It's gameday!

College football season is here! Let the good times begin! We rooted for Baylor on Thursday night. She loves hollering "Sic 'em Bears!" Sadly, Baylor didn't play as well as we hoped. We really do love college football around our house, and here's some pictures of us enjoying the first Saturday of games. Sic em Bears and Go Trojans!

Shea and Nash weren't really interested in College Gameday.



They were interested in cuddling with Mommy. :)



Do we have enough USC spirit around our house?

Daddy with his son. I hope for Jon's sake that he'll someday be a Trojan. :)

Do you see a theme?

Shea loves "reading" books, and she especially loves "reading" to Nash.

"lovin' from the oven"

I've discovered a new bakery, and it's probably not good for my wasteline. Muddy's Bake Shop has some yummy goodies! They have the most incredible cupcakes. My favorite so far is Mocha Madness. They'll have a few lunch/dinner items everyday, they have Wi-Fi, and they're open late. There's some eclectic seating areas in the shop and a couple of tables outside. It's located in Sanderlin Place (behind Clark Tower, near Fox & the Hound). Check it out! You will not be disappointed! You can read more about the bakery here.

I love the Olympics!

Like many people, I've lost a lot of sleep since the Olympics began. Watching Michael Phelps and the other swimmers was exhilerating. Misty May-Treanor and Kerry Walsh have been amazing. I even enjoyed some synchronized diving. My favorite part, nonetheless, is the gymnastics. I competed for many years with River City Gymnastics and coached some in high school and in college. I miss being around the sport, so I'm excited about any chance that I have to watch it on t.v. One of the highlights of the competition was watching Bela Karolyi watch the gymnasts. His enthusiasm is contagious, and you don't have to wonder why he is one of the greatest gymnastics coaches ever. I was privileged to meet him back when I was a gymnast. Here's a picture of 10-year-old me, sporting some lovely bangs, and Bela. Meeting him was incredibly exciting. You can also see an old picture of me on the vault (now replaced by the vaulting table).






While the Olympics delivered some amazing gymnastics, present also was plenty of controversy.




Controversy #1: The Age of Chinese Gymnasts
Our country at least has some integrity when it comes to the ages of our Olympic athletes. Look at the Chinese team next to the American team, and the age difference is obvious. It really stinks that we're penalized for following the rules. I think that there should not be a minimum age requirement and that each country should simly send their best gymnasts. First, it's impossible to enforce. No one can definitively prove that the Chinese gymnasts are underage because the Chinese government can forge any government document required to prove their ages. Second, female gymnasts hit their prime at about ages14 to 16, and the age requirement essentially denies many of them the opportunity to compete in the Olympics. The more hours a person spends in the gym, the greater the likelihood that she will experience a career-ending injury. By the time many elite gymnasts are 18, they're burnt out and can't endure the rigorous training it takes to be an Olympic champion. Thus, many fabulous 14 year old gymnasts will miss out on the Olympics. Third, the rule doesn't offer any real protection for younger gymnasts. Any Olympic hopeful is enduring the same level of elite gymnastics training whether she is 14 or 18, so the rule does not "protect" anyone. This former gymnast thinks the ridiculous age requirement should just be eliminated.




Controversy #2: Scoring
There has always been and there always will be controversy about gymnastics scores. It's a subjective sport. For example, I thought that in the event finals, Nastia Liukin's floor routine should have scored higher than Shawn Johnson's. But their routines were so good and the scores so close, that I can't complain about the result. Judges rarely get it completely right, but some very obvious judging errors stir up more controversy. The most obvious judging error of this competition involved a Chinese gymnast on the vault. When watching the vault in real time, I saw a major form break and a fall--two serious errors. The judges, however, missed the first obvious error and only deducted for the second error. Olympic caliber judges should not miss something like that. If I saw it in real time, they should too. It's a shame that their error essentially cost Alicia Sacramone a bronze medal.



Despite the controversies, this Olympic gymnastics competition did not disappoint. Our American gymnasts represented our country well. They competed with integrity and delivered some stellar routines. They dealt with some setbacks and still dominated in the all-around competition. Congratulations to the USA gymnasts!

