Am I seeing double???

The end of another weekend! They just fly by!! We had such a nice weekend with family and friends :-) It was my sisters birthday and we spent the day with the family....Charlie just loves her cousin Alex and is bewitched by her when she is around. Ali is growing so fast and is a real chatterbox...she is also very funny with a great sense of humor. Charlie has started on solids- which she is loving. She is 5 months next week and the paediatrician suggested starting her to help with the reflux. I held off but she has started waking a few times at night really hungry so I thought it was worth seeing if she was interested. Well it only took one little taste and she was into it! Haha she takes after me and will enjoy her food. She has tolerated it perfectly and her reflux has also improved- woo hoo!!! It is a bit scary watching her eat and think that it was not that long ago that she was so tiny!!

Saturday I went for a run with the pram- it was really hilly and a killer!!! I managed 8km and felt like I had worked really hard! We headed out to Smithfield on Sunday and I ran with the girls and we did the half marathon at an easy long run pace. Ray pushed Charlie in the 5km and did 4:50/km pace....she will get to go way faster with daddy!!!
I could feel the hilly run from the day before- my bum felt tired! We cruised along and chatted crap the whole way. I was really happy to finish....I have very little endurance and once I get to 17km I feel really tired. I finished in just on 2hrs so I was happy with that. My big goal for this year is the sydney marathon but I think I will aim to race the hunter half in July as well. I am also looking forward to the 10kms on Saturday....fingers crossed for a sub 50!

We are also doing the relay for life on the weekend which will be a really sad weekend this year....but will be great to do with some very special people!!!

feeling better.....

Thankfully we are all feeling much better in the Rowell household!!! What a yuck virus and almost everyone I know has been sick. Charlie is eating again and back to her smiley self :-)

I was going to go for a run on Tuesday but by the time I got around to it it was pitch black and pouring with rain....so I piked. I went to the gym instead and did a spin class. I love this class and I always leave feeling like I have worked really hard. I went for a 7km run yesterday with Charlie in the pram. It has gotten a lot easier and no longer feels really awkward to run. The hills are a killer though!!! I hovered around the 6min/km pace. I will go for a run again this afternoon with the pram....it gets too dark now to run at night and Ray runs in the morning, so I am going to replace my 4:30pm walk with running and do as much as I can with the pram. This will mean trying to do my hills and speed work with the pram...so it will be ugly, but better than no running at all. I am sure pushing a combined baby/pram weight of almost 17kg will help as well....how easy will it feel when I run on my own!

The first of many.....

....colds that is. Our little unit should be quarantined as we have all had a virus this past two weeks. It started with me and then Charlie and then Ray. So Charlie has her first of many colds. She started with a clogged nose and then she got this awful cough and the last few days has been vomiting and diarrohea. Despite all this she has been in good spirits and still smiles and chatters away....haha obviously takes after me and not her dad ;-) She is 4 and half months old and has grown heaps! I can not believe how big she seems. She has burst out of her three zeros and is now into the two zeros. I decided it was time to move into the next size when she had a muffin top when I put her jeans on- so cute!! She is now sleeping unwrapped and I am able to put her into the cot to sleep without all the patting and rocking! Woo Hoo! She usually protests for about 10mins and goes off to sleep. It is so much easier than all the patting and actually takes less time for her to go to sleep. She sleeps right through most nights but with this cold she is waking a few times after lots of coughing wakes her up.

I am really loving being a mum. I love watching her grow and develop and discover new things. I am not going to like having to go back to work....it seems so far removed from what we get up to now. I would love to be at home with her....but unfortunately the mortgage dictates other things. So I am just enjoying every day at the moment and cherishing everything she does.

On the running front I have not done a lot in the past two weeks thanks to the cold! I rested the week leading into Canberra hoping the cold would go away...but it hung around. I probably should not have run at Canberra but decided I had looked forward to this run for months so I would run and just take it easy if I felt bad. I was actually surprised that I was able to do the time I did. I was on track for a 49min run until I hit the 8km mark and then the cold caught up with me and I felt heavy and could do nothing but slow down. I forgot how much I hated this 10km course. You go past the start line 4 times and it feels like you are just going around and around. The great thing was having my sister and little neice on the sidelines cheering- so I got to high five Ali each time I went past :-) So I finished in 51:05 and I felt really happy considering how crap I was feeling. So hopefully I can get back under the 50min mark soon. Ray ran the marathon on the Sunday and had a shocker! He woke up with my cold and felt crap. He probably also should not have run....but are we ever sensible?? He said he felt ok until the 30km mark and then things fell apart. He said he could feel 6ft for the next 12 km. He was so relieved to finish and swore he will never do the two races again! haha I joked that he will have a great marathon PB next time he runs! I had a great time in Canberra with my family and friends and Charlie was great. My sister and cousin came to cheer ray on but the weather was so awful on the Sunday that they very sensibly went home! I went for a run on the Monday and felt so awful! I have spent the rest of the week resting and sleeping when Charlie sleeps. I am finally feeling a better and will start back into things tomorrow.

Not much else is happening....all is bliss at the moment!