I'm Every Woman

Hi, I'm Scott. My wonderfully amazing wife Jessica has a wicked case of writer's block, so I'm coming in off the bench to write a post about all the things I know she wants to write about, and probably a few more. I'm writing the stories as if I'm her from here on out, so the goal is to capture her voice. I've actually written one other post for her on the blog in the past (10 bonus points and a surprise gift to be sent to the first person who can accurately guess which post), so we'll see how this goes.

"First things first, let me catch you up on my running addiction. My whole goal in starting running was to do the 5k at the Rex Lee Run. Mission accomplished. We had really great weather for the couple weeks before the run, then of course it got really cold right before the Saturday. I woke up and honestly thought it was going to snow. I don't do running in snow, but thankfully the weather held off. It was ridiculously cold at first, but with my trusty iPod rocking out all kinds of musical goodness and my loving family cheering me on, I finished the race in pretty good time. And I never walked. That race has gotten HUGE. When I ran it my junior year in college, there weren't nearly as many people as there were this time around. Totally great experience.

Here are my biggest fans before the race. Grace is the blob in between Ethan and Sophie.

A bunch of friends from the MBA Spouse Association. Girl Power!

And after the race. Grace was done with the whole rah rah thing at this point. Shocker.

With the race out of the way, I'm still managing to run regularly although not quite as religiously. My feet were starting to hurt because my shoes were getting old. After nearly spending $130 on new running shoes that did everything but run for you, I managed to find these cute little ones for almost one third the price. Scott rejoiced for the cost, I rejoiced for how cute they are. And my legs are pretty cute too. Oh wait, that's Scott talking. Dang it, I'll try and stay in Jessica's voice the rest of the way.

Next came St. Patrick's Day. Frankly, it's not really one of those holidays that I manage to turn into week-long celebrations (like Valentine's Day) or three-month extravaganzas (like Christmas). I don't know, maybe it's because leprechauns just kind of creep me out with their impish looks and fiery red hair. But with Scott's parents in Ireland on a mission, I felt the need to support the cause. I was shopping at the mall with the kids and Ethan fixated on a white and green shirt at The Children's Place. Since I'm still one of THOSE moms (see earlier post), I decided this wasn't a battle worth fighting. With Ethan getting a shirt, I knew Grace wouldn't leave unless she got one too. And then Ethan wouldn't let us go without Sophie getting one too. So three rather unattractive shirts later, we had our not-so-Kodak moment.

Yeah, I know. The shirts are ugly.

And Sophie knows it too.

Easter came next. My mom, Amy and Jacob came in town for a few days and it was great seeing them. My mom managed to set up the photo above and we took a few shots. The picture taking went about as expected. See Christmas 2007, 2006, 2005 ... 1989, 1988, or 1987 for further information. That tie on Ethan is his first ever, and he really likes it and the other two we got for him later.

This photo pretty much sums up Ethan and Grace.

Ethan and Grace have begun collecting money for doing odd jobs around the house. And I mean odd. Ethan is always asking for ways he can get quarters for doing some type of chore. I'm pretty sure he's going to start messing things up just so he can get the quarter for cleaning it all up. We'd love to say that Grace has the same work ethic, but she's improving. We actually started the latest collection jars because Grace fell in love with a pair of hot pink Crocs while walking through Nordstrom. I told her they cost $25 and she needed to earn the money to pay for them. She should be ready to pay for them by the time she's 7. Ethan is also saving up for Crocs and a trip to Disneyland. I hope that work ethic came with a healthy dose of patience.

Ethan's preschool experience is wrapping up next week, which is just hard to believe. From what we can tell, he really likes it. He's certainly paying attention at least some of the time. One of the recent topics they covered was camping. We've only been camping once as a family (two summers ago), but apparently that experience and the lesson really stuck. One night Scott went to check on Ethan a couple hours after bedtime because he was talking to himself. That's not really noteworthy in and of itself. But as Scott got to the door, he peeked through the door and saw that Ethan had set up the easel as a tent and his sleeping bag underneath it. He was pretending to be camping and had his flashlight and everything. He fell asleep 30 minutes or so later.

Not to be outdone in the awkward sleeping arrangement department, Grace managed to take her obsession with junk to the next level. It wasn't enough to see the stuffed animals and Mr. Potato Head or even to play with them. She needed to be one with the junk. So one day at nap time, Grace crawled into the bin with all her stuff. Clearly she was pretty tired.


I can't really think of anything else to write about. Oh, I'm taking a hiatus from books with hopelessly romantic love stories. Our latest MBASA book club offering was These Is My Words. The meeting is tomorrow night and I hadn't read the book yet, but Sunday I started around 9 p.m. I finished 12 hours later, with a couple hours of sleep squeezed in somewhere around 4 a.m. OK people. I like to consider myself rational and logical, even down to earth. But this book tore me apart. I couldn't think about anything else all day and had multiple crying binges about the storyline. I won't ruin it for anyone else who wants to read it, but I just decided that I can't keep doing this to myself. Whether it's the Bella-Edward-Jacob love triangle or the Sarah-Jack romance from this one, my heart just can't take it anymore. So it's fluffy stuff or some of that crap non-fiction Scott likes to read for the next little while.

So that's that. The MBA program wraps up in a couple weeks. I'm getting emotional just writing about it, so I better finish up. 'Til next time."