Walking

Walking & Eating
I've walked the last two days. And I plan to go again today. I'm more motivated to do so because I've been using an app on my phone that tracks how far and how fast I'm walking, among many other things it tracks. It gives me a clear answer that I'm walking at the "very fast" past when I log my calories, which burns A LOT more calories that just a regular, moderate walk. And it doesn't even take into account the elevation I have to climb. I don't love walking, but I definitely don't mind it nearly as much as going to the gym. Going to the gym requires me to really devote a large chunk of time to it, between getting there and back, getting work out clothes ready, getting water bottle, etc.

I'm doing better with my eating. I'm also feeling better.  For breakfast, I've just thrown out the idea of breakfast food. I eat the same thing I eat for lunch: brown rice mixed with whatever veggies are on hand and maybe some nuts mixed in. My headaches are down, though still frequent, and I'm not nauseous for most of the day as I was in December and for much of January.

Meal Planning & Prep
It's funny because while Amber is moving towards a big shop once a week and meal planning, I'm moving more towards handling things day-by-day. And it's working out fairly well for me. During the weekdays, I really only have to focus on three days a week: Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Tuesdays and Thursdays we always have Laughing Planet because Avery's swimming runs until 5 pm. Trying to get home to make dinner in a state of Avery being tired from swimming and me being tired from being, um, me, didn't work. I find that if I do small grocery store runs for 1-2 meals at at time, vs. 4-5 meals at a time, I waste a lot less food. I am also realizing about myself, that when we have less food in the house, I'm more likely to use up all the food and be more creative about it. We'll see how this continues.

Things are also easier because D is on the elimination diet. For him, this is miserable, but for me, it's great. I don't have to worry about making something he likes because we're eating similar things everyday.

Reading
I'm in the middle of Here Be Dragons. I love it! It's even better than Sunne in Splendor. I'm so happy to have found another genre that I like. Here Be Dragons is about the Welsh prince Llewellyn of the 13th century.  My mom's side of the family is Welsh. I've never been overly interested in it as a matter of heritage, but I am finding the history of the Welsh culture interesting. I particularly like that their treatments and views of women were much better than their Norman equivalents of the time. Not great, mind you, but better.

Leather

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Strawberry picking

Avery and I joined Christie and Henry for some strawberry picking this morning.  It was a lovely morning and we easily filled up a large box with red strawberries.  Most of them even hulled themselves since they were at the perfect moment of ripeness.  My only plan for these strawberries is to make fruit leather.  I've never made fruit leather, but I got it in my mind a while ago that I should (I like from a post or a share done by Lori).  So off I went to pick a box of berries.  I got home, took a nap with Avery, then went about washing and sorting the berries.  By the time that process was done, I realized I would only be able to do part of the fruit leather process (date night tonight).  I learned a few things during this process.  Shall I share?  Yes?  OK.

1. I don't like making fruit leather.  It's much easier to buy a box and unwrap the nicely packaged and perfectly prepared rolls. 
2. When a pot of strawberries and water is put on the stove to simmer, covered, and left unattended, it will boil over and make the range look like a bloody crime was committed above it.
3. When strawberry puree is put into a blender, holding the lid down tightly is key if you want to avoid strawberries all over the wall and cabinets and your shirt. 
4. Walls and cabinets clean up fairly easily; shirts, not so much. 
5. 12 cups of strawberries yields three cookie sheets of fruit leather. 
6. I picked about 36-48 cups of strawberries.  
7. This fruit leather better be light years better than the boxed kind or I'm gonna be pissed.

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Movies and Books

I'm still reading the Ender's Game series of books.  I'm on book three now, Xenocide: Volume Three of the Ender Quartet. If you'd told me even a few months ago that I'd be working my way through a sci-fi series, or that D and I would be reading them at the same time, I'd have thought you were crazy.

I wanted a way to rate the movies I see, then post them to FB the same way the Goodreads site does for books. That is how I stumbled upon criticker.com.  It's a cool site that creates a PSI - probability score indicator - for a movie based on your previous ratings.  Basically, after you've rated x movies, it compares those ratings to other users who also rated those movies.  Using aggregated data from all users, it can then create a PSI for each movie you have not rated, which tells you what you will likely rate that movie.  After I entered about 100 movies, I started to pay attention to the PSI it predicted for me before I ranked a movie.  It was surprisingly accurate, I must say.  Especially because it's on a scale of 0 to 100.  They seem to have gotten around the obvious problem of comparing one user to another user (that being what one user considers to be a score of 90 might be another user's 80) by essentially comparing movies based on a curve.  It categorizes the movies you've rated into tiers, then compares tiers to tiers.  Clever.