"Nash Pulled My Hair"

Babies are notorious hair-pullers, and Nash is no exception. His big sister has yet to grasp the reality that he's a hair-puller by nature and can do nothing about it yet. Yesterday, we had our first major hair-pulling incident with the two kids.

I was sitting on the couch holding Nash, and Shea was cuddling up next to me. Shea was giving Nash kisses and getting in face to make him laugh. It was super cute. In the midst of this play, however, some of Shea's hair managed to wrap itself really nicely around some of Nash's fingers. as Shea pulled away, she screamed because it hurt. Instead of waiting for mom to help untangle her hair from Nash's fingers, she panicked and pulled away even harder. (There's some spiritual lesson in there.) The hair was so tightly wound around Nash's fingers that it hurt him and he started to cry. Shea pulled so hard that a chunk, and I mean a large chunk, of her hair was pulled out from the roots and left in Nash's hand. It was a lot of hair, and I know that had to hurt pretty badly. Now I have two crying children in my lap. Shea sees the large chunk of hair and wails, "My hair. It's broken!"

I manage to get them both calmed down again. Shea's head is just a little bit sore at this point, and she wants some justice. She tells me, "Nash pulled my hair. He need time out." She then points to Nash and says again, "Time out!" I chuckle and wonder how I should handle this one. Shea thinks that Nash has done something wrong. She doesn't get that as a four-month-old, he has no idea that pulling hair causes pain and that time-out will serve no purpose with him. Now, I could attempt to explain this to her, and she wouldn't get it either. I could ignore her, and she'd feel like Nash got away with something. I don't think that would be wrong, but I chose the easiest route. We were about to leave anyway. I put Nash in his car seat and placed him in the corner and said that he was in time out. Shea felt vindicated. Nash was experiencing some punishment for hurting her.

Just then, Jon walked through the front door, and Shea ran to him and tattled, "Nash pull my hair. Nash in time out." She then went to find her hair to show to Jon. We left for daycare, and I thought all had been forgotten. Shea, however, was still talking about it during the evening. She again recounted the story to her Daddy about how Nash pulled her hair and got sent to time out. She again looked for her broken hair to show to her Daddy.

Later that evening, Nash was in his exersaucer, and Shea was making faces at him as he squealed with glee. She then got really serious. She leaned over and got in his face and sternly told him, "Nash, don't pull my hair, okay?" Despite her Daddy's attempt to explain that when we forgive somebody, we don't constantly bring up what he did to hurt us , she will be talking about the hair pulling incident for a long time.

My Big Butterball is Four Months Old

Last Friday, I took Nash in for his four-month check-up. My big butterball weighed in at 18 lbs. 13 oz, and he is 27 inches long. Seriously, the boy is huge. He's wearing 9 month clothes already. Jon wants to start him on rice cereal, but I'd like to wait a little while longer. He doesn't need it, and he's doing great with just breast milk. He's gotten better about going back and forth between the bottle and breast, which is a huge relief. Nevertheless, there are still days when he won't take much from his bottle at daycare and wants to nurse all night. As you can tell, it wouldn't hurt him to miss a feeding here or there. :)

Nash is really interacting with us now. It's so much fun to get him to smile and laugh. Nash loves playing in his exersaucer, and he puts all the toys that he can in his mouth. We go through many bibs a day due to his excessive drooling, but no teeth are poking through yet.

Shea is such a great big sister too. She enjoys brushing the small amount of hair that he has, and she'll get in his face and giggle with him. She'll also occasionally instruct me to give Nash to Daddy so I can hold her instead. They're both gowing up so quickly! I'm trying to treasure the time that I have with them because I know that I'll blink and they'll be grown up.

