Building and another new baby (soon)

Been a busy few weeks here in the fitdad household.  We listed our house at the end of May, were under contract in 3 days and closed on the sale June 28th.

We officially became homeless that day and were graciously taken in by my in-laws until our new house is built in October.  We are building with Ryan Homes here in Pittsburgh so expect to be bombarded with posts along the way as we build.

I have been seriously negligent in posting regularly but life has been terribly hectic and given the opportunity to blog or be outside with Noah and the family I will always take the latter.  

We have been doing some of this:

Constantly this:

and, I have squeezed in a few of these:

Grampa has strong affection for ice cream so I think I am going to be doing much more running in the coming weeks...Who can say no to grampa and ice cream...I can't.

Then again if Christine gets around to having a baby in the next few weeks I am going to be doing more feeding, changing, and sleeping than running.

In that case if I continue with my ice cream habit I am going to be a fair bit more Fat Dad in the coming weeks.

Stay Hydrated and get outside!

Thanks for reading.

Happy Easter!

Good Afternoon friends,

It's been close to 2 months since my last post.  Life in the fitdad house has been very busy.  Preparations are under way for the new nursery for baby number 2 due in August.  Work has been insanely busy and run training has been taking up a good deal of my free time.  I have been seeing great strides in my times and mile splits.  This has definitely been a worthwhile endeavor!  The mix of recovery workouts and stressful speed and tempo workouts has reminded me of my days in high school running cross country.  My fitness level has improved drastically.

I have learned a very important lesson about flexibility, stretching and proper recovery as well.  I had a bit of a knee issue a few weeks back.  More on that in a future post.

Any additional free time I do have has been spent playing chase with Noah, building duplo castles for him to smash or playing with trucks.  Noah is all boy anymore, trucks, cars, trucks, and more trucks.  If it has wheels it gets driven around the house...heck if he can pretend it has wheels it gets driven around the house.  These past few months have been so fun with our little man.  He has such an endearing and wonderful personality.

Today we are going to spending our time with family enjoying the holiday and relaxing.   If you celebrate Easter I hope you and your family have a wonderful and happy holiday.  Enjoy the time with family and friends!

Happy Easter! Thank you for reading!

Smash Cake!

We celebrated Noah's first birthday this past weekend surrounded by family and friends.  While we don't plan on having such a ridiculously large party every year for his birthday, how could we say no to a huge soiree for his first birthday?  Noah had the requisite 1st birthday smash cake, my mom made AMAZING cupcakes, and Christine impressed with her party for our little boy.

My wife gets all the credit for putting together and planning this party, she did a wonderful job from the catering, to the decorations, to the planning of the treat boxes for all the kids in attendance.  We had a party hat decorating table so the kids (and adults) could make their own party hat.  There were balloons, snacks, amazing food, and delicious cake.  As well as a broad assortment of libations for the adults and sugary sweet  drinks for the kids.

We can't begin to express our gratitude to everyone who came out to make that day so special.  I think Noah had a chance to make his rounds to everyone and wave hello, give a high five, or a sly smile.  It was wonderful seeing everyone, I just wish we would have had more time to spend chatting with everyone individually.  We are truly blessed to have such a large group of people who care enough about us and our son to come out and celebrate with us.  I hope Noah understands growing up just how lucky he really is.

Here are a selection of some of my favorite photos from the afternoon:

9 MONTHS!

Tomorrow (5/17) will be 9 months since Noah came into our lives.  The past month has been a whirlwind of baby milestones.  As a first time parent I can honestly say that I thought that Noah would just one day go from laying and rolling around to full fledged crawling.  Call it naivete or whatever it may be but that's just how I thought a baby developed.  Little did I know that playing on the belly became grasping and pulling, kicking and army crawling long before he would ever pop up onto all fours and start that first crawl.

The past few weeks Noah would spend a lot of time in quad rocking back and forth and then laying his belly back down on the floor.  He would then proceed to lay on the floor reach out his arm and try to use "The Force" to draw an object closer.  When that didn't work he would shimmy, shake, pull, grab, and army crawl his way to the object.  Finally grasping hold of it and proceeding to place the item in his baby jaws and chomp down with his two new bottom teeth.  (Did I mention he has some sharp little chompers now)?

