What a difference a year (OK, ten months) makes

Game, set, match

This was the scene last Saturday on the tennis court that's down the path from our house. Chad is in heaven, because Liam is finally old enough to play tennis with him. It started out a few weeks ago with them hitting the ball against the wall at home. Then they hit the ball against the wall at school, and then they backed the cars out of the garage and played in there for a while. Finally, Liam was ready to try hitting over the net, and they had an impressive rally going by the time Mallory and I rode our bikes over to say hello.

Liam was pretty proud of himself. He understood the basics pretty quickly, and has been watching Wimbledon to learn some of the finer nuances this week.

Mallory does not like being left out. She made the perfect ball girl. Well, for about ten retrievals, anyway. Then she got kind of bored and wandered off.

I love this shot of Liam starting the ride home, racquet slung over his shoulder and ball cap dangling from his handlebar. I wonder if this is how Djokovic got his start??

Tired

Well, so much for updating on the weekend. Life has been full of so much obligation lately that I took the chance to unplug while I could. I'm feeling thankful that I did, because today it was right back into the fray.

Making things a wee bit harder to cope with today, I'm tired. On the weekend we took the kids to see Brave at the movies. It's a new Disney movie with a new princess, and she even has red hair - this was a film we had to see. It was good, but it wasn't quite what I expected. A very significant part of the film had to do with the princess accidentally using a spell to turn her mother into a bear, and how they go about trying to change the bear back. Needless to say there was a lot of bear stuff in the movie, including a few scary scenes. Well, Liam made it 7 years, 2 months, and 12 days, but last night he had his first nightmare that saw him come running into our room in the middle of the night... having dreamt that he was at the zoo and being eaten by a bear. It was almost 5 a.m. and he didn't want to go back to bed alone. I went into his room with him, cuddled up next to him, and missed my morning swim. But it's not like this is an excuse I use very often. I'm sure I can fit my swim in tomorrow instead.

Weekend

 I used to post pretty much every weekday, and then take a break on the weekends.

Now, it seems to be the opposite. Midweek is just too crazy most days. Work is faster-paced than ever before, activities occupy us most nights, and right now we have the end-of-the-school-year nuttiness adding to it (field trips, performances, and miscellaneous get-togethers).

Hoping to slow down a little this weekend and have a chance to catch up.

The family that pushes their lactate thresholds together, stays together

Today was not your average Father's Day in our household. It started at 5 a.m. when we woke up to an alarm that I needn't have set. The crashing thunder and bright-as-daylight lightning would have done the trick all on their own. I stood watching it at the window for a moment, and considered going back to bed. But I could not: it was Tomatoman, baby!

Chad was kind enough to go with me. This meant he spent Father's Day getting up before dawn, driving me to Leamington, playing personal assistant while I set up my area in transition, and taking a soaking while we waited for the race to start. Usually when there is lightning, the swim portion of the event is cancelled and the event becomes a duathlon. In this case, it was a qualifier for the provincial championship, so they had to run the swim. 45 minutes after the last lightning strike, we got the OK to get in the water.

Tomatoman is an awesome independent race and the course is mostly great. In theory, it's wonderful having the swim in the Leamington municipal harbour because the break wall makes for calmer water. On the down side: the water is dirty. Last year was not bad, but this year there were about half a dozen dead fish floating around the start area. It was rank. 

I have been mostly training for long, slow distance over the last little while, so I did not expect anything great to happen at this sprint-distance event. I did, however, expect redemption, after not being able to complete the event last year. And there was also the issue of the last triathlon I completed, which did not exactly go according to plan.

Unfortunately, I had a bit of panic again, right before getting in the water. I got in and swam around a bit to warm up, and thought I was feeling better; but when the horn sounded, I choked up again. It's a weird feeling and I can't really explain it, except that I can't catch my breath, can't keep my face in the water for long and am basically just in survival mode. A kind of claustrophobia. The one factor at play today that could explain part of it is that the thunderstorms rolling through the area made for some very choppy water. The swells were high enough that you couldn't see the buoys all the time. It made swimming somewhat difficult. I wound up backstroking nearly half the course, feeling ridiculous all the while, but after ten minutes or so I was more or less ready to swim like a normal person again, and I did. Still, it was a huge relief to get out of the water and unzip my wetsuit and stop feeling so constricted. Maybe I need a bigger wetsuit?...

So that put a bit of a damper on things... at least until I checked my watch. At roughly 17:30 for the swim, I matched my personal best and was almost six minutes faster than I was during the race where I totally lost it. Maybe my backstroke technique is far superior to my front crawl?? It doesn't make sense, but it is what it is.

