Elise Update

Elise is now 2 years and 5 months old. I started this post before the 21st and then forgot to take her pictures to fill it in so I'm posting it a few days late. There's still just so much I want to note about her right now so I can remember it later. She is the light of my days so many days. She's just such a doll. She's so sweet with nice manners and listens to me when I ask her to do something without yelling "no!" at me! When she does something she knows I won't like she immediately starts saying, "Sorry, mommy! I sorry, mommy!" I always respond with, "I forgive you," because I always will. No matter what my sweet baby does, I will forgive her. Plus the moment she starts apologizing all over herself I just melt into a million pieces. She's snuggly and sweet and the perfect little girl. She makes me laugh all the time. The other day while I was reading a book to the kids Carter said to me, "Mommy, why does Elise always make you laugh and I never make you laugh?" I told him because she isn't trying to be funny and she's little so she doesn't understand things like he does so she says things that crack me up. But he makes me laugh all the time too!

 

I think my favorite thing she says is her full name. She still won't really respond if you ask her what her name is although if you ask her how old she is, she will tell you 2. When she comes across something naughty she did the day before, she'll get so mad at herself. That's when she starts in saying, "Elise Kay Cooooc!" in the most upset sounding voice. One day I even caught her on video slapping her own hand and telling herself it was so sad when she came across a coloring book he had ripped pages in the day before. Sister also likes to count and mostly says, "8, 9, 10" every time she counts. When we are reading a book and I ask how many of something is in the picture she gets upset when Carter counts them. She'll try to slap his hand away while she points out at them yelling, "1, 2, 8, 9, 10!" She also loves our cat Skippy who she refers to as "my kitty." He never really let her pet him before but will now stay out when she wakes up from a nap and lets her pet him a little bit. She's been telling people all about her kitty to where they thought we got a new pet. I tell them no, he's just new to her because he's letting her pet him now. It's her job to feed him when Carter feeds Harper so maybe that's winning her some points with him! She also still loves Harper so much and will rub her neck just like Harper likes. She'll also bend over and kiss Harper on her back which is oh so sweet. She likes to point out that I'm her mommy and calls me "my mommy." When we see people, she introduces me by saying, "This my mommy," while pointing at me. She loves the roly polys that keep finding their way into our house. She calls them my poly but says it more like "my pully." It is adorable!

 

 

She's started wanting to do a lot more of what she sees Carter do. Before when I'd do learning activities with him, she'd just play off to the side doing her own thing. Now she wants to sit right with him and copy what he's doing. When he's practicing letter names, she's parroting them after him. When he's practicing letter sounds, she's parroting them after him. When he's counting, she's trying to count louder than him. She loves shapes and likes to point out shapes and their names. I'd love to sit her down with shapes and have her point out and name them so I can see which shape names she knows, but she's not interested in anything formal like that. I just take note of the ones I hear and see her say while playing with toys or looking at the shape of things while out and about. She's picked up way more color names. It's so cute to hear her say "geen." She likes to say pink and identifies pretty much any shade close to pink as pink, including red. Carter is really interested in learning Spanish so I've been teaching him the color names in Spanish. She loves to try saying those words too. I think it confuses her a little bit because she'll point at something and tell me it's color and then Carter will say it in Spanish so she thinks she's wrong. I've had to ask him not to do that for now. She's really interested in the sun since we did a learning theme on it so she's always pointing out the sun in pictures and in the sky.

She reclaimed this chameleon from Carter's room and named him Froggy.

 

 

It seems like her sleeping is back to more of a normal schedule. She tends to wake up closer to 7:00 most mornings and will occasionally sleep even later. She still wakes at 6:30 some days and I wonder if she'd sleep later if she didn't hear me getting up early to run. When she wakes up and I'm still in bed she likes to come into our room first thing. She comes to my side of the bed and hands me my rings off the bedside table so I can put them on. At nighttime she's been coming up with excuses to get out of bed. It's usually that she says she needs to go potty. Most nights we'll let her get up once to go potty and after that tell her she's already gone and she needs to stay in bed. When we redirect her to her room she just cries and cries over "being in trouble." I hate that. It's so sad. She'll also say, "Carty in bed? Carty stay in bed?" So we've really used that as a motivator telling her that Carter is a big boy and he knows you don't get out of bed at night, telling her she needs to be a big kid like Carter. I'll even take her to his door and let her peek in and see how good he's being in his bed. She wants so much to be a big kid like him.

