it seems like ages ago that i was training for and occasionally running marathons and it's hard to believe a year and a half has already passed since i last tried to get back into the habit. it's always easy to find excuses for not taking the time to exercise when you have an active two and half year old running around.

but now the peer pressure is on now that i've become a founding member of a running group at organic valley and the fact that they want to start running regularly after the new year has been just the motivation i've needed to drag myself out and run a couple of miles yesterday and today. i was pleasantly surprised that i was even capable of running 2 miles as i imagined that i wouldn't even be able to make it around the block.

i know vowing to exercise more is a pretty cliche new year's resolution so i'm adament that this is not, if fact, that sort of resolution. but it's feeling entirely possible that i might just meet a personal goal of running a 5K in february or march and maybe, just maybe, a local syttende mai half marathon in may. and then the chicago marathon in october? perhaps. right now, it's just a one foot in front of the other, one day at a time sort of thing.

sort-of relatedly, i had no idea that you burn almost exactly the same number of calories regardless of whether you're walking or jogging - 62 calories per 100 pounds body weight per mile ( at least as long as you're running slower than 9 minute miles which i definitely am at this point ). who knew? at least i don't have to feel bad if i take a walking break every once in awhile :-)

oh, and happy new year!

odin loves the song pony boy which is understandable since it's on one of his favorite cds, happy lemons, and we still sing a modified version we call pudding boy, pudding boy!.

since i've a hankerin' to pick up the harmonica again and we have fun playing together, i thought it would be fun to get the sheet music for the song and transcribe the vocal parts/melody to harmonica. but i can't find a source for the sheet music anywhere and i'm not very good at picking out notes by ear so i'm not having very much luck. if you know the notes to the tune i think you could make odin's new year by leaving them in the comments or sending them to me in an email ( eric AT snowdeal DOT org ).

who knows, eventually maybe we'll even record a duet :-)

exactly 300 days ago i wondered whether the terrible twos were nigh and while it's taken a little longer than i thought, it would seem that they've finally arrived in full force.

these days, it's almost guaranteed that odin's answer to every request will be "no!" or "no! i don't want to!" or "no! i don't want to do that!" and if we ask him to not do something, like step on the christmas tree lights while we're taking down the tree, he'll - of course - do the opposite while being clever about testing the boundaries of what we might mean by no ( like, say, stepping on the very edge of the christmas tree lights while smiling a devilish grin and insisting that he is not stepping on them. ).

i know that this is an utterly normal stage to go through and that it would be sisyphean and just plain wrong to try and stifle a stage of development that is meant to hone independence through "oppositional behavior", but still, i can't say i'll be disappointed to this stage come and go. quickly.

surely it's not too optimistic that this will all be sorted out by the new year? spring? his third birthday? college?

someone, somewhere must have studied the varied kinds of gift givers. there are those that give because that's what's "expected". and then there are those people like myself who think about all the great gifts that would be perfect for this person or that person but never get around to getting it all together and end up feeling a bit guilty about their lack of holiday gift giving execution skills. and then there are people like peep's mama ( and here ) who manage to put together a perfectly perfect box of gifts.

not only did she and her family send odin a SCHOOOOOLBUS! and a "superfantastic odin mix" cd filled with her son jack's ( a fellow micropreemie ) favorite songs, but they also included a big ol' treat for mauja and truck and...and...US!

we've never even met "in real life" so i'd like to know how she knew that skor candy is one of my favoritest kinds of candy. even though she claims to not be a good explainer in her directions, even a dolt like myself can follow along and i'm totally going to steal the idea.

thank you amy, andy and jack. it's perfect.

hopefully nobody will take this the wrong way, but after not seeing odin and kris for almost a week and then driving over a thousand miles in 5 days to see grandparents and cousins and aunts and uncles i have to admit that it was nice to get back home after a long day of driving with enough time to spend some quiet time having our christmas the day after christmas.

happy holidays to all from odin and us!

so, it's christmas day and a whole bunch of cousins have gathered around, somewhat patiently awaiting the appointed time to open presents. what is odin preoccupied with?

"poppi, i neeeeed a scwewdiver. i need to fix it."

as near as i could tell, the toy car wasn't broken and i have no idea where he developed the idea that a screwdriver is a general purpose fix-it tool, but nonetheless, christmas day was the day that he decided he was was mister fix-it.

hopefully come spring, he'll still be interested enough in fixing cars to give me a hand with the old ford.

it's always fun to see odin and his age adjusted cousin get together again. they're both growin' like weeds, weeds i say. don't worry, if you get a little teary eyed taking a trip down memory lane, it happens to the best of us.

during playtime with some cousins, odin felt perhaps a little neglected when some of them went of to play together and without making a big deal out of it or asking them to include him, kris quickly constructed a table fort! soon enough, evelyn noticed odin's new fort and then everyone else came on over to see the coolest place in town.

parenting jujutsu at its finest.

