Weekend wrap-up

It was a busy weekend at the Naegle household.

Friday

Friday Davis and I headed to Arlington Town Night for fair like activities on one of the town sports fields.  There was food, pony rides, train rides, live music, a dog show, bouncy houses and tons of kids.  We went straight from daycare and planned to meet Mom for the festivities.  Since we went straight there, it meant we were going to have a hungry little guy after a little while, so I bought him his first hamburger of which he enjoyed eating the bun and cheese.  We had hoped to get Davis on a pony ride, but the line for the ponies was over 45 minutes, so we spent our time walking around and watching the live music, fire trucks and chasing the train giving rides around the field.  I think Davis would have enjoyed the train ride, but I didn't have the patience to spend 20 minutes in line.  He really enjoyed the brass band that was there and had a great time dancing and spinning around in circles.  He only tried to take food from other people's picinics a few times.  We left at dusk, before the fireworks as we are still slaves to Davis's sleep schedule.

Kristen got delayed leaving work and we ended up meeting up on the walk home instead of at the festival as planned.  However, it worked out great.  Kristen brought Megan with her and ran into Bill and Sonya on the way and we all headed back to our place for a late dinner.  It was a great spontaneous dinner and very nice to have people over for dinner once again.  Davis had a great time getting all the adults to stand up and spin around in circles with him.

Saturday

Saturday we took our normal trip to the Y to work out while Davis goes to daycare.  Kristen did the boot camp style class as usual, but I just ran 10 minutes on the treadmill and streched.  Davis did not do well being left in daycare and my brief exercise worked out for the best as I picked him up just when they were about to come get me to take care of an inconsolable child.  We spent the rest of Mom's workout playing in the mat room which Davis enjoyed a lot.

After the Y, we went to the Wright-Locke Farm to pick raspberries, but they weren't open yet so we headed home and then to Arlington Town Day.  A 1/4 to 1/2 mile second of Mass Ave in Arlington was closed for the annual town celebration.  There were booths from local organizations, schools, resturants, vendors as well as live music, performers and lots of people.  Davis road on my shoulders for much of our time at town day which was great until he gave me a big hug and put his hands over my eyes.  We grabbed lunch from one of the Indian resturants with a boot and sat on the library lawn eating and chasing Davis.  Davis enjoyed dipping his part of the Samosa in sauce and pouring water all over himself.

After naps at home, we went back to Wright-Lock farm and picked two quarts of raspberries.  We actually picked quite a bit more than that, but everything that went into Davis' bucket went right into his mouth.  We froze half the raspberries, but managed to eat the other quart in just a day.

Sunday

Sunday we headed up to Wilimington for my first half-marathon and Kristen's (and Davis') 5k.  Kristen did very well in her 5k considering she was pushing 40+ pounds of stroller and a little bit sick. I was very impressed!

My half-marathon was "fun".  I've been running pretty regularly since May and decided a couple months ago to go for a half-marathon and picked this one based on the recommendation of a running coach in my office.  My longest run before this was two weeks ago at 12.2 miles.  On that run, I took no water or food and really struggled in the last two miles.  This time I took water with a little bit of sugar and salt added and with the numerous water stops a long the way was hoping to feel better at the end.

The race really broke down into parts for me:

1. The first 3 miles were really easy.  I was planning on really being conservative here and running 7:30 miles which is a little bit slower than I've been doing on my training runs.  From past races, I knew it would be a real challenge to limit my pace in a crowd - its very easy to not realize you are going faster than you want when there are lots of other people around.  I started near the front of the race and settled into my own pace very quickly.  I came through the first mile at 6:55 and the second at 13:57 which was must faster than planned, but I felt really good.  
2. The 3rd to 8th mile were just on cruise control.  I felt great and just worked on slowly catching the people in front of me who I could see.  
3. After the 8th mile, I had mostly passed the people I could see and was starting to get tired.  It took me almost 4 miles to catch the last person I could see.  This also felt like the hilly part of the run.  Up to mile 12, I felt pretty much the same - tired, feeling the effort, but pretty good all things considered.
4. Mile 12 to 13.  Agony. I was very tired and running out of energy.  I couldn't go any faster.  By far my slowest mile.  Had a hard time running straight.
5. The last .1 miles.  Saw Kristen and Davis, got a great cheer.  Kristen yelled I was top 10. I couldn't believe it.  Still in agony and unable to go any faster, but got a chill finishing.