The bike was a non-event, except that I took the corners very carefully and slowly, as the pavement was wet and I'm still skittish from my spill a few weeks ago. I had a speedy (for me) bike split and was convinced that I'd overcooked it, as I felt pretty beat by the time I got out on the run. But I was moving faster than I gave myself credit for and about two minutes from the end of the race, it occurred to me that I might possibly break 1:30, which has been my goal for a sprint distance race since the first one I did a couple of years ago. I started picking up the pace and by the finish line I was all-out sprinting. Alas, it wasn't meant to be. I finished in 1:30:05. I picked a lousy day to decide to put on socks in transition.

We didn't stick around the venue for long after I finished. We drove home, unpacked, showered, and had a well-deserved nap. Then we were off to the second event of the day: the First Annual Father's Day Classic at Wilson's Conservation Area. There were two events we participated in there, the first of which was the kids' 100m dash.

This was the first race our kids have ever done. They were pretty excited about it. The race was open to  kids up to the age of 7; 8 year olds and up have to run the 5k, which seems like a pretty huge leap. Speaking of huge leaps, I love this picture of the kids running. Mallory is a pretty speedy little girl and she is getting down to business. Liam, on the other hand, is all about enjoying the journey. He looks like a gazelle.

Between the two of them, guess who won?

Here they are, getting ribbons pinned on at the finish line.

And they even got a free teddy bear. Combine that with all the fruit, muffins and Timbits they ate and I'd say the race was well worth the $5 entry fee! 

Lastly, it was time for Dad to stop spectating and start doing something, so he ran the 5k.

Tonight, we ate like pigs, washed a boatload of sweaty clothes, and are otherwise taking it easy. We are all exhausted.

Happy Father's Day to all the great dads out there. You know who you are. :)

Itchy

OK, so I retract the earlier statement. It doesn't go the whole way up to his shoulders; it actually cuts off where his shirt sleeves end. It does, however, go right up to his crotch, which is weird because he is always wearing knee-length shorts... so how did his upper thighs get so exposed?

This morning he was bad enough that we took him to the doctor, and the official diagnosis was: poison ivy. Or some other equally-irritating plant encounter. He was prescribed a steroid cream, which we were told not to use unless it was absolutely necessary. So, go figure with that one. Do you want us to use it or not??

He stayed home from school today but is not infectious (we washed his bedding and towels anyway) so he will go back tomorrow. I assume I should use some sunscreen on him, but kind of question the wisdom of layering that on top of everything else that's going on. Maybe we'll use the spray so at least we don't have to rub at it.

Oh yeah, and that awesome farmer's tan he's sporting? That's what happens when you wear a rash guard when you swim. At this rate he's going to look awfully funny by the end of August.

End of year fun... with one minor glitch

Today was Liam's end-of-year field trip. The kids went to Greenview Aviaries and I was lucky enough to be able to take the day off to join them. (There was quite a large parent turnout - I'm still not sure at what point parents stop attending these things. I don't really recall a lot of parent chaperones on field trips when I was a kid, but maybe I just didn't pay attention to them.)

The weather was great and it was an awesome day. I think the kids would have spent more time in the splash pad had it been a little warmer, but there was lots of other stuff to keep everyone busy. The time flew by. We easily could have spent more time watching the animals and we only covered a fraction of the playground.

The zipline was the biggest hit with everyone. It's probably just about the oldest piece of equipment there and it's built out of rotting wood, rusty cables, and a loop of rope to put your foot through. I'm sure it's going to fall apart any day now. And when it does, it's going to go down with kids all over it - they can't get enough.

We did have a big damper on our day. Liam's arms and legs are positively covered in what is best described as something akin to poison ivy. He came home from school yesterday covered in an itchy, red, blistery looking rash. It's especially bad on his forearms, but goes all the way up to his shoulders and on his legs it goes up to his crotch. Nothing on his face or trunk. The only guess I have for what happened is that he has taken to playing soccer at recess each day, and yesterday he lost his ball in the cedar hedge that runs along the edge of the school yard, and he had to go in to retrieve it. He's been in the cedars before and never reacted like this, but maybe there is something else growing back there? I feel awful for him. I've been dosing him with Benadryl and swabbing the worst spots with  calamine lotion, but I am not sure that it is helping any.

The rash is making him miserable, and the Benadryl is making him tired - so tired that he fell asleep on the bus in both directions. So I'm sorry that this had to coincide with his fun day. This morning I asked whether he wanted to stay home from school, given how miserable he seemed, but he looked horrified at the prospect. So we went on the field trip and faced the stares from some of the other kids who were convinced that he has chicken pox. Here's hoping a good night's sleep helps and he wakes up feeling much better tomorrow.