Once he had a grasp on the quad position he slowly advanced to putting one arm out in front of him and then rocking till his little leg popped forward.  The beginning of crawling.  He continually worked himself into a sweat on the floor daily until that one movement became two, and then three, then five or six crawling movements.  Then suddenly a day or two ago...Noah just strung together a crawl across the entire living room.  All it takes to get him going now is a little motivation in the form of a desired toy,  mom and dad's toes (he loves pinching our feet) or the baby gate that dad was assembling.

On the eating front Noah is getting to experience all kinds of new foods, textures, and levels of puree.  He loves apples, cantaloupe, watermelon, and carrots.  He is still a little unsure of the fork mashed bananas, but he does like pureed banana.  He is also slowly but surely getting used to his sippy cup...although he prefers to shake it, chew on it, and flip it upside down to play with the little nub of plastic on the bottom of the cup.

It has been an exciting month in our household, he is changing every day almost so fast that I feel bad missing a day to work because when I see him the following day he has a new trick to show me!

Here are the 9 month photos from our session yesterday.  I can tell you that now that Noah is mobile he won't sit still for pictures long...especially once daddy brings out his fancy camera.

Enjoy!

 A little post crop vignetting:

 Love that smirk!:

 Probably one of my favorite pictures of Noah ever:

 Let me see that camera for a second dad :

 I'm outta here!!:

 Enough already dad!!:

8 Months!

Yesterday was Noah's 8 month birthday...I can't believe it has been 8 months already.  Our little man has such a wonderful and pleasant personality.  He laughs (real and fake now), he imitates us, he cocks his head to the side when he listens. (which is rather adorable).  He smiles slyly and giggles.  He eats almost every vegetable we put on a spoon for him.  He climbs all over us even though he isn't quite crawling yet.  He stands and holds himself up with a little assistance from mom or dad, and he is always climbing up to see what's on the other side of the couch.

I love being a father, I love my family days with Christine and Noah, and I enjoy sharing our experiences with you and hope you enjoy them as well.

Thanks for reading.

Here are the 8 month photos:

Time Flies.

     It's amazing to me how quickly times goes by, and I mean in general not just since we had Noah.  We are rapidly approaching my 2 favorite holidays, Thanksgiving (eating, and family) and Christmas(eating, family, presents).  We are also rapidly approaching a milestone day for Noah as well, he will be 3 months old in 8 days.

As a first time parent I sometimes just observe in awe as he develops and changes almost by the hour.  A month ago he could only hold his head up for a few seconds before he would get tired and frustrated and drop his head to the floor.  He can now hold his head up for as long as you will let him lay on his belly.  He is beginning to "superman" when we lay him on his stomach.  He definitely recognizes our voices as well.  I came into the room the other day and he immediately spun his head around to find me, and smiled.  Of course I take second fiddle to mom, if she walks in the room he gets all goo goo eyed and so does she.  Watching Noah on his play mat on the floor as he lays on his back kicking and smiling smacking his little hands off the noise makers hanging overhead.  He sees himself in his little mirror and he smiles back and sometimes yells things out like he is trying to get his own attention (of course he has no self awareness yet).  He is quite the verbal little dude, most days I can sit him on my legs facing me and we will "talk" for long periods.  He yells out something and I respond in kind, he smiles, coo's and yells some other random sound.  I repeat my sound and we continue this process until he gets bored.  It's really fun and I am beginning to get pretty creative with my stories when I interpret what he is "saying."  You can almost see the little neurons and pathways in his brain developing and "connecting the dots."

Christine is an OT, and she has charts for baby/newborn development.  Charts for milestones and everything else under the sun.  I occasionally glance over them to make sure that Noah is developing on schedule.  He is, as much as I would like to believe that he is exceptional, he's not...he's right on track and that is perfect in my book.

