Whoa Nelly!

First a little housekeeping...I promised an explanation for the word "froggyposs" from a previous post.  As I was typing that post I had a suspicion that the Blogger spell checker wasn't working, so I figured I would type some gibberish to see if the spell check would highlight it.  Well, it didn't, so I had to manually spell check the post.  I obviously forgot to go back and delete my "test word."  As for what it means, it was about 2 in the morning that was just the first thing that popped in my head.  I have no idea what made me think of it.  Maybe it'll catch on one day and become a common term that describes when a spell check fails to recognize a misspelling.  Anyway, now we can get back to some normalcy...

We have had a very warm winter/early spring and the Smith's have been spending a bunch of time outside.  Much to dad's delight, Emry has loved playing outside.  She loves to go on family walks around the neighborhood.  She no longer wants to ride in the wagon, but prefers to push Whit in the stroller or walk/run alongside mom and dad. 

 

On the Emryboard, we told the tale of Emry's first skinned knee.  Well, earlier this week she discovered how to use the pockets on the front of her jacket.  While we were out on a walk, she put her hands in her jacket pockets and started running down the street.  I said to Maren, "That's probably not safe because she can't brace herself if she falls."  No sooner had the words left my lips and Emry faceplanted right on the pavement.  It was a scary fall, but she survived.  Emry was left with a nice bruise on the right side of her face...which served as a reminder for her to slow down and take her time.

I mentioned on the Emryboard how much Emry enjoyed showing off her skinned knee, well her face bruise was no different.  She loved the attention and putting on band-aids.  I think deep down she wants to be a rapper.  Her first album drops later this summer...

I tell you about Emry's story because I've learned to pull back on the reigns a bit myself.  In the past, I always ran with a watch, keeping track of my time and pace.  Every race I've ran and training run I've done has had a goal time in mind.  Since I took a break from running after I had my back pain in the fall, I began running earlier this year without a race to train for.  I also decided to run solely in my minimalist running shoes, which completely changed my stride and the way I run.  So to avoid causing injuries I started off slow...very slow for me.  In fact, it was so slow, that I didn't want to know how slow I was going, so I decided to leave my watch at home. 

It was a liberating experience, just going out to enjoy a run for the heck of it.  I found myself paying more attention to my surroundings than looking down at my watch.  I also discovered it was more enjoyable to run this way...I'd go out for an early morning run and just get completely lost in my thoughts.  I wouldn't worry about how far I'd gone or how long it had taken me.  I was more in tune with how my body felt, and if I got tired or sore, I'd head back home.  It was nice not being tied to a stopwatch or a training schedule that said I have to run this far, in this amount of time, on this day of the week. 

That's not to say I'll never participate in a race again.  I'm just saying it is nice to go out and just run for the sake of running...just going out an enjoying your God-given abilities without any other distractions makes you feel in tune with His creation.  Its quite an experience!  And despite what 99% of people say, running can be fun...

(I couldn't resist the urge to post a Back to the Future clip!)  

So next time you feel like going out for a jog or a walk, think about leaving your watch (and ipod and cell phone) at home.  Don't worry about how fast you go or how far you've gone.  Try to get off the city streets, maybe find a trail or a nice country road and just take it all in.  Listen to how your body feels and what it's telling you.  Just get lost in your thoughts and the beauty of everything around you.  And when you finally get tired, turn around and head home...or just keep on going! 

She'd keep right on going if we let her!

Froggyposs Fail

What does this mean?  I don't get it.  Is it an inside joke?  I think Ken is losing it.

These are some reactions you may have had if you read my last post and noticed the random word "froggyposs." Someone asked me why I used the word "froggyposs" and what it meant.

It was obviously a mistake, but in my defense I was rocking a baby to sleep in one arm and typing with the other - at 2 in the morning.  Instead of deleting it outright, I went back and edited it with a strikethrough.  I didn't want to hide my mistake, but instead wanted to let you see where I used it and in what context.