It was that obsessive rating that resulted in my 1:30 am bedtime last night this morning. I regretted it in the morning, but I do feel like I accomplished yet another meaningless data task and those are my favorite types of meaningless tasks. 

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Weekend plans

Saturday morning we're planning to go miniature golfing.  Sort of an early father's day celebration.  Saturday afternoon we're heading to a neighbor's house for a BBQ/play date with the families of two neighborhood kids Avery currently goes to school with.

Sunday I'm quite sure I'll spend packing for my flight later in the day.  Since they changed the time of the Timbers game, D will be able to drop Avery and me at the airport.  Avery and I are quite excited to see our CO/WY/CA relatives who will be at Dylan's (my nephew) 3rd birthday celebration.

Fallout

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Timbers Game & Timbers Game Fallout

Avery did awesome at the game last night.  She was engaged the whole game according to D, she could describe her favorite part of the game (watching D wave a big flag), and she was still wide awake when they got home at 11 pm.  She fell asleep about 11:30, I think.

In the lobby of D's office building before the game - I wish we'd had a real camera for this picture.  So cute.

Avery did not do awesome today as a result of said very late bedtime.  My friends (you know who you are) looked at me a bit incredulously when I said Avery was going to the game despite the late start time.  Originally, that was my reaction too when I found out the start time.  D pointed out it wasn't that late and she's been up that late before without dire consequences.  With time, it became a given in mind that she'd go, which was why I said to the aforementioned incredulous friends, "Late nights every once in a while don't seem to impact Avery."  Yeah, half of that is true.  The night part of it; the next day part of it, not so much.

So today was just awful.  Avery was either exceptionally sweet and adorable, or a complete nightmare throwing fits over nothing - and she'd turn on a dime between these two states. Unfortunately, the distribution was something like 10% sweet, 90% nightmare.

Avery is still going to go to the next evening game, but I will 1. ensure that I'm mentally prepared to deal with the fallout the next day (e.g. not scheduling a playdate I then have to bail on) and 2. maybe I'll pick up D and Avery from the game to expedite their arrival home.  Something like that.  We'll see.

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Poop

My stellar day with Avery was only just topped off when the three kids (G date night) were in the tub together.  Nolan pooped in the tub.  D is out for the night, so I had to manage poop fallout on my own.  Ew.  I don't know how long they'd been sitting in the tub with poop as I was busy tidying up the bathroom and closet before I noticed something odd floating there.  I quickly escorted Avery and Elise into the shower, then transferred Nolan into the shower.  Next, I fetched bleach & fishing implements (read: slotted spoon and a large bowl).  First, I rescued the toys from the poop-infested water.  I put those in a sink of bleach water.  Then I scooped the poop, then I let the water drain, then I washed the tub completely out, then filled it back up to the top with bleach water, then I ran the jets just to be aggressive about it.  I'll probably end up cleaning that sucker another few times before I can bring myself to use it again.

Elise asked to sleep in Avery's room, so I dragged our extra twin mattress in there.  I haven't given them the chance to sleep in the same room in quite some time, so it'll be interesting to see how they do. Update: as of 8:20, they're still awake, but they're being fairly quiet and I'm lacking any motivation to do something about the talking.

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Go figure

Fortunately, before Avery's complete meltdown this morning around 10 AM, I managed to make both banana bread and the meat sauce for tonight's dinner.  In the banana bread, I substituted brown rice flour for regular flour and guess what?  Best banana bread I've ever made.  Not "good for gluten free" bread; best bread ever.  Go figure.

The meat sauce was made for the kids to have spaghetti tonight.  I made myself brown rice to mix in with it.  Guess what?  I actually prefer it mixed in with brown rice versus eating it with pasta.  Go figure.  

Nutshell

Friday in a nutshell (as told in my FB status)

Exhausted after a full day of fun:
- Slappy Cakes (make your own pancake restaurant)
- Followed immediately by Playdate PDX
- Followed immediately by dance class
- Followed immediately by a playdate with Friend Elise & Nolan
- Finally ending with all three kids asleep at my house for the Gs' date night.

Thank goodness all three kids went to sleep without protest and were asleep by of 7:30.  My patience was wearing a bit thin and D was at motorcycle training, so it was a solo performance for me.  Avery didn't get a nap, so during the afternoon, any NI (Nolan Indiscretion - things like existing, breathing, touching anything, looking at anything, etc) set her off.

