Big week for C-Note

C-Note is now a red belt, two belts away from earning his black. He did a great job breaking his boards sparring and showing his forms. He is so focused! He is really looking forward to his tournament in May.

He also lost his first tooth! Eating dinner, he asked me why there was red on his quesadilla. Excited, I jumped up and told him it was his tooth coming out. I then grabbed his very wiggly tooth and pulled it before he could say no. For two nights he waited for the tooth fairy. And for two nights, the tooth fairy was a no show. Quite the slacker. Last night he finally left the lid off of the glass gift box, which is the tooth box in our house, and she deposited $5 in return for the tooth. More than she gave for oldest's first tooth, but oldest also was visited the first night.

Oldest told C-Note that the fairy probably came the two nights before but due to the fairy's tiny nature, she couldn't lift the lid. It is hard to tell if Avery believes or not, so it is always cute to hear her take on the situation. I was just so relieved she had an explanation.

Getting off the sugar train

A few months ago a friend told me about the Clean Program. It is a 21 day cleanse created by a cardiologist, eating approved foods and supplements to rid toxins from the body.

I have wanted to do a cleanse for awhile now, but was never satisfied with the approach. Until this one. I didn't want to starve myself, I like food too much. And although this program does sell supplements to buy, you don't have to. I read Dr. Junger's book, Clean, which this program is based upon, and bought the recommended supplements at my local health food store.

The book, website and blog all have approved recipes created by a wonderful chef which is so helpful. But this is where my fear kicks in. There are numerous ingredients 1) I have never heard of, therefore 2) have no idea where to find them in my grocery store and 3) some of the ingredients I have heard of I don't necessarily like. Beets are one that come to mind.

But as much as the cleanse is physical, it will also be a mental cleaning. I don't feel healthy with my current diet (pizza for dinner last night, toasted salt bagel with cream cheese and a coke for lunch, insert eye roll here) so the point of this cleanse is to be open to new ideas, new foods, re-try foods I have tasted in the past that I may not have liked. I desperately want to change my cravings and palette, so I will face my beet hurdle and I am sure other food hurdles to come.

I imagined myself wandering around the grocery store, asking an employee to be my personal shopper hoping they would know what these elusive (to me) products were and where they would be located.

Thankfully another friend told me about Wegman's online shopping list. After I planned my weekly menu, I entered my items into the website and not only did Wegman's website show me a picture of the product, it also told me what aisle to find it in!

I spent 80 percent of my time this morning in the produce aisles. I learned that a daikon is a Japanese white radish, that there are many variations of kale and cabbages (of which I needed three, regular, red and napa), that Tahini is a sesame based paste, that chick pea miso has to be ordered online and so much more. 90 percent of my grocery bill was produce, green produce, and it felt good spending money on things that are nourishing and wholesome.

There is so much natural color in my refrigerator and fruit bowls. I am armed with all that I need for week one of Clean. I know the cravings for sugar and dairy will be strong, but I am keeping my eyes on the prize. I want to feel better and this will help me achieve that goal. Whether I find that I have food allergies when I re-introduce foods, or I curb my cravings, or I just start eating clean foods more often, it will be worth the 21 days of Clean.

Clean's motto: Address Root Causes of Poor Health Cleanse the Right Way
(I have linked to the actual manual that describes the cleanse instead of the website where the products are sold.
http://cleanprogram.com/files/clean-program-manual.pdf

no surprise

We picked up her glasses yesterday and not only does she love how well she can see with them, she looks great wearing them. It really is no surprise that one, if not all three, will need corrective lenses.



She picked a pink case that closes in the shape of a heart and she loves the little 'bling' on the sides of her frames. The optician gave her a few lessons about the general care of glasses and she is taking this new responsibility very seriously.
"Mommy, can I wear them in the bathroom?"
Me: "Well you need to see what you are doing in there, so yes."
"Mommy, do I take them off to shower?"
Me: "Yes, they will get too wet and then you won't be able to see out of them."
As she packed her glasses case in her backpack this morning she told me she would take them off for gym and recess. I told her to do what she thought was best, but that they are for her to see more clearly, so the more she wears them the better for her eyes.

Mile 20

Seasoned marathon runners warned me. But no matter how many warnings you hear, you have no idea what you will feel at mile 20, or 21, or whatever mile you happen to hit your wall.

Our trio of runners trained four months for this St. Patrick's Day race. We clocked a lot of miles, a lot of laughs, we felt good. Our longest training run hit 21 miles, we knew we would face a tough road from 21 to 26.1 on race day, but we knew we had laid a pretty solid foundation and would power through that last leg.

I'll spare you the details about my intestinal issues the day before and day of the race. What I thought were nerves was most likely a stomach virus, leaving me starting the race on empty, nothing would stay down, in, you get the picture.

With that said, I felt decent the first half. If I had crossed the finish with the rest of the half marathoners, my time would have been close to a personal best.

Close to crying, realizing I had another 13.1 to run, I hit my wall. Not at 20, not at 24...no, at 13.1. I felt awful and I could feel myself slowing down considerably. I could tell my neighbor was slowing down to stay with me and while I appreciated the gesture, I didn't want to see her ruin her race. But she knew I was in the pits and hung with me. I could feel the dehydration sinking in, I couldn't catch up with what I had lost the last 24 hours and nothing sounded good or tasted good even though I forced myself to eat and drink at every water station.

