run

Saturday, Mike and I ran in a 5K in Hudsonville.  We were both pretty excited about it - it was my first race since June 2011, and Mike's first since May 2012.  Mike is much, much faster than I, but we were both pleased with our finish times - we definitely want to improve before the next one, but we did decent for now.  I am signed up for a 5K in mid April, and we are both signed up for the River Bank Run 5K in mid May.

Running has been great.  I still don't like it, and I haven't improved as fast as I'd like to, BUT I keep going because I feel so good.  Most of the time I am super energized all day after I run, and I actually want to eat better usually (except today, for some reason I just want to snack, snack, snack...and after the race on Saturday I wanted to eat like I ran a marathon even though it was only a 5K...).  I am completely enjoying being more of my own person than I have been in a very long time - it's such a freeing feeling to not be trying to get pregnant, pregnant, or breastfeeding. I keep trying to figure out how I'm going to keep up with running once Mike gets into his busy season, and I don't know how that's all going to work yet, but I definitely don't want to stop or it's going to be that much harder to start back up again next winter.

Friday night we went out for pizza as a family.  I really wish I had videoed it to look back on about 15 years from now.  I have visions of all my boys being teenagers and each needing their own large pizza.  For now, Caleb usually won't eat pizza and it even took some coaxing to get him to eat a bit of a cheese breadstick (which he has eaten many times no problem).  Logan did eat about half a piece of pizza and sometimes will eat quite a bit.  Caleb definitely has a strong will and has completely dug in his heels about not eating at suppertime. We've been trying various approaches and so far we are making no headway.  :)  One thing that has become very clear over the last months that we've been dealing with this, is that it is an obedience issue and not a food issue.  What's also frustrating is that overall he is really doing well with obedience in other areas - he's just decided to be stubborn about this one thing.  I really, really hope that someday he can use that strong will for something super good and awesome!!  :)

Levi continues to become more and more interactive.  He LOVES watching his brothers and often wants to be in on what they are doing.  For the most part they are still really "in his face" and love their little brother, but I'm starting to see some frustration when he goes after some of their toys or messes up something they are playing with.  As he's gotten mobile there's been more incidents, too, where he's definitely learning to be the tough little brother - ex: he's crawling for the bathroom, and one of the boys pulls on his leg to drag him back...

It is such a joy to watch Caleb and Logan observing the world around them and asking questions.  I DO get tired of some of the questions, and many of them stump me, but I love it that they are paying attention to what's going on and thinking about it.  We had communion in church Sunday, so of course there were some questions about that.  Randomly today Logan told me he didn't want to get baptized...  Hmmm....  We'll work on that.  :)

One thing I have to make a note of for when I read this stuff years from now, Caleb and Logan (esp. Caleb) are into Rescue Bots right now.  They love watching the show on tv (thank you, Netflix!), and often when they are playing on their own I will hear Caleb saying, "Rescue Bots, roll to the rescue!"  We have been trying to use a Rescue Bots toy as a motivator for Caleb to eat (I'm not ready to call it a bribe....), but so far it hasn't worked even though he clearly wants it SOOO bad.

Another quiet time is done already - gotta run!