Excited for the holidays

Thanksgiving is coming up in two days and I can't wait. My MIL arrives tonight from New Hampshire and she will be here not only to celebrate Turkey Day but also Izzy's first birthday (!) on Saturday. I have found myself more excited for the holidays than I have been in a long time.

It started with Fourth of July. Izzy was old enough to pay attention to the parade in our town and was awake the entire time. It was fun to point out the exciting dancers and people in the parade to her.

Halloween? This one is easy. CP never let me dress up the dogs and we haven't been to a Halloween party in a while because CP hates to dress up....so other than buying a lot of Halloween candy for the neighborhood kids to enjoy, we didn't do much. This year I got to dress up my adorable daughter and parade her around the neighborhood (and put her in a carved-out pumpkin)! 

Thanksgiving? Izzy missed this holiday by just a day last year. I'm not sure exactly what she will or will not eat at the dinner this year but we will have fun watching her taste it! My parents and my MIL will be there so it will be nice to have 3 out of the 4 grandparents with us for the day. Having her will make the day a little more stressful for CP because I won't be able to help him cook as much, but it is obviously worth it.

And then there is Christmas. I feel really bad that we won't be doing much decorating around our house this year for Christmas- or getting a tree- because we are leaving for Spain on Christmas Day...but I have to remember that Izzy won't remember it anyway. She will be a few days shy of 13 months so I'm not sure she will get the concept of presents and will likely be more excited about eating the wrapping paper. :-) Obviously in the coming years Christmas will be a MUCH more exciting day for her.

I think that what has me most excited about the holidays after having a child is the idea of possibilities. I am ready to start my own traditions with our little family around the holidays. Sure CP and I could have started them while we were trying for a baby but it is much more fun to experience the holidays through the eyes of a child. I'm grateful that we got lucky through IVF and had Izzy. Her presence really makes a difference in our lives.

Microblog Mondays

Oh man. I am no longer 18 any more. This weekend I headed out to NYC for a fun weekend with college friends. CP decided not to go because he had been traveling so much so he stayed home with Izzy. Most of the other husbands decided not to join us as well so it was a fun girls weekend in which I drank far too much.

Friday night at our last stop of the night we went to a gay bar called Flaming Saddles. Instead of women dancing on the bar, it was gay men and it was hilarious. They got really into it!

Needless to say, after being out until 3am Friday night, we rallied and started drinking again at 11am on Saturday morning. Yesterday I ate breakfast but felt awful the entire day. Didn't eat lunch. Didn't eat dinner. Went to bed at 9pm. Today I am feeling better, but man does alcohol do a number on this 35-year-old body!


Want to read more Microblog Mondays? Go here.

I shouldn't have looked

On Friday I had to head to my primary car physician to get some tests and blood work done so that my physician could refer me over to my RE once again. This was supposed to happen two months ago but no one informed me that I had to get all of my tests done again, so my RE appointment is now early next month.

This delay means that the January frozen transfer that we were hoping to do will not be happening as I'm sure that we can't get everything together in time for that because I still need a saline sonogram and really, who knows what my RE will find there. We still know that I have a fibroid behind my uterus- will I need another surgery to get that taken care of before the frozen transfer? I worry that this will indeed be the case, but I will find out soon enough.

When I got into work this morning, I saw a message from my doctor that some of my blood work results were back. My FSH is still too high (14- it was 13 back in December of 2012- it should be less than 10) and my Estradiol is less than 20 which according to the ranges supplied by my doctor means that I am post-menopausal. Awesome. 

I didn't think that pregnancy would cure my hormone issues and I didn't think that it would be a cure for my fibroid, but I had a glimmer of hope that because my first IVF worked that maybe I could be that person that magically got pregnant after IVF. Not only does this make me laugh at the fact that I even had a glimmer, but it makes me even MORE nervous about the frozen transfer next year. These results put even more pressure on that to work, even though it is really out of my hands. If it doesn't work am I going to respond even more poorly to the drugs based on my new test results during a fresh cycle?

I shouldn't have looked at the results this morning because I have to leave to give a presentation in a few minutes and now I am going to be worrying about it all day.

Microblog Mondays

It's too cold here in Chicago for a regular post, so I'm phoning in Microblog Mondays and putting up cute pictures of Izzy instead.

