A MILE LONG

That is how long my TO DO list is these days. Honestly, the second on item gets checked off (and, yes, I do put little square boxes next to each item so I can put a check-mark inside of it after the item is finished) another item is added. I'm starting to wonder... why there are not 27 hours in a day? can I really pull off being a student, mom, wife, and marathon trainee? can I really survive another hour, day, week, MONTH on so little sleep? will it ever get easier? will my life ever make sense again?

All those questions aside, things are great. The baby is getting ready to turn SIX MONTHS OLD. She's sitting up with support, sucking down the rice cereal a couple of times a day, playing in her bumper-jumper with a huge smile on her face, and quickly out growing all of her cute infant clothes. We made our first TWO trips to the ER last weekend... we thought she might be coming down with her second UTI. We talked to the pediatrician and she told us to go to the hospital just in case. We went and found out she didn't have another infection. Thank goodness. However, something wasn't right and we were instructed to bring her back if she spiked a fever or started showing other signs of an infection. We were home from the hospital for less than a few hours when she spiked a fever of nearly 104. Scary stuff. Her little legs got all red and blotchy and she wanted nothing but to be held. We went back to the ER, were seen by a wonderful resident (Dr. Dave), and given a diagnosis of viral infection. Less than 12 hours later her fever was gone and she seems to be back to her normal self. I spend Thursdays and Fridays at home with her and am so enjoying our time together. Today is definitely an inside day because of the rain and cool temperatures.

School is in full swing now... I started a new seven-week course on Monday. It's an advanced biostatistics course focusing on methods for microbiology. As I was sitting in class yesterday (learning about statistics from incomplete randomized block trials), I couldn't help but wonder how I got to this point in my life. I'm taking 800-level statistics course (two this semester) and loving it. The classes are kicking my butt and causing my brain to spin, but I'm loving it. I cannot wait to put all of my knowledge to good use (yes, some day in the future I'll have to get a job!).

D and I are proud to announce/reveal our new blog OUR WEEKLY MENU. We spend a fair amount of time each week planning menus, creating recipes (D does this), experimenting, organizing, and talking about food. So we've decided to put our menus, recipes, grocery lists, and other food thoughts on the web. It's been a lot of fun working on a blog together and we hope that it will be as useful to others as it is fun for us.

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To Do today: reading, reading, and more reading. I have a chapter on controlling for random effects in a longitudinal analysis to read and two books on public health and GIS to get through. I'll be curled up in the living room with a pen, highlighter, and strong cup of coffee for most of the day.

Marathon training: the NYC marathon is seven months and one week away. Yesterday I mapped out a rough training schedule for myself. I'm not able to get as many runs in a week as I'd like right now, but am hoping the weather will improve and the little one will be strong enough to sit in the running stroller soon.

Marathon attire: I bought myself a really cute running skirt at Lucy to wear during the marathon. Nothing like cute clothes to help me get motivated.