The days go by....

I wouldn't say we've found a routine, exactly, but the days are going by in a rhythm of naps, gym time, mommy/baby hours, and (starting today) mommy/baby music class. Nothing is predictable, but everything is great. Hannah seems to be a little more able to soothe herself and we appreciate the break from inconsolable evening screams. Her ability to self-soothe is definitely aided by her fist- at first, she could only suck on it if it happened to cruise by her mouth at a slow enough speed for latching, but she is now (more or less) able to stick all or part of it in her mouth at will.

Yesterday was the Wisconsin Ironman, held in Madison. When the Ironpeople entered the water at 7 for the 2.4 mile swim, we were still asleep. We were barely out the door for church by the time the swim course closed at 9:20. When we came home, after lunch, the fastest Ironpeople were done with their 112 mile bike ride and were into the marathon. I went out and watched people run for a bit.

Now, I have to say that I was surprised at the ordinary-ness of most of the competitors. Maybe because I've only ever seen the Hawaii Ironman, which you have to qualify for (meaning you have to do at least TWO Ironmans), I expected everyone to bear some physical resemblance to a Greek god. Personally, if I had trained hard enough to complete the event and still had the body of some of the people I saw out there, I would be pissed. It made me think that I could certainly do an Ironman. It made me want to do an Ironman. Then I remembered how I felt after my marathon and tried to contemplate doing anything before I did that. I don't think I even did a warm-up run because I didn't want to waste the energy. Hmmm.

So after watching the runners in the early afternoon, I went back home, had a nap, cooked dinner and cleaned the kitchen. After dinner (around 7) we decided to go for a walk. The marathon was an out-and-back course, so the runners were going by our house during (approximately) their 4th and 22nd miles. There were still people heading out on their 4th mile at 7 p.m. These people had been exercising continuously since 7 a.m. and still had more than 80% of a MARATHON left to run. Surprisingly, no one was crying. I would have been crying. One contestant, who was walking at that point, was in a good enough mood to heckle us: "Hey, you two with the stroller, slow down. You're making us look bad." We informed him that we hadn't actually done any other physical activity that day. "Oh, well in that case, pick it up!"

What we didn't tell him was that we were walking to the corner store to get brownies. Because we had ice cream at home, but we had run out of brownies to go with it. But, inspired by all these people perform the hardest athletic competition other than maybe ultramarathoning, we left the chocolate sauce off our brownie sundaes. It's practically the same thing as training.