Izzy playing her new alligator xylophone (consignment sale find on Friday)

Izzy's keeping warm this winter with adult gloves

The cutest pout in all of the land

Want to read more Microblog Mondays? Go here. 

More sister issues

So remember this post that I wrote a little bit ago about my sister and how I am upset at her lack of interest in her only niece? Well, the story continues.

(I should pause to say that in a way, I am lucky that this is why I am having issues with my sister. I know that there are bloggers out there with much deeper sibling problems...but having said that, this still upsets me.)

In September my sister and her boyfriend went to Africa for a vacation and while they were there, they got engaged. I am very happy for them because they have been together for a while now. When they got back we had them over to celebrate. My sister barely acknowledged Izzy and the entire conversation was basically about planning for their wedding. I realize that non-parents would not be excited about milestones and all but Izzy had just started pulling up on furniture which you think they would have noticed that suddenly she was up and off the floor but they were too engrossed in their cell phones and/or talking about their wedding.

Anyway, so they started talking about their wedding and possibly having it next fall...which wouldn't really jive with our January frozen transfer as if it worked my due date would be right around the wedding. My parents tell us not to base anything on their wedding date, but CP and I discuss it and decide to push back the frozen transfer date so that we can make sure we are at the wedding. Turns out it is not that big of a deal as now my sister's wedding will be in 2016 because they couldn't find a venue big enough that had any dates next year.

So last week I send out an email to my parents and my sister about Thanksgiving and Izzy's first birthday party on the 29th (Saturday). My parents will be there but my sister will be with her fiance's family in WI since they won't be around for Christmas. Fine. At least we won't have 5 extra people sprung on us (her fiance's family) coming for Thanksgiving like last year (the day before my c-section no less). But as far as Izzy's birthday? Well, they "will try to head back from WI" to make the party.

Am I being an asshole for thinking that they are assholes if they can't make Izzy's birthday party? The world does not revolve around my daughter and her life but they barely see her as it is and they can't even commit to coming to her first birthday party?

*sigh*

I promise that I don't stew on this all day (who has the time?) but when I do think about it it gets me riled up!

15K complete!

It was only 26 degrees when the race started which made for a cold wait for my corral to start and a cold first half mile or so. The organizers had a corral go off every four minutes to try to spread everyone throughout the course which was nice. But yeah, waiting for Corral N to go off was brutal. I was running the race myself but ended up finding my boss and his wife who happened to be the same corral as me so we chatted as we waited for our start.

Running with a whole lot of people

I had planned on seeing my boss and his wife quickly distance themselves from me (since usually my boss is faster than me) but they ended up starting the race off slowly and so I jumped ahead of them. My plan was to take a brief walk break every mile or so (and try to time them for water walk breaks as well). The first part of the race we ran through a tunnel that smelled like poop. Yes poop. Not sure what was going on with the sewer system on Sunday but it wasn't pleasant. Thankfully that lasted less than a mile before we were on regular city streets. I tried not to go out too fast in the beginning (something I did in the half marathon) so that I could save some energy for the last part of the race. 

For the first 2.8 miles both the 5K runners and the 15K runners were on the same course which frankly was a bit annoying because there were a ton of people to have to weave in and out of. I also kept seeing people with corral letters after N which was really annoying because they clearly jumped up corrals. Other than the weaving, I felt pretty good and didn't walk until mile two, where I grabbed some Gatorade from an aid station.

Miles 3 and 4 were nicer because the streets were fairly open since it was just the 15k runners, but I was struggling a bit mentally because I kept thinking about how much farther I had to run. I just kept thinking that I had to push through because I was currently beating my boss! At some point during mile 4 there was an "aid station" for strawberry flavored marshmallows. I decided to eat whatever they had on the course because it may give me a bit of energy that I would need later on (NO ONE at the expo the day before was selling Gu, Jelly beans, or anything and I didn't have time to hit up a running store so I had no fuel.) It was gross but I ate it anyway. (I use quotation marks around aid station because marshmallows aiding running? Debatable but I ate them anyway.)

In between mile 5 and 6 there was a section of the course where you ran north up a street about .5 of a mile then turn around to run south back down the same street. I thought this would be a good chance to see how far behind me my boss was because I hadn't seen him pass me (that I knew of). As I ran past the turn around and didn't see him I was on a big high because I realized that I was pretty far in front of him! I finally saw him right before I turned to head towards the lake which meant I was about a mile ahead!