Michael Phelps and Food

Last night, Jon attempted to tell me everything that Michael Phelps eats for breakfast. The amount of food was so staggering that Jon couldn't remember it all. I looked it up today, and I am so amazed that I'm blogging about it. I'm doing Jenny Craig now, and I get 2300 calories a day because I'm breastfeeding. The way I'm doing it, I have a lot that I'm supposed to eat throughout the day, and I rarely eat everything that I'm supposed to. Michael Phelps eats almost double the calories that I get in an entire day! I cannot imaging trying to get down 12,000 calories like Michael Phelps does, unless it was all cake and ice cream. :)


Here's the article from the NY Post:

PHELPS' PIG SECRET: HE'S BOY GORGE
By CLEMENTE LISI with Post Wire Services

Swimming sensation Michael Phelps has an Olympic recipe for success - and it involves eating a staggering 12,000 calories a day.

"Eat, sleep and swim. That's all I can do," Phelps, who won two more gold medals today, told NBC when asked what he needs to win medals. "Get some calories into my system and try to recover the best I can."

By comparison, the average man of the same age needs to ingest about 2,000 calories a day.

Phelps, 23, will swim 17 times over nine days of competition at the Beijing Games - meaning that he will need all the calories he can shovel in his mouth in order to keep his energy levels high.

Phelps' diet - which involves ingesting 4,000 calories every time he sits down for a meal - resembles that of a reckless overeater rather than an Olympian.

Phelps lends a new spin to the phrase "Breakfast of Champions" by starting off his day by eating three fried-egg sandwiches loaded with cheese, lettuce, tomatoes, fried onions and mayonnaise.

He follows that up with two cups of coffee, a five-egg omelet, a bowl of grits, three slices of French toast topped with powdered sugar and three chocolate-chip pancakes.

At lunch, Phelps gobbles up a pound of enriched pasta and two large ham and cheese sandwiches slathered with mayo on white bread - capping off the meal by chugging about 1,000 calories worth of energy drinks.

For dinner, Phelps really loads up on the carbs - what he needs to give him plenty of energy for his five-hours-a-day, six-days-a-week regimen - with a pound of pasta and an entire pizza.

He washes all that down with another 1,000 calories worth of energy drinks.

Phelps remains on course to at least equal Mark Spitz's record of seven gold medals won at the 1972 Munich Games.

At these Summer Games, a typical day for Phelps starts with a 5 a.m. wake-up call. Most of his races have taken place between 8 p.m. and 10 p.m. ET when in China - 12 hours ahead of East Coast time.


clemente.lisi@nypost.com

SLEEP! YEAH!

My lovely little boy, Nash, does not miss a meal. Since he was born, he's eaten at least every three hours. His sister, Shea, slept for eight hours a night when she was three months old, and she slept twelve hours a night when she was four months old. Nash does not. Three hours is the norm, and he'll go an occassional four if we're lucky. We'd gotten to a pretty good routine, but I was still getting up with him at least twice every night. He didn't fuss too much. He was fine if I fed him, and he'd go right back to sleep. However, after four months of interrupted sleep, I'm utterly exhausted. Now there's a light at the end of the tunnel. Last night, Nash slept for five consecutive hours! I'm hoping that it wasn't a fluke. It was wonderful! Of course, I still woke up at 12:30am and 3:30am, but Nash slept from 10:30pm to 4:30am.

All of you who are moms (and maybe some dads) may know the drill. The baby makes some noise. He grunts a little and begins moving, but doesn't really wake up. You sit up and watch. You might make sure he's comfortable, not too hot and not too cold. You wonder whether you should try to go back to sleep or just wait for the baby to wake up. You know that it's so disheartening to be awakened just after you drifted back into dreamland. Nevertheless, if you've ever done it before, you have learned never to wake a sleeping baby during the night. After some time passes with the absence of grunts and stirring, you feel it's safe to let yourself fall back asleep. Time for feeding number two comes around. Again, some noise and movement, but no wakefulness. A double blessing! You can get some more rest! Sleep has never been sweeter! If that happens for a few nights in a row, you know that you will soon be able to have some restful sleep. Life will begin to return to normal.

Who do you think I am?

This morning, Jon was reading to Shea while I finished getting ready. She picked out a hand-me-down book entitled, Jesus and His Friends. Jon turned to the first page. On it was an illustration of Jesus and some of his disciples in a boat. Jon pointed to "Jesus" and asked Shea, "Who's that?" Shea lit up and exclaimed, "Pirates!"