Gearing Up

I love, love, love the holidays! Fall is simply the best season, and once Halloween turns into Thanksgiving, there is just no better time in my opinion. I'm pretty excited about next week for so many reasons, and this year Thanksgiving means even more to me because of the Turkey Trot. I've worked hard toward this goal, and I think it's appropriate that my challenge is on the morning of a holiday in which we are given the opportunity to be thankful. I'm running this 5K because I had baby fat to lose, and what a good reason to put on weight! I'm jogging this race for Silas and myself, as well as the hopeful future children that BJ and I will have. I want to be able to run throughout my next pregnancy, so I'm running for my children and me. What a blessing! Meanwhile, I totally need to step it up. My longest distance run so far without stopping is 2.5 miles. Now don't get me wrong: this is great, especially for me. My goal is the entire distance on Thanksgiving morning, though, and I don't want to stop short. I'll only adopt the "everyone is a winner" mentality if desperate times call for desperate measures during the actual race. (What I mean by this is certainly not any kind of hope that I will win this race! It's more like "Don't be a loser by not running the whole thing.")

In the spirit of gearing up for next week food-wise, I'm also running a pre-holiday batch of the cookies that I was considering making for Thankgiving. Each year for the past three years I have worked hard on baking an extra-tasty cookie, with each year being a different cookie. This year I thought I might try chocolate-peppermint sandwiches. I can't just make a mediocre cookie though, so we're doing a trial run now. Those are in the oven and Silas is sleeping away after an eventful day thus far. He had his six-month appointment this morning, complete with six shots (boo!). After his morning nap he played hard for an hour and a half with his friend DJ, so he's pretty much pooped again.  I am washing up some of his laundry as part of my afternoon as well. When we were at Target yesterday I bought him a navy blue hoodie that was on sale for $3.50. At the store I thought it was fleece, but as I pulled it out of the sack today it seemed oddly velvety. Hmm. The tag says 100% polyester, but I'm pretty sure this is velvet, people. Now if I dress my son in this, he will be just like George Costanza, all draped in velvet. Perish the thought! Every mother's nightmare, a George Costanza son! If this doesn't feel significantly less velvety post-wash, it may go straight to the "too small to wear" pile.... For those of you interested in such things, Silas is still in the 90-percentiles for length. The doctor said that if he is still this high when he is 18 months old, we can expect at least a 6 foot man out of him!