 

 

Elise is now in undies pretty much full time. She has accidents on occasion. It seems like she has about one accident a day for the most part. She has had a few days with no accidents here and there, but still has some accidents. It's hit and miss. When we're at home she very rarely has accidents. She just runs around and goes when she needs to. Although this morning she had an accident right after I got her dressed for the day. What blows my mind is almost all of her accidents when we are out and about are in her car seat. I'll have her go potty before either leaving the house or leaving the place we were visiting. Then 15-20 minutes later when we arrive at our destination I'll find that she's pottied in her car seat. I don't understand why that is happening. I'd think she'd be able to hold it better than that. But maybe she doesn't feel it as much in her car seat with the buckle right there, I don't know. We bought some Pull-Ups and I use them sometimes when we are out and about. When she's in them I always take her to the restroom just as many times as I normally would, it's just nice to know if she does have an accident, it won't make a mess. I use Pull-Ups at the Children's Museum because of their tape slide and ball pit which would be a nightmare to clean if she had an accident there. I also used a Pull-Up at the OKC Zoo when we went because we were quite a drive from home and I didn't want to run out of changes of clothes and I didn't know where all the restrooms were located like I do at our zoo. Even wearing a Pull-Up, she freaked out when she had to potty and we couldn't find a restroom. She ran into the grass and started to pull her pants down to potty in the grass. We did find a restroom and she went but she had already tinkled a little in her Pull-Up. I also decided to put her in a Pull-Up during long drives, including our Meals on Wheels route. It's hard to quickly find a restroom during our Meals on Wheels route and we're also rushed on time. I do make sure to make a couple stops for the restroom on our route but this way I can stop at convenient places rather than frantically trying to find a restroom when she says she has to go. When she does have an accident and I ask her where we go potty or poop (whichever she's done), she says, "toy-lit." It's just so cute how she says it and I love that she says toilet instead of potty chair. She does great on the toilet without a special seat but does still like to use her potty chair most of the time when we're home.

 

Right now her favorite game is to pretend to be a dog. She can crawl around on all 4's for a long time! She also loves to pant and bark and lick my legs. I've used the game to my advantage. When she's playing in the morning I'll get Harper involved. Carter's decided Harper is the mommy dog and he and Elise are the babies. I'll take Harper in and brush her teeth and then give her a treat telling her what a good dog she is. Then both the kids let me brush their teeth and I give them a treat and tell them how good they are. Then I do the same thing for brushing their hair. It's a wonderful little trick and makes it so much faster to get them ready and it involves way less fussing! I'm also able to do stuff like open a package of fruit snacks and just give them one as their treat like I do with Harper's treats.

Here she's playing doggy and was doing that most of the photo shoot.

 

Elise still adores her baby dolls and takes such good care of them, rubbing their backs, shushing them, and singing to them. It is very cute to watch. She is all about babies in general. Anytime we are out somewhere and she sees a baby she is all over him/her, gushing and talking to them in a sweet voice. Anything she sees that is small or smaller than other things around it she deems to be a baby. She'll say, "Awww, baby!" At the aquarium if there's a tank of fish where some fish are a different kind and are smaller than the others, the smaller ones are babies and therefore so cute! She found a "baby" rock and thought it was so cute she gave it a kiss. She loves to play with blocks, especially Duplo and Lego. She can pass so much time just building towers. And she doesn't give up. She can put together regular sized Legos. If she's having a hard time snapping Legos together she just keeps trying until she gets it. Whatever kinds of blocks she's playing with, she always wants to play with the squares, especially with our magnetic blocks. When she and Carter are playing with them together, there's always a fight over the squares because Elise wants to play with only squares and all the squares while Carter needs some for his creations. There has been a lot more fighting between her and Carter lately. They grab things from each other and do stuff to each other just to annoy one another. When I separate them they get so upset but once they're back together they're bugging each other again. It's like they just want to annoy each other. That's not all the time, just some times. Most the time they play nicely while side by side playing or playing pretend together. Often times I find them sitting together in a chair while Carter "reads" to Elise. It's adorable.

