Life With Lani: I Just Can't Keep Up...

It has come to my attention that there were some technical difficulties with the bath time video from the last post - so here it is again. :)

It's crazy how just a few days can go past and babies can go through so many changes! Mira has finally decided that she loves the doorway jumper. Lately when you help her stand up she starts jumping (or trying to jump) so the doorway jumper is great now that she's figured it out. Before when we put her in it she would just try to walk around in it. She's also learning how to clap her hands. Her version of clapping has been to flap her arms around but a couple days ago she started to bring her hands forward when she flapped, and eventually her hands make contact in the middle. So cute! She'll only "clap" a couple times and then she gets fascinated with her hands and will clasp and wring them together and examine them very closely. And then it's on to the next thing. She's just a busy, curious little explorer! And still as happy and sweet as ever. She's not really babbling yet but she does like to laugh and coo, and when she's really tired she hums.

I feel like she's gone through another growth spurt. I was looking at her today and thought to myself, "Holy crap, she's ginormous!" People keep making the comment that she's really long for her age. She certainly does seem tall. So hard to believe that I used to be able to hold her tucked under my arm like a football!

Oh and some more big developments in Mira news: she can crawl now! Last week she was just "lurching" around but a couple days ago she figured it out! She's only doing it for a short distance right now and she still likes to rock back and forth a lot but just give her some time and she's definitely got it. She'll crawl more if she's chasing something she shouldn't be getting her hands on, like an expensive watch or anything electronic. At the same time she seemed to figure out how to go from her hands and knees back to a sitting position. It's so exciting! I know I've been saying that I don't want her to be mobile but since she's figured it out I guess I ought to encourage her. Everyone keeps saying that she'll definitely be walking by the time she's a year old. I hope not but the way she's going that's certainly how things are looking.

Here are a bunch of videos. I know videos are more time consuming than pictures but I always feel like pictures don't capture the whole story. Here's one of her crawling.

Here's one of her jumping.

And here's what happened when we gave her a pickle to suck on.

I was really surprised about the pickle. I thought the taste would put her off but she LOVED it and screamed when we had to take it away from her because she started biting off chunks of it. The interesting thing about this is to hear my parents talk about how similar Mira is to how I was as a baby. They keep saying that when I was Mira's age I also rocked back and forth a lot, I loved to jump, and I LOVED pickles. It's so neat to see that she is, in fact, my daughter. :)

So despite Mark recovering from pneumonia, last weekend we ran the Dirty Dash at Soldier Hollow. For those of you not from Utah, Soldier Hollow is where the cross country skiing events were held during the 2002 Winter Olympics in SLC. If I were into cross country skiing I would have loved this place - but I'm more into downhill. But anyway, the Dirty Dash is a mud run - a race that they make you run a 10K or 5K through the mud and all sorts of obstacles and the point is to get as dirty and muddy as possible. There's no way you could run this just to get through it quickly and make good time. There were THOUSANDS of people there to race, and everyone would get bottle necked at all the obstacles so really it was just for fun. And oh boy, was it ever fun! It was a lot more fun than we thought it was going to be! My dad and sister Sara got to watch Mira and try to get some action shots.

Mark and I ran with a team of people from PCMC (my work), and our team's name was Beauties and the Beasts and the men had to dress like women and vice versa. One of the best parts of a mud run is the costumes - you dress up in these really wild and creative costumes that purposefully get trashed by the end of the race. There were some awesome ones there - fairies with wings, people in cow suits with udders, there was a group of men wearing baby carriers complete with baby dolls strapped in, women in huge tutus - it was crazy! I really think Mark had one of the best costumes in the whole race. So many people would call out to him on the race and say things like, "Looking good, Granny!" And he totally played up the part too. And the best part is he started the race with a sunhat and a purse, and finished the race with a sunhat and a purse! While we were getting ready before the race started he overheard someone say something to the effect of, "Yeah, good luck finishing with the purse!" So since he heard that of course he became bound and determined to finish the race with that darn purse! And he kicked my butt too, even with sick lungs he probably would have finished the race an hour before I did if he wasn't nice enough to stick with me. (I think he got worried that I got trampled after we got separated early in the race.)

They had some really fun obstacles - swamps of mud to slog or swim through, climb up ropes while slipping in mud, crawl through pipes half full of mud (while getting blasted with snow-making machines), climb over hay bales and wooden fences, a huge Slip 'N' Slide - someone had a lot of fun figuring out this course! We started off doing the 10K course but ended up cutting across partway through so we probably ended up doing a 7.5K or something like that. It was exhausting too! It didn't feel so bad right afterwards but the next day we could barely move! I got some pretty awesome scrapes and bruises, which is how you know it was fun. It was so worth it though and now we're excited for the next one (which probably won't be until next year). My sister Sara wants to run the next one too. I'm already formulating our team's name and costumes in my head. :)

Here are some pictures of race day.