Summer Days

The responses I've gotten to my last post have been overwhelmingly supportive and sympathetic. If anything, parenthood gives us a great reason to complain about common crappy experiences! Sometimes I wonder how any of us survived to adulthood, especially if our parents had to deal with our siblings too.

Summer is in full swing and that means another Dirty Dash. This is our third straight year running the Dash and it's always so much fun. I've had people give me funny looks when I say our idea of fun is to dress up in wacky costumes and run a 10K full of obstacles and end up covered in mud. I guess when you put it that way...

This is how you make an entrance!

Since most of the group we run with works at the hospital and since the hospital is making us go to standardized scrubs in a few weeks, we decided to make costumes out of old scrubs that we won't be able to wear anymore. We had everything from vests and cut-offs to full-blown pirate costumes. Here are some pre-race pictures of Mark and me.

Unfortunately we didn't get a group post-race picture but you'll have to believe me when I say this was definitely the muddiest we've ever gotten! There's another race in September that I'd love to do but I have a feeling we'll have too much going on that time of year.

Mark's parents babysat Mira for a few hours a couple weeks ago and their synopsis of the experience was that she is "busy" and "full of energy" and "a little monkey" and have we considered buying her a jungle gym for the back yard? They took her to the Playland at McDonald's and apparently she went climbing all over the place, up to the very top, several times. My family has been over to visit and made comments about how wound-up she was acting but actually that's how she always is. I keep saying to my parents and sisters that if they want to borrow Mira for a few hours please feel free to take her.

I do love how she's getting into this princess phase. We found this little dress-up princess outfit and Mira absolutely loves to run around in it.

We spend as much time as we can outside, although sometimes it just gets aggravating for me because unless Mira is confined within 4 walls that are taller than she is she has this tendency to run off, which of course means I have to run after her, which she finds hilarious, so she giggles and runs faster. If I wasn't so worried that she'd hurt herself or get lost I have some days when I'd just let her go but of course a responsible parent such as myself can't allow that to happen.

At the end of our block there's a house with a couple of dogs that Mira has "befriended." Every time we walk past she "whistles" to get the dogs' attention.

Then she and the little dog get some exercise.

It's no wonder I'm so tired by the end of the day. A few days ago I fell asleep on the couch and unbeknownst to me Mira snatched my phone and took a few candid shots of me. I got a good laugh when I went to download pictures to my computer. And apparently she gave me a stuffed animal to sleep with as well.

Just because the weather is warm doesn't mean we've neglected Discovery Gateway. In fact Mira begs to go there quite often. She still has the attention span of a goldfish so I'm still running around chasing her but at least it's in a child-friendly building.

I should mention she does want to try to wash the dishes for real at home too.

 And for once she actually cooperated with the camera so I could take some super cute pictures of her.

She is a performer at heart, for sure. I think there's nothing she enjoys better than singing and dancing for a crowd. I'm trying to figure out how we're going to afford to put her in dance, gymnastics, singing etc.