 

Elise loves to play with her friends. She's always asking about Kyra but I think that's because she calls her BFF Charlee by her older sister's name on accident. Either that or she has a fascination with Kyra even though she doesn't really play with her. She loves to help Charlee by showing her what to do on different toys and even pushing her on the swing. It's cute to hear them talk because they are about a month apart. When Elise is pushing Charlee on the swing she'll say, "Higher?" and Charlee will say, "Yeah, high!" It's usually just a little conversation but it's so cute to hear them communicating with each other. She makes friends wherever she goes and recently made friends with a little girl who had the same head of white curls like hers! It was so cute to see. She also loves to play with Carter and when Jake is around they all three play together running around and being silly. She is super snuggly with Carter too. When she wakes up from her nap and finds him sitting on the couch with me she snuggles right up to him. At night when they watch a little tv before bed she pretty much sits in his lap. If something happens that Carter finds a bit scary he holds onto Elise during the scene. Elise really doesn't have much fear and loves to play scary games. When we play shark all the other kids are afraid of getting caught by the shark but she will run over to the shark and laugh with no fear! She is also so darn tough! She burned herself on a cookie sheet and didn't even cry. We actually treated the wrong area because we weren't sure where she got burned.

 

 

 

Now for some random tidbits I love about her right now. She has started cheesing for pictures but her cheese face is more of a grimace and I die laughing every time I catch it in a picture! Her hair is starting to darken and looks like more of a dirty blonde in the roots while the longer parts are still almost white. It makes me feel like she's moving away from being a baby which makes me sad. She likes to put her wristbands on her ankle and wears them as an anklet. Her favorite food is mac and cheese and she is obsessed. She's still a pretty big eater and really loves mandarin oranges or clementines. She'll eat 5 in a sitting if I don't stop her. When she gets excited about food she makes a slurping sound. When she sees a picture with animals or people of different sizes she points out which one she thinks is the baby, which is the daddy, and which is the mommy. If there's a child alone or a child with a dad she asks where the mommy is. She isn't afraid to try anything and will climb ladders, jump off of things, and just be a regular daredevil. I love her to pieces and enjoy being her mom so much! I'm looking forward to our special Elise and mommy days while Carter is in school! 

Change of Training Plans

Immediately after finishing the Aquarium Run Half-Marathon I just couldn't wait to start training for another half-marathon. I wanted another chance at a sub-1:30 so badly I started contemplating a summer half-marathon somewhere cooler. I got excited thinking maybe I could run the Mighty Mo Half-Marathon which I ran as my first half-marathon 10 years ago. It would be so awesome to go back 10 years later and break my half-marathon PR which I ran at that race. Yes, my PR half-marathon was the first one I ever ran. Same goes for my marathon PR. But it appeared they no longer run the race. I decided that was for the best as I was having serious shin splints which caused my shin to throb anytime I was sitting or laying down. It was so bad while laying in bed at night that I had a hard time falling asleep. I decided my best bet was to take the summer easy, just getting in base mileage and then start up with training for a fall half-marathon in November. After talking about my goals and my fears of again over-doing it, Ty and I decided to hire one of my friends from my race team as a coach. We figured I'd run easy over the summer and then I'd start in training with him in August. When I met with him to discuss my goals and what our training plan would be, he talked me into starting with him in May because he wanted to monitor my recovery to ensure I was starting the training block in August completely healed and ready to go. That made sense to me so we went with it.