I won't reveal its meaning just yet, but will open the floor for anyone to guess what I may have been doing, thinking or trying to say.  For now, click on the link at the end of this sentence to enjoy a compilation of other "fails" from February 2012.  At around 1:08 of the video, you can see the Indiana Pacers mascot failing a halftime show at a local high school basketball game!

I will let you know that the real meaning of "froggyposs" isn't very exciting...but who knows, maybe it will catch on and become "a thing."  Anyone who wants to take a stab at its meaning, please leave a comment...

March Madness

With twice as many bathtimes, diaper changings and clothes to change, there has definitely been some craziness around the Smith house lately. When you add to that the nursing sessions every 2-3 hours and several sleepless nights(example - look at the time of this posting), these first couple weeks of March could sometimes be described as "madness."  To avoid a lawsuit by the NCAA, my attorney says I need to mention that the title of this post is in no way referring to, attempting to advertise or profit from any basketball tournament in any way, shape or form. froggyposs

Luckily, we are truly blessed to have wonderful people around us who have helped us along the way.  We just want to thank everyone for their generous gifts and helping us adjust to having two kids.  In addition to all the gifts of clothes, diapers, toys and books for Whit & Em, we have been overwhelmed by the gifts we've received in the form of dinners, babysitting, house cleaning, groceries, support and encouragement.

This is not a knock on Maren's cooking, but I haven't eaten so well in years!  We've had people bring us everything from homemade stew and lasagna, to enchiladas and taco salad, to rotisserie chicken and grlled chicken, to BBQ chicken pizza and...you get the idea.  I could go on and on about the delicious desserts and other tasty treats people have provided, but I don't want to turn this into a food review blog...you are all amazing chefs!

We've even had Lent-friendly meals brought to us each Friday in the form of fish tacos, salmon patties and shrimp jambalaya!  Ironically(?), these Friday meals have all been delivered by friends who happen to be non-Catholic.  Everyone has been so thoughtful and willing to put our needs in front of their own, which we greatly appreciate.  We owe a great debt of gratitude to everyone and can't say "thank you" enough! 

A Baby Story

We don't have cable TV, so a major factor in our decision to have a second child was the two days of free cable at the hospital.  We made it through 9 months of pregnancy, the labor, the pushing and the delivery...and when it was finally time for cable TV, what did we watch??...TLC's A Baby Story.  Are you kidding me?!  We just lived it...and now we have to waste our cable TV time by watching some cheap reality show version of it?! That would be like David Freese going home to watch The Bad News Bears after game 6 of the World Series.  Well, we definitely hit a home run with lil' #2, so I'll share our baby story with you...

These two cuties were about to become three 

Emry was wondering why daddy
was home from work so early...

Waiting for Mia to arrive

Maren called me around 1:30pm on Thursday the 23rd from the doctor's office to tell me her water had "sprung a leak" and we needed to get to the hospital within a 2 hours because things would start progressing.  I rushed home from work, put our hospital gear in the car, and waited for Mia to come pickup Emry.  Mar, E and I spend our last few moments as a threesome walking around the neighborhood and taking some pictures.

The last photo as a threesome

Knowing how fast Maren's labor was with Emry, we wanted to make sure to get to the hospital quickly.  But everyone knows you can't have a baby without some chocolate cigars to give to your visitors, so we made a quick stop at Stephen Libs to pick some up.  The "quick stop" became a lengthy ordeal...first they only had a couple cigars on display, so the lady helping us had to get some "from the back."  Then the lady wanted to talk about how great it was that we didn't find out if it was a boy or a girl.  We dropped the hint that we were in a hurry to get to the hospital because Maren had started labor.  The lady finally rang up our purchase when Maren grabbed a bottled water to add to the order.  But the lady had the already finished the order, had the cash register open and had our change in her hand.. I saw what she was thinking and said "Just give me the change from that order back and ring up a separate order for the water."  She said "No, its no problem, I'll figure it out here."  And started the process of mentally trying to add $1.07 to our original order and then figure how much change she owed us.  After a few seconds (that seemed like 10 minutes) she whipped out a calculator to do the thinking for her.  She kept looking at the receipt, then back at the cash in her hand, then back at the receipt again.  Just when I was ready to walk out and say "Just keep the change" she finally had it figured out.  Maren would comment later it reminded her of this scene from Love Actually.
 
