Bringing Up Bobbin

They may be sucking, but we're still fans!

---

Comments

Add a Comment

House guest, Day 2

"H"'s entry for today, as dictated by Bobbin:

November 16, 2008

Today I went to a football game. I cheered! I jumped up and down and fell on the cement but Bobbin always picked me up. I wore a jersey. I ate a hotdog for lunch. I saw airplanes. Blitz is the mascot.

Go Seahawks Go!

I really wanted to go down there to the field, but it was foggy.

And here are the photos we included in the journal:

And here are a few more photos from the game.

---

Comments

Add a Comment

Gold Fever

The athletes and the audience may be ramping down in Beijing, but Olympic fever is still rampant in our household. The last two weeks have seen Bobbin running through the house, waving her arms in rhythmic fashion, shouting out "Look, Mommy, I'm swimming! Just like Michael Phelps!"

Yes, Michael Phelps is a household word now. She talks about him almost every day. If we're listening to the radio in the car and a news story comes on about Michael Phelps, her ears perk up and her face lights up and she proclaims "Mommy, they said Michael Phelps!"

Yesterday Bobbin came running up to me and said "Mommy, do you know how Michael Phelps breathes when he's swimming in the water?" This is a subject of fascination for Bobbin lately - that people can't breathe when they're under water and fish and other ocean life can't breathe when you take them out of water. She's had a couple of slips in the bathtub recently that helped to reinforce this fact to her first hand. How Michael Phelps is able to swim under water and breathe through all that splashing was a mystery to her. I explained that he brings his head up with one arm stroke to take a breath and then puts his face back down in the water with the next arm stroke so that he could move fast through the water; his head goes up and down, up and down, up and down while he's swimming and he takes his breaths when his head is up. She studied this, fascinated, as he swam on tv.

But Michael Phelps isn't Bobbin's only fascination with the Olympics. Gymnastics has sparked her interest and imagination as well. A couple of days ago Tim and I caught her doing somersaults off the sofa. She's constantly balancing and then jumping on one foot ever since she saw the women's floor routines. Today she took the cloth seat cover off of her doll's highchair exposing the metal frame, and turned it into "uneven bars" on which Minnie Mouse proceeded to complete a gold medal performance, flipping and twisting, hanging by one foot and getting tossed into the air for her dismount, landing face down on a pile of pillows. Every single one of her dolls got a turn on the "uneven bars" too, and Tim and I were captive audience to an hour-long show of their gymnastic capabilities.

This morning she was feeling "so-so" about going to soccer. But the minute I started talking about the Olympic soccer team and challenging her to show me her big Olympic soccer kicks, she perked right up and there was almost no stopping her.

I'm glad the Olympics have left such an impression with her and that they've helped her develop new interests, given her new fodder for her imagination, and even given her some new found confidence and independence on the playground as she tries to mirror the athleticism and creativity that she had watched, so riveted, on our laps every evening for the last two weeks.

---

Comments

Add a Comment

Olympic sport or not? The expert analysis

A conversation with Tim this evening:

Tim: I dunno if it should be an Olympic sport or not, but those women beach volleyball players were workin' it!
Me: Do you enjoy watching the Men's volleyball as much as the Women's volleyball?
Tim: Regular, or Beach volleyball?
Me (intrigued by the question): Beach.
Tim: I've never seen Men's Beach volleyball.
Me: Well maybe you should watch it. If you don't enjoy it as much as the Women's volleyball then maybe neither should be an Olympic sport.
Tim: Well maybe they should put it on when I'm watching TV.
Me: No one wants to see Men's volleyball; that's why they don't put it on prime time.

I'm not entirely sure what or who's point I made.

---

Comments

Add a Comment

Daddy's so proud :-)

Tim took this photo yesterday after our season tickets arrived with a complimentary "12th Man" flag. Oops... I guess I'm supposed to say "Spirit of 12" or somethin' now. Ah, screw it. Anyway, we're gearing up for football season around here. Can you tell? All she can talk about these days is "when we goin' to a football game? We going tommowow? Saturday? Will there be fireworks? I wanna watch a FOOTBALL game. Maybe next week? Can we watch it on TV too?"

