Peter's Christmas Wishes

Peter has been home sick all week and I tried to do some of the activities that he was missing at school. So, I had him write a letter to Santa. Here it is! I think it's pretty wonderful for 3-years-old!


He also "borrowed" our camera and did a study of the house from his perspective-- not without interesting results.






Click here to see his entire "portfolio."

This morning Peter turned the porch light on and said, "I like to leave it on because if anyone is lost they can come to our house. And if they don't have anywhere to sleep they can sleep in my bed. And if they are scared, I'll cuddle them."

My first "Tri"

Why I want to "Tri"

I have a lot of runner friends who do marathons which I think is awesome. I'd like to do a marathon but you'd have to spend soooo much time -- er, running. I don't actually like running. I figured marathon was out.

Last summer, my friend Micol told me she was doing a triathlon. And I thought: Wow! You have to be so well rounded. You get to swim in a lake or an ocean. It actually sounds fun. But Micol was a competitive runner in college and is built like a superhero. At the time, it didn't occur to me that it was a sport that a normal person can do.

Then, I started meeting some normal people who do it...

After about a year of having a secret desire to be a triathlete (and feeling self-conscious about the extra weight from my pregnancy) I picked out a race and started training.

I found a wonderful book called Slow, Fat, Triathlete: Pursue Your Athletic Dreams in the Body You Have Now. Her massage is that a fat, slow (and in my case, older) person has just as much right to train and compete as the skinny person who will win the race. She's a very inspirational writer -- and she's funny. I heartily recommend this book everyone whether your goals are athletic or not.

A 10-Week Journey

I made a training program for myself and started checking workouts off my training sheet. Every time I completed a workout I felt a bit like a superhero. I need to say here how thankful I am to my husband and father-in-law. Every checkmark on this page implies childcare support. A LOT OF IT. Thanks!!!!

My friend, Michael Cooney said of running something like, "I love running -- but the first 15 minutes of any run sucks." I found that comment INCREDIBLY helpful. It didn't help me fall in love with running, but it did help me get through the suckiest part. Every time. :)

Somewhere along the line, I decided to enroll in a swimming class. I used to be on swim team (during the Reagan Administration) but I never really learned any technique before this class. I'm finding that swimming builds nicely on my long-standing yoga practice and that swimming is my strongest event.

The Big Day

When we arrived at Island Beach State Park, it was 40 degrees. This didn't worry me nearly as much as the surf report which called for chop. I had chosen this event because it gave me the most time to train before the end of the season. It was short (.25 mile swim, 10 mile bike, 3.1 mile run). And the bike & run course was FLAT. What I didn't respect when I chose the event was how dicey the Atlantic can be in mid-October.

Standing on the beach, I couldn't tell how bad the surf actually was. I was too excited. I was thinking, "In 2 hours, I will be a triathlete!" Mythical. I was in the last wave to start: over 40 women and over 50 men. Everyone was super nice. I think when you are facing the ocean you feel less like you are competing against each other, and more like you are challenging nature. The starter sounded and we ran into the ocean. The course went out a long way before it turned to run along the shore. It way was over my head long before the turn at the first buoy. Then I got hit by a big wave. It threw me down but the water was deep enough that I didn't hit bottom. I had never been thrown by a wave so far off shore. It knocked my goggles off. I swallowed a bunch of water and threw up a little. I was petrified. I stopped swimming and considered turning back. I wanted to cry. 10 weeks of training. I was so sure of myself a second ago. Swimming is supposed to be my event. One of the over-60 ladies I had been speaking to on the shore put her hand on my shoulder and asked if I was OK. Yes. I was OK. A little panicked, but OK. I started swimming again. I got hit by a second wave that took my goggles off. It wasn't as bad the second time. I felt so thankful that my friend Micol had lent me her wetsuit: at least I wasn't fighting to stay afloat! After I rounded the first buoy I rolled onto my back. I started doing a move I learned in my swimming class called "sculling." It's really a wrist conditioner, not so much a stroke. I was getting nowhere fast. But I was able to look at the sky and let my breathing and my heart rate come back down. When I relaxed enough, I started doing backstroke. Before long I passed the next buoy. I picked my head up to survey my progress. To my surprise, there were still a bunch of swimmers behind me. Some of them were from the previous waves! I turned over a resumed my freestyle. I finished the swim in 18:48. It was a little less than twice the time it would have taken in a pool.

I felt a mix of emotions coming out of the ocean. The overwhelming one was: "I survived." But I also felt a little discouraged. I was still shaken by the panic and I was disappointed at my swim time. I know I wasn't dead last -- but I was worried I wouldn't make my goal of finishing in under 2 hours. I had pictured myself running out of the ocean to the transition. But I was walking with barely enough wind to thank the volunteers.