When training, the three of us passed the time by telling each other stories. We know a lot about one another now, and it is often hard to find a story we haven't told to one another. Many times we don't even care if we have heard it before, at least it keeps our mind off of the miles that lie ahead.

I begged my friend to tell me a story. She laughed but knew I needed it. She took time trying to find one that she hadn't told before and finally came up with one from her husband's time spent working for the secret service, nothing top secret of course, but a funny one to give me a good laugh.

A couple of the bands kept me moving, a women's drumline was particularly motivating. A lot of signs made me laugh..."Chuck Norris never ran a marathon" kept reading over and over in my head.

At mile 15 my friend asked what I needed. I told her I needed her butt running in front of me or else. We had slowed to a snail's pace. While I knew how badly I felt and that moving forward was my goal, no matter the pace, I had to get my friend running her own race. Finally she took off and when I couldn't see her within a couple of minutes I knew it was going to be a long day.

While most to all of our training runs have ended in 50 degree weather, race day we started at 55 degrees. By Mile 18 it had to be 70. The course had also opened to full sun. I kept drinking and eating what I could, but it was getting harder and harder to stomach anything. I pushed on, and felt pretty good until Mile 20. Then I got very dizzy, very sick and threw up right there on the side of the race. While I was OK with getting sick, I was not OK with the dizziness, I feared falling and hitting my head. I started walking and I called Stephen who tried the "mind over matter" pep talk until he heard the details of my intestinal issues. I so appreciated the "atta girl" talk, but had to cut the conversation short due to a wave of nausea. I went back and forth in my head about sitting down, walking over to a police officer to ask for help, or continuing on. No doubt in my mind, if I had been wearing white, I would have laid down right there and raised my white flag in surrender. I felt awful.

I did stop in a medic tent. Sat in the shade, stretched, drank some gatorade and talked with someone about my options. I could stop now, be taken to the finish and get an IV of fluids or try to walk for a bit and see how far I could go. I decided to walk but with the intent of finding help as soon as I felt dizzy again.

So for 6 miles I walked. With open cups of gatorade in my hands. I thought about a lot of things. Funny things, like how I managed to walk the worst part of the course, where the stores have bars on the windows and a house had yellow caution tape around it. I steered far away from the "I can't believe you are walking this after all of that training." I was already down for the count, I didn't need my self-inflicting talk to drop kick me as well. Pink's song "Perfect" played several times on my iPod which was a great inspiration:
You're so mean (Your so mean)
When you talk (When you talk) about yourself, you were wrong
Change the voices (Change the voices) in your head(In the head)
Make them like you instead
(Chorus)
Oh, pretty pretty please
Don't you ever ever feel
Like you're less than, less than perfect
Pretty pretty please
If you ever ever feel like you're nothing you are perfect to me

5 hours and 13 minutes later I crossed the finish line. Physically, it was difficult. Mentally, it was a beast. I couldn't believe my body had let me down after months of training. I had to walk, not just here and there, but six miles, across the finish. Even though I had already signed up for another marathon (Marine Corp in October), I was ready to hand over my bib number to someone more deserving, someone who could run.

It took quite a few days to physically recover, especially since myself and the three kids were diagnosed with strep just four days later. It took until my next race to mentally recover. April 1, Cherry Blossom 10-miler, best race of my running "career." I'm back.

Lastly, I read this quote several days ago and realized it rang true for me and that awful race day.

"There is a difference between giving up and knowing when you have had enough."
Marc and Angel Hack Life - Practical Tips for Productive Living
www.marcandangel.com

I'm back.

The Kitty Party

Thanks to a lot of helpful tips on the internet, Avery's kitty party was a blast. Two hours was just enough time for twelve kids to eat a lot of sugar, play games and have fun.

Avery chose black, silver and pink as her party colors, colors of a cat of course! She enjoyed making this centerpiece for the party table.


We played lots of great, old school party games. Pin the tail on the cat (Daddy and Avery drew this masterpiece!), guess the number of goldfish in the bowl, hot kitty (our version of hot potato) and many rounds of copy cat (our version of Simon Says). Pop rocks were great game prizes! For a craft, the kids decorated balloons to look like cats.



The kids were also given plates of candy to decorate their cupcakes to look like cats.



The game the kids liked the best was when they found deflated balloons and decided to blow them up and let them fly around the house over and over. Who needs goody bags?

Second Grade Theater

We thoroughly enjoyed Avery's second grade play "Circus, Circus" last night. The music teacher put together a great show, every child participated and it was funny, cute and entertaining.



Avery enjoyed being a part of the chorus. I didn't capture it here, but each child wore a brightly colored shirt with rolled up jeans and mismatched knee socks. Most accessories were made from the elementary school fascination: duct tape (see her pinned on flower).



She came home from school, right after performing the dress rehearsal for the kids at school, and told us she was so nervous she couldn't stop smiling!

I Love February

Our favorite daughter has a February birthday! A magical one this year, turning 8 on the 8th. She had a wonderful day celebrating.



Using an idea from the website Pinterest, we decorated the bedroom doors last night with hearts telling the kids all the things we love about them. The kids loved reading them and the day started off much better than most, interesting what a little positive encouragement can do first thing in the morning!




I received the BEST Valentine's gifts this year. Our new dishwasher was installed, I can actually see the countertops after three weeks of handwashing everything and leaving it all out to dry. Stephen also hung the last two curtains in the family room, a point of contention between the two of us for over a year now. Not to mention the sweet love note and box of chocolates he left for me at my desk this morning on his way out of town.