Being a first time father of a 3 month old is finally becoming alot of fun.  The first few weeks to months are mostly stressful with little reward other than the satisfaction that comes from knowing you have a child.  As the baby begins to develop though, as you see the changes in the child and the child recognizes you then it becomes an otherworldly experience.  I have been told (and I am) treasuring this time, taking it all in as much as possible because the rumor on the street it that once he becomes mobile life gets crazy again.  Until then I am just going to enjoy this time, enjoy my son, and enjoy the sleep we are getting now that he is going 8-10 hours a night.

Post #2 10/27/2011 Fitdad update.

I seem to have become a cluster-poster.  Making all my posts for the past few days in one single day, so if you didn't read the earlier post from today you can find it here.  This post is going to be more fitdad, than dad, but there is still a small amount of dad thrown in at the end.

I have now been going on close to a week with my "refocused" approach to weight watchers for men.  Sunday will be the determining factor if it is working.  I have been diligently tracking my points and snacks and I also lowered my daily points target by 2 to see if that helps as well.  I have been on the bike trainer once for 35 minutes and ran two days ago, all since my last post.  I had made plans to go ride with my friend Mark on Wednesday, but rain and a hankering for pancakes kept us indoors.  Can't say that I regretting missing that workout for Pumpkin Pancakes and a great brunch spent with Mark and Kristin and their daughter Carly.  She and Noah are just too cute when they are together...all the old ladies were swooning.  Mark and I figure we can really pick up some hot blue hairs during brunches.

I set out on a mission during my run a few days ago to see how fast I could run a 5k.  I did that a few weeks ago when I was in Jersey for a wedding and ran a 25:38.  My goal was to run faster than that, I pushed and pushed, and finished in 25:25.  I was pretty stoked!!  Actually a little sore today because I haven't run that hard in a while.  I feel as though if I keep pushing myself I will be able to get my 5k time down into the 24's by the new year and hopefully further down that next year.

I need to get in at least 1 or 2 more workouts this week to feel comfortable with my progress.  Today is out because I work all day.  I will either have to get up early before work Friday (unlikely), or workout after work.  I am due to spin on the bike for at least 30 minutes followed by a run before Sunday.

My diet has been erratic the last few weeks, but it's difficult to always stay on the program when you are attending parties (baptism) and going out to eat.  Thank heaven that fruits and veggies are 0 points on weightwatchers plus because bananas, apples, kiwi, celery, carrots, tomatoes, cucumbers, and pears have been my hunger busters the past few days.  I have also relied on fiber one bars (4pts), baby bell (light) cheeses (1pt), and eggs (2pts) and chicken breasts (vary due to size), to fill my diet with fiber, protein, and flavor!  I rarely use mayo on sandwiches because its has a points value, I prefer hot sauce and mustard whenever possible.  I have really tried hard to cut out the mindless snacking that I consistently don't think about when I am hungry as well.

Now on to the additional "dad" section of part 2 of today's blog.  Here are the developed pictures from Noah's 2 month photo shoot!  I have had a few people ask me where we got the onesies marked with months for the pictures.  Those are actually stickers, we received them as a gift from our good friend Kristin Sullivan!  She said she got them from www.etsy.com just search for baby month stickers.  You will see a large selection of them.  (I don't make any money from you clicking that link just wanted to share!)

Lets Get Baptized!

This past Sunday 10/23/2011 was Noah's Baptism.  He performed marvelously, only crying once when I passed him off to Rev. Thompson.  He was a hit among the congregation in his dapper all white tuxedo and bow tie.  The Baptism was followed up by a nice and small family gathering at my in-laws house.  We are incredibly grateful for them opening up their home to us because we would have been pretty cramped in our house!

Here are the pictures that capped off the day, complete with corny captions by yours truly.

 Fist Bump daddy-o

 I am sooooo hungry I could just EAT this BOWTIE! nomnomnomnom.

 Daddy, I am working up a surprise for you!

 Ok, I will smile nice once or twice.

 Wanna see my ehhhh face?

 My tie is unclipped, cause I'm cool like that.

 Scruntchy shoulders!

 HEY DAD!

 My Really Sad face...

My pitiful face.