I finished 10th out of 112 in 1:30:53 (6:56 average pace) and 3rd in my age group (30-39, 11 runners).  This was about 8 minutes faster than I was aiming for, so I'm very happy with the result.

My Mile times broke down about like this:

• Mile 0-1: 6:55
• Mile 1-2: 7:02
• Mile 2-3: 7:08
• Mile 3-4: 6:47
• Mile 4-5: 6:55
• Mile 5-6: 6:53
• Mile 6-7: 6:52
• Mile 7-8: 6:36
• Mile 8-9: 6:55
• Miles 10-12: 20:52 (I forgot to hit the lap button)
• Mile 12-13.1: 7:56 (7:12 pace)

After the race, I was pretty wasted.  Not taking in calories during the run really drained me.  Running really makes it hard for me to eat, so I could only take in a little bit after the race and spent the rest of the day eating and drinking to recover.  I also had a problem with my shoes where my toes blistered quite a bit, so in the afternoon while Davis and Kristen took a nap, I went to the running store and got new shoes and socks.

Results are here:

• Half Marathon Overall
• 5K Gender

After the race, we met up with Josh, Courtney, Mack and Liam at Together in Motion in Arlington to celebrate Liam's first birthday.  Davis had a good time playing in the mats and I tried to not get too close to anybody since I had not showered.

After the party, a nap and a snack, we went to the mall to get him some new shoes and do some shopping for Kristen.  Davis jumped from a size 4.5 to 6 and had a great time running around the mall and people watching.  After the mall, we went out to dinner for the first time in about a month and had a nice dinner at a loud mexican resturant.  Davis did great and enjoyed his beans, rice, guacamole, chips and pizza.  It was nice to go out again.  The last time was something of a mess and involved a lot of screaming and food throwing.

Next Week


This week is going to be a different for us.  Kristen heads of for the first of three consequtive conferences.  She is in Houston Wednesday to Friday, back in Boston for the Siebel conference on Saturday (and maybe Sunday), then off to Austin for another conference Tuesday to Saturday.  Sunday I've got a cyclocross race in Glouscester, so it shoud be another interesting week around the Naegle household.

A dragon?

Ridiculous. Expect to see more like these soon.

Stages of food acceptance, toddler version

At dinner last night, as I watched Davis poke an olive, I started thinking about the stages of food acceptance in a toddler.

• Stage 1: Physically turns away, leans out of the highchair to get away.
• Stage 2: Throws it when in reach
• Stage 3: Pokes and/or smashes it
• Stage 4: Will eat it off of Dad or Mom's plate and utensils
• Stage 5: Will eat it off if their plate
• Stage 6: Will ask for more
• Stage 7: If present on the table, will not eat anything else

Here are the stages of some of Davis's food:

• Applesauce: Stage 7
• Yogurt: Stage 7
• Black beans: Stage 5
• Olives: Stage 3
• Strawberries: Stage 6
• Raspberries: Stage 7
• Corn: Stage 2, usually
• Kiwi: Stage 6 or 7
• Broccoli: Stage 4 or 5
• Green beans: Stage 2

He has a few stage one foods, but they are not coming to mind right now.

"Work life balance" never getting it right

You may have noticed that John is primarily updating the blog lately (and thank goodness he is!).  I have been working quite a bit lately between trying to advance my postdoctoral experiments and put together an application package for faculty positions.  Unfortunately, and probably fortunately, I have had one of those jarring wake-up calls you get from time to time that makes you realize your priorities are all out of whack. 

