The End of Summer

The end of summer is here. Cool lake breezes and cool nights are making for good sleeping weather. We've harvested more tomatoes than we know what to do with. And things are starting to ramp up for the beginning of school. 


Thankfully we've had a couple of weeks of good old fashioned summer laziness. After Joe finished his first round of interviews our schedules suddenly opened up. I have still been working three days a week at the bakery, and Joe has been using that time to work on his journal assignments. But other than that it's been like one big long weekend. We've done a lot of sleeping in, cooking together, and doing whatever we feel like. We've gone on lots of walks, played in lots of parks, and worked in the garden. We've also watched some movies, gone shopping, and cooked some more. We haven't really been visiting other people a whole lot. It's been really nice to just hang out together as a family.  


Here are some pictures of our recent adventures: 


Making marinara sauce from our garden harvest. We froze two bags worth!

At the Fox Valley Folk Festival sitting in her big girl chair. 

In the Children's Garden at Morton Arboretum. I think Lily would like to live in this little house. 

Walking down the path with dad at the Arb. NBD.

Sunday afternoon nap after church and lunch at New Star. 

Looking at these pictures, Lily looks like such a big girl now! She insists on walking everywhere and prefers to hold Joe's hand while doing so. She's also a great eater. We do have days where she only wants crackers and cheese, but other days she chows down on moussaka, pasta carbonara, pork chop suey and baklava. And we've had marginal success with a variety of sippy cups, but she can drink like a champ out of a solo coffee cup lid. So no, our baby is not gulping down a cup of coffee, it's just the only thing she'll drink milk out of other than a bottle. And I never thought I'd be a sucker for this, but the pitter-patter of little feet followed by an unexpected knee-height hug and "wow!" is the cutest thing ever. 

This week things start to get busy again. Joe has a few call-back interviews and I have a couple of cakes to bake. Friends and family are coming to town and classes will be starting soon. I'm looking forward to a little bit of hustle and bustle but am extremely grateful for the last couple of weeks. 

8 Weeks left

I ended up at 159 this week. Woo hoo! It's been a long time since I've been under 160. Let's keep this going. I ran twice this week. One was 3.5 miles, the other 5 miles. I'm averaging about 11 min/mile with the jogging stroller, so hopefully I'll be a little quicker than that without it. I'm going to try to work in more runs without the stroller so I get used to it. 


I think I may have to give up my hope of running the whole thing without walking. After these last two 5 milers my hips were feeling a bit creaky. It's so frustrating because my heart and lungs can go forever, but my hips and legs just can't. During this run I tried something different. I ran for a mile and then walked for a minute before running the rest of the next mile. I ended up finishing a full 4 minutes faster than when I ran it in two larger chunks. My hips felt great but my heart and lungs weren't loving it. Clearly the answer is I need to do more interval work. I looked at the race map and they have water stations about every 1.5 miles, so I think the plan is going to be run in between stations and walk for a minute or so through them. Which realistically is probably what would have happened anyway since I am incapable of drinking water and running at the same time. So, now I just need to do more intervals. Boo. 


And I haven't managed to start doing any strength work. I'm worried about my arms being sore and shaky the next day (not good for cake decorating). Also, the only time I have to do anything like that is in the evening when Joe is putting Lily to bed and that is my designated do the dishes, straighten up the house, and then play on the internet time. Ugh. I just need to get motivated one night and do it. I keep telling myself that I'm looking for a good routine to do, but really that's just procrastination. I don't need to read/watch someone else's plan for pushups, abs, and squats. 


(After reading this you might think that I would get all motivated and do something after I finish writing this. Unlikely.)

Don't be a square!

For those of you planning a wedding in the near future, let me offer up one piece of advice: do not choose a square wedding cake. I know what you're thinking:

"It's so different and fun!" 

"I just want something simple." 

"It's so elegant and chic!"

It's not any of those things. And let me tell you why. 

1) It's not different. In 1965 if you had a square wedding cake that may have been a novelty, it no longer is. The bakery where I work makes a ton of these each week. It's nearly as ubiquitous as the round cake. 

2) It's not natural. Icing is composed of sugar, butter, and cream. None of which are things that naturally have corners. So why would mixing them all together allow for the creation of perfect corners? It doesn't. 

3) It takes a long time. In order to get those perfect corners, we have to ice the cake, put it in the fridge for an hour or so, take it out of the fridge, smooth the cake, put it back in the fridge for another hour, take it out again and finish decorating it. By this time your cake decorator hates you and is behind on their work thus ensuring that any decoration you have requested will be done hastily. 

4) It is rarely simple or elegant. Square cakes show off every single imperfection. So even if your decorator is awesome, there will still be flaws evident. And that's not including any damage incurred during transportation. The cakes you see in magazines are fake. They're made with royal icing and styrofoam. This is what allows them to look so perfect and smooth. Also, if you're putting a ton of decorations on it anyway (read: NOT simple or elegant) you lose the squareness of it anyway. 

So whether you're looking for something traditional: 

Or something more modern:

Spare your cake decorator the frustration, and yourself the likely disappointment and don't be a square!

(Now imagine this cake with fresh bright orange, red and gold gerber daisies on it. So cute, right!)

Photos Galore!

Here are some pictures from Lily's birthday party. I made a strawberry cake with cream cheese frosting. It was also like 90*F and ten thousand percent humidity. And raining. So the cake itself ended up pretty sad looking. But I like the chunky chocolate butterflies. They're just perfect for a little kid cake. 

