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Big Fun Greek Birthday

One of Little Boy’s best buds in Kindergarten is a Greek-American boy. Today was his birthday party. Little Boy took great care in decorating his birthday card:

A Little Boy Original

Little Boy was worried that his friend would assess the black grass part in the lower-left hand corner to be “boring.” I was worried that his friend would rip it the envelope and throw it away, not realizing that THIS IS ART and will be worth millions some day. Ahem.

The party was loads of bouncing, running fun. Who doesn’t like to see their Kindergartener physically exhaust themselves while you idly chat and make social with other parents?

Party Photo

Silly Face Version

In the party room, I noticed that birthday boy’s grandmother took a special interest in Little Boy. He barely took two bites of pizza when she brought him another slice. She also brought him more juice and double-checked that he didn’t want any ice cream. I bristled silently at the second juice box, but didn’t interfere — I figured Greek grandmothers find joy in nourishing little boys. But I noticed she wasn’t as attentive with the junk food to other kids. When we were getting ready to leave, she came over to me.

“Your boy, he is my grandson’s favorite friend,” she proclaimed, beaming at us both.

“Oh yes,  they are great friends!”

Little Boy was simply stuffed. Happy, and stuffed. He gave a big birthday hug to his friend before we left.

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By Meredith – January 19, 2014

Sunday of Ski

I took another trip to the local conservation lands, which are replete with perfect, light, fluffy powder that is about to be ruined by the imminent forecast promising warm rain followed by another deep-freeze. I roused at my natural weekend waking time of 6am (yes, that’s a full 8 hours and I consider it sleeping in!) and readied my gear while sipping a coffee.

First, I tried out my new snowshoes in the hilly, woodsy section of the conservation lands. It was 7am and 18 degrees. I warmed up quickly trotting up the roughly 400 ft hill in semi-packed snow, my snowshoes comfortable on my feet.

Like Giant Flipflops

At top of the hill, the sunrise (in the distance) made me contemplative and grateful.

Sunday Sunrise

I went about 3 miles on the snowshoes — mostly running, some walking. I could have done more but I was mindful that it’s a new activity placing new stresses on my lower legs. It took about 1 hour — obviously running on snowshoes isn’t much faster than walking when you’re plowing through 6 inches of powder.

I headed back to the car, retrieved my backcountry XC skis, and set out for the 4-mile, 1 hour loop through the flat part of the conservation lands.

I returned home to find Mr. P (who had some scheduled geek work to attend to) waiting for me to go XC skiing at the Weston Ski Track with him and Little Boy. Sure, it’s ridiculous, but why not? I’m already dressed!

A Small Downhill

Zoom!

XC Skiers in Repose

A lot of ski in one day, but in New England, good snow is all-too-fleeting.

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By Meredith – January 5, 2014

2014: Doomsyear!

Well, 2014 is off to a promising start (sarcastic scoff). Little Boy’s return to Kindergarten has been postponed until next Monday due to a Nor’easter that the media is intent on branding as “Hercules.” (It’s not the 12-18 inches of predicted snow that’s keeping us huddled indoors, eating bison-and-neufchatel noodleless lasagna and playing Connect Four… it’s the 5 degree “Feels like -10” temperatures that are expected to cripple Boston for the next 36 hours or so).

Since school was a no-go, and since I judged the roads too perilous to drive to Concord anyway, I stayed home with Little Boy while Mr. P put in face-time at his office. I was actually able to get a LOT of work done on a neglected project for work because Little Boy slept until 9:30am (good thing there was no school today! I think the XMas vacation has left him in a slumber deficit).

He wasn’t the only one sleepy. Lazy kitty-cat snuggled up to me on the sofa as I worked, and look irked whenever I moved.

Little Boy got some serious Lego time…

… before Mama made him suit up for some sledding, even though she knew the snow was too fluffy for good sledding but was desperate to get him out of the house in 28 degree weather because there will be no sledding tomorrow in “Feels like -10.”