I mentioned earlier how Maren's labor with Emry went quickly...by the time we got to the hospital at 3:30pm, her contractions were already coming every 4 minutes.  You wouldn't have known it because she hardly complained of any pain.  On the ride from Libs to the hospital, she mentioned she was becoming "uncomfortable," but that was her only comment about the labor.  We were admitted right away and put into a triage room.  After about 45 minutes, we were moved to our labor/delivery room.  Then the waiting began...

Luckily one of our good friends was our nurse.  She was supposed to leave at 4:30 but stayed a couple hours late to help Maren get her epidural and get settled in as much as possible.  Maren's doctor was also not supposed to be on call that evening, but she came over to the hospital anyway to be with Maren.  She stayed the entire evening just to do Maren's delivery.  We were so lucky and blessed to have such wonderful, generous people helping us out!

Catching a few zzz's while waiting for "things to progress"

My jobs at this point were to text updates to our family and to provide Maren with ice chips. Maren was doing great handling all the discomfort, and the ice chips were the only thing she could "eat". Maren was extremely hungry -- She began having her first contractions and felt sick on Wednesday night. She woke up Thurs still feeling sick, so she had only eaten half a piece of toast that morning. After visiting the doctor, she was told not to eat anything else since labor had started. -- Finally around 9 pm things started happening more rapidly. It had been over 12 hours since Maren had eaten anything. Thus, at that point Maren "calmly asked" me to put my phone away. 

Ahh the ice chips!

After what seemed like forever, it was finally time for Maren to start pushing. The long wait with no food had taken its toll on Maren. She had "the shakes" and some extreme nausea. She would push for a couple contractions, then stop to throw up for a minute(she gave me permission to share this info!), but she still pushed through it like a champ. After 45 minutes of pushing, they finally used the vacuum to assist in the delivery.


The doctor successfully delivered the baby, set it on Maren's stomach and said "Can you see what it is?" Number 2, as the baby had been affectionately known for the previous 9 months, finally had a name. It was a girl...little Whitney Ann Smith* was finally here! She weighed 8lbs 5oz, was 21 3/4 in long, and had a full head of dark hair. *Disclaimer: Despite all the news recently about Whitney Houston's passing, our Whitney's name was chosen months ago based on one of Maren's longtime childhood friends.

The first pic of Whitney and mom together!

  The doctor clamped the umbilical cord and let me cut it. The nurses took Whitney and began the newborn tests and cleaned her up. The doctor finished the delivery with Maren and got her cleaned up as well. 

After being poked and prodded, Whitney was a tired little girl!

Maren's nausea vanished almost instantly and she asked for some food.  It was about 11:15pm at that point, so all they had was a pre-wrapped turkey sandwich with american cheese on plain white bread.  Maren commented that it was the best sandwich she had ever eaten! 

Pre turkey sandwich
(Whitney was winking at a cute doctor in the room.)

Post turkey sandwich

About 12 midnight Whitney's grandparents arrived at the hospital to visit her.  Whitney would would have to wait until the following morning to meet her sister Emry for the first time.(There will be more on that subject in the upcoming days on the Emry board.)  When everyone had left and things settle down we were finally ready to get some sleep.  The only thing left for me to do was sing Whitney her first song - the chorus to "I Will Always Love You."

Whitney Ann Smith

The family of four

Is Your Refridgerator Running?

Ours is certainly working overtime right now...anyone rummaging though our fridge these days might guess we are the crazy people who prepare for things like nuclear attacks, winter blizzards and Y2K.  With the new baby on the way, we decided to prepare some meals and freeze them.  Then, during those first hectic weeks with the newborn, we can just heat them up for a quick dinner.  "What to Expect When You're Expecting" would classify this as nesting...

We're ready WWIII

Luckily, there was one space
left for a tub of rocky road!