When arrived in the transition area, they were playing Kirsty MacColl's "In these Shoes" which is one of my all-time favorite songs. I was a big shot in the arm for me. I was singing along with Kirsty and taking extra time to regain confidence. They time your transitions in a triathlon. (Transitions are the "costume and prop" changes between the 3 sporting events.) And even though I took double what I took in T1 practice in order to regroup, my transitions were strong-- it's an old theater skill, after all. I've probably had a lot more practice than most athletes.


By the time I started biking, I was back to feeling AMPED. I was warmer. The day was warmer -- and downright gorgeous. I was happy to be outside. I was sure now that I would complete my race and determined not to let time get me down. The bike course was out and back. Lots of people passed me on the way out. I kept reminding myself that I have a clunky old mountain bike and I shouldn't sweat it. I started singing "Boys from the County Hell" to get my cadence up. After the halfway point I could see how many people were still biking out. Some of them were young, fit looking people too. The swim must have killed them. My bike time was 41:26. Not a record in the cycling world-- but 3 minutes under my personal best!

Chris was waiting for me at the beginning of the run. I told him I'd see him in 40 minutes. By now I was absolutely elated! I was cheering on random racers -- especially other woman. I kept shouting "Hooray for the Ladies! All the Ladies!!" I was thanking all the volunteers. I wasn't thinking about time AT ALL anymore. Only how happy I felt. I said before that running isn't my favorite. I ran a 5K before I was pregnant and came in at 45 minutes. I was second to the last in the whole race that day. So, imagine my surprise when I completed my run in 35:16! I could not believe it!!

Overall my time was 1hr 41min 40sec -- well under my 2hr goal. And I wasn't dead last. Not by a long shot. Oh, and my best sporting event was, far and away, the swim. Panic and all.

So, next up: the One Hour Postal Swim in January and Escape From Ft. Desoto in April. Anyone in the Tampa area have a bike I can borrow? Or, better yet, care to join me? You have six months to train...

Winter greetings

Peter's winter greetings from Chris D'Amato on Vimeo.

Pete Sounds

Sir speaks!

"A good day for ducks"


Singing the Kipper theme song

A package from Oklahoma

Chris writes: An unknown lady in Oklahoma sent me, with no explanation, a copy of The Timewaster Letters, which turns out to be an absolutely cringingly hilarious collection of fake letters and their real responses. It's exactly the sort of thing that appeals to my sense of humor.

Either Mrs Lott knows me way better than I know her, or one of my friends put her up to this.

C'mon, fess up!

Wow, it takes pictures too

Just emptied out the digital camera and found some snaps from the summer. Here is the boy in Dad's car:

Yesterday it was beautiful outside. A perfect fall day. Peter fell asleep in the hammock with me and we stayed there for ages. Just before he woke up, his mom came with the camera. This was one of the happiest hours of my life.

These and more are posted on our picasa web albums page.

Summer pictures round-up

Daddy's been abusing the video camera a lot, so there are fewer pictures this summer. Still a lot, though, and we just uploaded a bunch. Sorry, we usually don't have time to select just the best ones.

The pictures below and more are available on the "all the kid pics" link which appears on the right.

Going to the Y

Here is a short video of a happy boy who is about to be taken to his favorite place, the pool at the YMCA. He's talking a lot these days.

Link to video

Garden of earthly delights

Chris types today.

We are managing to do a little more than just survive this summer, and it's been great. We installed a fence in the backyard to make space for Peter to play. . I feel very cpable now that I have mastered some basic operations with concrete. And we've done some gardening too

Our tomato plants have grown a lot, and have so far provided us with exactly one perfect, delicious tomato. Maybe we will get some more. The zucchinis were looking very promising, but then we learned the hard way that zucchinis need way less water than tomatoes do, so next year we will not be planting them next to each other. The eggplants have made a lot of foliage and a couple of very elegant-looking blossoms but so far no veg. Stay tuned for an update. Peppers are popping and herbs are healthy.

G has planted a lot of stuff for butterflies and hummingbirds, but I will let her blog about that the next time she has time to herself. Should be sometime before 2018.

I would like to post the video I made of "out" hummingbird. G hung the feeders and made homemade bird-juice, and carefully kept them topped up for weeks before we finally saw a hummingbird. But once it showed up, it stayed. Maybe with a partner. We see them every day now, prety much everytime we go outside to watch for a little bit.

Hummingbird visit from Chris D'Amato on Vimeo.

 

I made this video with our handy little Flip camera, attached to the feeder hanging bracket with a visegrip. Anybody know what kind of hummingbird this might be?

It seems like there are two of them in our yard, they look very similar. They like to perch on the twigs above the feeder, so we get to inspect them a lot more that I ever did before.

Somewhere I have great pictures of this amazing caterpillar that appeared on one of G's herbs, I will see if I can find it.

Meanwhile, I better get back to work. Expect to see more blog posts during the second half of the summer when I have schoolwork to do.

Peter's new train set

Peter has been enjoying Thomas and Friends cartoons, so we bought him a little wooden Thomas which instantly became his favorite toy. He would carry it everywhere and even took it to bed, and he spend a lot of time playing with trains and trucks on a little Matchbox playset someone gave him.