I’m sure most people are enjoying this extended winter vacation, but I’m taking this Nor-easter as a sign that 2014 will be termagant at best, apocalyptic at worst.

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By Meredith – January 2, 2014

2013 Recaps ~ 2014 Resolutions

Mr. P, Little Boy, and I said goodbye to 2013 over a homemade feast of roast duck, foie gras, beet and orange salad, mashed turnips, and champagne; since New Years is sandwiched in the middle of a work-week, and since none of us would make it past 10pm, it was lovely and low-key. While Little Boy relished in the thick slices of foie gras, Mr. P and I reflected on 2013 and our plans for 2014…

Vacations

  • We started 2013 skiing blissfully in France, then returned again in May to rainy northern France for a family reunion (stopping in Ireland for a great extended layover). Our most ambitious (and expensive!) trip was Yellowstone and the Grand Tetons in August. Interspersed along the way were periodic trips to Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine, and Pennsylvania.
  • In 2014, our first big trip will be a long week skiing in France in February. We’ll go to San Francisco a few days in May, then… ? We’re still trying to figure out our summer trip. We’ll finish the year with XMas/New Years skiing in France.
  • 2014 Resolutions: Conserve vacation days so I can carry over the maximum of 1 week (I have grand ambitions of taking an entire month off from work in summer 2015).

Little Boy

  • What a big year for Little Boy! He started 2013 in preschool and ended the year in Kindergarten, where he has matured exponentially. He has a really good handle on letter sounds and is beginning to blend them together on his own… yes, he is on the cusp of reading. He is quite the artist, and can spend long periods of time coloring (he has an eye for detail and color). But he spends most of his indoor time assembling Lego kits. We are so proud of how far he’s come intellectually, physically, and socially (forgot to mention that he’s now “married” to a little girl in his after care program).
  • 2014 will be more of the same. As much as I want to, nothing can stop this Little Boy from getting older.
  • 2014 Resolutions: Teach Little Boy to play chess. Do more art together. Do more museums. In the spring and summer, take Little Boy to excellent outdoor places (we already do this, but we should do more).

Xmas, 2013

Grad School

  • I took two classes in 2013 –one per Spring/Fall semester — and they were both hellish ordeals involving 10-20 hours of work per week. What happened to the brochure image of the happy adult learner, effortlessly managing their full-time job and family commitments alongside their grad work? Instead, I was furiously reading research articles about metacognition at 3:30am (after my “full night” of sleep) while drinking the coffee and nibbling the chocolate that would fuel my early morning 8-mile run, which had to be finished at 6:30am so Mr. P could do his morning run and I could shower, dress, and feed the Little Boy (and myself) and be at work by 8am so I could put in my 9 hours… huh? What was the question?
  • I expect 2014 to be exactly the same.
  • 2014 Resolution: Stop killing myself to get perfect As. It’s not worth it.

Cat

  • We started 2013 without a cat. We ended 2013 with a cat.
  • He’ll probably make it through 2014 (if he stays this cute 😉
  • 2014 Resolution: Seriously, what resolution could I possibly make about my cat?

Running

  • I started 2013 with a lingering quad injury that I was convinced would never go away. Rest didn’t seem to help, so I started running again anyway in February — which cured me. In April I set road PRs for 5K, 10K, and 5 miles. In June I ran the inaugural TARC 50 miler, which was a total mud fest. I completed Vermont 100K (thanks to my pacer Mr. P, and my family crew). I took a break, scaling back the mileage until running a killer marathon in the Grand Tetons in August. I took another break and then ran an assortment of half marathons and shorter distances in the Fall. Although I’ve had bodily niggles here and there, I managed to avoid any major injuries. Overall, a good year.
  • I’m currently in off-season mode, but I’m about to ramp up quickly for the Miwok 100K in San Francisco in May (I “won” entry in the highly competitive lottery). It’s a hilly race, so I’ll be focused on hills (duh). I have a few ultra races in March/April for training. After Miwok, who knows? I’ll probably need a break over the summer and may spend the rest of the year trying to win short road races (5Ks and 10Ks).
  • 2014 Resolutions: Do a snowshoe race. Do a XC ski race. Keep a training log. More squats. More hills. More speed work. Become fat-adapted through low-carb training (to avoid the ultra nausea).

