18 months

I can't believe Ty is 18 months old. I wish I had thought of this idea sooner but oh well. I'm going to recap his growth every few months. I think it will be fun to go back and look at and see how he changes over the months/years.

Age: 18 months
Weight: 29.4 pounds
Height: 31 1/2 inches
Food: veggies ( its pretty normal for ty to eat 2 huge bowls of peas and carrots in one sitting), fruit of any kind, grilled cheese. at daycare he will eat meat (turkey, chicken, pastrami) ...at home, he feeds it to the dog. go figure
Words: everyday his constant babble sounds more and more like actual words. so far he has mastered mama, dada, stop (in a very whining and raised voice, awesome), up, and please (which sounds more like peeeezzz). There's a lot more that he is trying hard to say but hasn't quite mastered, like banana.
Toys: hes still a big fan of balls (soccer, baseball, football, tennis) he will even roll up the washcloth in the bath tub to the shape of a ball and then throw it (ruddley is still has high hopes of him becoming a left handed pitcher) apparently at daycare he spends hours on the rocking horse and gets annoyed when any other kids stand next to him so they can have a turn.
Teeth: 12 with 4 more coming in
Sleep: YES! knock on wood but he sleeps a solid 12 hours a night. he normally goes to bed between 7-7:30 and if we don't have to get up or anything in the morning he will sleep until 8.
Favorite Song: he enjoys listening to his suzuki cello cds as well as the little mermaid cd i play for him now and then (hes going to kill me when he finds out i made him listen to the little mermaid!) . he really loves any kind of music.
Favorite Book: he likes his First 100 Words book along with his First Colors book. he likes to hold his own  book now while we read a different one to him.
Favorite Game: soccer
Bad Habbits: hitting....mom and dad....and then laughing about it.
Potty Trained: HA! i could only wish
Friends: just the ones i make him play with and the kids at daycare
Favorite memory of the last month: just watching him start to learn and discover new things. he has become so independent over the last month and even though it's a pain sometimes, i love watching him do things for himself. of course having him come running to me and give me a hug when i walk in the door after being gone for a run is pretty cool.

she gave me crap for not giving her credit for these photos

a slice of heaven!

i've never blogged about my kitchen creations. there is one reason for that. i cant cook...or bake. well, scratch that, i make a killer mac and cheese and one specific chicken dish (which i have lost the recipe for. humph). other then that, i avoid cooking. my husband is an amazing cook and so i don't mind leaving most of it to him. he can whip up an kick butt meal pretty quickly with the most random ingredients. i on the other hand need hours to prep my dinners. today however, i am blogging about my amazing kitchen goodness.

back story:
my husband rides to work (35 minutes) with one of his co workers that lives down the road. it saves on gas, time, yadda yadda... the last few weeks he has been starting my car before ty and i leave so that its nice and toasty when we head out in the morning (insert collective "awww how sweet"). well this morning he had to get a few things out of my car before he left so i gave him the keys. when he came in we started talking about something and next thing he knew his ride was here. so off he went.

ty and i continued to get ready and 15 minutes or so later we left. only, not really. i went out and saw that my car hadn't been started so i looked around for the keys inside. nope. no keys to be found. i called ruddley and asked where he put them to which i heard "ohhhhhh f*&k" come from the other end of the phone. yup, he left for work with my keys in his pocket. it wouldn't have been such a big deal except they were on the interstate and the next exit wasn't for another 10 miles which puts them about 30 minutes from our house. his ride kindly turned around and drove back so i could get to work.

i sent ruddley an email later on in the day and said i was thinking about making some stuffed strawberries i had seen on pinterest a few weeks ago. an hour or so later i had an email exchange with his co worker/ ride to work...

J: "Let's go with those cream cheese filled strawberries!!!!"

Me: "I owe you big time too. I'll make some tonight"

J: "Your husband owes me big time!!"

Me: "Which means tonight will go something like this. 'Hey sarah, can you make some of those strawberry things tonight so i can pay back Jeff for driving me home since I screwed up this morning' "

J: "That's too funny Sarah"

oh crap...now im committed to making those damn things. sigh. 

they seriously were the easiest thing to make ever and oh so good! i got the idea from natalie's  blog.

i'm waiting to add the graham cracker topping until the morning. figured it would get soggy. so here's the deal on how to make these gems. the only thing i would do next time is drizzle chocolate over them...or maybe dip them in chocolate if i was really brave.

Ingredients:
-1 lb large strawberries
-8 oz. cream cheese, softened (can use 1/3 less fat)
-3-4 tbsp powdered sugar (4 tbsp for a sweeter filling)
-1 tsp vanilla extract
-graham cracker crumbs

Directions:
1. Rinse strawberries and cut around the top of the strawberry. Remove the top and clean out with a paring knife, if necessary (some may already be hollow inside). Prep all strawberries and set aside.
2. In a mixing bowl, beat cream cheese, powdered sugar, and vanilla until creamy. Add cream cheese mix to a piping bag or ziploc with the corner snipped off. Fill strawberries with cheesecake mixture. Once strawberries are filled, dip the top in graham cracker crumbs. If not serving immediately, refrigerate until serving.


