12 Miles, 2 Weeks To Go!

This was a good week for running because I was able to get in all the miles that I was supposed to and felt pretty good.  The miles are decreasing in preparation for the marathon, which is in TWO weeks.  My long run on Saturday was 12 miles and next week it's only 8, yay!  I feel pretty ready to do this, but still a little nervous.  When I ran the 20 miles in Manchester my feet felt fine, but when I did the 12 miles this week here in Hillsborough they really hurt again.  I think that is what I am most worried about.  I don't usually live by this philosophy, but I will probably bring some Ibuprofen so my feet don't hurt so much during the marathon.  I have worked too hard to have my feet stop me!  I'll just give them some special attention after, maybe a nice soak.

My 12 mile long run went pretty well.  I must be a little more fatigued than last week because I was more tired and sore than after the 20 mile run (not horribly bad though), and my feet hurt.  It is getting more chilly out now, which at first I thought was great to get rid of the heat and humidity, but now I'm not so sure I like it.  Once I get running it's nice, but to get motivated to go for a long run is really hard.  When it's cold out I like to hibernate inside where it's warm and cozy.  I am always glad once I get out there, but it is definitely a challenge to get started.  When I went out for the long run it was really windy and I wanted to turn around and go home, but after a mile I was warmed up and was able to enjoy the day...because really it was (haha, again) a beautiful day...just cold.

It isn't even that cold yet, I am just a big wimp when it comes to cold.  I'll complain some more...Now that it is cold it takes forever to go outside with the kids.  Gone are the days of heading outside whenever we felt like it, walking to the beach with hardly anything on.  Now we have to put on layers and socks and shoes and hats etc. just to go outside.  It takes a lot of motivation on my part, since again, I don't like the cold...but I DO like to be outside.  The real bummer is that when we are so bundled up it is hard for Constantine to play using his arms.  It adds a lot of weight to his arms which makes it a lot harder to move them to play, even on his tray.  We are looking into options for clothes that are warm, lightweight, and thin to make it easier to play outside with out getting cold (or getting sick!).

 

C doing his famous art.  See it at angleboyart.org :)

Aurelia gardening

We had a pretty low key weekend just playing staying close to home.  We had a nice visit from Memere and Uncle TJ and did "projects", which C is really into now since we have been going to the library and doing craft projects there.  We made a really cute felt birdhouse with lots of details which C directed and glued.  He is a guy who knows what he wants and luckily good at telling us what that is.  We actually had our meeting with the school this past week to go over results of their testing they did on him to determine his eligibility for pre-school.  Like we sort of expected, he tested above average in his expressive and receptive language.  Little smarty.  He tested average for how he speaks, which is great because SMA can affect how he talks, but right now he is right on target.  Everyone at the school seems really excited to have him and are really going above and beyond getting everything ready for him to fit right in.  It makes me more excited and relaxed to have him go to school knowing that it will be such a great experience with people who really want what is best for him (health wise, socially, and academically).  Only one more month till school!.......
   And TWO weeks till marathon day!!

Two Awesome Newspaper Articles!

Click on the links below to view two articles that were written about us.

http://www.server-jbmultimedia.net/VillagerNewspaper/sitebase/index.aspx?area=doublepage&adgroupid=192994&pagenumber=1&view=double&FH=635

http://www.concordmonitor.com/article/221402/happiness-and-sadness

Both articles came out really well!  One thing I will say is that Constantine IS able to sit by himself and is very proud of that,  but otherwise great articles!

14 Miles, 20 Miles, and a Wedding!

This post will cover the past two weeks since I couldn't find the time to write last week.  Well, it's not really that I didn't have ANY time, but at night when the kids went to sleep I was too sleepy to write.  My week of running wasn't too exciting anyway.  I did a 14 mile long run and again it was a perfect fall day.  I did a part of my hilly hills run and included some roads that I had never been on before.  It was a great run.  There was one hill that was HUGE.  I usually don't mind running up hills, but this was just so long and steep...kind of more like running up a mountain.  I am so glad that I've been training on all these hills though.  I missed some miles in the middle of the week again.  It is getting harder to do all the miles, not physically harder, just finding the time to do it.  When it is 3-5 miles I can squeeze it in easily, but now that it is up to 9-10  miles on a Wednesday and Dom has to go in for overtime so I can't always do it.

  

We had a really fun fall weekend though with the family.  We went apple picking at a beautiful farm north of Concord.  They had goats, horses and chickens and platform to enjoy the amazing view.  Aurelia was very happy holding and eating two little apples she picked and Constantine enjoyed some licks off my apple (he is so easily pleased).  We also went to the pumpkin festival in Milford with Pepere and Oma.  They got to see the pumpkin launch into the river, which C loved.  They got balloons and saw the fire truck and just enjoyed all the people and activities.  We also carved our pumpkin and painted pumpkins and made applesauce, which Constantine could actually eat a little bit of.

This past week I switched up my running schedule so I wouldn't have to run over the weekend.  I did 5 miles on Tuesday then did my 20 MILES on Thursday.  Constantine has his feeding and swallowing appointment and aqua-therapy in Manchester on Thursday mornings so we all went in to Manchester and Dom took the kids to his appointments while I did my run on the marathon route.  I feel a little redundant saying this, but it was again a great day for a run.  My hilly hills training definitely paid off because, while Manchester is definitely hilly, Hillsborough is more so.  The run was challenging, but I felt awesome when I was done.  It was almost weird how good I felt.  Maybe I expected to be much worse off, but even my feet felt okay.  I was a little frustrated because there was a bridge that was closed to pedestrians and I waited for a little bit to cross on the shuttle bus to finish the marathon route, but instead I stretched out while waiting then decided to do the remaining miles by backtracking the route.  When I was done Dom and the kids met me and we went to the mall to get my dress and shoes for the wedding (and of course to see the animals in the pet store).

