Fun with Blankets

Tonight we were letting Evelyn roll around and just play by herself (while we sat on the couch and laughed at how cute she was!).  She ended up rolling herself up into a blanket...so I had to grab the camera!

Night-night...

Olympic Marathon Trials

My friend Nicole is pretty much a rock star!!  Nicole and I were at Northern Colorado together, she was working on her doctorate while I was working on my masters.  She is an elite distance runner and this weekend ran in her third (THIRD!!!) Olympic Trials for the marathon.  Oh, and did I mention that she has 2 kids??!

Dan and I drove up to Houston on Friday to watch Nicole run in the 2012 Olympic Marathon Trials.  We got in a little later than we had planned to, so we just saw her briefly on Friday evening.  Friday evening turned into a bundle of fun for us...Evelyn had a rough time both eating dinner and sleeping, and ended up vomiting all over the little blanket they put at the bottom of hotel beds and some of the sheets - sorry downtown Houston Hyatt.  Sure hope those documentaries about hotel rooms are wrong! (We left a note for the cleaning staff that they would probably want to wash it!)  I was the lucky one who got to sleep on that side of the bed! :-)  She was really restless all night and woke up quite a few times - which isn't normal - she usually sleeps really well in between us when we let her do that.  Dan took over around 5:00am, so I think I was running on about 2 hours of sleep all day Saturday.  Fortunately, being at the trials was a pretty amazing experience, so I was running on adrenaline most of the day!

Here is the pack of women coming around their first loop downtown...I didn't get many good shots because I was bawling.  I was so proud of Nicole!!

Three of these four will represent the US in London, Meb Keflezighi, Ryan Hall, and Abdi Abdirahman.

The leaders of the women...Desiree Davila and Kara Goucher are two of the three women who will represent the US in London.  I'm sure the third, Shalane Flanagan, is also in here, I just can't see her in the picture!

Yay - Nicole!!  This is at the 15K mark.

Nicole at about mile 25.9 - after she saw us! :-)

After the race, we met up with Nicole and her family for lunch.

Nicole and Evelyn

Nicole, Evelyn, and Nicole's oldest son, Tyler

The Gaines' and the Hagobians...

Dan, Stacey, Tyler, Nicole, Evelyn, Shay, and Todd

Nicole and I!

This was such a great experience for me.  It was awesome to go support Nicole and cheer her on in what may be the last race of her career.  But it was also pretty incredible to watch all of these amazing athletes compete.  I am kind of a nerd in that I really love the Olympics, and know a lot of useless facts about them.  Part of this is because in my Sport in Global Society class we cover the history of the Olympic Games from Ancient Greece to now, but part of this is because I just really enjoy the idea of something as simple as sport bringing countries together.

Nicole, we are so proud of you!!!  I'm so glad we got to spend time with you and your sweet family!

Eating Puffs!

Finally figuring out how to get these things in my mouth!!

Tebow!!!!!!!

Love my Broncos!!!

Time to Catch Up!

The end of the semester is always crazy for me - lot of grading and appointments with students begging me to give them the 2-200 points they need to get the grade they thought they deserved.  If only they would care so much the other 15 weeks of the semester...  The fall term is always a bit more difficult because we have a major state conference (TAHPERD) that falls every year the week after Thanksgiving.  I'm really not sure who thought that the week after Thanksgiving was an ideal time for a conference, but it clearly wasn't anyone in higher education (TAHPERD is a state organization for health, physical education, recreation, and dance - and is primarily made up of public school teachers in those areas).  Shake up the end of the semester with TAHPERD and getting ready for our first major road trip with a 7 month old, and I got a little behind on blogging!

Now those of you who know me, know that I'm hyper-organized - Dan calls me a Type A+ person - and I use this blog as a scrapbook of sorts.  So I'm going to have to back track and actually schedule posts for the days that I would have posted them.  If you're really wanting to keep up on us - you'll want to scroll back to November 30th...right after Thanksgiving and start from there!