And here are some pictures from forever ago for some perspective. This was taken on the day we moved out of our house in Tucson, exactly one year ago. Lily is 6 weeks old. 

Here she is about 4 months old. 

And 5 months. 

This might be one of my favorite pictures ever. She's about 9 months old here. 

She's still on the small end for her age, but it's nothing compared to how tiny she was when she was first born. Even until just a couple of months ago she was pretty scrawny. Now that she eats enough food to feed a small cow she's finally getting some chub. So there are some pictures. Finally. 

One year old! (Belatedly)

So I'm finally getting around the "Lily turns one year old" post. I'm only five weeks late...


Lily is one year old. I can't believe it. It feels like she's been around forever and just arrived all at the same time. I feel like a whole new person and still the same person. I still don't feel like a 'mom'. I don't really know how to describe it. When I think of moms, I think of patience and understanding and unconditional love. I still feel like I come up short. But whatever. This has been an amazing year and I'm excited to see what's still coming. 


Lily is about 20 pounds and 30 inches tall. She crawls all over everything, climbs up on everything, shuffles along the furniture and is taking steps all on her own. She made it all the way from the living room through the dining room this afternoon. It's not quite consistent enough to truly call it 'walking' but we're close. She is super silly and loves to laugh. She doesn't have any single favorite toy buy loves anything you can pick up and shake. Or hit something with. She's still the cutest baby on the planet but is starting to look more and more like a little kid every day. 


Joe took this video today. I like how she doesn't give up and just keeps coming. 

We had a small gathering at the Morton Arboretum on her actual birthday. I made a cake, of course. Compared to the cakes I work on now it looks like it was made by a monkey. So it turns out that I don't have any pictures from her birthday celebration on my phone. I'll have to get them from my mom's camera tomorrow and upload them later. All I have is this one picture I shared on facebook earlier. 

And here are some random photos from a trip to the Field Museum a couple of weeks ago. In the Crowne Family Play Lab they have all these little costumes you can dress up in. Lily picked the skunk. She also loved the music room where they have all these different instruments from around the world that you can play. The elephant bells were her favorite. 

I feel like I should write something profound and amazing that Lily can read one day when she's older. I don't really know what else to say other than I love you and I'm so glad you're a part of my life. Happy birthday Lily Sofia!

9 weeks to go

So it's been a long time since I wrote a fitness post. I don't even know what week I'm on anymore. All I do know is there are only 9 weeks left until the Monster Dash Half Marathon that I registered for way back when. I've been doing pretty good over the last couple of weeks. I went for a 5 mile run yesterday. It took me about an hour, but that included a quick pit stop at mile 3. I've been hovering right around 161 lbs for the last couple of weeks. My original goal was to be under 150 lbs by race day. I think it's still possible, I just need to be better about what I eat. I always have an excuse for what I eat. When it's too hot I don't want to cook so we eat crap. Now that it's a tolerable temperature in the kitchen with the oven on I cook cheesy delicious rich things and eat way too much of them. Oh well. I'm still getting smaller and fitting into more of my old clothes so I'm not too concerned about the actual number the scale says. What I really need to do is start some strength training again. My arms are so weak and I keep thinking about how much easier it would be to run if my core were stronger but I never do anything about it. I broke our set of weights at home a few months back and they're really expensive to replace. They're just hunks of metal, why do they cost so much? I just need to suck it up and do some good old fashioned calisthenics. I'll get back to posting weekly updates on this, but from now on the weekly count will go down to race day. Happy training!

It's done.

After much agonizing I decided to stay with the part-time cake decorator position and decline the full-time museum position. This was probably the hardest decision I've ever had to make, but I'm convinced I made the right one. 


I got lots of great insight from friends everywhere. But the thing that really helped me decide was yesterday at church a teenaged girl got up and was talking about a mission trip she went on over the summer. She quoted a passage from Matthew that was read at our wedding:


Matthew 6:25-34
²⁵ “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes?²⁶ Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? ²⁷ Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life^[a]?
   ²⁸ “And why do you worry about clothes? See how the flowers of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. ²⁹ Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. ³⁰ If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? ³¹ So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’³² For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. ³³ But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. ³⁴ Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.


It's been a long time since I thought about that passage. It occurred to me that I was being influenced by what could be, what might be, what may be and not what actually was. Being a part-time cake decorator right now is absolutely perfect. Working full-time for the museum had a bunch of different possibilities, none of which were a sure thing other than I would be spending less time with Lily and Joe. It's the kind of job that would require a huge emotional investment, and I would feel guilty about not giving it 100% and I would feel guilty about not being with family. That's just too much guilt for me to handle. 


Also, I can still volunteer at the museum. That's basically how I got the job offer anyway. Volunteering allows me to work more closely with high school students than the job would have, I get to do it once a week, it lets Joe and Lily have daddy-daughter-dates, and I'm still doing something worth while. Working part-time and volunteering offers me the best of both worlds. 


So there you have it. After sending my email declining the position I went for a 4-mile run along the lake with Lily in the jogging stroller. The sun was shining, there was a cool lake breeze, Lily napped the whole way, and I didn't have to stop to walk even once. Now Lily's taking another nap and I get to blog and watch Days of Our Lives. This is definitely the right choice.