Ahh, the irony. I spent several minutes trying to find one of my library books. Eventually I discovered it under the near-constant pile of clutter plaguing our kitchen peninsula. The book? Absolutely Organize Your Family: Simple Solutions to Control Clutter, Schedules & Spaces. Right.

I must say that I semi-rocked the Rock ‘n Roll Marathon (the half) on Saturday. It wasn’t quite as fun as last year (my first time doing that particular race). The hills seemed…mmmm… hillier. There were a couple of great signs this go ‘round. (I always pick a fave or two). Most people stand there with signs with the name of their running loved-one. One dude out-did ‘em all with his sign. “YAY! WAY TO GO, Random Stranger!” As I passed him I yelled, “Hey! That’s me! And I’m gonna win.” He high-fived me and matching my (faux) enthusiasm responded with, “Yeah, ya are! Go stranger!”

The other great sign was: “It’s not sweat. It’s just your fat cells crying.” Ahh, yeee-ahh.

Anywhoo, my goal was to finish under 2 hours. Last year, I finished 13.1 miles in 2hrs.1 min.44 seconds. I’d been trying to visualize a 1:55 finish, that way I’d give myself plenty of cushion. Well, at 1:54 I was still quite a ways from the finish, but I trash-talked my lame-self, remembering that I didn’t train for and wait a whole year to just miss my goal by a few seconds or minutes. I managed to muster a little bit more energy and crossed the finish in 1 hour, 58 minutes, 46 seconds. A 9:04/mile average. By the skin of my teeth!

I’ve decided to take this week off all together from running, though I don’t that I’ll make it, I think I need to up my training…in order to keep up with Kayliana. My Word! The girl is BUSY. Today she pulled herself up to standing for the first time (on her exersaucer, which then nearly collapsed on top of her). She tried to walk around it!! At SEVEN MONTHS OLD. She’s rocking her first (of many, I fear) bruise – a little blackish-blue spot on her forehead where she wacked the corner of the wall. This evening, she got slightly stuck on the bottom shelf of her changing table (which she had climbed up on). Seriously, the baby girl is a monkey-pants!! Oye.

At least now that she’s eating solids, Kayliana’s spit-up comes in a variety of colors; I was getting so tired of the same ‘ol white-ish spit-up. Seriously, I know that she’ll (ideally) outgrow spitting up within the next few months, but I clean up spit-up so many times a day – off her, out of her hair, off me, off the couch, off her toys, off the floor, out of floor vents (that’ll smell AWESOME when the heat comes on), off the carpet (I’ve invested in “Kids & Pets” carpet cleaner in bulk – I sometimes wonder if she’ll be the awkward kid still drooling and spitting up in Kindergarten. Nobody wants to be THAT kid (or sit next to that kid lest they get spat up upon). I do insanely hope she’s done soon because 1.) I’m tired of baby vomit, 2.) SO many of her cute outfits are just not even seen because of the constant bib-wearing and 3.) her ‘lil baby neck chub-rolls are starting to make getting bibs on her tricky and she’ll outgrow them any day now. I looked into how long this whole spit-up sitch should carry on, and I learned that only 20% of 6-9 month old babies still do it. Yay for our overachiever!!

So, you know why I haven’t blogged for a few weeks? ‘Cuz I’ve been cleaning up spit-up, foo.

It is also interesting to note that out of three babies not only is Kayliana the most forth-coming (with spit-up), but (and this is following two boys!), she is by far my most active baby! She’s a rough and tumble, ready to party little kiddo. And she seems constantly on an army-crawl-mission. She’s found herself in a few pickles: Getting stuck under the coffee table (but being OK with it). Pulling Zach’s entire play-kitchen pretty much on top of herself and yet getting mad when I removed it (because she was happily sucking on the cabinet door). Hugging the corner of the kitchen island (peninsula, really) and opting to gnaw on the wall a bit. She’s unplugged the stereo numerous times (yes, I realize this is just our lameness in not getting a better outlet cover right there, so in the meantime, we leave the stereo cord unplugged and up out of her reach). She can already reach fairly high though and has managed to pull folded laundry off the couch and books off of the coffee table.

Kayliana’s favorite pastime is discovering the items left on the floor that really shouldn’t be – in particular finding abandoned shoes and sandals (primarily the boys’ flip flops) and sucking on them for their unique flavor-finds. I made the mistake once of glancing away while she crawled down below and I – wearing sandals at the time – suddenly felt an odd wet sensation. She was sucking on my big toe. I’ve also experienced the VERY not pleasant feeling of warm spit-up dripping between my toes. Yuck.

You’d think we’d have learned by now: wear close-toe shoes and cover the floor and every possible surface (including ourselves) with massive amounts of tarp. We should also rip up the carpet and just put a big drain in the floor so we can hose the whole place down.

In other news: we have a second grader in da house!! Wootwoot! Yesterday was Matthew’s last day of first grade (sniff sniff). Everytime I say something about him being a second grader, he corrects me with, “Mom, not yet.” Apparently the summer is a weird limbo-place between grades.