So the other day we found a train set on craigslist for him. This is a time-lapse video of how he spent the day.

He is absent from the video only when he was physically dragged off for naptime, meals, and socialization with his cousins Thomas and Molly who were visiting from North Carolina.

Peter's new train set from Chris D'Amato on Vimeo.

More babies

Andrew and Farah have some new pictures of Amelia up. She is adorable. Looks like most of Andrew's genes are recessive, thankfully.

She has been a very avid crawler, taking an early interest in one of her mom's favorite sports. They are lucky parents, track stars have very low equipment costs. That's what we are trying to steer Peter toward soccer.

A few words

You should visit (yes you) so we can all go to Fosterfields together. We know all the animals by name except the chickens. It's great. Yesterday Peter went and stood by the back door and said "cow" until his mother took him to the farm.

He's talking more and more, and mixing sounds with signs. Still working on the final consonants, so we are Ma and Da. His favorite nocturnal raptor is an Ow. He loves when he can say words correctly, like "boo-boo". And he will kiss your boo-boo for you if invited, with a little smooching noise.

And he has been signing some complex nouns, like bird+bath and the sign for chicken which is a bird, pecking. His mom sees a lot of sentences from him but I had my first the other day at the farm when he said "pigs, sleeping."

Roadtrek RV for sale to good home

Click to Play

A walkaround of our 1994 Roadtrek 190 Versatile

Peter vs the safety gate

Here is a short video showing the child being creative.

It was a great safety gate for a while.

Everything's coming up ... roses?

Wow, I have posted a lot of videos lately. The thing I hate about videos on the web is that you have to watch them in real time, you can't scan them quickly and ignore the boring parts, like you are doing with what I am writing right now.

Spring is here. Crocuses then daffodils then tulips came up all over our yard, which continues to be miraculous to me. The dracunculus vulgaris has also reappeared, much to the dismay of my lovely wife.

She's a great wife, so I tolerate her idiosyncracies, which include a dislike of cars that catch on fire even a little bit and an inexplicable antipathy to giant flowers that smell like rotten meat and attract hordes of flies during the hottest days of the summer.

So, if anyone would like to adopt little Draco please come to our house with a shovel and a bucket.

Free range chickens

We got a new toy, about which I will blog in the fullness of time, but in the meanwhile here is a short movie of Peter with chickens and some little girls. We went to Fosterfields yesterday and had a great time.

There are a bunch more clips from the day, which you can see if you follow the link to the google vid.

Sometimes you must love the internet

Several great Alan Watts lectures, animation produced by the South Park guys.

Nick plays KCRW!

With Lizz Wright on Morning Becomes Eclectic, one of our favorite music shows!

A day in the life

Here's a snippet that captures several hours of life in our living room on a typical weekday. I set the webcam to capture one frame every second then I ran them together using virtualdub. I removed a couple hours where nothing happened except for the cat walking through once in a while.

Oh man, I just got a great idea for the next version. Check back soon.

Sir Edmund Percival Hillary

Sir's climbing abilities are advancing. To his credit, he did ask for help getting down.

His favorite spoken word of the week is "Daddy."

His favorite signing word of the week is "cold." Chris and I were talking about cold at the dinner table and Peter jumps up and signs "the ice cream is cold" then runs to the window and signs "outside is cold." I gave him popsicles last weekend because he was cutting molars. Later in the week I was asking him if he wanted a cracker in the car and he said he wanted a popsicle. We don't know the sign for popsicle, so he pointed to the popsicle stick on the floor (alas, there are many things on the floor of my car) and signed cold. I knew exactly what he was talking about.

All of a sudden he started to ask to watch "Blues Clues" a lot! His request coincided with him actually playing Blues Clues. For those of you who don't know the show, the characters find a series of clues and try to figure out the answer to a puzzle. The first time I saw that he was "playing" was when they asked "which of these piles has 3 things?" Peter signs "the bananas" and the actor says "that's right, the bananas." I thought-- this must be a fluke. Maybe he just saw bananas on screen and signed that coincidently-- but the other piles were all things that he knew the signs for and when he signs just to say things that he recognizes, he'll sign the whole picture. Then I thought, well, he's seen this episode 100 time and he memorized the answer-- but then we got a new Blues Clues DVD from the library and the first time he watched it, they asked "which animal goes above and below the water?" and he signs, "the dolphin." I had no idea they could know all this at such a young age!

Yesterday, I wasn't planning to put him in baby-sitting at the Y -- but he saw the other kids playing with the toys and begged to go in. When I left, he ran off to make some pretend phone calls. I had no idea that pretend play started so early! When I came back to get him, he had made a friend. The sitters said this little boy was crying when his mom left him and Peter went to console him. They continued to play together the rest of the time. I ended up leaving him an extra half hour because he wanted to play with his friend. Sniff! He's growing up so fast!!