Dance, Dance, Dance

When we return from our trip to California, the new session of dance classes starts.  I've signed Avery up for three back-to-back classes.  I am not sure how that's going to go, but we're giving it a whirl.  Until Friday, I'd only signed up for two classes, Pre-Ballet and Terrific Twirling. However, today Miss Erika said that the hip hop class next session would be doing Michael Jackson and, well, I couldn't resist.   I'm thinking if Avery has a clothing change between each class, that should keep her enthusiasm up.  Of course, enthusiasm is not a weak point of Avery's, so maybe just showing up will be enough.

Denied

Our lottery application for the White House Easter Egg Roll was unsuccessful.  Such a bummer.  I didn't realize until we didn't get it how much I would have liked Avery to go.  My aunt has graciously offered to have an Easter Egg hunt in her condo for Avery on Easter, so that will still be tons of fun for Avery.  Plus, she'll still get to wear her adorable Easter dress (which she is head-over-heels in love with and asks to wear on a daily basis).

Strawberry season

And now I know what I will be doing during strawberry season: picking, then leathering (thanks to Lori for sharing that link via Google Reader).

I'm also looking forward to blueberry season since Avery just loves frozen blueberries.  I plan to freeze a lot of blueberries.

My favorite pictures of me & Mom and me & Dad

I saw these two pictures, which I have sitting in one of our guest rooms, as I was tidying up today.  I figured I'd scan and share.

My favorite picture of my me and my mom is more because the picture actually came out than because it's a good picture.  It was taken the summer between my sophomore and junior year in HS. I like it so much because it's amazing the picture has our faces in it.  We were walking along a rocky beach in Wales near our relatives' house.  There was a stone wall and we just set the (film) camera on the wall, set the self timer, and hoped to at least capture some part of our faces. I think we did quite well!

My favorite picture with my dad is of him and me in our backyard when I was 2 or 3.  I don't actually remember taking it. I'm not sure how old I was, but I remember my dad often working in the yard.

Maybe I'll upload them to FB and tag my parents. 

Boast

Boasting

I went grocery shopping with a list for the first time in a very long time.  Yes, I feel proud.  I even have three meals planned out.  I've been cooking during my very long hiatus from organized shopping and meal planning. I just haven't been shopping for more than one or two meals at a time, and those meals are consistently ones that require no recipe (salmon, rice, & veg; steak, potatoes, & veg; chicken, rice, & veg; you get the picture).  

Reverse boasting

Yesterday, I did a trail walk with Turtle, then painted the nook for 2+ hours.  Those two activities plum wore me out.  It was pathetic.  I am so out of shape.  I was huffing and puffing up the hill during the walk.  After I was done painting, I was literally shaking from using my muscles to hold positions they're not used to holding for any length of time.  After I carried the rug upstairs to put in the nook, I was exhausted.  In fact, I went to bed at 9:30 last night because I was so tired.

Attention seeking

So, dear readers, I need advice.  Avery's need for constant attention (praise?) about whatever it is she's doing has reached a level where I feel it's now something we have to curb or it's going to be a social problem for her.  I'm not sure she's seeking praise as much as it is attention.  She doesn't seem to care whether I respond with a "yes" or a "well done!" or an "uh huh."  It's that she wants me to watch/see/admire every.little.thing she does.

A few points I'd like to make before I provide an example of this behavior:

• This need isn't specific to when I'm not paying direct attention to her.  I wouldn't be (as) concerned if she did it only when I was on the computer or looking at my phone - both of those activities are difficult to handle since attention is so very diverted.  She does it all.the.time.  
• I'm personally not overly annoyed by it.  I'm more concerned with the trend.  I also know that I would find any other child who did the same thing very annoying.  Ergo, I have to assume a vast majority of teachers will find it annoying, as will peers as she gets older.
• I could be wrong, but I don't think it's a function of a lack of sufficient attention by either D or me.  While our attention does not revolve around Avery when we're all home together, both of us actively focus on spending time where our attention is devoted to Avery (vs. the phone or the computer or a book or TV).

OK, an example of the behavior:  I was coloring with Avery the other night.  She had her drawing she was coloring; I had mine.  About every fifteen seconds or so, she'd exclaim, "Look it!" and want to show a line she'd drawn or that she used a color or whatever.  At that point, I used an example from a WordGirl episode she's been watching lately.  In the episode, there's a girl who is always boasting about how she's the best at everything she does.  Someone explains to the girl that no one likes a boaster.  I tried to parallel that logic to the attention seeking Avery's exhibiting.  I explained that, like boasting, our society doesn't like attention seekers.  I further explained that she should try waiting until she was completely done with her drawing, then ask us to look at the final product.  She said, "OK!" but did no such thing.