ENJOY!

more then just a runner

The idea for this blog started a few years ago as I was knocking out some miles on the treadmill at the gym. We all know how painfully boring that can be and how we think of all kinds of crazy ideas. This blog was one of them. I was training, and say that loosely, more like running x miles when the schedule told me to, for my very first half marathon. There was no tempo, no track, no LSD runs... I just ran miles. I wanted a place to record my training and my running and my thoughts on said training and running. I had no idea how big the blogging world was at that point. I mean, yea I had read a few running blogs but really had no idea. 

As I got into it, I started following and reading more blogs, all running related. My focus on this blog up until now has been running with a few random posts thrown in here and there. I've learned alot about running over the last few years. I've learned a lot of "unspoken rules" in the running world, followed people's training plans that have led to an amazing PR. I've read about how every runner has their bad runs and how to recover from that. However, the name of my blog is not "Tales of a Runner". Yea, there's more to me then just a runner. This blog is supposed to be about one mom's adventure in running. So, I've got the running part down around here but I'm missing out on the mom part. While I love running, I'm really quite ok with skipping my run on any given day to spend more time with my family (unless I'm training for something big....like, oh, say my first marathon! yikes!). 

From awesome blog #1 

When I had Ty I started a separate blog for him. I wasn't sure I wanted to connect my two worlds. I've been a bad mommy blogger and I haven't posted anything on his blog in a long time. I know I'm going to regret this down the road when I wonder at what age he started walking, or when he reached other various milestones. It's just that maintaining two different blogs takes a lot of time. I'm hoping it will be different when I combine them all onto one. I've been thinking about this for some time now but the real push came when browsing around on my new love, pinterest. I came across all kinds of crazy mommy DIY blogs. Seriously, how can you not fall in love with blogs that teach you how to make this... 

I'm already planning these for Ty's July birthday! I'm also thinking I'm gonna tell ask Ruddley oh so nicely to paint this for T when he grows out of his current infant decorated room...

Stolen from here

Ohhh and of course I want to make these for the kids at daycare next month...

Amazing DIY mommy blog

Ohhhhh pinterest you are sooo amazing! Now that Ty is getting older we can do more fun things for/with him. It may sound weird but I'm really starting to feel like a mom now. I mean, I know I have been one for the last 18 months but now he's at the age where we can do things with other kids and he actually runs off and plays. In fact, he has his first real play date this afternoon. I'm in no way a crafty person, but for my kid? I think I'll try. So if you read this because you like reading about my running (which I highly doubt cause it's nothing special) then you're gonna have to get used to a few "isn't my kid so cute" posts in the near future. I promise you'll love them :) 

Streak 100

When I got my tattoo, I became a lifetime member of Crow Athletics (getting a crow inked on your body gets you far in the running world!). At the end of December I got an email from them about Streak-100. Crow was offering members of the club a chance to participate in a friendly competition. Here are the rules...

STREAK-100 Decree: 
1. There is no entry fee to take on the STREAK-100 challenge.
2. The STREAK-100 will start at midnight on January 1st and conclude at 11:59PM on April 9th.
3. Official participants must be members of Crow Athletics in good standing during the entire 100 days of the challenge. (Thru April 9th.) 

STEAK-100 Scoring: 
"Honesty is the best policy." Please be honest about your daily running.
1. Official participants must run or walk one mile every day starting on January 1st and finishing on April 9th.
2. Participants may join the STREAK-100 after January 1, 2012 ONLY if they have run every day since January 1st.
3. All participants who complete the STREAK-100 will receive an award. Additional awards will go to the top male and female competitors with the highest mileage.
4. After the completion of the STREAK-100, competitors will be contacted by email. Please be honest. Competitors are encouraged to keep track of their mileage, but are not required to. (Note: Only participants who track their mileage will be eligible for mileage awards.)


I'm not a big sucker for running streaks as I'm a huge fan and believer in rest days. I'm not saying that running streaks are bad or people that do them are not smart runners but my body NEEDS time off and I like to respect that. However, when I saw that you can run OR walk I decided that I could probably do that and it's only for 100 days. So even on my rest days, I could get out and at least walk a mile. Then when I saw there were awards for everyone that completed the challenge I was totally in. I love free things :) I'm not going to attempt to have the highest mileage because I know some of the people running are big time runners and there is no way I could keep up with them and not get injured. This will be a nice way to keep me going for the rest of the winter though.

So I'm 2 days in. On the first day I ran.... one whole mile! Hey, it counts. Today I ran 5 miles which turned into the biggest pacing fail EVER! 9:06, 8:23, 8:44, 10:30 and 9:53. oooooops! I should add that I hit some serious wind on my way home.... but yea, that's no excuse. Sigh, lesson learned. I'd rather learn it now and not in the middle of a race.  I felt pretty good during those first 3 miles and I kept thinking what if I had a sub 8 average for 5 miles! I will be so happy!. I should know by now that every time I think something crazy like that I always end up crashing.

We'll see if I can make it until April 9.

Do you have a running streak?