After two weeks of running every other day my shin was starting to throb less often and I got the go ahead from my coach to run 5 days a week. I was so excited! Coming off the spring season with a mediocre half-marathon I was fired up to get back to training. At the beginning of May he asked me if I was ready to start in with speed work and I was a little bit scared but also so excited. My shin still hurt some but it was definitely getting better. Once I started in with speed work I loved it and was so ready to get back into hard workouts that I didn't voice my concerns over how things were feeling. I kept writing off that I didn't quite feel right on the fact that I was out of shape after coming back from my "injury". I feel silly calling it an injury after what so many of my friends have gone through with terrible injuries, but it was a slight injury. I was able to hit the times my coach prescribed for me, but I just didn't feel strong or feel like myself. My tempo runs tended to feel more normal than speed work which made me feel like it was just that I was out of shape. But it was also opposite from what I normally have which is killer speed workouts with just okay tempos for the most part. I started noticing that my easy runs were just crazy slow for me. My first mile tended to be anywhere from 9:30-10:00, normally around 9:45. I really couldn't think of a time I had ever run a mile that slow. Typically my easy pace is right around 8:30 and I'd run more like 9-9:30 pace with the double stroller. I was running my easy runs around 9:30 pace without the stroller. Again I figured it was just because I was out of shape. I mostly ignored the fact that the first mile of my runs I was in pain and my legs felt dead.

There were a few times I mentioned to my coach that I was concerned with how my legs were feeling. It was eerily similar to how I started feeling toward the end of the spring season, like my legs were fatigued and over-trained. I worried I hadn't taken it easy for long enough for my legs to really come back from what I'd put them through during the winter and spring. He tended to agree with me that I was just working my way back from injury and was a bit out of shape. But then came the Blue Moon 10k. I was so disappointed with how the race went. It was upsetting to run the time I did but I was more upset with how my legs felt. I knew I went out too fast the first mile, but that shouldn't have caused my legs to feel so dead and fatigued. That race weighed heavily on me but I decided to let it go. My coach had me scheduled for an 8 mile tempo the following weekend and I was a bit leery. I took off and everything seemed to be okay with a 7:31 first mile. But then the 2nd mile the fatigued feeling started to kick in and I was worried about how the run would go. By the 3rd mile which I went through in 7:48 I knew there was no way I could finish the workout. I decided to run a couple easy miles before trying to pick the pace back up a little bit for the final 4 miles. That way I could still finish out a 10 mile run. After 2 miles at over 9:30 pace I could tell there was no way I would be able to pick it up the last 4 miles so I considered it a win when I dropped my pace back down to just under 9:20 pace for the final miles. My legs had that dead, fatigued feeling I battled during the spring season and this tempo run was very reminiscent of many of my failed tempo attempts of the spring. As I slogged through to the finish I thought things over quite a bit and by the end I felt like I knew what I had to do.

After the spring season I kept going over things in my head. I wished that I'd just taken some time to run easy and get my legs back after that first scrapped tempo. I felt like if I'd done that I could have salvaged a decent season. As they say, hindsight is 20/20. But in this situation I felt like I could learn from the past and use it to improve my future. By the time I made it to the car I had decided to let go of a sub-1:30 fall half-marathon. I felt like chasing that right now would cause me to make mistakes similar to my mistakes in the spring. My plan was to take 2 weeks off from hard workouts and just run easy to get my legs back under me. Depending on how that goes, then I'll add in one hard workout a week for a while before getting back up to my regular schedule. I started toying with the idea of running the full marathon instead of the half marathon in November. That would take the pressure off trying to run a PR or doing anything spectacular in the half and I liked the idea of just going out and seeing what I could do. When my mom signed us all up for the Route 66 and I found out Jeremy was running the full, I was torn. I had talked to him about possibly running a full in the fall but that was when I was certain I would dominate the half in the spring. When the half dominated me in the spring I switched my focus to going after the half I had attempted in the fall. I really wanted to go for a PR half but I also really wanted to run Jeremy's first post-TBI marathon with him. Not to mention it would be both of our first marathons in a long time. My first since November 2009 and his first since Novemeber 2008, so nearly 10 years for both of us! Now that I had let go of my goals for a half-marathon I could switch my focus to the marathon.