Now the wedding stuff!  On Friday Pepere and Oma came over to hang out with Constantine for the weekend.  My mom (Memere) came over to pick up Aurelia to take her to Vermont for the weekend.  I am so thankful to them for watching them and making me feel comfortable leaving for so long.  My dad has been learning the ins and outs of caring for Constantine for months now.  Every week he comes over to go through the routine of his care so he was prepared to do it without me there.  I'm sure it was a challenge to wake up during the night to turn him over.  I know they both had a great time which allowed Dom and I to have a great 5 year anniversary/ wedding weekend away. Bryan and Alyssa, whose wedding we went to were so kind to make a donation to Constantine's medical fund in honor of their guests instead of wedding favors.  We are so thankful to them for that!!  It was a great weekend.

Us with the bride at the rehearsal dinner

The Adventures of Fizz the Fish!!!

Here is C's room.  You can see Fizz by the bed :)

I am so excited about this!!  My sister-in-law came up with this great idea to make a book together to benefit Constantine and SMA research.  I wrote the story about our Chinese Fighting Fish, Fizz.  At night while we are doing Constantine's routine before bedtime we make up stories about Fizz escaping and doing crazy things then coming back to his house.  Fizz lives in a tank on a shelf right next to where Constantine sleeps so he gets to watch him as he goes to bed.  We have made up many stories about Fizz including one Dom made up where Fizz goes down the toilet and explores the water treatment facility.  I chose to write a big adventure where he goes to see all the things that Constantine loves.  I thought it would be fun to read to him because he always gets excited when he sees things like tractors and trains in books.  It worked because he does LOVE it!

Kim did such an amazing job illustrating and getting it together on blurb.com.  I am so thankful to her for thinking of this.  I am not very creative in general so it feels pretty cool to have my name on something so wonderful.  I hope everyone else likes it too and hopefully it will raise some money for Constantine and SMA research.  There is a link to the book to the right where you can preview the whole book. Let me know what you think and tell your friends and family about it!

18 Miles Then The Farm...Phew!

This week was my 18 mile long run week, which I have been nervous about since I first started training for this marathon.  I was a little worried about doing it since last week I had such a hard time with the 12 miles.  I got lucky again with the weather being a perfect, beautiful fall day with temperatures in the 60's.  We went to Dick's on Friday and bought some gel inserts for my heel since it has been a little bit sore since after the 16 mile run I did a couple of weeks ago.  While we were there I got some gel energy/electrolyte packets that I figured would be easier to carry and eat on my run.  I was all prepared and ready to run.  This time I knew from the get go that I could do it.  I did have my coffee so maybe that helped, even if only mentally!

I decided to do the Hilly Hills run again just because I don't have to drive anywhere to do it.  Weird how I am too lazy to drive somewhere to run, but will do the stupid Hilly Hills run for 18 miles.  This run really is beautiful though, I'll give it that... and I think I'll be glad that I trained here come marathon time.  I had a great run just enjoying the day and time outside.  Dom and the kids met me toward the end of my run to refill my Gatorade and bring some Ibuprofen, but Dom forgot the Ibuprofen part (this came back to haunt me in the last two miles, but at the time I just said "Oh, that's okay").  I think the gel energy/electrolyte thing helped me a lot, but was really GROSS.

I ended up meeting them at the Agway in town where they stayed to paint pumpkins.  I was bummed that I missed doing that, but glad that they got some fun time with just Daddy.  That was at about mile 13.  I ran the 3ish miles back to the house then added on the lake run to make an even 18 miles.  I will tell you that I was in pain.  It's always my feet that go first, although that gel thing really helped my heel because it didn't hurt at all. This is the first run that I thought I might not be able to finish.  It was hard, and even though I really don't want to hurt myself, I wanted to do this and aside from my feet, I felt okay.  I haven't had to walk at all yet, so I figure I still have that up my sleeve come marathon time.  I did it and it felt great to be able to cross it off on my training schedule.

Afterward I stretched like crazy, took some Ibuprofen, and showered.  It's amazing how much better I feel after a shower.  I relaxed a bit then Pepere and Oma (my dad and step-mom) along with my brother, Miles, came over to visit.  We were talking about what to do and I mentioned going to the farm to see the animals, and of course Constantine heard and went crazy wanting to go..so we did.  We had a great time at this farm outside Hillsborough that allows you to walk around and check out their cows, goats, emus, llamas, and different birds.  It's a great place and the kids love it.  We even got to take home some peacock feathers.


Now I am trying to plan out my training schedule around our weekend away, which is fast approaching.  We are going to Mass for a wedding on the same weekend as our five year anniversary.  We figured we'd just go as a couple and have grandparents watch the kids (Ahh...I know everything will be FINE, but we never leave them!).  That is the same weekend as my 20 mile training run, so I think I'm going to do it earlier in the week so I won't be sore and tired for our nice weekend.  Two things I am especially excited for:  Getting some really good sleep, and getting dressed up and actually feeling pretty.  Fun, fun!