Shopping with Doll-Face

Dolly and I went grocery shopping today.  In store no. 1, she started out thrilled to be there, holding tightly to the cart with both hands.  Within a minute or two, she started banging one hand, as she is wont to do, still clutching the cart with the other. 

 In store no. 2, I looked for greeting cards.  When I turned back to Dolly, I found this. 

And then, because kneeling/squatting isn't quite exciting enough...

I let her ride that like that for a minute.  Then I made her turn around and sit back down like a normal child so I wouldn't have to hang on to her.  And then she did the whole thing all over again. 

Those cart belts are good for diddly.

Camp Pendleton Sprint Triathlon

A couple of months ago, my good friend Melanie Karner told me that she and another friend in our ward, Heidi Hawkins, were going to do the Camp Pendleton Sprint Triathlon on August 4.  Melanie said I should do it, too.  So I did. 

I've been really wanting to get new running shoes for probably four years.  The race - and the fact that my shoes' stuffing had totally escaped - motivated me to finally conquer my foot deformity, shoe and shopping aversions, and inability to leave the house on days I'm not working to go buy new shoes.  I sort of thought the race might be a nice way to say goodbye to these guys:

This picture does not do justice to the filthiness.  They've been on every hike, every run, pretty much every walk, and even some touristy-type excursions since I bought them, I don't know, 10 years ago.  Never washed.

Given the stuffing situation, however, I risked blisters and wore these, which I bought two days before the race:

Similar, except presentable. 

Remember when I made fun of Jim's pants?  (See http://whitandjim.blogspot.com/2012/03/pants-that-jim-wears.html.)  Perhaps in this way we are peas in a pod.

I had hoped the race would also motivate me to exercise, but that was not to be.  Instead, I prepared by pretty much not working out for a year and then going out for Smashburger and Coldstone the night before.  The last time I rode a real bike was during the sprint triathlon Jim and I did in Galena, Illinois on our honeymoon over four years ago, although I have done a few miles on a bike at the gym every once in a while since then.  I went for a brief swim in a pool once while I was pregnant.  Aside from that, the last time I swam was in Galena.  Needless to say, I was not favored to win. 

The swim (500 yards, or about 1/4 mile) and run (5k) were shorter than Galena; the bike (30k, or about 18 miles) was a little longer.  This was an ocean swim, so we had to deal with currents and waves.  We were in the 40+/overweight (euphemistically referred to as "Athena," for some reason)/mountain bike wave, which was the very last to go.  I rode the mountain bike Mamo and Papo gave me for Christmas approximately two decades ago (I'm thinking I was in 8th grade?) and sported the retro-cool helmet from the same time period.  Melanie was so into my helmet she insisted of getting a picture of me wearing it next to my hot rod before the race.  If I ever get that picture from her, I'll have to add it.  It's really cute.  (Or not.)

Mel and I in the transition area before the race:

I thought the swim would be easy, but I was a disaster.  It's just a rectangular swim course; you go out to the left of a buoy, round the buoy, swim parallel to the shore, round another buoy, and head in to the beach.  We watched the groups ahead of us get sucked to the right and struggle to swim left to get around the first buoy.  Accordingly, we started way down the beach, and then I swam to the left to make sure I didn't get pulled to the right of the first buoy.  I ended up so far out to the left that I was in no danger of that.  I couldn't see well because my goggles were dirty and scratched and half-full of water at all times.  I could not for the life of me swim in a straight line.  On every leg, the workers on jet skis were yelling things like, "Swimmer, you're off course!"  I thought it would be cake once I rounded the second buoy and headed for shore, but that's when things really got hairy.  I was so disoriented and all over the place that I had to take two strokes, come up, do a complete 360, and try to find the beach.  Even when I spotted the shore, I couldn't tell if I was looking at the sand right in front of me or way down the beach.  I almost felt as though I were drugged or something.  It was bizarre.  Some guy on a paddleboard tried to help another struggling lady and me in by telling us to swim by him and follow the red floaty he was dragging.  I wasn't close enough to him, though, and couldn't see the red floaty when I put my face in the water.  I eventually made it to shore, ahead of only a few people.  Embarrassing.

