Scrappy Says, "Mele Kalikimaka"

Last night after dinner I said, "Ok, Moana! Bathtime!" And you know what she did? She walked right up to Scott on the couch and made this little "mmmmmm" sound while pursing her lips and getting her face very close to his. We figured out that she was trying to kiss him goodnight, which he always does right before I take her up to do bath/bedtime. Just how cute is it that she went to initiate it? And with that "mmmmmm" sound- she must have gotten that from watching Scott and I kiss goodbye every morning before he goes to work.

Moana is in a nap transition stage right now, meaning some days she takes her two naps as usual, but every third day or so she just isn't ready to take a nap in the morning so she ends up with just one longer mid-day nap. I'm okay with it either way but the hard part is not knowing what it's going to be each day. Just makes it tough to plan. Anyway, she didn't want the morning nap today, so I figured I needed to take her out and entertain her for a few hours until it would be time for noon nap. No place entertains her like the beach, so off we went. She is so social these days too- she just walked right up to this little 2 year old boy and started playing with his buckets of sand and water with him. He was a good sport in sharing. The beach we go to has lots of dogs running around and playing in the water (mostly off leash) and she just squeals and starts barking out loud at the dogs when she sees them. I have not heard her say 'dog' but she says 'RUFF RUFF RUFF' whenever she sees one (or a picture of one). Then she'll go right up to the dog and luckily (so far) they have all been kid-friendly dogs so she typically gets a big wet sloppy tongue in her face, which makes her laugh and squeal even more.

Ok, enough of the sap.

Because you know what? It's not always so rosey and cute around here. Take tonight, for example. Moana drove me batty. Seriously, no idea why, she just whined and moaned and screamed at me... I tried to feed her, but she wouldn't eat. But she wouldn't let me eat. She wouldn't let me walk into the kitchen without screaming, but if I just sat on the living room floor it was ok. Heaven forbid I tell her not to suck on that eraser she ripped off the end of the pencil. And no, Moana, your blanket cannot come with you into the bathtub... complete meltdown to follow. I was at the end of my rope by the time Scott came home. Seriously, I just handed her off the second he walked in the door and told him it was time for Changing Of The Guard. Sometimes I think that's just what she needs. Because while she can instantly forget that she screamed incessantly at me for the past hour and decide to be all darling during her bath (yes, immediately following the meltdown she forgot about her blanket and enjoyed the heck out of her bath toys), I don't forget quite so quickly or easily. And my mood clearly plays a big role in her mood. So when Scott finally got home he couldn't figure out what I was talking about because our daughter morphed back into her cute little self for him for almost an entire hour. Then she started wailing again about every little thing so I just put her to bed.

It's amazing how these little people can stretch you to your extremes... one minute you're like she's the cutest thing ever!! And the next minute you're willing to give her away for free.

Christmas is in just a few days and I'm pretty much done shopping. One gift I still have to go pick up, but it's already paid for so it'll be a quick trip to get that done. Just a little bit of wrapping left and I'll be ready. Moana is not going to have a huge Christmas this year b/c let's face it, that's just completely unnecessary.

I sent out our Christmas cards last week... it was funny as I was addressing them to all these relatives that I am not in regular contact with (some of Scott's who I do not even know!) all I could think of was that I should be sending cards to all of my blog friends too, though I do not know most of your addresses so obviously that did not happen. But seriously, Scott's aunts and uncles are not going to understand the little joke on our card like all of you would.

Speaking of Scrappy, he's been pretty easy on me lately. A lot of my nausea seems to be gone, which is a relief. It's not much fun to feel like you could just upchuck at any given moment throughout the day for weeks and weeks on end. Anyway, that seems to be over. And in other good news, it seems that my blood volume has finally caught up to my expanded veins and arteries. I don't feel all dizzy when I stand up anymore, and my heart rate while running seems to have gone back to normal. For a while I felt like my heart had to work really hard just for me to jog really easily (Dr. Clapp explains this in his book by saying that in early pregnancy we just don't have enough blood to fill our expanded arterial system so that's why HR is not a good indicator of how hard a woman is working in early pregnancy.) Anyway, running feels easier now, even though I don't feel especially fluid or light on my feet while doing it. I managed to run 40 miles last week, which is a lot I know... it wasn't my plan to run that much, but after Saturday's run I counted it up and had 36. And on Sunday I was going to go ride my bike but it looked like it might rain and I'm just not interested in riding in the rain these days so I went for a 4 mile run instead. There you go. 40 miles. I keep telling myself that I will back off as soon as it doesn't feel good anymore, but it still feels good, so I'm feeling no need to back off the volume. I have backed off the pace quite a bit though. I don't even know how slowly I'm running anymore b/c I've stopped timing my runs. It's fine, whatever the pace is. It's fine. If I'm honest, I'd tell you that there's actually a teeny (tiny) part of me that feels relieved to not have any pressure on me to go 'fast' this next year.