Enjoy! (and yes...I pretty much spent the whole day blogging to catch up...I had a little girl who took really good naps today!)

Too Fast, Baby Girl...

While I pretty much hate working now that Evelyn has popped into our lives (anyone know of a 100% online teaching job in sport psychology? Anyone?  Me either), one of the best things about my job is that I do get to stay at home on Fridays with her, as well as all of the normal academic breaks.  So while Dan had to head back to work this week, Evelyn and I have another couple of weeks at home before I have to go back.  I'll have her nanny come for a day here and there so that I can be sure to have everything ready for the spring semester, but for the most part will be home until the 17th.  

Yesterday I was working on some of that spring semester preparation, so I put Evelyn in her exersaucer to play beside me while I worked.  Over the past few days, we have been over annunciating "ba" sounds to her.  She's been a "talker" for weeks, but hasn't really started to do single syllables or string anything together yet.  Yesterday morning, while changing her, I was doing it again and she started to mimic me a little - opening and closing her mouth as I did mine.  Then out of the blue a few hours later...this happened...

I'm so glad I had my phone handy to record it...but wait, you aren't supposed to be this big yet!!!

The next day I was getting ready to take a shower and put Evelyn on the floor to play with some toys.  I've had to start closing our bathroom door while I shower because she's rolling all over the place and rolled out into our bedroom last week!  While I was brushing my teeth, she started doing this...

I thought it was cute, her pressing her squishy little cheek up against the bathtub...and thought maybe she liked the cold feeling....until she started doing this...

The picture doesn't show it all to well, but she was trying to pull herself up on the side of the bathtub.  Woah, woah, woah, baby girl, you really aren't supposed to be this big yet!!  She didn't get much more than an inch or two off the ground this go around, but I'm sure it's just a matter of time.  Sigh...I guess we better get to work on that baby-proofing of the house!

7 Month Follow-up Appointment

We had Evelyn's follow-up appointment to check her weight after we started fortifying her breast milk.  She is doing great!  She's also been eating solids MUCH better these days, so I'm sure that helps as well!

Here are her weight statistics for 7 months (that's all they did):

Weight: 15 pounds, 6 ounces (15 ounces since 6 months) - 14th percentile

She stayed right at the 14th percentile, so she's still little - but gaining like she should! :-)

Cold Weather Running

It's "winter" here in south Texas...which so far has meant that it's only 70-80 degrees instead of 90-100.  There have been a few days that have dropped into the 50s-60s, so I've had to bundle Evelyn up a little when we go for our runs.  I tried a blanket one of the first days, and that failed miserably, so we bought this cute little, if we lived up north she could wear this all the time, outfit.

She still cracks me up because anytime she has a coat or this on, she barely moves.  She'll move her eyes around to see things, but doesn't move her body or head.  It's funny.  I wonder if she thinks she can't move.  It's almost like the kids in A Christmas Story...only she's way cuter.

Come on, Broncos!

Win and you're in, Broncos, come on!!!

Evelyn getting ready to cheer...she's the top of the pyramid this year!

Wrestling with Daddy...Daddy's looking about as good as the Broncos are the last few games.

Hey - at least we had a better record than the Colts (why could this never happen when I lived in Indiana??!) :-)

Hey guys - like my cheerleader pose?

Happy New Year!

It's hard work to take a New Year's nap with Daddy...and to make hair this cool looking!

I wanted to shoot some "new year's baby" pictures with Evelyn...only I'm cheap and tried to make her a new year's sash instead of buying one.  She wasn't entirely cooperative.

First, I'm gonna wrestle with my Dad

I'll sit here for a second...but don't think I'm gonna sit still!

Hmmm..this looks like something I want to put in my mouth...

Now I'll just be cute...since Mom took that paper away...

Hey, my pluggie!

Love my pluggie!

Now I'm gonna get my Dad again...

At any rate...HAPPY NEW YEAR FROM OUR HOUSE TO YOURS!!!