City Chase 2008

Today Rory and I participated in the 2008 City Chase, taking place in Ottawa and Gatineau. It was a pretty good time and we did fairly well considering our general state of unfitness. I believe we came in 88th out of 340 teams, and were about the 6-7th place all-female team. Hey - we'll take our victories where we can get them! Not quite as good as in 2006 when we were the 3rd all female team and 29th place, but really, sometimes I wonder how well we could do if we were ever actually in shape! :)

Some of the fun things we did included a disc-golf challenge in JC Park, walking on stilts, fencing, batting and catching, and shotting cans with a paint ball gun. We really didn't do any of the crazy checkpoints this year, like eating gross stuff, touching spiders or canoeing on the river. On the one hand, I regret that the checkpoints we did were pretty tame, but on the other hand I appreciated that we weren't particularly dirty or wet at any point. It was a really nice day for the race, though we did have to make sure to drink enough water once the sun came out.

A little funny...after the race Rory and I were joking about "when we go to the World Championships in Morocco" (which we were going to get to by having our names drawn out of a hat instead of winning a local race). We had been told that the race for Worlds lasts 40-72 hours, rather then the 6 hours of today's race. Considering that we were basically dead after finishing at around 5 hours today, I thought 40-72 hours might be a bit much. In response, Rory said, "we might need to stretch first". hehehehehe

Thanks to all of the people who helped us out with the clues and finding checkpoints, etc - Greg, Dave, Kevin, Bonnie and Catrina. Thanks to Tim and Sandy for coming over today to help out around the house and look after Avery. I sure hope I didn't miss anyone! :)

Avery at 4 months...

Note: I started writing this post on July 5th-ish, but am actually finishing it on July 12th - not sure what the date will be when it gets posted.

Yet more time has passed between postings, and it seems I am now just trying to keep up with the major milestones. Avery was 4 months old on July 4th, Independence Day coincidentally because she seems to be getting more and more independent all the time. She can now roll both from back to front and front to back (with varying degrees of success), which means I can't really take my eyes of her when she is on the playmat, lest she roll with any speed into the wall. I've said it before and I will say it again, thank goodness for the Jolly Jumper when I am trying to cook or to just get a little bit of a break!

I am going to go ahead and guess that she is about 25-26 inches long now, and somewhere between 15-16 pounds - she is now in six 3 diapers. We are no good at weighing and measuring her at home, but she will be going to the doctor next week for her 2nd vaccinations and we'll get the real story then. She has been doing fun things like putting her feet in her mouth for a couple of weeks now, and she has gone swimming in our pool a couple of times this summer.

The pool is pretty chilly, so I think she mostly just tolerates it for my sake rather than actually enjoying the experience. Hopefully that will change as the pool warms up. You will note her stunning orange swimming ensemble in the pic - it is from Sunseals (a Canadian company) and while it was not cheap, it seems to be doing the trick to keep the sun off her since we aren't supposed to use sunscreen yet.

Today we have an impromptu swim visit from the Fergusons, which turned into afternoon beers, and then morphed into dinner. If there is one thing I love about mat leave (other than watching Avery grow up) it is that I am enjoying being more social on weekends, worrying less about getting chores done and fitting in everything I need to do before going back to work on Mondays. It is so nice just to lounge around and not worry about time passing too quickly!

Greg has been on parental leave with me since the end of June - things are going pretty well (neither of us has gone postal on the other one yet :) and we are even getting some things done around the house. It will be a bit of a shock when he goes back to work in August, as I will have to start coming up with ways to fill the days for Avery and I again. My plan is start her on solids in early August, so that should hopefully provide both of us with some entertainment and maybe even bring some structure to our days - we certainly don't have any of that now!!! :)