Heidi, her sister-in-law (who was also racing), and Mel were almost ready to start the bike portion when I got to the transition area.  I tried to discuss the swim, but they seemed in a hurry.  Heidi and her sister-in-law headed out, but Mel waited while I got my shoes on.  I had told her that if I did the race, she had to stay with me.  After I pulled my bike out, I was like, "So give me a lesson on the gears.  How do I work them?"  She refused my inquiry and said, "It's a race!"  We laughed about that exchange later.  She tried to stay with me for a few minutes but couldn't go slow enough to keep up with me.  She went on ahead, and I had a leisurely ride bringing up the rear.  As I was biking, I thought, "I could go faster, but then my legs would hurt.  That wouldn't be fun."  I passed a couple people and got passed by a few.  For a good portion of it, I was just biking alone with nobody else in sight.  I even wondered if I'd taken a wrong turn.  Mel and Heidi said they had the road to themselves a lot, too.  I guess that's what happens when you're in the very last wave.  The bike portion was quite flat and easy, although there was one hill at the end I almost thought I'd have to walk up.  My bum region hurt bad, but my knees held up well.  I felt pretty good starting the run. 

I saw both Heidi and Mel on the run.  Melanie took off just as I was getting to the transition area.  The run, too, was flat and easy.  I ran (jogged) the whole thing, despite what Dolly did to my bladder control (not good), and made up a couple of minutes.  I ended up finishing just four minutes behind Heidi and two minutes behind Mel.  I even beat a few people, although I'm sure they were over 50 and/or had a flat tire during the bike leg.  I considered my performance a raging success.  The humiliating part was all of the people along the course yelling, "Good job!  Keep it up!  Let's pick up the pace for the last section!" and things of that nature.  I really wanted to explain, "I'm not doing a good job, and I'm OK with that.  If I had actually trained and were trying right now, that would be sad."  They made me feel really embarrassed, as did the fact that I had to start the run after most people had finished.  But part of that was a function of our being in the last wave. 

In any case, here are the three of us after the race:

(Midget much?)

After we finished, they let us walk on some giant military hovercraft thingy:  

Back at the car:

So I learned some things about myself during the Camp Pendleton Sprint Tri.  I learned that I am lazy and that I apparently have not one competitive bone in my body.  I can't figure out why anyone really cares about how he does in a race.  To me, it's just a nice way to spend a couple of hours outside getting some moderately strenuous exercise.  I didn't know I was so uncompetitive, and I find it intriguing in light of the fact that I participated in competitive individual sports as a wee lass.

ABC Song

I often sing the ABC song to Black Dahlia when I'm feeding her.  I just heard Jim singing it to her in the other room, except his version of the last line ("Next time won't you sing with me?") is "Won't you come and play with me?"  So cute. 

Catch-up + Dolly World

At the end of June, the Young Men participated in the stake road show.  Eric Koehle, our friend and a counselor in the bishopric, wrote the script (based on Star Trek), and the bishopric headed up rehearsals.  Jim was in charge of the set.  After the first night of performance, Jim came home and said their set was so ghetto it was totally embarrasing.  Other wards had elaborate sets, while ours consisted of boxes painted white.  Jim had never seen a road show before and was laughing about how Koehle should have told him more about what was expected.  The second night, Jim came home and said our ward had won the award for best set.  I thought he was joking, but apparently we were the only ones who stayed within the guidelines (put up and take down within one minute, etc.).  Pretty funny.  Dolly and I went and saw our youth perform on the second night.  It was really hard to hear, but they did a great job. 

We went to the beach on the 4th of July.  We met up with Sam and Tatum, Jeremy and Trisha Wilson, Shawna and Gavin McEwan, etc., who go every year.  It was cloudy and cold.  This is all I got:

The following week, Jim took the Young Men on a six-day trip to Yosemite.  He did many hours of research in preparation.  None of his presidency could go, so the bishop (who had two sons on the trip) was the only other adult.  They left around 4:00 A.M. Monday morning, and Jim only got a couple hours of sleep.  We were up packing, making lots of tin foil dinners, and trying to get Half Dome permits.  They got to Yosemite around noon, and then Jim immediately killed them with a 7-miler to Upper Yosemite Falls.  It was all downhill from there (figuratively, not literally).  Apparently the most hiking any of the boys had done before that was a flat, two-mile meander.  There was much soreness (the bishop was limping most of the trip), and there was much complaining.  They didn't end up doing Half Dome because they couldn't get permits for everyone and because nobody wanted to.  They did see some amazing things, though, and I think at least one of the boys appreciated it.  How could you not like camping here?