We overestimated the size of our freezer when we planned the meals.  We made 4 different soups that filled up a total of 7 tupperware containers.  They included:

• Chili
• Navy bean soup
• Chicken vegetable soup
• Taco soup

We made 6 other meals that filled up the 13 foil pans.  They were:

• Chicken w/wild rice
• Cracker Barrel chicken - one of Maren's favorites
• Stove Top chicken
• Butter chicken - the name is deceptive; its actually served in a creamy tomato sauce over rice
• Jennifer's chicken - a recipe Maren invented based on one of her favorite Jennifer's meals 
• Southwest Skillet Ragu - a fancy version of hamburger helper

It made for a fun afternoon with Emry acting as our sous-chef.  She helped add the ingredients into the pots and pans.  She "organized" the tupperware containers and served as taste-tester.

Not a big fan of lemons...

We enjoyed it so much, we decided we'll do it again every couple of months or so.  If anyone wants any of the original recipes, just let me know.  If you want, I'll also share with you some tips we found helpful to modify the recipes and how we prepared them for freezing and re-heating!  The countdown to baby duece continues....

Lent 4.5(Studio Cut)

Its the time of year again for many of us to decide if we're giving up soft drinks or chocolate for the next 40 days...Ahh the Lenten fast!  Before I go any further, I must tell you I've had a personal struggle with the Lenten fast in recent years...

NOTE FROM THE EDITOR:  I started writing about my issues and opinions on the Lenten fast in great detail, but it was a little too deep, too lengthy, had a negative tone and didn't fit the overall mood of the blog.  I saved that version as the "director's cut", and anyone interested in reading it, consider this your invitation to contact me. I'd love to share it and/or discuss the topic of Lenten fasting with you.  The remainder of this post is the "studio cut," the version with a much lighter, happier tone which should appeal more to the general audience.

So on that note, I've put together a list of some of the sad attempts at Lenten sacrifice I, and other people I know, have made for ourselves:  

• Dark Soft drinks - but Sprite, MT Dew, etc were ok
• Regular soft drinks - but diet soft drinks were ok
• Beer - but not hard liquor(college logic was behind this terrible idea)
• Light Beer - if he was going to drink, he wanted a headache to pay for it 
• Cookies - excluding Girl Scout cookies because those are charitable
• Birthday Cake - but all other cakes were acceptable
• TV- excluding the NCAA tournament
• Chocolate Ice Cream - but all other flavors were acceptable
• Chocolate, AKA - "plan B", "old reliable", or "the fall back plan"

Needless to say, I've wanted to get more out of the Lenten sacrifice the past few years.  Those of you who have been reading this blog(thanks!) know the history behind the recent kick I've been on about living a simple life and eliminating wasteful habits.  I was thinking about the upcoming Lenten season and how I could incorporate those notions into my Lenten fast.

Coincidentally(not ironically), I was reading an article recently and stumbled across a program called Lent 4.5.  I looked it up online and was intrigued by the idea...

 The program is based on the idea that if you took the surface area of the earth and divided it by the 7 billion people living here, we would each have 4.5 acres of land.  From our 4.5 acres, we would have to make our food, get water for cooking and cleaning, get wood and materials for our home and furniture, produce the metals and plastics for our appliances and cars, make materials for our clothing, create the energy we need for lights/power, produce oil for our cars, and dispose of all of our waste. 

On the Lent 4.5 website, it cites a 2009 study which declared it takes 22.3 acres of land to support the average American's lifestyle.  The idea of Lent 4.5 is to move ourselves from 22.3 acres down to something closer to our "fair share" of 4.5 acres.  The program focuses on one topic each week: Christian simplicity, food, consumption, water, energy, transportation and generosity/gratitude. 

I was so intrigued by the idea that I called the program director and spoke with her for almost an hour.  I told her my church wasn't participating, but I wanted to do the program myself.  She sent me the weekly handouts, a group discussion workbook and some additional material they issue to each church coordinator.   I also signed up on on their website to receive weekly reflections via email to help along the way.

The thing I liked most is that it is a formation process to help us change our habits and behaviors.   Its not just another glorified diet that ends on Easter morning when you eat a 3 lb chocolate bunny for breakfast.  Each week there is a list of activities we can do to cut down our consumption. There are also reflections on scripture, videos or articles about the weekly topic, as well as various other information.  So you can get involved with it as much or as little as you'd like.    

