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...

Hike for Discovery - Sweetwater Creek State Park

Steph & Lucy
On Saturday we hiked at Sweetwater Creek State Park just west of Atlanta. Steph and I had hiked here once before, so I knew it wasn't a challenging hike with relatively flat terrain. But it is pretty technical with lots of scrambling over rocks and roots. Since I'm a masochist I added an extra 5 pounds of weight (two 1 liter Nalgene bottles) to my pack in an effort to slow my pace and still get a good workout.

This was the first hike of the season that Steph joined me on. When we arrived at Sweetwater at 7:30 AM it was already extremely muggy due to the previous night's rain. Yuck!

As a team, we decided to hike the red trail to the white trail for 6 miles with an optional 3 mile extension on the yellow trail. Off we go!

The first part of the trail is pretty flat with a lot of rock outcroppings and roots littering the trail. Its a nice hike that follows along the river past the New Manchester Manufacturing Company textile factory ruins. The factory itself was destroyed during the civil war by Sherman during the Atlanta Campaign. Al that remains is part of the shell of the original building.
New Manchester Manufacturing
Company Ruins

The rain on Friday night made it a bit more difficult on this part of the trail, especially on the rocks that you hike over. Being the incredible klutz that I am I slipped on some of the rocks and fell. The trail is ~15' above the river at this point. When I fell and slid down the rocks I managed to grab hold of the rocks to prevent myself from sliding all the way into the river. Unfortunately, my right leg was hung up on a tree, so I had no leverage to life myself out of the predicament I was in! Steph and another hiker grabbed my hands and pack to lift me slightly, free my leg and get me back on the trail.

The rest of the hike was nice and uneventful, thankfully. Steph and Lucy enjoyed themselves greatly and tired themselves out. After the hike we came home and the ladies, Lucy and Steph, passed out. I don't think I have ever seen Lucy pass out so hard! Clearly she enjoyed herself, but I believe I wore her out. I'll have to keep this in mind for the next time I want Lucy to relax!
Sweetwater Creek Rapids

Next week we're headed to Vogel State Park for the Coosa Backcountry Trail. This is the toughest hike of the HFD season and one I did not complete last year. I'm looking forward to tackling this trail again and completing the entire trail without bailing out at the road crossing. I'm sure I'll have plenty of pictures to post from Coosa this time around!

Bumblefuck, WI

One of the perks of being a consultant is traveling to great places. Buenos Aires, NYC, Chicago, Boston, etc. Of course, we also travel to some pretty out of the way locations now and again. This week I'm stuck in Bumblefuck, WI.

Now Bumblefuck wouldn't be so bad. Wisconsin is known for its cheese and beer (yay, beer!). But Bumblefuck has little of either from what I can see so far. I found a few chain restaurants as I drove around looking for a place to grab a meal. I also found a few local places, so I decided to drop in on one of them. The first warning sign that I made a bad choice was that there was no beer served here. Well, that's the only warning sign, but the food was decent and cheap. But no beer? I feel like I'm back in the South, standing in the wine & beer isle at Publix on a Sunday where signs everywhere remind me that someone else's religious beliefs are being pushed upon the rest of us and therefore I can't buy alcohol on "God's" day. Feh.

On another note, I went to Stone Mountain yesterday for some hiking. 3 times up and down for ~7.5 miles (including the walk in/out of the park, since we're all too cheap to pay for admission). Sandy mentioned hiking Kilimanjaro... perhaps when we're done with the fall season we can plan an expedition for a handful of folks... I'm having some serious wanderlust these days. Vacation can't come soon enough.