While Jim was gone, I had a terrible week with Dolly.  He called and asked how she was, and I answered, "Unrecognizable."  She was so fussy and weird the whole time.  She cried when I put her down.  She cried when I left her sight.  She cried when I tried to put her to sleep.  It was bizarre.  (One of my friends said she was acting like a normal baby, but she was certainly not herself.)  Her second tooth made its appearance shortly after that, so maybe teething was the culprit.  I had a lot of work to do that week, too, which added to the fun.  But we survived, and the boys came home a day early. 

Evergreen is back to being a delight most of the time.  She and Jim do lots of dancing, complete with dips. 

She figured out how to escape from the Bumbo.  I put her in it while I unloaded groceries and found this when I came back:

The Bumbo has since been retired.  Now the only place I can stick her and make her stay is her high chair. 



She thinks it's fun to drop things from it.

Since we're obsessed with the Olympics, she's been watching some television lately.  She's not quite as glued to it as she used to be.  One day she was so happy to stand and hold on to the back of the couch, watching me in the kitchen instead of the T.V. 

She treated us to a playful screaming session.

 

Last week she started screaming during her bath and would not stop.  It was so loud, right next to my head, in such a small area, that I thought my ears would explode. 

Miss Chavez gets so nuts in her crib that we finally broke down and got a video monitor.  She's all over the place - sideways at the top to sideways at the bottom and back again - and has gotten limbs stuck through the side a couple of times.  I don't know how she sleeps jammed up against the side, but I laughed when I saw her hair sticking through the slats:



I know the monitor is not essential, but it has been really nice to see what she does up there when she's supposed to be sleeping.  The blinds provide endless amusement. 

She does a lot of tummy time and practices her crawling:

For a girl who used to hate being on her belly, she sure insists on it now.  Dolly is officially a total nightmare on the changing table.  She throws her head back, arches her back, and tries to turn over immediately.  It's so bad that I think I may need to hire a diaper-changing assistant.  She's really strong, and I don't have enough hands to fight her and change her diaper at the same time.

I've caught her snuggling with the couch a few times. 

Jim figured out that she must be messing with her shadow. 

She still clucks.



She loves exploring on foot.  This is not her best work, but you can see how excited she is to be walking:

Her recent crawling practice is paying off.  In a really short period of time, she's gone from this...

... to this:



I'm trying to put her on our carpet upstairs a little bit so she can roam around (the wood floor downstairs is a problem), but she gets into some uncomfortable positions.  She thinks she wants to get under the bed, but then she hits her head.

Dolly and Jim have a new trick that I'm afraid will result in severe injury at some point.  In the meantime, it is enjoyed by all:


I think she got this from when I regulate on her for being silly during mealtime.  I shake my head and say, "No!" 

(I love when she cocks her head to the side.)

It's been a while since we had a shenaniquin photo shoot.  Jim wanted to see how big Dolly's gotten, so what better way to measure that than to put her in the sink we photocized her in months ago?

This little chiznet has sooooo much energy.  I think she's a "go-er," as Ann Marie predicted.  She wants to be busy all the time.  She'll try to scale you when you're holding her, and she'll dive off anything. 

She sticks her tongue out all the time, and she still loves remotes (as you can tell from the fact that we use them as an enticement to crawl).

I take back what I said in my last post about her bald spot filling in.  I think it is more accurate to say that her bald spot has expanded around the back to both sides, so she only has real hair on top.  Basically, she's sporting an all-over comb-over. 

Lil' Miss and Mr. Giraffe have fallen on hard times.  She almost always rejects him at bedtime now, although I usually put him in her crib with her anyway.  Sometimes she plays with him when she wakes up.  I guess they just weren't meant to be, long-term. 

Lastly, off the Dolly topic, Jim's foray into furniture has gotten off to a successful start.  Bookshelf no. 1:

Fancy, no?  He's anxious to do the bookshelf for the other side of the T.V.  Before you know it, we'll have a real family room!