Waving to him and the knowledge that I was beating him fueled me for a while but right around mile 7 I was starting to want to walk more. There should have been a tootsie roll "aid station" at some point but I guess they ran out. They would have been hard to eat while running anyway.... I did partake in the chocolate marshmallow "aid station" though. :-) It was right around this time I calculated that I would have to run 2.3 miles in the next 22 minutes to make my goal time which de-motivated me a bit. I just knew that I didn't have it in me at the end of this long race....but I did my best to try to speed up (which made me walk a little more).

Miles 8, 9, and the last .3 I was trying to use the downhill on the course to make up time while also trying not to ruin my legs. I knew I couldn't make my goal time at this point but I was going to try to push it if I could.  

I "sprinted" through the finish line and was very happy to be done with the race.

My splits:

Mile 1- 10:49

Mile 2- 11:04

Mile 3- 11:31

Mile 4- 11:04

Mile 5- 11:09

Mile 6- 10:52

Mile 7- 11:50

Mile 8- 12:05

Mile 9- 12:11

My first 15K time: 1:48:56 for an average pace of 11:42/mile.

So I missed my goal time of 1:47 but I knew that it was going to be a stretch. I am still very proud of myself. Two miles less than an 11 minute/mile and most of the rest in the 11 minute/mile range even with walking is good. By the time the race was over I had run/walked over 20,000 steps according to my Nike Fuelband!

After getting my medal, I grabbed my gear bag and threw my coat on because I was sweaty and getting cold.

My new bling!

I swear it was another mile of walking before I hit up the after party. The hot chocolate was meh but the fondue with the marshmallow, banana, and pretzels was delicious!

Mmmmmm chocolate fondue

I didn't get a nap in later that day and I wanted to kill Buster at 3:19am early Monday morning when he woke me up for no reason what-so-ever to pant and keep me up for the next hour, but I haven't been as sore as I thought I would be. My next race (with my mom!) will be the Santa Hustle. It's only a 5k but you get a Santa beard, a hat, and a sweatshirt. :-) 

For the winter months I'd like to keep running but most likely shorter distances. The long training runs by myself are for the birds. But I may try to do the Soldier Field 10 miler next year if I am not pregnant/cycling.

The 15K is finally here

In just two days I will be lining up to run the Hot Chocolate 15K, my longest race since the Amica Half Marathon in 2011. Life has certainly changed a lot since then. Buster is no longer a puppy who we just brought home and were working on potty training, CP is no longer working from home and is now traveling like crazy across the world, we no longer live in CT, and the biggest change is obviously Izzy.

A couple of those changes have made setting time aside to do weekday runs and weekend long runs aside much more difficult. My commute in CT was 10 minutes; here it is a 35-40 minute train ride and then a 10 minute walk to work each way. That doesn't leave me much time to workout on the days that I go into the office so I depend on my work-from-home days to get my runs in. But some weeks I only worked from home once a week or I had other things that I needed to do during lunch/after work- like cleaning, running to the grocery store, etc. All things that are much easier to do before picking up Izzy from daycare.

The long runs on the weekend were all over the place- sometimes CP would be home, once I took Izzy to the gym daycare, and then the other times I had to get up early to run the long run prior to work (like the day before we left for Santa Fe). I am fairly proud of how I did in fitting in runs with CP gone so much for work- while I didn't always hit three runs a week, I did complete all of my long runs by just somehow making it work. Completing the long runs by myself and not with a group (like I did for the half marathon) made me realize that I don't like running by myself much past 6-7 miles. Even if I am not talking to someone during the run, training is much more enjoyable just knowing that there is another person next to you feeling the same pain. :-)

So the big day is Sunday. My goal is to finish within 1 hour 47 minutes which would be an 11:30 pace. I believe that I can do this as I ran my 8 mile run with an 11:36 pace (in 1 hour 32 minutes) after drinking some wine and being out late at a Halloween party. I will be happy to finish with less than 1 hour 50 minutes though.

Sadly, CP is still in Thailand so Buster is going to be boarded Saturday night so that Izzy and I can stay downtown with my parents so that I don't have to get up as early and so that my parents can watch her while I am running. Grandparents for the win!

Wish me luck and I'll let you know how it goes on Monday!