Work

  • In 2013, the small reading software company I work for was bought by a very well-known company. This has brought added job security and better perks (more tuition assistance, more vacation, the prospect of a raise for the first time in 3 years). I’m in a pretty good place right now.
  • No plans to move, but who knows what will happen in 2014?
  • 2014 Resolutions: Maintain productivity in the office so I can work at home more often on days I don’t have meetings.

Random 2014 Resolutions

  • More date nights with Mr. P.
  • More home improvement projects (painting, moulding, lighting, new dishwasher).
  • More blogging (even if it’s boring blogging).

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By Meredith – January 1, 2014

“Santa is Magic”

“Santa is magic.” If I had a dollar for every time I’ve uttered those exact words or otherwise expressed this sentiment, I could pay for all of Little Boy’s Christmas presents (which will be quite the haul this year).

Little Boy’s Christmas list originated right after Halloween, with frequent additions. I encouraged the list because, despite the materialistic “gimme gimme” underpinnings, it’s an excellent at-home reading/writing activity — he’d name a toy and I’d either verbally dictate the letters for him or help him sound it out. But now he wants to add everything he could ever want to the list — from toys to animals to food.

Like, earlier this week we saw an Erector set toy sitting on a Toys for Tots donation table. “Mama, what do the letters say? I need to add it to my list!”

“Space Chaos,” I told him. And the whole way home, he made me repeat it so he wouldn’t forget the name. I finally scribbled it down on a piece of paper, to relieve him of the fear that we would forget it, because it was driving me crazy: “Space Chaos, Space Chaos…” These words are etched on my very soul.

Anyway, he got the notion that all he has to do is write something on the list and Santa will bring it. The list is quite long, and has everything from Dreamlites to baby cats. “Hon, Santa can’t bring everything,” I have told him. This makes him worry, as certain things on the list are much more important than others. Like Space Chaos — so important.

Lots of really good and tricky questions about Santa, like this one: If Santa’s elves make the toys he brings on Christmas morning, do they also make the toys we see in stores, because the toys are the same? This lead to a discussion about factories and factory workers (who are “sort of like elves”), the living conditions of factory workers (who may or may not live communally “sort of like elves”) but definitely do not dress like elves or have pointy ears. The eventual end of the discussion could really not be anything except the whole “Santa is magic” declaration. Done!

However, though a lot of things about Santa are still plausible to a 5 year-old boy who is smart enough to understand that there are lots of things he doesn’t understand, he finally has realized that every Santa he sees is not the “real” Santa. Which, I think, has made going to visit Santa a little less special (but still an exciting event).

Santa 2013

Pretty good picture (Little Boy’s smile! Awww!) though the Santa 2011 photo is still one of my all-time favorite. The “You People are Completely Nuts” look in his eyes combined with his “I’ll Do Whatever They Tell Me To” smile just kills me.

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By Meredith – December 15, 2013

Beaujolais and Blogging

Last night, my grad school class effectively ended in a blaze of PowerPoint glory! when I and my project team member (on behalf of our two distance-learning team members) presented the culmination of our semester-long labor to our Fortune 500 stakeholders, assembled in a 130-degree university classroom… to much accolades!

And what a labor it was: near-daily team meetings, hours of work, and more hours of fret… it’s funny. Ha. You sign up for grad school and think, “Oh, I’m only taking one class. I can easily fit it in somewhere ‘tween family life, work life, life life…”

But no. It takes over. This semester’s class was one long group project. I spent more time with my group than I did my husband. Absurd.

Yet… it’s over. So 3 classes down, 7 to go until I am a Master of a fashionable Science. I celebrated tonight with Beaujolais. And blogging.