TBall is done. The boys’ team was undefeated. Ye-ahh! (Not that they ever kept score, but still…). Both kiddos got trophies and were pretty much beyond stoked about ‘em.

We started swim lessons this week. They haven’t taken swim lessons in two years, so it’s good to be back at it.

I’ve successfully tapered (the best part of training!) and will run my fourth half marathon on Saturday. I’m REALLY hoping to cut at least two minutes off of my time so I can PR (personal record) and finish under two hours. I’m also REALLY hoping to run on my feet, not my face and to avoid stitches or any other serious injury.

Because apparently running 12 miles isn’t enough of a challenge for me, a root was strategically placed on the path and after successfully avoiding said-root for 9 miles I managed to at long last trip over it. This was no graceful trip, however. (Is there such a thing, really?) This was a ‘hmmm, maybe I’ll try running on my face instead of my feet and then since that doesn’t seem to work will skid to a stop on my hands and knees and chest but will REALLY come to rest with the use of my chin-brake.’ I managed to pull myself up and dust myself off muttering, “SH*^! Are you kidding me?!” I’m very sad to say that I forgot to stop my watch (in order to not count this little detour against my pace). I was maybe a little distracted by the blood and dirt and dust. (Dirt doesn’t taste good, fyi). I noticed a few runners on the path below looking at me dust myself off but notta-one asked if I was OK. After a quick scan I realized that I’d bloodied both my knees, my left one, in particular had some pretty deep gravel pits a-happenin’. Both hands were scraped and then there was this little minor detail of my chin throbbing something fierce. I pulled a Kleenex out of my water bottle holder and held it to my chin. I thought that maybe I wasn’t that bad and gore-y since no runners had looked at me with anything other than mild interest. But after soaking through the Kleenex, I decided to find out just how bad it was. I stopped a girl who was running towards me and asked, “Um, hi. Sorry. Can you just tell me if I need a band-aid?” and lifted my chin. Her eyes got wide and she stated the obvious, “Yeah, you definitely need a band-aid and probably some stitches.”

I walked to the restrooms which – thankfully – weren’t that far away. Ouch. Definitely needed some band-aids. I woundedly waddled to the boat house office and requested a few. The office guy asked if I was alright. I mumbled, “Yeah, I just totally bit it, and I’m just pissed. What am I five?!” (No offense, Zachary).

Back in the restroom, I went about somewhat cleaning myself up and applying band-aids. A couple of the women were awesome. One looked me up and down and said, “Well, the good news is: your legs still look great!”

Another gal and I started chatting a bit. She asked how long I’d been running and how much I left to do. I told her that I’d completed nine but still had three miles left.

“Are you going to finish?”

“Totally,” I said.

“That a girl. And when you get home, you get your Bad Ass crown on and wear it all day.”

But I don’t have a Bad Ass crown! Maybe I should get one.

I’m proud to say that I completed my 12 miles (though I may have been a bit under…my pacing/mileage got all messed up with my fall and walk to the restroom). And thanks to adrenaline and the desire to live up to my (imaginary) crowned persona, I finished the last 5K faster than any of the previous three 5K's I’d already run. It was actually very probably my fastest 5K ever.

Dude. I’m so hard core. I’m so tough…until I called Mike in the car and told him that I’d fallen down and got banged up pretty badly. Hearing his concerned voice quickly worked the Bad Ass right on outta me. No wonder kids cry hard when they get skinned knees – it HURTS. Once home, I had a SERIOUS cry in the shower when I attempted to scrub some of the gravel outta my wounds. To be honest I was too much of a wuss to do a good job; I just hoped that my body would eventually expel the foreign objects (and not, ya know, grow over all of it).

Within thirty minutes of getting home, I was dressed, bandaged and we were walking out the door to the boys’ Tball game where almost instantly Zach got hit in the head with a ball and hit in the hand with a flying bat. He was tougher than me with his injuries and was totally fine. And later, Mike got a terrible Migraine and had to lie down for a while. What was our damage that day?! Seriously.

When we got home from the game I attempted to eat (something that one really ought to do after a long run on a hot day). Opening my mouth even the littlest bit sent all sorts of pain to my chin-wound. I ate tiny bites and after a while decided that I should (again) go access the damage. Blood had nearly soaked through the standard-size band-aid, and I determined that I better go visit the little Urgent Care Center (conveniently located just a few blocks away).

When the doctor first looked at my chin I felt like the biggest lame-o ever, like I’d totally wasted their time.

“You know, with face injuries you really need to get stitches right away. At this point you’ll probably have the same scar if we stitch you up and it doesn’t seem to be that deep of a cut. It just all needs to get cleaned up.”

So, the nurse went about the TORTUREOUS process of removing all the dirt and gravel and dust that I was too scared to. She reassured me that plenty of people come in to get ‘cleaned up’ after a big spill and that it was a good idea since she would completely sterilize everything to avoid infections, blahblahblah. At one point she used a rough brush to scrub my deepest cut. I’m pretty sure I grumbled about wanting an epidural for my knee. It's official: I'm the hugest wuss ever.

