Taste Tester

Moana is on the verge... of mobility... yesterday for the first time she got her belly off the floor while on her hands and knees. And boy does it make her proud! BIG smiles and some primal screaming from her when she's up. Today she started rocking back and forth while in that position. So far she's only figured out how to move herself backwards. (Apparently the remote control isn't yet enough of a carrot to move forward for.)

I don't know why I'm encouraging her to move since everyone says that's the end of getting anything done around the house while the baby is awake. I guess its the drive inside me that is always encouraging development and progress. I expect it from myself and I hope for it from my daughter. So what I'm saying is that this may be the last week I'll be able to get any laundry done.

She can almost run in this scooter thing now. I usually let her cruise around on our patio in the mornings and she digs it. Remember that out of control dill plant I wrote about a few week ago? In the true 6-month-old-baby-spirit of tasting everything she can get her hands on, Moana let me know that it doesn't really taste so great.

I'm excited for a fun weekend coming up! I'm running a 5K tomorrow morning. Clearly I am not over trained because the thought of killing myself for 3.1 miles is quite exciting to me! I haven't run a 5K in two years so am curious about what I can do. I ran something like 23:20 at this same race in 2007. Race pace calculators tell me at this point (based on my recent 10K's) that I should be running right around 22 minutes flat, so of course I think it would be cool to cross the finish line in 21:xx. We'll see if I can do it tomorrow.

Then on Sunday we've got the first ocean swim race of 2009! I live for ocean swim races. There are like 8 of them each spring/summer and they excite me so much! This one is put on by my masters team and since it falls on Mother's Day each year, they have a special awards category for mothers. And guess who gets to race as a mom for the first time this year? Bet you can't guess!! Ha! Anyway, it'll be really fun to hang with some of my old ocean swimming buddies that I haven't had time to play with much this year.

So it's a beautiful Aloha Friday here. Moana and I are going to go meet Kelley and Sara down at the beach here in a little bit. The ocean water is warm now and babies love it. There's nothing like sitting in the sand and having the gentle ocean waves roll up onto your legs. That, and it's about time Moana gets accustomed to eating sand.