To catch up: Thanksgiving was nice. We went skiing in Maine (’cause in late November, Maine usually has a pretty decent man-made snow pack). It was cold and windy, but we solaced ourselves at night in the outdoor heated pool. The steam was thick and the sangria sweet. I forgot about grad school, and work, and running — yeh off-season! — and everything except my two boys:

On the Sunday River gondola

Warming & fueling up in the lodge

At home -- kitty-cat is comfy!

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By Meredith – December 11, 2013

Ooops

Oh, I think this is the longest I’ve gone not updating my blog without the excuse of being overseas and bereft of internet. Bad, bad! What happened to that daily compulsion to write? It was sublimated by attending to near-insurmountable day job demands as well as an annoying amount of grad school busywork, plus traveling, running, domesticating, and hanging out with my boys. Or, as Little Boy would winsomely put it… “my bros.”

He’s doing great in Kindergarten. Or, as his teacher put it during the parent-teacher conference… “I don’t think he has a learning disability.” Excellent!

Honestly, he’s doing great. Even if he’s not reading yet (and really, two decades ago the idea of a 5 year-old not reading was normal — not a situation to monitor, anxiously) the teacher reports he comes to school ready to learn, works tasks to completion, is very popular (with both boys and girls), and has a decidedly “engineer” mentality. Her words: “engineer!” Every parent goes to the Kindergarten parent-teacher conference hoping to find out what their child will be when they grow up, and I swear, while looking at a picture he constructed of a castle (which he spelled “ksl”, but whateva) she pointed to his intricate rendering of the curtain walls and said “Look, that’s an engineer!” We’re holding you to that, Mrs. R. If he doesn’t grow up and build bridges in Africa, we’re going to have another little conference.

Playing at dock construction, Habitat

Halloween -- Red Ninja!

Cool October Day at Boston Harbor!

Our pumpkins, courtesy of Grandpa's Pumpkin Patch

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By Meredith – November 20, 2013

Great Kid

Lately there have been too many pictures of sweaty runners on this website. And not enough Little Boy.

I have good intentions of sitting down and writing a lengthy post about how Little Boy is adjusting to Kindergarten life, but work, grad school, domesticity, and my own pursuits (see sweaty running pictures) have been all-consuming. When I’m not engaged in those things, I’m usually hanging out with Little Boy and Mr. P, because that is my greatest joy.

When Little Boy came home 2 and 1/2 years ago, I took him to an International Adoption doctor in Boston. She gave him a thorough physical as well as a battery of developmental tests. This was about one week after we came home (I wanted tests for parasites, pronto) and though I loved him dearly, it was an abstract love — Little Boy and I were still strangers, I was a new mom, and the language barrier often made simple things a struggle. Essentially, I was uncertain and a little scared about suddenly being in charge of Little Boy’s life. I think the doctor could sense my uncertainty, because at the end of the visit she looked me straight in the eye and said, “This is a great kid.”

“Yeah, he is,” I agreed.

She repeated, “This is a great kid,” sounding 100% more certain than I did.

Maybe the doctor says that to all the new adoptive parents, to bolster spirits, rally confidence, and foster acceptance. But these days, when people ask me about my son, that is exactly what I say: “He is a great kid.”

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By Meredith – October 31, 2013

TARC Fall Classic 2013

Exactly one week ago, last Friday, a co-worker asked me what I had on tap for the weekend.

“Oh, just a race tomorrow morning,” I said.

“Uh-oh! I’m afraid to ask how long!” she said.

“It’s only a half-marathon,” I said. I said “only,” only because earlier this year she would ask me how long my races were and I’d say horrific things like “50 miles” and “100K.”

But of course she started laughing. “Only a half-marathon!”

Ha ha, but really. A half-marathon doesn’t seem like much to me any more. For the TARC Fall Classic, I was originally signed up to do the marathon, but the fact that I’m kinda sort maybe trying to qualify for Boston by running the Philadelphia Marathon next month gave me pause, because this TARC Fall Classic is the very race that effectively ended my season last year, when I pulled my quad running the 50K (a week after running the Chicago marathon). I’ve learned. I emailed the race director the week before and asked to switch to the half, because, if I’m going to qualify for Boston, I need more running fast, not more running long.