sniff. kris and odin left today to spend some of the holiday season with family in western michigan, which means they had to pack lots of important things, like toy trucks and cars and trucks and even more cars. all of which can make for a pretty heavy backpack that can make walking out the door a bit a challenge if you've not yet mastered on-the-fly center of mass recalculations.

it sure is going to be a quiet week and it's a little difficult to imagine that after he does finally figure out how to get some forward momentum to race out the door, i won't see him again for 6 whole days.

given odin's love of all trucks ( he did name his kitty truck afterall. ) and the fact that he can correctly identify organic valley milk trucks on the street, it seemed impossibly wrong to not get him a wooden replica of the tankers for christmas. sure, it's a "simple" gift, but i'm almost certain it will be his super favoritest gift ( many apologies to everyone who has already sent him what will surely be tossed aside in the piles of wrapping paper :-) ).

i think there might be a betting pool at the company "corner store" as to whether or not i'll actually be able to wait until christmas to give it to him. i hear the smart money is betting no.

while one might rightly question the sanity of volunteering to play the harmonica for a skit in the upcoming company christmas party, particularly when one hasn't played the instrument regularly in a long time and christmas carols were never part of the regular repertoire, but hey, i've never been one to back down from the prospect of embarrassing myself in public even if it's in front of new co-workers.

who knows, if it goes over well maybe next year odin can get up on stage and play along since he sure loves to wail on the harp.

wow, it's hard to believe a whole year has already passed since odin's last nicu follow-up ( neonatal intensive care unit ) assessment, but it's that time of year again. and since we moved to a small, rural town, getting an assessment isn't a matter of driving across town, so kris and odin trekked 40 miles to the metropolis of la crosse to meet with developmental specialists. unfortunately, my new responsibilities kept me from going which was sort of a drag since this was the first of innumerable assessments that i've missed and it was tough to not hear and see exactly what transpired.

as was anticipated, for the most part odin is continuing to beat the micropreemie odds with no "significant" developmental or growth delays. at 31 pounds (14 kilos ) and 36.25 inches ( 92 cm )he's in the 75th percentile when compared to full term toddlers for height and weight and almost nobody today that doesn't know better would suspect that he weighed 23 ounces when he was born.

of course, he was as chatty and charming as ever and didn't fail to impress the specialists with his smartitude ( he didn't even get a chance to show them his puzzle mastery since they were only interested in colors and numbers which he conquered long ago ).

amidst all the positive news, they did note that he seems have an underdeveloped sense of proprioception which can lead to poor body awareness, standing balance, bilateral coordination and motor control. i must admit that it's a little difficult for us to even notice it anymore because he looks like any other toddler who loves to haphazardly run around and wreak havoc, but to their trained eyes he's compensating for a lack of skill in precisely determining where his body is located in space at any given moment.

amusingly, most toddlers with this sort of issue inherently know how to get the feedback they need to train their brains, so they do things like jump off of everything and anything. so, while it's not a huge deal, we need to make sure we make a renewed effort to help him do more of things that he needs to do to get the system feedback he needs, including walking on various gradients, terrains and uneven surfaces. and lots and lots of running and climbing and jumping.

there will be plenty of time for that. and for quiet bubble baths where odin fills his poppi in on all the exciting things that happened during the day.

the other day a local school held a christmas fair with a host of craft activities for kids which provided odin with his first opportunity to make a christmas ornament.

when he was making it we told him it would make the perfect gift for a grandparent, an idea that delighted him. but having given it more thought it would seem like we, his loving parents, should get first dibs on his very first christmas creation.

but if we do keep it, that would make us lying parents and bad children. perhaps a reasonable compromise would be to have him make a bunch more ornaments for all his grandparents ( and great grandparents! ) and tell everyone that the one they got was the first one he made :-)

i'm not sure i'm going to promise to get out some photo christmas cards this year since some might remember what happened last year and nobody would probably believe if i did anyway.

but if i was going to do a christmas card this photo might be a candidate. maybe. i like the picture, but perhaps i'll get something more appropriate before the cards need to go out. then again, it's not exactly easy to get him to cooperate these days so sometimes you have to take what you can get.

if thor can have an oak, certainly odin is entitled to help pick out a christmas tree every year.

almost exactly two years ago he was swaddled in a sling on the tree farm barely aware of his surroundings and now he absolutely, positively insists on helping me haul the tree all the way out despite the fact that the temperature is a brisk 18 F (-7 C ). maybe next year or two he'll be able to throw it on his back and whistle the lumberjack song :-)

and yet, after showing me how much higher he can can jump today than yesterday ( which higher still than a 100 days ago ) and a bath and a few books, he will be fast asleep, but only after reassuring himself that there are, in fact, no bats in the house. for whatever reason, months after the last sighting of bat, he's suddenly become quite concerned that they are back and is convinced that they are "scaaaaawweeee". which is odd because we consciously try to not talk about the bats in negative ways around him and have never told him that we thought they might have ever been in him room.