Marathon Mom

 My little climber Wow, 10 months already and quite the big personality. Ophelia is such a happy baby, most of the time, and loves people. You can just tell she is thinking about everything around her and just taking it all in. Over the past month we’ve gotten more adventurous with her food and what a difference that has made. It seems she likes “real” food much better than the boring flavorless baby food. Some of her favorites are lentil taco filling, curry vegetables, vegetable chili, fish, and corn bread. She is standing on her own and has attempted a few steps, but tends to just throw herself forward whenever close to someone forgetting to move her feet. She loves to climb anything she can, I'm just waiting for that first ER trip and hoping it isn't in the near future! It is so interesting to see the difference between her and other babies close in age. We were at the in-laws on Thanksgiving and her cousin who is 1 week younger is not even crawling yet, but he is an exc...

For the first time ever I was one of those crazy black Friday shoppers. Every year I look through the ads and then decide sleep sounds better then crowds and cold, but not this year my mom and I were at Target at 6am getting toys, movies, and clothes for Ophelia and most importantly a new coffee maker for Matt and I. Then it was off to Kohl's for more toys for Ophelia and finally to Borders for the free coffee for me and books for Ophelia. I hate to admit it but I kind of wish I was out there earlier since I missed a couple of the deals I was hoping for. I think this might become a new tradition. I guess I need some sort of Thanksgiving tradition since the only part of the meal I like is the pumpkin pie.

A short report of my final race of the season. The day was perfect for November weather, sunny and upper 50s. I think this race was a good preparation for the later start of Boston, since it not only started at noon, but on the day we changed the clocks back so thanks to Ophelia I had been awake since 5am. It was a small race and the thanks to the laid back race director I was able to get through the bathroom line before the start. The race was chipped timed, but all based on a clock start so I wanted to be near the front. I headed out with a couple other women, but quickly realized I wasn't going to be keeping up with them. I ran a quick but comfortable pace and then the hills came, one after another and I was passed by another woman around mile 4 pushing me back to 4th. I tried to catch her and kept her in sight but never quite got there. I knew this was a hilly course, but wow it was much tougher racing on it then running a 20 mile training run. I started with high hopes of a...

Is it wrong to use an infant to trick or treat so mommy and daddy can have some candy? I hope not, yesterday we took Ophelia to the community trick or treat and she had a blast watching all the peopls and digging through her bucket of treats. Next year getting this candy from her might be a little more work!

Somehow this feels like a huge milestone for age, maybe it's because Ophelia has now been alive in the outside world as long as she was growing inside. She continues to develop her own inquisitive, adventurous, sassy, personality. Her favorite activities are climbing stairs, emptying out the cupboards, and throwing the dog bowls. Yep, none of these are activities aimed at 9 month olds, but she has much less interest in her toys then these activities. The last few weeks she has been eating better, much of this is us being more adventurous with foods, she loves pasta in any form. I think the thing is she just wants food with flavor, none of this boring baby food stuff. I don't blame her! She now waves good bye and has been working so hard on standing alone, soon she'll have it. And she's talking a lot more, repeating what we say and saying "dada", "bye", "pupu" (puppy). She is still taking after me and remains tall and thin 16lb 4oz (5-10%) a...

I thought sleep got better as babies got older, not with mine! After the difficulties we had the first 6 weeks she started sleeping great, up maybe once a night and then slept through the night at about 3 months. Then it was only naps that were an issue, but within another month or so those worked out too. AT least in the first few months everything is a haze and your body has adjusted to the wake ups, but now my body has adjusted back to sleeping. Not sure what the deal is now, for the past 3 weeks Sleep has not been good in our house and my coffee habit that I had gotten down to 2 cups a day during pregnancy has doubled. Ophelia has had cycles of nighttime wake ups that are easily remedied by a nighttime feeding and she’s quickly back to sleep. These usually last for a couple days and could be explained by a growth spurt, developmental milestone, teething, or illness, but this bad sleep cycle is going on 3 weeks. At first I thought growth spurt or she wasn’t eating enough before b...

Baby food that is. I thought we had been pretty open and adventurous in feeding Ophelia, but lately I am starting to wonder if we have progressed enough. Last weekend we were together for a family event and my cousin's 11 month daughter was eating potato chips, probably not the best example but we are no where near the potato chip phase. Then I was talking to someone at work yesterday who's daughter is 2 weeks older and learned she has been eating pancakes and sausage the previous night at dinner. I have been making most of my own baby food and Ophelia's diet is mainly fruits, veggies, yogurt, and cereals. Although we have done bites crackers. She gets to taste anything that seems appropriate and has had Indian food, ice cream, beans and fish. I know there are no hard rules to feeding a baby, but I am just wondering what other moms are/were feeding their 9 month olds. The pediatrician did say that by 9 months she should be eating 3 meals and pretty much what we're hav...