Since I returned from Lisbon, a month ago now, I have been having problems with my cell culture.  The idea behind cell culture and why biologists use cells is beyond my capacity to explain tonight, but I hear the book "The immortal life of Henrietta Lacks" is a wonderful look into this arena and the personal and ethical stories surrounding the very first implications of using human cells in a petri dish as a method for studying the underlying mechanisms of life itself.  Unfortunately, what happens when you make the conditions ideal for growing human cells is you make the conditions ideal for growing a whole bunch of things like bacteria, yeast, and mold.  Unfortunately, those things all grow faster and so can quickly overtake your culture and destroy any hopes you had of finishing an experiment or making any progress.  It turns out that now I know my contamination problems are wide spread in the lab and were unavoidable and we are now taking the necessary steps to fix it, but not before I lose something that has taken me two months to achieve.  On the bright side those months included a lot of fiddling with things that I now know how to fix and so the next time around will be weeks to get back to the same spot instead of months.  However, I've been a wreck over all the time I have "wasted" due to these problems.  I realize the real emotional problem for me is not just that it will take me a few weeks to recover, but all those evenings I came home late and only saw Davis for a few minutes before he went to bed and all those weekends I went in to work are what I feel the most pain in losing by watching this experiment go up in flames.  I now realize I have not been doing a good job of separating my personal and my professional life and it really needs to change so that next time this happens (and it will happen) I only know the small pain of losing some work time and not the big pain of letting my family down for what in the end is nothing tangible.  It should be entirely feasible for me to work a normal amount and be there for my family and make progress and I hope to prove it!

On the job front, I have now applied to three Universities!  (The current market for people in my position dictates that I should apply to 20 or 30 schools, so I still have a long way to go). 

Weekly update

Time flies when you have a child.  I don't really know what happened to last week.  Davis is growing up fast and we had a fun weekend.

This weekend did not quite go as planned, but we still manged to have a good time.  Kristen and Davis both have a cold (runny nose + cough) so we weren't as active as last weekend.  We had hoped to go to a bar with Davis to watch the University of Washington (Huskies) football game, but the colds and a late start meant we decided it was better not to go.  However, we did wear our matching Husky shirts on Saturday - it was quite amusing to be asked "So, are you big fans of George?" when we were picking up pizza (the shirts simply said: Washington).

This weekend:

• Davis and I went to the Burlington touch a truck.
• I went to the Y for a work out.  Kristen and Davis stayed home sick.
• Davis had a 3 hour nap on Saturday.  He woke up after an hour and 20 minutes, then slept on me for an hour and 40 minutes.  I really enjoy having him sleep on me, so I did not mind.
• Davis had a 3 hour nap on Sunday.  This was his first long weekend nap where he did not sleep on me for part of it.  It was quite a surprise and blessing.

Davis:

• Can now jump.  It is incredibly cute.  He throws his hands up in the air and gets just a little bit off the ground. 
• Uses a lot more words.  He has said in the last week: "breakfast", "grandma", "hungry".
• He is starting to use short phrases including: "All right", "No Way!", "Where is Mom", "Read this"
• Helps put his toys away before bed
• Feeds the cats treats.  He tends to favor Domino, but Kristen makes sure Lilly is looked after. 
• Climbs into the dining room chairs and sits when we say it is time to eat
• Has a few more teeth.  He has at least 9, but it might be 10.  Its hard to get a look in his mouth.
• Almost, but not quite, needs his first haircut
• Pretends to vacuum the floor.  He connects 4 or 5 of his magnetic cylinders to a ball and walks around making vacuum noises.
• Pretends to play trucks with his mega blocks.  Last night, he handed me a block and said "truck" then we drove our "trucks" around the living room.
• Shows a lot more interest in reading.  He now brings us books and sits in our laps while we read him stories.  He really enjoys "The cat in the hat", "Mr. brown can moo", "Brown bear brown bear, what can you see" and his bedtime stories.
• Pretends to give his monkey water.  Pretends might not be the right word for it since he actually gives his monkey water.
• Gives wonderful hugs
• Is staying up later and sleeping in later.  He usually goes to bed at 8:00 and wakes up at about 6:30.  This is great as we get an extra half hour with him at night and an extra hour of sleep in the morning.  Some days, he sleeps in until 7:30 which is great on a weekend, but a little stressful for the week.  We've started setting our alarm clocks again which is quite a change.

