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Month 10
Austin and Summer,
These monthly notes I write to you are, in many ways, the
baby book we are keeping for you so we can look back and remember how we were
feeling and what you were doing at different stages of your first year. Since some months can feel pretty
similar to the previous one, certain entries are harder to write than
others. You may be doing different
stuff and of course our love for you grows every day, but to simply write about
that can feel really repetitive.
And honestly, monthly love letters would be kind of boring for you to
read about in the future. So, I
think I’m going to take a slightly different approach this month and write
about an experience that I had.
On October 7th, I ran the Chicago Marathon, which
I’d been training for over the past 6 months or so. This was noteworthy for two main reasons: 1) I ran a marathon,
and 2) it was the first time since you were born that I went out of town over
night without you.
This was third marathon I’d run, and I trained harder for
this one than either of the previous two.
In my first two marathons, the results were mixed. I finished my first marathon (the
Marine Corps Marathon in Washington DC) in basically 5 hours due to some
unforeseen circumstances and a really bad day. Right after that race ended I thought I’d never run another
marathon. But months later I
realized I still had unfinished business to tend to, so I started training
again and ran my second marathon (the Atlanta Marathon) the following
year. My goal was to break 4
hours, but I finished in 4:00:04. It
was a huge improvement, but I still had more to accomplish. That’s why this year I trained even
harder, with lots of long runs, plenty of speed training, and even giving up
dessert for the two months leading up to the race (which is not easy to do
around your mommy).
On race day, the first 20 miles went amazingly well and I
was on pace to finish in 3:30, which would have been an incredible time for
me. But the last 6.2 miles, I got
a ton of cramps and really had to battle through some serious pain to keep
going. I ended up finishing in
3:41, 19 minutes better than my last race.
So, why give you all of that detail? For a couple of reasons. First, you should know that while it is
easy to want good things to just happen,
more often than not you have to work really hard to achieve things that will
make you proud of yourselves. And
sometimes even when you work incredibly hard for something, the results still
aren’t exactly what you’d hoped for.
And you know what? That
doesn’t even mean that you’ve failed.
It just means you experienced a journey along the way. And if the goal you were trying to
achieve still seems appealing to you, you should use that experience as
motivation to get right back up, try again, and succeed the next time
around.
I also wanted you to know that during those last few miles, when
it got really tough, I thought about you guys and was able to keep going
because I wanted to do my best for you.
Your mom and I talk all the time about how proud we are to have you as
our babies. And as you grow up and
your list of accomplishments gets longer and longer, we’ll only grow
prouder. But something I’d never
really spent much time thinking about was the other side of things. And the reality is, I want you to be
proud of me, too. I know you’re
much too young right now to understand what that means, but hopefully when
you’re old enough to read this by yourselves, you’ll understand and you’ll even
think that your dad has done some pretty cool stuff in his life.
As for being out of town, I had a great time on my trip and
I was busy for most of it, but I was definitely very excited to be back home
with mommy and my two little monkeys.
We talked via Skype a couple times a day, so I was able to see you guys
eat and play, even if you were confused about why daddy was inside of mommy’s
computer. Of course mommy had no
problem at all being home alone with you.
But this month mommy is going out of town for a few days, so hopefully
I’ll be able to report back with the same level of success when she gets home
from her trip.
As for this month…Austin, I think it’s always kind of up for
interpretation as to what a baby’s true “first word” is, but we’re pretty sure
that you said “ball” this month. I
was at work and mommy was holding a ball when you made a “ba” sound. I’ve seen it happen several times
since, so we’re pretty convinced it’s for real. I don’t know if this means you’re going to be some kind of
amazing athlete or if you’re going to walk around with your hands in your pants
all day (you already like to do that in your bath every night), but we’ll find
out soon enough.
In other news, you also got your first haircut this
month. Your sideburns were
starting to look like payos and it was driving your mom crazy, so we went to
some fancy salon and you got to sit in a firetruck and get your hair cut. It was actually pretty uneventful, so
rather than describe the whole scene, I’ll just let you watch the video.
Summy, you finally got tired of seeing Austin move and shake
all over the house while you sat and watched, so you decided to start crawling
too this month. Now you’re all
over the place, too. You also
started dancing to music. Mommy
has been taking you guys to music class and it seems to really have resonated
with you. Anytime we put on music
from one of your toys, particularly the ABC’s, you start moving back and forth
to the music. It’s pretty damn adorable. And
you also starting clapping your hands this month, so whenever we say “Yay,
Summy!” in a real excited voice, you clap your little hands and give us a huge
smile.
Can’t wait to see what you guys do next month!
Love,
Daddy
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