I have a few questions for you readers:

1. Do you think this is a problem that is personality driven vs. age driven?  If it's age driven, I can see letting it go and getting through this phase.  If it's personality driven, I do feel like it's behavior we need to curb, or at least guide in a more acceptable direction.
2. Does anyone think this is a behavior that we shouldn't try to curb?  While I can't say I'd be convinced that it's acceptable long-term behavior, I'm definitely open to hearing other opinions.  Looking at it from another perspective, I can see how someone might say trying to curb this behavior is not accepting Avery for who she is.   
3. Does anyone have any other thoughts on this?  

Wonders

Wonders never cease

I cooked dinner with no recipe yesterday.  I know.  I was shocked, too.  We like this blue cheese encrusted filet mignon recipe.  One day it occurred to me that I might like to have meatballs made with blue cheese, panko, and parsley.  I tried it last night and it was delicious. I was most pleased with myself.  We had green beans and potatoes (from my ridiculous trip to the farmers market) with it.  When Avery was eating the green beans, she said, "Just like Teacher Theresa!"  They often have green beans at lunch, so I guess she now associates those with Teacher Theresa.

Following my monumental dinner, I went to workout while D put Avery down for the night. When I came home, Avery wasn't asleep yet, so I went up to have a quick cuddle before bed.  She was so cute: "You go to gym gym?"  After confirming that I did indeed go to gym gym, she said, "You go change your shirt."  I was a bit sweaty, I guess.

Teacher Theresa

Avery seems to really love being around Teacher Theresa.  She talks about her often.  She seems happier when I drop her off on the days when TT is there all day.  Avery goes to school two days per week, but TT is only there ½ day on one of those days.  As such, I'm going to ask if I can shift Avery's schedule so that she's there on days when TT is there full time on both days.  It puts the days Avery is in school on a schedule less than ideal for me, but I figure it's more important that Avery is fully happy there.

"Training"

I have to put training in quotes since I'm never sure how serious I am about this stuff until I've been doing it a while.  However, since we have signed up the half marathon in October (what was I thinking?), I figure I should at least attempt to train for it.  D came up with a training schedule for himself.  I'm adapting it to my personality and tendencies and we'll see where that lands me. I don't care about my time for the half marathon, but I do care about not injuring myself, so my main goal is to be in good enough shape to get through it in one piece.

I went to the gym immediately after dropping Avery off at school.  I did both cardio and weights, then came home and walked the dogs.  So my entire morning was spent being very active.  I plan to go to the weight toning class tomorrow (unless I chicken out, which is always a possiblity when it's a workout class - I'm fine once I'm IN the class and I've done it once, but getting through the doors that first time kicks my ass).

Daddy / Daughter Camping Trip

D and Avery were invited on a first annual daddy / daughter camping trip!  I am both excited and jealous.  While not a camper, I know Avery will be so excited on this trip and I'll miss not being able to take part.  However, what could be better than daddy/daughter camping?  Not much, I'm sure.  She's undoubtedly going to have tons of fun with Daddy and the other girls.  We will need to purchase a tent, but I think it's well worth it for such an event. 

So, ladies, I have a free free weekend!  (Did anyone see Rules of Engagement this week? If you did, you'll get the "free free" reference.)  Planning shall commence offline if anyone else can manage to free themselves of kiddos for the weekend (edited to add: which is at the end of June).

A Lazy Sunday

The best thing about LOA: not getting the dreaded pit in my stomach on Sunday afternoon about having to go through another week of work.

Today was a good day. I slept in until around 10:30, then got up and played a quick game or two of computer Scrabble (I'm hoping this addiction is a passing one), then went to Kitchen Kaboodle to get some baking/cooking items. When I got back, Damian and I went to three open houses in our neighborhood to snoop. One house actually had a sauna in it and the house never had a buyer, so the builder just put it in there as part of the spec for the house. Seems very odd to me. Another is on an absolutely fabulous lot with views and a huge, flat yard (rare in our neighborhood), but the fittings were not to my taste, though most were of high quality. The third house is not new and was just your average house.

I made my first cheesecake when I got back. I'm pleased that the middle didn't crack, which I understand to be an issue with cheesecakes. We'll have it tomorrow night as it's supposed to chill for a day before serving. Annoying.

That's about it. I'm going to tear myself away from computer Scrabble and enjoy my book for a while: Pillars of the Earth.