Touch a truck

Davis and I went to "Touch a Truck" in Burlington today.  Davis loves trucks and we thought it would be fun to get up close and personal with all sort of trucks.  He had a good time, but was a little scared and startled by all the air horns going off.

He got to "drive":

• A public works truck
• A cement mixer
• A fire truck
• A dump truck
• An MBTA bus
• A tractor-trailer

He also got to touch a lot of trucks.  His favorite activity, and that of many others, was to sit and run around in the scoop of a front-end loader.

Honking the Public Works truck horn

Touch a truck

Driving a truck

Sitting the the wheel of the front-end loader

In the scoop of the front-end loader

Driving the dump truck

New Photos

I feel like I'm chasing my tail right now, so as much as I'd like to write about our weekend, some pictures is all I can manage right now:

Toes!

Sand!

Drivin' a car

Playing with the water

Playing with the water

Hamming it up for mom

Going down the slide by himself

Going down the slide by himself

There are a few more on picasa.

Tidbits about Davis

John does a fantastic job capturing our weekend activities, but I wanted to add some little stories about Davis.

Davis gives kisses
A couple of weeks ago Davis looked at me and then very pointedly turned his head to the side.  I finally clued in and turned my head to the side and he gave me a kiss on the cheek!  Kisses are now a regular visitor in the Naegle household.  Dad is a little sad that they seem to be mostly reserved for Mom right now.

Davis is a total ham
Davis knows exactly when there's a camera pointed at him or someone is looking and he can really ham it up.  When we went to the soccer game on Saturday night, there was a row of teenage girls sitting behind us and he had them wrapped around his little finger.  I couldn't even count the number of times I heard "Look at those eyes", "What a happy guy", "Oh what a smile", or "What cute hair!".  Davis spent most of the time in his seat turned around entertaining them.

Davis has hair (unique hair at that)
We like to joke that Davis' hair growth has been the reverse of male-pattern baldness.  He started out completely bald, and stayed that way for a long time.  Then he started to grow "the ring" of hair.  Right now he has hair on top with a widow's peak that is slowly filling in.  The hair on top is still quite short and tends to stick up all over the place.  When we were grocery shopping this weekend the couple behind us in line asked if his hair stuck up like that naturally or if we styled it like that on purpose.

Davis is resourceful
Davis never ceases to amaze us.  Saturday morning the three of us were in the living room trying to wake up.  Dad was laying on the couch and Davis laid down on the mat that was stretched out on the carpet.  When I tried to join him he pushed me off and said "NO! MINE!".  So Dad was nice enough to give me a pillow and I laid down on the floor next to Davis (but not on his mat!).  Well, Davis decided my pillow looked pretty good so he tried to horn in on it.  In an attempt to teach a lesson, that feels borderline abusive, I said "No, mine.".  Davis just looked at me for a second, turned around and walked into our bedroom, grabbed a pillow off our bed and then walked right back into the living room and laid down with it.  Whatever misgivings I had about showing Davis what it feels like when someone doesn't share, they dissolved when we saw how resourceful he is!

Davis has a special spot in the living room
There's one spot in the living room that Davis will always go to for the following things:

• To put sunscreen on (you can usually get sunscreen on three limbs before he starts to run around)
• To put shoes and socks on
• To give the kitties treats
• To do the "bicycle"

Today, as I was getting ready in the bedroom for the bike practice we went to, I said to Davis "I'm going to ride a bicycle, do you want to ride a bicycle?".  Davis immediately ran to his spot, laid down on his back, and bicycled his legs in the air.

Davis has many words and phrases
Davis is clearly understanding a lot of what we say now.  However, I have learned it's important to realize the gaps in what he understands.  For a while we have been struggling with him throwing his food at meal times (dinner especially).  It's been getting a lot better, mainly John and I think because we have greatly de-emphasized our response to it.  A few nights ago, Davis had a great dinner with no food throwing.  I said "Davis, wow, THANK YOU very much FOR not THROWing FOOD".  Davis immediately, in short order, threw the two strawberries and the eggplant on the floor and against the bookshelves.  That folks was entirely my fault since I now see that what he heard are the capitalized portions of the sentence.  Here are some words and phrases Davis is saying a lot now:

• No, wait
• What's that?
• No way!
• Thank you
• Stop
• Outside
• Truck (by far his most used word it seems)
• Socks (sounds a lot like truck)
• Shoes
• Toes
• This
• More
• Mine
• No
• No, Mine!