This afternoon she spent a good half hour running around Zed's house with Miss E yelling "GO SEAHAWKS!!!" with blue and white streamers in tow.

---

Comments

Add a Comment

what a night!

Seahawks win 21-20 tonight, and Tim and I stayed to the very end while Bobbin was at home with the babysitter, who was one of her teachers from school.

Fun was had all the way around! Tim and I had an actual "date", we watched our team win and advance to the next round of playoff games, and Bobbin had a blast with her teacher playing and reading and singing and watching football on TV at home. She also had 2 helpings of dinner, refused her bedtime bottle because she was so full and exhausted, and was in bed asleep by 7:15 (which didn't come as a total surprise since she was up at 6am this morning and only napped for 30 minutes, 15 of which were in the car).

It was a perfect night! we'll definitely have to do it again (I can't remember the last time we left Bobbin at home with someone other than Tim or I... umm.... hmm... it's been at least 6 months I think, because I believe it was when D&B last babysat for us, which means Squeaky Zee hadn't been born yet. Wow, when I put it in that perspective it's definitely been a while! :-)

---

Comments

Add a Comment

Take me out to the ball game!

Today we took Baby Girl to her very first baseball game! Seattle Mariners vs Cleveland Indians. No idea of the outcome cause we left after the third inning. Not because she was not doing well but because we were tired and we didn't want to stray too much from her bedtime routine!

We started off this morning playing "house" before heading off to school:

Then we sat on the floor in the kitchen while mommy got our school bag packed.

Then after school Mommy picked her up early and took her to Safeco Field to meet up with Daddy and watch her first baseball game! We had a snack before the game.

No... she didn't get to eat any of the chips. But she really enjoyed playing with the sealed bag. It made fun sounds when she would clap it with her hands or put it in her mouth!

Then we went down to the field to watch batting practice.

And while we were down there, one of the Cleveland Indians hit a foul ball along the third base line where we were standing, and the security guy on the field was nice enough to pick it up and hand it to her! Much to the dismay of the little boy with the baseball glove standing a little bit aways from us :-). The ball immediately went into her mouth and she wouldn't let go of it for anything. We went right back up to show Daddy!

And then it was almost time for the game to start so we went to our seats to get comfortable!

And then we watched the game!

She thoroughly enjoyed herself, alternating her attention between the crowd and the field. And every time the crowd would cheer or clap, Baby Girl would jump up and down on my knees and grin and yell - her own version of cheering! She totally got it, and totally got into it! It was a beautiful thing to watch :-)

It was a gorgeous afternoon and evening too. In the mid-to-high seventies, blue skies, sunny, slight breeze but a nice warm one. A perfect day for Baby Girl's very first baseball game.

And of course, there are plenty more photos from today in her 9-month photo album!

---

Comments

Add a Comment

Well, we did our part!

But it just wasn't meant to be this year. It was disappointing to see them lose, but I'm still proud of our team and the fact they made it all the way to the Super Bowl in the first place!

All in all a great day. Beautiful weather; we got some fresh air; and we enjoyed a fun evening with our friends.

There's always next year! And you can bet we'll be at all the home games - Baby Girl included!

---

Comments

Add a Comment

It's SUPERBOWL SUNDAY

Go Seahawks!!!!

---

Comments

Add a Comment

Seahawks Win!

Touchdown!

:-)

Baby Girl has another bout of the stomach flu - although we're all handling this one much better, and so far she doesn't seem quite as bad as the last one; she still has a pretty good appetite, is in great spirits. She's sleeping more than usual, but that's what I would expect.

Anyway - she and I stayed home and watched the game on TV while Tim, his mom, and our friend Chris went to see it in person :-) It was a great game!

Next week, we host the NFC Championships. Go Seahawks!

Oh, and of course, here are more pictures of the world's cutest seahawks fan cheering her team on to victory earlier today.

---

Comments

Add a Comment

Going the extra mile...

Heh heh...

Chicago Marathon mistakenly added a mile (Associated Press)

"the race's course was mistakenly set at 27-point-two miles - a full mile longer than the traditional marathon distance".

"Mark Chilar, the race organizer, apologized for the mistake and blames the extended distance on some last-minute second-guessing and adjustments to the course."