Switching race distances 13 weeks out from the race isn't the most ideal situation but it still gives me plenty of time to prepare. The first thing I did when I got home (after running the idea past my dad to make sure I wasn't nuts) was to sit down and plan out how I could get my long run up to 20 miles in time. It's a little tricky because we have a lot of fall races planned but I can still easily get in one 20 miler and possibly 2 before the race. The timing of races isn't ideal for having my last 20 miler about 3 weeks out from the race like I'd like, but I'm not attempting to run a fast time so I'm not too concerned. I more so want to make sure I'm able to get through the race, not that I'm going to be able to get through it in PR time. Since I was focused on the half and trying to get my speed back, my longest run so far has been 10 miles but I've also gotten up to 14 during the last couple seasons so I'm not too concerned about jumping up in mileage a bit in the beginning. Just for fun, here is my plan for weekly long runs: 12 miles on August 27th (this weekend), 14 miles on September 3rd, 16 miles on September 10th, 18 miles on September 17th, 15 miles on September 24th, 20 miles on October 1st, Zoo Run 10k on October 8th, 15-20 miles depending on how I've recovered on October 15th, Twilight Thriller 5k on October 22nd, Tulsa Run 15k on October 29th, the Jenks Half Marathon is November 5th so if I'm feeling up to it I could possibly do that, then 8ish miles on November 12th, and the marathon on November 19th. For the first time in a while I am super excited about the fall season! I'm pretty pumped to do something different and to pick the marathon back up after 8 years!!!!

Running with the double stroller at a fun run.

Carter got out at the end to run with us.

Wordless Wednesday

Carter asked me if he could write a book while I was cooking dinner.

Carter playing with a compass.

Elise kept ripping her bow out of her hair so Carter put a bunch in his hair.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Elise put pink cowboy boots on, it was so cute!

I didn't check to make sure they fit and it wasn't until she fell down that I realized they were 2 sizes too big, haha!

 

We went out for ice cream on my last day to watch the kids.

 

 

 

Working on a place mat his Great Grandma Shupe sent.

Elise figured out where her blankets are kept in the closet, she pulled all of them out and asks to be covered up with all of them every night.

Elise making nice with Skippy.

Elise became friends with a little girl who looks a lot like her.

 

Carter writing a book about volcanoes and earthquakes.

 

 

Carter coloring the picture that was on the inside of the pull up box.

 

Elise saw me putting my hair in a ponytail and asked me to put her hair up too.

 

 

 

We got to visit our 2nd state park, Natural Falls State Park.

 

 

Looking down at the waterfall from the overlook.

 

 

The beautiful 77 foot waterfall.

 

 

 

 

 

Elise was super proud to go across the river with daddy on a fallen tree.

 

 

 

Carter got tired.

 

 

We went back down to look at the waterfall one more time before we left and saw a rainbow!

 

 

Playing with shadow puppets behind our shadow theater.

Playing in the dirt while I waited in line at the Children's Museum for a special event.

 

 

 

Carter posing in front of the Children's Museum backdrop during the eclipse viewing party.

When I finally talked Elise into a picture Carter didn't want to come back.

 

When I finally talked Carter into coming back for a picture, Elise refused to stand in front of the backdrop.

Ready to view the eclipse.

 

Playing at the splash pad in between checking on the sun.

 

 

 

We loved the crescents in all the shadows during the eclipse!

Elise really wanted to wear her boots for some reason.

Meeting the pig at Talking is Teaching.

The pig from the "If You Give A..." book series.

I tried trimming Carter's hair a little.

Elise doing somersaults.

Being silly with Oreos.

Carter took his shirt off because it was wet so Jake had to take his off too.

Thomas came over to even up Carter's hair with trimmers for me.

 

 

 

They loved the Children's Zoo at the OKC Zoo.

 

 

 

Flamingos for Opa.

Playing in the stream.

  

 

Climbing like a monkey while watching the monkeys climb.

Elise was pushing Carter like it was a swing.

 

 

 

Waiting for the elephant show.

Sitting on the rhino statue in front of the rhino exhibit, the rhino was in the mud in the background.

 

Carter got to help during the elephant show because he identified one of our 5 senses.

Trying to lift a tusk.