Davis can play follow the leader
We have great fun playing follow the leader with Davis.  We can stand on one foot and he'll stand on one foot.  We can lay down on the ground and bicycle and he'll do that (sound familiar?).  He's great with songs too like "Head, shoulders, knees and toes".  Some things he's learned at daycare are "Cheers", high fives, and fist bumps (called "pound").   Another game Davis loves (particularly while naked after a bath) is chase. 

Davis loves music
Davis continues to love music of all sorts.  Anything from the ice cream truck to grammie's cell phone ring can elicit a dance.  Dad found a great musical set at a garage sale that has been very exciting for Davis (probably less exciting for our downstairs neighbors).  He loves to drum and play the recorder.  He also enjoys taking the recorder apart as well as using it as a drumstick.


Davis loves Domino
Davis and Domino continue to have a pretty close relationship.  We still spend most nights chasing Domino out from under the crib at bedtime and letting him in the room first thing in the morning.  One morning last week I was getting his lunch ready when I decided to peak in on them and found Davis carrying Domino.  Domino looked less then enthusiastic about it, but just hung there like a limp rag doll until Davis put him down, at which time he bolted from the room.  You'll notice we never mention Lilly and Davis' relationship.  Lilly keeps a large distance between them unless Davis is helping us feed them.  Davis is a great counter and table sentry.  Whenever the cats are somewhere they shouldn't be, he lets us know.

Weekend wrap-up

Labor day weekend was a good combination of being busy, relaxing and saying good-bye to summer.  Our heat-wave broke when Hurricane Earl passed off-shore and the weekend was a fantastic 70 to 80 and sunny.  A great break after 5 days of 94, 92, 96, 94 and 95 for highs.

This weekend we:

• Went to the Y.  Freddy's class was cancelled because of the holiday weekend, so we went a little later than usual.  However, we ran into Freddy in the gym and he gave a special 6 person extra hard version of his class.  It was a great workout, much better than we would have done by our selves.
• As part of the next bullet item, we made a quick trip to Ikea for dinner and a new table and chair set for Davis to play with in the living room.  So far, both the cats and Davis approve of the new plastic furniture.
• Saturday we went to our first Revolution soccer game.  Kristen got deeply discounted tickets from Groupon that included a free shirt.  The game was at 7:30, a little late for our little guy, but we went anyways for an adventure and to start testing our parenting comfort zone.  The game, what we saw of it was fun, but Kristen was expecting a European atmosphere as was a little disappointed by the lack of passion from the American fans.  I spent a lot of time out of my seat with Davis walking around, but was rewarded by catching a tee-shirt thrown into the stands at half-time.
• Sunday we went peach picking in North Andover.  Davis had a blast running around the orchard then feeding the animals afterwards.  We fed llamas, goats and a cow.
• After a family nap and sleeping on dad Sunday, we went to our friends for a BBQ.  Davis again had a blast running around, climbing in chairs, eating and playing chase / hide and seek between the air whole-house air conditions.
• Monday we took Davis to a cyclocross practice in Lexington with a few people from Quad Cycles. Kristen and I are both planing on doing a race next weekend so we wanted to get our bikes tuned in and get some technical practice in.  We took turns practicing and supervising Davis eating donuts, peaches, water mellon, water and blue berry muffins by the handfuls.  Unfortunately, I did crash and hurt my right knee a little bit.
• After we got back from practice, Davis took a long nap and we cleaned the house and yard. 
• After naps and an early dinner, we skyped with Grandparents then headed to the nearby sprinkler park for the last time this year.  School starts tomorrow in Arlington and the sprinklers get shut off.

I have some videos from this weekend that are not uploaded anywhere yet, but here are a few pictures from the soccer game:

Exploring the seats before the game

Seattle Fans

With Mom

Hey mom, there is a soccer game over there!

Mom watching the game, Davis watching something else.

Tired guy, right before heading home