Well hell.. you've already gone 26.2. What's another mile at that point, right? ;-) Yeah - don't go there. That last "point two" at the Disney marathon was probably the hardest distance I"ve ever run in my life, regardless of the happy, cuddly Disney characters lining the street cheering me on in the final feet of the race.

However it does remind me of the time my friend Jenn and I went running at Greenlake in downtown Seattle. We were actually in training for the Disney Marathon at the time - very early on in our training, mind you. we had only worked up to about 3 miles at that point. Greenlake has a 2.8 mile paved path completely around the lake, and a 3.2 mile gravel path around the edge of the park that surrounds the lake. Jenn and I were feeling ambitious so we opted fpr the 3.2 mile path - going "point two" beyond our longest run at that point ;-)

So we got there, and parked the car, and walked down to the path, and casually made note of our starting surroundings (which we thought wise, since we'd be running in a circle. We wouldn't want to overrun our starting point, now would we). We stretched and put on our headphones and adjusted the volume on our mp3 players, and off we went.

At one point we passed a Spud Fish and Chips restaurant. Not particularly noteworthy to me, since I don't eat fish. But I like to watch the scenery while I'm running.

We continued running. We were both starting to get a bit tired. We were thinking we had to be close to our starting point by now so we started paying closer attention to the street signs and houses as we ran by. Neither of us had a watch on so we had no idea how long we had been running. The path was not marked, so we had no idea how far we had gone. But it couldn't have been more than 3.2 miles since we hadn't seen our starting street name or passed any of the houses we had made note of when we started.

And that's when we saw Greenlake's second Spud Fish & Chips restaurant. Strange that there were two - maybe one served the east side of the lake and one the west? Although the lake isn't that big, so why people couldn't just walk or drive around was beyond me. Who knew. We pondered on that as we continued to run.

We were starting to get really tired at this point. The music was no longer distracting. I wanted to find our starting point and get back to the car and have some water and a snack. How long had we been running? How long can it possibly take to run 3.2 miles? Were we both that out of shape? It's only "point two" miles longer than last weekend's team run, and that had felt pretty good. Why was this feeling so much longer?

And then the thought started occurring to us that we had overrun the starting point. But we were paying such close attention! How could that have happened? It couldn't have. We must be close. Maybe it was just a bad running day and it felt longer than it was. No more distractions. Time to focus. Must get back to starting point. Must find car.

So eventually we started recognizing the surroundings. Oddly enough we both thought we might have seen them before. At this point there may have been a niggling little thought in the back of our heads that we had actually run around the lake twice. But we both ignored it. It couldn't be. We stretched, drank our water, got back in the car and headed home.

But at our respective homes the thought persisted. So Jenn and I independantly did a little research... and do you know what we found? There is only one Spud Fish & Chips at Greenlake. We had run around Greenlake twice. That's 6.4 miles, when we had only set out to do 3.2, and our longest run to date had been 3. We must have gotten back to the starting point faster than we had expected, while we were still absorbed in our running rhythm and the music and the distracting lake scenery - before we started paying attention and looking at the street names. Needless to say we both felt a) quite sheepishly foolish ("Hey look! There are two Spud Fish & Chips at Greenlake! How odd"... "Yeah, how odd!") but at the same time b) quite exhilerated and proud of ourselves - we had just run 6.4 miles! That's over twice our longest run to date in training! We rock!

The following Saturday when we met with our Train to End Stroke Team for our usual team run, the goal was 4 miles. And Jenn and I breezed through it effortlessly ;-)

Anyway - kudos to everyone who finished the Chicago Marathon - way to go the extra mile! :-)

---

Comments

Add a Comment

Congratulations Sarah!

Congrats go out to my sister, Sarah, who ran and finished her first 10K run last Saturday during the National Capital Race Weekend in Ottawa.

The official results have been posted but you can just hop on over to saedigh.com to see her finish time :-)

And as if that wasn't enough exercise, in 4 weeks she's heading over to Tanzania to climb Mt. Kilimanjaro. I'm not kidding.

Go Sarah! I'm impressed and proud of you!

