Apollo watches TV

Mike and I have noticed in this past year that periodically Apollo will watch TV. You can see his face looking up at the screen and watch him pay attention. Sometimes it's very brief, just like he wants to check out what we're watching. Sometimes though he'll pay attention for a longer period of time. We've even had the occasion where he didn't like something he saw on TV and started to bark or growl but it never lasts too long. Last night was different though.
Apollo doesn't like our new Wii. We're not sure if it's because we're not playing with him or if it's because we often look like we're throwing something but don't actually let go. Regardless, he gets fussy when we play. Last night I was making up some additional miis for our Wii. I was having fun making one to look like Mike's brother, Scott. Scott has every large, bushy eyebrows that pretty much form a unibrow. As I was trying large scary looking eyebrows on this mii Apollo started growling and barking at the TV. He was completely worked up and very upset. At first I laughed and thought it was the scary looking face but I could not get him to settle down. I finally had to change the screen so the large mii face wasn't there anymore to calm him down. When Mike came home we laughed about Apollo barking at Scott. However, when I showed Mike we picked a different mii and Apollo went berserk over that mii as well. So apparently there's something about the miis that Apollo doesn't like. For the rest of the evening though when we had the TV on Apollo would periodically walk up and check out the TV, almost like he was checking to make sure it was real people and not the miis. This weekend every one's coming over to our house to watch the Superbowl and play the Wii. It should be interesting to see how Apollo responds.

Jesus dies every year

So a few years ago while I was finishing my Masters but before I moved back to Texas I ended up taking care of three boys. It was an interesting experience to be a nanny and I really enjoyed it. It's always fun to learn how to parent on someone else's child. One thing I already knew is that children are very observant of what is said and done around them. That made me very picky about what I would play on the radio in the car. Since even country songs occasionally use inappropriate language or topics I just left the local Christian station on. I knew there wouldn't be anything on that channel that I would be embarrassed to have the boys tell their parents they had heard. The youngest boy, age 4, spent the most time in the car with me and probably heard the radio the most.

After I had been with them a few months we were in the car one day when Tucker's voice comes from the back seat. "You always listen to songs about Jesus. Why do you love Jesus so much?" I was a little caught off guard but said I loved Jesus because God loved me. He asked how I knew that. I then tried in very simple, 4-year-old terms to explain that God had sent Jesus to die for our sins because he loved us. I didn't get very far in to my explanation before Tucker interrupted me. "Oh, I know all about that. Every year at Easter Jesus dies and comes back to life." So there you have it from a 4 year old's point of view.

To remember for the future...

Right now we don't have TIVO or a DV-R. I know this may seem shocking, but Mike and I aren't that addicted to TV shows. If we miss something we usually don't care. The only reason we have Direct TV in fact is so that Mike can get ESPN and watch his favorite sports teams. . The other weekend while we were visiting Mike's family I was reminded of why, when we start a family, that we will need to invest in a DV-R. Ethan (the second oldest nephew) was sitting at lunch when his mom opened a diet coke and poured it into her glass. As it bubbled and fizzed Ethan looked at it and said "mmm, drinkability!" (If you're not familiar - this would be the latest Budweiser commercial) I couldn't keep a straight face and all the adults began to laugh. Of course, this only encourages a 4 year old to keep repeating it. This whole thing was especially funny because Scott is looking for position as a Baptist pastor and so they don't drink alcohol. Ethan finally finished lunch by showing us that he knew what commercial it was from by saying the entire line "Budweiser... it's drinkability". At this point I told Megan that they might as well give up and break out the margaritas because everyone is going to think they're lushes anyway.
As funny as it was though it made me think about what children see and hear. From an academic standpoint I know this and have taught it in Child Development. It's something completely different to be reminded of it in real life though. Megan and Scott try to restrict what the children see on TV and if they think a violent or inappropriate commercial is coming on then they turn off the TV for a minute. It never occurred to them though to turn off the beer commercials during football. So that is something we'll need to remember in the future: if we don't want our children to be exposed to commercials then a DV-R will need to be ordered.
All of this reminded me of the kids I used to nanny for and the youngest one's interpretation of Easter, Christ's death and resurrection... but that's for another day.

Mike's marathon

Mike ran the marathon on Sunday. I'm really proud of him. He finished in 6 hours and 11 minutes. The race clock starts at 8 when the race starts, but he didn't cross the start line until a little while after that. He had a smart chip tag on his shoe to track his time. I think it was a learning experience for us both. Mike learned that he really should have trained more. His conditioning was fine, he was never really out of breath too much. However, around mile 18 his legs started to cramp up really bad and he had to walk/run the rest of the way in a lot of pain. Before that happened he was on pace to finish in 5 hours. With the cramping though he finished just a little over 6 hours so he still finished his goal - to finish before they pulled up the finish line. =) Mike also learned what he's going to be like when he's 90 years old and can barely move. He's been pretty sore the last few days. I was glad that we both took Monday off from work. It gave him time to recuperate some.