Speaking of lack of structure, each night seems to bring a new sleeping adventure. Avery is always waking up at least once in the early morning and wants to be fed. If it was always 4am or 5am, I could understand that. But sometimes it is 1am, sometimes 3am, and sometimes 5am. I can't tell if it is something waking her up (like the animals), that she just wakes up and can't soothe herself back to sleep, or if she really is hungry at each of these times. At any rate, I almost always end up feeding her and then trying to convince her to sleep again. Usually Greg ends up rocking her for a while, which means neither of us gets much continuous sleep. So who really knows. The next thing we are going to try is to move her crib back into her room from our bedroom, hopefully this weekend. Public health recommends babies stay in their parents' room until 6 months, but we've already had her with us longer than most people we know (except for the Lawsons), and I think it is time. Hopefully this will result in better sleep all around! :)

Saying goodbye to the Miracle Blanket

As Avery is now 15 weeks, it was well time to try putting her to sleep without using the Miracle Blanket. As mentioned previously, this swaddling blanket was a present from Amy who nicknamed the resulting arrangement as the "Baby Burrito". But really, Avery had been sleeping through the night for approximately the past two months and I wasn't very keen on what would happen when we stopped using the blanket. I was also nervous because of the problems the Keans had with Daniel once they stopped - what was it? He didn't sleep through the night again until he was 10 months???

Anyway, given that Avery had started to work at least one arm or one leg out of the blanket for the past couple of nights, I figured it was time to make the change. So last Friday night we gave it a try - putting her in a sleep sack instead. And it really wasn't too bad!! Since then she has woken up fussing a couple of times in the night, but usually putting her soother back in her mouth helps her to go straight back to sleep. That is, until last night...I am not sure what happened, but she more or less woke up every 3 hours again, just like when she was a really newborn. I ended up feeding her each time and then rocking her back to sleep. I have a couple of theories - one is that this is her 3-month growth spurt, but a couple of weeks late, and the other is that she really didn't like the spicy Thai red curry chicken I made and had for dinner two nights in a row! I am hoping that whatever the reason, it is just a very short phase and we will go back nice sound sleeps very soon. I am not sure how well I will be able to handle sleepless nights again, now that I have gotten used to the luxury of many hours in a row! :)

P.S. An update on the passport experience...I am fairly certain I received both Avery's and my passport within a week of going to the Gatineau office. So once again, I highly recommend going there if you need your passport in short order.

Avery at 3 months...

How time flies! Especially when you have a new baby and/or guilt about not posting anything for a long time...to be honest, I haven't really felt there was much of note to wrote about over the last few weeks, but Avery's 3-month bday seems like a good enough reason!

She is doing super-well, measuring in at approximately 24 inches and weighing somewhere between 14 and 15 pounds. I don't have a more precise weight because she is now too old to go to the public health well-baby drop-in sessions and at the last one we went to, last Monday, they told me she weighed less than she had at her pediatrician appt 3 weeks before that. ? So at this point, I am just guessing. She is pretty active and happy (most days anyway, yesterday was bit of a rough ride), and still has no semblance of a schedule - though I suppose that is probably more my fault than hers :) A couple of weeks ago she seemed to be starting to roll-over (check out some videos on flickr), and even spontaneously flipped from tummy to back, bonking her head in the process and surprising Greg big-time. But she hasn't seemed too interested in trying again since.

We had a little adventure today - we went to get passports with Julie and Nicholas. The whole experience couldn't have been smoother. Avery slept the whole time, there was zero line-up, we were able to have a nice lunch, and apparently Nicholas even slept in the car both ways. We should go get passports everyday!!! At any rate, I would highly recommend going to the Gatineau office if you need to renew your passport anytime soon. The building wasn't the most straightforward to navigate with the stroller, but that is partly me not being adept at navigating the stroller in general.

Tomorrow we have a breakfast date with a friend from work - we are supposed to meet up at 8am. I am hoping this all works, but I suspect we might end up a little late. I fully intend to blame it on traffic. Friday is a lunch date in Gatineau with other work friends, and then my mom is coming in the evening for the weekend. Looking forward to some grandmother fun and good weather hopefully...and hopefully the new pool will be installed very soon!