On the move

Emelia is officially crawling. She spent about 1.5 months on her knees rocking back and forth. Last week she started lunging herself. Then a couple days ago her knees began to slide forward, one after the other. It's over. No more setting the blanket in the middle of the room, for her to play nicely on, while I go about my duties. These shots are from two days ago when I first saw how serious the situation had become.  I had left her on the pink blanket a few minutes prior...

Our little one is also the proud owner of two bottom teeth.  The first one came before Christmas and then the second a few days after.  Right now she is working on a big one on top.  I took the girls to a friend's house for dinner last night and Emmy had her fingers in her mouth the entire visit.

There is a big storm brewing and on the way.  I know we can't compete with the white madness out east, but we are expecting about 6-12 inches over the next two days.  That's a lot for us.  Our town is not set up the way east coast cities are with all their plows and salt trucks.  Plus, we live in a tiny offshoot community that's even higher in elevation (more snow) and we are last on the plow list.  In storms like the one promised we generally get snowed in temporarily and lose power.  Last year we had no power for 3 days.  Our house is all electric, no propane, so that pretty much puts us out of commission.  We don't have a wood stove, we have a fireplace which we use to heat our house.  So staying warm is not the issue, eating is.  Last year we made lots of eggs over the fire and I even made bread in a dutch oven.

 When our power goes out we have:

no internet
no hot water
no stovetop
no fridge
no freezer
no lights

So this year I cooked a few things in preparation.  I made a huge batch of spicy turkey sausage soup and cooked a couple packages of  chicken.  I also did two loads of laundry and made sure we have some candles & headlamps available.  It's all very exciting.  And maybe it will be nothing.

This morning I ran 5 miles on the treadmill.  It was the first time I didn't run outside since starting the marathon training.  It was mind numbing.  I really didn't like it and had to force myself to think of problems I could solve during the torture.  I thought about the marathon, the details of it.  I thought about how I've lost almost 30 lbs. since this all began, I thought about the possibility that I get treated differently at different weights, I thought about meat heads, I thought about being a better person, I thought about losing 10 more lbs.

Tomorrow I have to run 8 and if the snow is not here yet I will run outside.  If it is here I will have plenty of time to come up with a marathon race day plan.

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