My Shadow

I saw my shadow at the mall today.
She was pushing a stroller, but there was no baby in it. She was carrying the baby while the stroller just served the purpose of a cumbersome accessory. She made my day.
I am a baby-carrying, empty-stroller-pushing mom the majority of the time I go out with The Smalls. We pass a lot of strollers every time we go out, and almost invariably there is a child in it. Strange how that works. As I juggle holding my baby while pushing his empty stroller, sometimes I point out the other baby-carrying strollers to him and how cool the other babies look hanging out in their strollers. But he's just like, so what? I'm not into being trendy and don't you go try putting me down in that thing again or I will sound the alarm.
I see those baby-carrying strollers everywhere and I wonder what that must be like.
Bless that woman in the mall with her non-trendy baby! For some reason it felt really, really nice to see another woman with the same breed of baby as mine. I wanted to invite her to lunch to talk things over. Instead we just smiled.

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Our Little Snot-Nose Crawling

This is Michael's favorite video. Of himself, of course. He gets really happy when he sees himself get really happy.

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Duathlon

So I competed in my first duathlon yesterday. Basically, a triathlon for people who aren't swimmers. Run-bike-run instead of swim-bike-run.

It was fun, although about 100 times less fun than I used to have road racing and mountain biking racing. But, as a trade off, it was also about 100 times safer. So I guess I consider that sort of trade-off more at this point in my life when I have a baby who relies on me every minute of every day. It was also almost within spitting distance of my house, which was great because I could be at home nursing Michael one minute and on the course warming up literally the very next. Nursing always makes me super relaxed (or drowsy to be more exact) and that was a nice way to ensure a really calm start. Although then I found it difficult to really find a very competitive spirit. I wonder if I will ever feel that competitive drive and passion again like I used to. I mean, it was fun, I tried, and I did well, but I just couldn't get myself to care too much. I was hoping that a race would magically fire me up again.
Afterwards, we met up with some friends at their parent's summer house in the archipelago. It was beautiful! Rob reveled in the chance to put some more time on his paddle board, as well as had the chance to try out wind surfing (verdict: tricky!).

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Biggie got The Memo about Mother's Day!!!

It's a Mother's Day miracle.
All I wanted for Mother's Day was to sleep in a little bit, and somehow, Michael got the memo.
6:38 am!!!
Hey, it's all relative. He's been waking up between 4:58 and 5:52 (the exact time you see on the clock really gets etched into your mind when you are forced out of bed this early) for the last couple weeks, so 6:38 was pretty big.

But wait! There's more!

Then, as we were staring out the window together (another trick that soothes him), we had a magical moment as a mother and baby deer walked right by us through our yard and stopped to graze together in our foliage.

Then when we went to church, I didn't have to take him out ONE SINGLE TIME! He was so good, in fact, that I listened to every single speaker and actually got something out of it.

Then he ate by far the most he has ever eaten, without even requiring me to employ any trickery (like, Here! Play with this toy! Then as soon as he opens for the toy shove my spoon in.)

Also, today he gave me a happiness-to-whining ratio that is off the charts high for this boy.

But wait! I haven't even gotten to the best part yet.
Drumroll please....

HE SAID MOM TODAY!!!
And MAMA and MA'AM and mmmmmmmmm and muhbah and all sorts of other jibberish, but he clearly said mom and mama several times. He has never even made the "m" sound before today.

The bottom line is this:
My son, who is still only 7 months old, made my Mother's Day feel like something that could qualify for one of those tiny little Hallmark books that are way over-priced and no one really reads even though they seem like a cute token gift.

Finally, to my mom and mother-in-law: here is a little video of Michael that I put together for you. I know it is a little self-serving, but I hope you both like it too! (Since putting this together a couple weeks ago, he has learned to crawl...so I guess that means I need to make another one soon.)

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Helsinki

Smalls and I decided to party it up while Rob was away for business and went to visit the grandparents in Helsinki. As illustrated by the way Michael is hanging upside-down*, it's hard-core partying when my parents are involved.

We saw cool buildings, ate kabob, visited their mission office, and watched the city fill up with drunken madness as the Finns celebrated May Day. Smalls saw cool new walls he could scratch, ate his fingers, visited two older people who smiled at him a lot, and watched as the city filled up with shiny metalic balloons as the Finns celebrated May Day. It was like the best luck of his life when he was staring at a big cluster of balloons a street vendor was holding, and then a strong gust of wind caught them all and blew them right into the stroller, inches from his face where he could just reach out and touch them. Even Mother Nature doesn't want to hear Master Smalls whine.

*This seems to disable Michael's whining mechanism. Since this discovery he spends a lot of time upside-down. It's good for healthy brain development.

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