After mutilating my chin a bit (at least that’s how it felt), the doctor was brought back in for inspection.

“Oh, well, now that that’s cleaner, I see that you’ve got a decent gaping wound there. It’s quite deep. You will need a couple of stitches afterall. Would you like us to use the numbing agent?”

Um, are you kidding? Of course! Now, the nurse prepped me that the numbing stuff goes in with a needle and stings and really “almost hurts more than the stitches themselves.” Awesome.

Thankfully, I didn’t find it to be all that bad. I was numbed and then she began to scrub and clean a little more vigorously and wait, uh, hold on, I thought I was supposed to be numb there, and I can totally feel that and it hurts!! She assured me that it can take a bit to set in and she’d have the doctor give me some more….but she didn’t!! I couldn’t see what was happening (he literally draped a paper sheet across my face) so when he started in I thought maybe he was doing the numbing action, but no!!

Notcing my cringing he said, “Oh, can you feel that? Well, can you handle it? Really the stitches will probably be done before the numbing stuff would even take effect and it hurts about the same.”

Whatever. Fine. I’m a Bad Ass, right?

He continued sewing my chin closed. “Oh!” he exclaimed sounding a little too happy. “There’s a piece of fat here hanging out. I’m just going to go ahead and remove that for you. There's some complimentary lipo for ya!”

Great. My lucky day. I thought about asking for a complimentary tummy tuck while he was at it but my mouth hurt too much to talk.

So, in conclusion, I’ve got my nice battle wound and story, and I will say that am VERY grateful that things weren’t worse – that I didn’t injure myself in a way that would inable me to run (like even a spraned ankle would’ve been way lamer). I didn’t knock at my teeth or break my nose or lose an eyeball or die...let's face it, all much worse options. I’m definitely all sorts of sore in all sorts of places today. The twelve miles alone would’ve done that but my shoulders hurt from trying to stop the fall, my knees are bruised, all of my scrapes hurt when bumped and holy crap my stupid little stitches hurt whenever they get nudged in any way (i.e. when Kayliana flails when I’m holding her, etc.). Thursday, I get to go back for stitch-removal. Yippee.

Matthew probably summed it all up the best tonight. “I’m sorry you got hurt, Mom. But I really don’t like to see your stitches. You look really freaky.”

I’m ever so tardy in chronically the glee of my 31st birthday (eight days overdue as a matter of fact). It was pretty much magictastical. Mike surprised me in the morning upon the return of my early run (three weeks ‘til half marathon!). He asked if I was ready for my gift. Um, BORN ready. He came back wrapped in his robe and instructed me to ‘unwrap’ my present. “Not in front of the children!!” I cried. As it turns out, Mike – the sneaky man – had requested my birthday as a vacation day and was at my beck and call.

“You realize that I’ve already made plans with my parents, right?” I asked. “They’re going to watch the kids while I run errands.” (Which is in itself a dream come true). “So, I’m actually not going to be here for most of the day.”

“Yes, I know. You can just leave me your to-do list, and I’ll get as much done as I can.”

“Seriously?!” I squeaked.

“Yep.”

“You’re sure? Like, whatever I want? Anything?”

(Looking a little less sure). “Um, yes.”

So, I left him a list with about three weeks worth of work and the poor guy busted his hiney to complete exhaustion. Yes, I definitely enjoyed my day with a man servant.

We met Mia – Kayliana’s birth mom – for a joint birthday dinner at Red Robin on Friday night. (She and I have the EXACT same birthday). We had a WONDERFUL visit. As always, she’s amazed to see the changes in Kayli and she always has a good time goofing around with the boys. We had a great time!

This past weekend we spent a lovely weekend with my parentals and brother Chris at Port Ludlow. We had a grand time swimming in the pool with the boys, searching the beach for sea glass, and having a visit with my dear pal (since first grade) Rachel Ballard and her mom. Rachel, I might add, is a soon to be published novel!!! A Long-Forgotten Truth is now available for preorder on Amazon.com and Barnesandnoble.com. SO exciting!

Tonight, the boys had a conversation that was the cherry on the top of my birthday week (plus) celebration.

“I choked at lunch today on broccoli,” Matthew said.

“Uh-Oh. Were you OK?” I asked.

“Yeah, but O’Ryan had to go ask Ms. Mandy to give me a procedure. But I didn’t need the procedure.”

“It’s good you didn’t need a procedure,” Zach said. “But I don’t even know what a procedure is.”

I explain what a procedure is – how you follow certain steps to achieve something and how – in this case – you’d follow certain first aid steps to help someone.

“Oh!” Zach exclaims. “Like the kiss of life!”

“Yeah,” Matthew agrees. “I SO wouldn’t want the kiss of life!!”

“Blech! What a yucky procedure.”

(Apparently “the kiss of life” was in the movie Madagascar – 1 or 2 – I dunno which bu the boys sure did)!