The purpose of my post today is to invite you to check out their website.  If this is something that strikes a chord with you, please contact me.  I would love to have some people to discuss things with and share different ideas throughout the Lenten season - and even beyond.  As you can probably tell, I'm pretty gung-ho about it, but please don't shy away from my enthusiasm!  I don't expect everyone to be as passionate about it, but would love to hear any input that anyone has.  Even if you don't want to formally participate in the program at all, I am willing to share my thoughts and ideas with anyone who wants to listen.  

Anyway, that is all that's been on my mind lately...well that, and the fact that my wife will have a human drop out of her crotch any day now.  God has certainly been good to us this year, and we hope to take this Lenten season to reflect on the many blessings our family has been given.  To those of you who participate in a Lenten ritual, I wish you good luck deciding your fast and abstinence this year!

Ironical Irony

During any long winter runs, I always wear glasses to shield my eyes against the cold wind.  On sunny winter days I wear sunglasses.  If I run early in the morning when its still dark, I wear a clear pair of carpenter's safety glasses. 



I had to post the picture so you'd know
its not as dorky looking as it sounds. 



Before an early morning run recently, Emry picked up the safety glasses and tried to put them on. Unfortunately, she poked herself in the eye with one of the ends of the glasses. "How ironic," I thought, "She poked herself in the eye with something that is meant to protect against eye injuries."   That thought stuck with me as I walked out the door, and during my run I came to this conclusion:  Nobody knows how to correctly use the word irony...


i·ro·ny

1. the use of words to convey a meaning that is the opposite of its literal meaning

2. an outcome of events contrary to what was, or might have been, expected

These are two definitions for irony listed on dictionary.com.  There were other definitions, but I only listed these because they apply to normal everyday conversations.  We hear people say all the time, "That was so ironic."  But was it really?

The biggest misuse I hear is when people use the word "ironic" when they mean "coincidence."  A lot of times someone will tell a story like, "I ran into my buddy Dave at church today.  It was so ironic because I  was just talking about him this morning!"  It was actually just a coincidence, just dumb-luck.  Nothing opposite or contrary to what was expected happened in this scenario.  

We hear irony used in pop culture all the time on TV, in movies and in news articles. And who could forget the Alanis Morssette song "Ironic"?  Even the professional writers who produce this stuff don't properly use the term.  So if the professionals are not using it properly, how can we be expected to know how to use it correctly?

I just read an article recently about Knowshon Moreno getting pulled over for a DUI.  The headline said "Most Ironic DUI Ever."  The article claimed the irony was that his vanity license plate read "SAUCED."  To me this is a funny situation, but to be ironic, shouldn't the plate have said "SOBER"?  (I will not add to the epidemic by mentioning how "ironic" it was that he was on my fantasy football team this year.  And no, I wasn't sauced when I drafted him in the 8th round, but maybe I'll start using that as my excuse for making such a poor pick.)   




If she's driving in Denver, she might be
checking the rear view for sauced NFL drivers... 


Even Alanis's song, "Ironic," that we all jammed to in junior high was full of un-ironic scenarios: "Traffic jam, when you're already late."  "Its like rain on your wedding day." "Its like 10,000 spoons when all you need is a knife."  These are all unfortunate or coincidental situations, but there is nothing ironic about them.  Something needs to happen in each scenario that is opposite than the expected outcome. Maybe the title of the song itself is supposed to be the irony...its a song titled "Ironic" that doesn't contain real irony in most of the lyrics.  I don't know if that makes it ironic though...

I'm not saying I use these terms correctly all the time, and I don't claim to be good at English.  I just thought I'd share a random thought I had during my run the other morning.  I'm also not trying to be a snooty blogger who points out everything wrong with the world and offers no solutions to the problems.  My intention for this post was to clarify how to use the word correctly.  Unfortunately, all I've really done is complain about how not to use it.  Hopefully my rambling thoughts haven't left anyone more confused about what irony means...that would be pretty ironic.  Don't you think?