I’m not that fast, though. Faster than last year, for sure. I’ve used some of Mr. P’s road-running techniques — tempo runs, sprints. I even went to the local high school track one morning but then the football team showed up and I freaked out and left… the next day, I had a knot in my hamstring and I vowed to Mr. P “No more running fast.” But the allure of finishing higher in the race results is undeniable. I’ve evolved past wanting to do a race to prove I could do the distance; I now aspire to be faster in the shorter distances, to be a little more competitive in the popular local races, and dare I say, I aspire to qualify for Boston (which involves running 26 miles for about 8:20/mile, so yeah, it’s insane, but why not try)?

Among the local trail running community, the TARC events are beloved and always very competitive. There are always a good number of newcomers who show up, not realizing that a trail race means roots, rocks, and hills — very different from the treadmill! But it’s a good time and costs $20 and they let us download the photos for free. Gotta love the TARC. I finished in 2 hours 10 minutes — 10th girl out of 41.

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By Meredith – October 25, 2013

October Randomness

The nights are chilly, the leaves are dropping, and we can no longer take an apres-diner romp on the funground. Hells yeah, it’s October!

We’ve been busy. Little Boy is a full-fledged youth soccer player, which requires commitment beyond my wildest expectations. Tuesday nights and Saturday mornings — gone, poof, to soccer. Which is fine, because he’s getting markedly better and enjoying it. At the beginning, he was wasting that precious lightening left-foot kick by anointing himself as the sole defensive player on his team. Apparently young children don’t play positions in soccer — they are all supposed to chase the ball en masse, all 10 of them attacking the ball at once, a throng of kicky little legs. It’s encouraged to develop their dribbling skills but it makes for a chaotic (not to mention exhausting) soccer experience for the kids.

Which is why, when Little Boy realized how nonsensical it was for everyone on the team to chase after the ball and he decided to buck against the norm by playing defense, I was a little proud of him. Of course logically, strategically — they shouldn’t all run after the ball. But if Little Boy stood on the other side of the field, guarding his team’s goal, not only did the other parents look at me with pity (that my son’s not a joiner), he was losing valuable soccer skills — not to mention he’d never score a goal! We had to force him to defy the logic and join the herd.

And last week, he scored his first in-game goal!

Half-time Snack

Both Little Boy and Primus the kitten have been growing exponentially. They have a hate-love-hate relationship. Now that we aren’t always rushing off to the funground in the evening, they’ve made a brotherly peace.

We went to Gillette Stadium to take in a football game. I’d love to say we saw the Patriots, but we aren’t committed to taking Little Boy to an NFL football game before he understands really basic fundamentals of the game. So we paid $10 each to see my Alma Mater UMass take on Miami… Miami, Ohio, that is.

Are you ready for some football?

UMass won, apparently (we left after the stellar half-time show! The bandies will inherit the earth!)

Grandpa and Grandma came to visit a few weekends ago, which mean that Mr. P and I could go on a date — and when I saw “date,” I mean “arriving and departing an early Sunday morning running race together.” Oh, but we enjoy it! I gave Mr. P a carte blanche on the event and he choose the Nahant 30K, a road race. “Sure, fine,” I said. It turned out this is a key event in the USA Track and Field Grand Prix, meaning that amateur runners across Massachusetts flock to the Nahant 30K, and everyone was in a running club, and despite the fact that I ran 8:30 min/mile for 18.6 miles, I still finished in the bottom half of the girls. Super competitive. The pre-race ladies’ room line reminded me why I prefer the camaraderie of trail races. Trail runners would be avidly discussing hydration gear, watches, and sports bras while debating whether to just go in the woods; road runners examine their competition’s shoes, legs, and waists with steely glares. Nahant was a tough race, for sure.

Mr. P finishing Nahant 30K

Me finishing Nahant 30K (18.6 hilly miles)

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By Meredith – October 15, 2013