On the other hand, I learned that I was completely unprepared to cheer my husband properly. My mom came down to meet me and we drove to 6 different spots along the race to cheer him. I brought our camera and I also had cliff bars and poweraid chews and the like to give him along the route. I did all the prep work the days ahead to make sure that I knew what time we needed to leave and what to bring and where to go, filled out his race bib, stayed with him until the race started and all that. I thought I was being very supportive. However, I didn't have the professionally printed shirts saying Run Mike Run. I didn't even have a homemade one. I also didn't bring a poster or banner and I didn't have the blowup sticks that you bang together to make noise or the cowbells. So now I'm trying to convince Mike to run another marathon so that I can properly cheer him on. At the moment I'm not having much luck (something about his legs feelings like they've been beat a thousand times with a baseball bat).

I also didn't think about bringing Apollo with us for the day. We left him cooped up at home and our neighbor came to play with him for a little while about midway through the day. I saw a lot of people with their dogs though and I think I would bring Apollo if we did this again. He would enjoy it, although I don't think he'll understand why he can't run with Mike.

Finally I learned that I was much more nervous, anxious, and worked up over this race than Mike was. I was about ready to cry by the time he crossed the finish line for some reason. I realized while Mom and I were waiting about mile 22 that Mike and I do almost everything together. If he's playing on a sports rec league or I'm doing something we go support each other. And for flag football or basketball I can watch him run up and down the field and see him the whole time. With the marathon though I couldn't see him the whole time and it was really hard on me for him to go through something so difficult, painful, and momentous without me being able to be there for the whole thing.

Other things we learned:

- To be grateful for sore legs that hurt. We saw two people, including a 7 year old boy, without legs who ran the race with prosthesis

- To be grateful for safe finishes. An experienced runner died towards the end of the race on Sunday.

- That before we have kids we need to get a real video camera rather than just using the recording function off my camera

- That it's really cool to have F-18s do a fly-by the kick start the marathon.

- That when people say that finishing is winning a marathon, regardless of place, it's really true. In the case of 26.2 miles, just finishing really is winning.

Marathon prep

So when your husband comes home one day and says he wants to run a marathon in a few months because he's not getting any younger, don't quickly say ok without a thought. I've learned that him running a marathon actually has implication for my life. For the past three months he's been gone for hours on Saturday morning doing his long runs. Now honestly this isn't that big a deal except that I'm home cleaning house and looking at the yard work that he's supposed to get done but doesn't. This only got to be a serious issue recently as the runs were long enough that he got home, sat on the couch, didn't feel like getting up for the rest of the day and would ask me to bring him his dinner, water, etc so that he wouldn't have to move. As a result the rose bushes we purchased on sale in September are still in their pots waiting for their flower bed to be tilled and mulched.
This week I've been cooking special dinners with lots of pasta, printing maps of the marathon to find places that mom and I can go wave at him as he runs by, taking next Monday off work so that I can stay home and help take care of him, and thinking about how early I have to get up on Sunday so that I can go wait in the cold for the hours it take him to run the race.
Now I realize that all of this may sound very selfish since I'm not the one who's been doing the running and not the one who will be pain come Sunday afternoon. The truth is though that it's not selfish, because as irksome as it has been sometimes and as much as I don't like getting up early I'm actually happy that I get to do all this and be supportive of Mike. I'm proud of him for running this marathon. He's wanted to do it for quite a while now. Instead this is more a cautionary tale for you to know that when your husband comes home and says he wants to run a marathon that it will somewhat inconvenience your life and for you to remember you promised to be a loving, supportive wife so give him a kiss and say ok anyway.

We Won!

So, as you may recall we have been battling the big evil home warranty company. The short version is that while they pretended to be decent for a year and do what we paid them for (with enough prodding), right before our renewal period they morphed into an evil company. They lied to us and about us and refused to honor the contract. This would be the dryer incident. So we decided that we didn't want to renew with them after all and told them we were cancelling our renewal. Mind you that this was before the renewal date. We were not so kindly informed that the cancellation fee was $300 (renewal fee was $339), even though it was not yet the renewal date. It didn't take long to realize that any logic was lost on them and we resorted to disputing the charge with the credit card company. We had our doubts about whether we would be successful since it was taking so long and the credit card lady seemed to be having a lot of trouble understanding the concept of a home warranty. However, Mike noticed on our credit card statement yesterday that we've been credited the renewal fee so we won! We feel a little like David bringing down Goliath. Just in case you're interested. We had National Home Protection and (obviously) don't recommend them. We googled them after we started having trouble and there's a lot of unhappy people with them trying to file a class action lawsuit now and dealing with the attorney general. Since we got our money back we're not interested in all that, but I just thought I'd share for anyone who is researching home warranties.

Guess we'll have to start going to reunions...

This weekend I was in Chicago for a college friend's wedding. We were never able to find super-cheap airfare so Mike stayed home and worked on the yard. I roomed with several of my college girlfriends who also left their husbands at home and had a really fun weekend. It was great to catch up with all the Trinity folks that came to the wedding. And with 4 girls in one room, "adult libations", dancing and a hot tub I started having flashbacks to college. Of course the problem with acting like I'm back in college for the weekend is that I'm not back in college, I'm 30, and I had a huge presentation on Monday morning. I've decided that I'm officially too old to behave like I'm 20 anymore. At one point in the evening though I realized that with the exception of a few people that everyone there would be married by the end of the year. I haven't been back to any of the official Trinity reunions because I see so many people at weddings instead. Guess we'll have to start going to reunions....