Catching Up

Lot's of little things to catch up on here...

On 5/2 Maya turned a month old. On 5/3 we had a baby naming at our house, both celebrating her birth, her identity and our 5 year anniversary! Happy anniversary, Schmu!

On 5/5 we celebrated Cinco de Mayo. Not. It was, however, Java's 12th birthday which we celebrated — a day late, mind you — with our twice annual "dogs eating ice cream at Bruster's" day. Ice cream was enjoyed by all, except Maya who got her's second hand.

We had Moms on Call come out this week to help us with some of the baby care basics that nobody ever teaches you. Most importantly, however, is that they teach you how to help your baby sleep longer in the night so we can get more sleep. They promise you'll be able to get your baby to sleep from 9:30 PM until 2:30 AM (or later), have a feeding and then sleep until 6:30 (or later) using their techniques. I thought it might be BS, but indeed, it works! Maya is being a total angel and letting mom get some much needed sleep.

Living in Atlanta, we not only have the book to refer to, we also had one of the authors come to teach us her methods along with 6 months follow up support via email. The hands on time was fabulous, we both learned a lot and felt our time and money was very, very well spent. However, I did have one minor issue:

When we were speaking about nighttime rituals, Jennifer asked us about our faith. I politely told her we don't subscribe to one. I figured that would be the end of it. However, she pressed on, wanting to know in what faith were we brought up. We responded that we were brought up Jewish. She then went on to tell us how we should talk to Maya as we get her ready for bed, telling her how someday she'll go to temple, recite prayers, etc. I can appreciate that her nighttime rituals include reading bible stories to her kids (Steph tells me this is mention in their book). However, I am an atheist, I don't believe in god, the bible or any other religious texts. Why can't we talk about the dogs, our family, things that are important to us?

As I am always reminded when consulting, there are three topics never to be broached with clients: religion, politics and money. Again, this is a minor quibble (less than 2 minutes out of 2.5 hours we spent together) and I'd hire her again in an instant, perhaps after explaining to her that my beliefs are as strong and important to me as hers are to her. Reading their website now, I see that they are both quite religious. Perhaps if I had known this before our meeting I would have been more direct with her regarding how we desire to raise Maya with respect to religion when the question was raised.

I ran 4.5 miles yesterday in about 45 minutes. My longest solid run yet, albeit pretty slow. I was using my heart rate monitor, trying to maintain a relatively steady heart rate in the 75 - 85% range. I'm going for a run again tomorrow, today was on off day, and I'll try to break 5 miles. Working toward the magical 6.2 for the Peachtree in less than 2 months time.

Finally, today Maya went on her first hike to Kennesaw Mountain. She didn't do much hiking, just a lot of sleeping as Steph, Lucy and I did all the hard work. I'm looking forward to her being older and able to sit up on her own. By that point I should have a baby backpack to put her in for longer adventures...