---

Comments

Add a Comment

March Madness is here. But did you know...

I am NOT a basketball fan at all. It just doesn't hold my interest. Not sure if it is the egos and attitudes ("me me me") that is pervasive throughout the NBA; or the fact that there just appears to be nothing competitive about a bunch of 8 foot tall players trying to dunk a ball into a 10 foot high hoop or more generally where 3-digit scores are not uncommon. It's just never really interested me the way football and hockey have.

However - since it is that time of year here in the good ol' U S of A, I thought it worthwhile mentioning (since it's not as well known a fact as I thought it would be) that basketball was actually invented by a Canadian.

Yup. Them's my people!

Exerpt from inventors.about.com:

James Naismith was the Canadian physical education instructor who invented basketball in 1891. James Naismith was born in Almonte, Ontario and educated at McGill University [Heather's note: my alma mater, by the way] and Presbyterian College in Montreal. He was the physical education teacher at McGill University (1887 to 1890) and at Springfield College in Springfield, Massachusetts (1890 to 1895). At Springfield College (which was then the Y.M.C.A. training school), James Naismith, under the direction of American phys-ed specialist Luther Halsey Gulick, invented the indoor sport of basketball.

The first formal rules were devised in 1892. Initially, players dribbled a soccer ball up and down a court of unspecified dimensions. Points were earned by landing the ball in a peach basket. Iron hoops and a hammock-style basket were introduced in 1893. Another decade passed, however, before the innovation of open-ended nets put an end to the practice of manually retrieving the ball from the basket each time a goal was scored.

In 1959, James Naismith was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame (called the Naismith Memorial Hall of Fame.)

Incidentally, the rules for Modern Ice Hockey (hockey as we know it today), were also invented by a Canadian, J G A Creighton, who was ALSO a student at McGill university.

Go McGill!

Go Canada!

Go Team! (I guess if I have to pick one, I'll root for the Huskies. But I likely won't actually watch any of the games ;-))

---

Comments

Add a Comment

Quit yer whinin'

It's Superbowl weekend this weekend. Patriots vs Eagles on Sunday.

While of course we'd much prefer to be rooting for our beloved Seahawks in the Superbowl, that just wasn't in the cards. But we maintain eternal hope for the future. So - in the absence of having a team to root FOR in the Superbowl, we will be avidly watching the game on Sunday and rooting AGAINST the Patriots. It's become a tradition :-)

And so, it is with great pleasure I begin our anti-Patriots crusade by bringing you an article that reinforces just what a whiney bunch of weenies the Patriots are as a team.

Pats complaining about practice field again (Mark Long / Associated Press)

Whatever.

Go Eagles!

---

Are you ready for some FOOTBALL?

Woohoo! The football season is here! Well... the pre-season is, anyway :-)

Tonight at 7pm is our season home opener - Seattle Seahawks vs Denver Broncos.

So you know where we'll be tonight :-)

I wasn't always a football fan. It wasn't until Tim and I started dating that I got into it. It wasn't that I disliked it - I just didn't understand it and had no interest in it. But after it became apparent that we would still be dating into the fall of 2000, Tim saw fit to warn me that Sundays and Monday nights are off limits. Meaning, if I make any plans to do something on Sunday or Monday night during football season, I'd be doing it without him :-) Fair enough! Good to know the boundaries of the relationship early on :-)

But Tim was not just hoping I'd leave him alone on Sundays and Mondays - he really wanted me to share his enthusiasm for the game so he bought me "Idiot's Guide to Football". Great book! I read it cover to cover and by the end was even impressing Tim with my knowledge of the game.

Tim's been a season ticket holder for several years now, so we've gone to all the home games (I think we missed one in 2003 when we were on our Honeymoon; and I missed the one that Tim took my Dad to in winter of 2002, when Mom, Sarah and I went wedding dress shopping instead :-).

My initial impressions of the game after reading the book and going to the first home game can be summed up like this:

Violent Chess

When you get past all the helmet banging and bone crunching and grunting and sweating and all the gladiator analogies, there's actually a whole lot of strategy involved.

Anyway - Football season is here, and I'm excited!

Go Seahawks!

Post Game Update

Sigh... they lost...

---