".



These tasty bran muffins are from my new favorite cookbook, A Passion For Baking (thanks for the suggestion, Robyn!). Not the most photogenic muffin, but the silicone cups are worth touting as a wonderful invention. Leaves a nice tender bottom on the muffin without the necessity of throwing away used paper. A nice present from Santa last Christmas.

I wish I could say we are always cooking healthy things like bran muffins, which would probably aid my attempts at getting into shape. But, alas, I like chocolate way too much. Anyway, regarding workouts, Mondays are stretch and strengthening days and I accomplish that with a yoga class. I really love going--the challenge, the cycle of the workout, the soreness I get in places I never thought to stretch or strengthen. I've been working on the headstand--inversions were a little tough to tackle after breaking my toe a couple years ago--and I'm venturing away from the reliability of the wall. One thing that I particularly like about yoga (or the classes in our neck of the woods anyway) is that there is no expectation of perfection--you do what you can do and you push yourself as far as you are comfortable going. I enjoy seeing how far I can go and I love the freedom to fall over on my butt and hear myself laugh along with everyone else. Mondays are a highlight of the training week.

Trip

The kids and I just took a trip to Maine with some friends whose parents have a cabin on small lake. It was supposed to be a three nighter, but we came home after one night. I felt really guilty about cutting it short, as I was afraid our hosts might take it personally, but as I lay awake last night with our bigger little guy as he is crying in my arms "Timmy go home" interspersed with our littler little guy being up four times in six hours, all I could think was I can't do this by myself and decided to put myself and my family ahead of how I was afraid someone else might feel.

Really, I'm sure it would have been fine if we had ended up staying. As you can see from the pictures, the kids had a ton of fun during the day. And, perhaps I should have had the fortitude to keep going despite my intense fatigue and ill-timed migraine as it would have given Timothy some good overnighter experience. I just don't know sometimes, as a parent, when I'm supposed to comfort and when I'm supposed to teach a stiff upper lip.

I know that I can't let this make me fear overnighters (although it does) and I need to remember the pure glee in Timothy's face as he splashed in the water and had so much fun. I'm sure the longer I look at the joyful pictures from the trip, the memory of difficulties will soon fade away.

What you don't see....

... is the big black bear thirty feet to the right of the turkey. Timothy pointed outside this morning to show me the turkey and when we looked closer, there was a beautiful black bear staring right at the turkey. He wandered off before I had a chance to get the camera, but we saw him a few minutes later loping out in the back field where we have quite a wild strawberry patch. So amazing!

We've actually had quite a bit of animal activity since yesterday when the farmer finally got the first cutting out of our field. It's been such a wet summer, he hasn't been able to hay at all. Lots of birds circling, looking for newly homeless mice I imagine.

Speaking of mice, Timothy has quite an obsession with them. He likes to draw pictures of Tucker chasing a mouse (his description of the image) and talks about mice gobbling up various things (stemming from a great book about a big red strawberry, a little mouse and a big hungry bear). Recently, this has combined with a desire to keep Shawn or me in his room at night (in his new big boy bed!) when he tells us that he is scared. "What are you scared of?" we ask. "Mouse" he replies. "Why are you afraid of the mouse?" "Mouse gobble up." "What's the mouse gobbling up?" we query. "Timmy's trucks." Ah, we don't want to lose those.

It's pretty cute.

I'm back!

Well, it's been almost a year since I last posted to this blog. We've been busy, I guess, and some motivation was lacking to devote my time to sitting in front of the computer. Today, however, I went for a great run on a nearly-summer day (we haven't had many this summer) and decided it was time to start up again for a couple reasons.

1. I'm intending to run a half-marathon this fall and it's going to be difficult staying on a training regimen on those days when I'm sleep deprived from two youngsters being up during the night. If I feel like I have an audience there to show my dedication to, I'll be much less likely to slouch off my workouts!

2. Shawn took the picture of the cheesecake I made yesterday and it was just too good not to share. I've decided I'll cook and Shawn will be my photographer--that is an art I just don't have an eye for.

I've been running off and on since our little Patrick was born--today was the longest run I've done yet, about 4 1/2 miles, and it felt great. The beautiful day definitely helped too--gotta love vitamin D.

So, back to the window into my little world. Enjoy!