So yesterday was a milestone of sorts for Tyler. It was his first time to completely strip all his clothes off and run through the house in only his socks. Yikes! Not my most anticipated milestone. :) Surprisingly he is my first child to do the whole stripping thing. My other two would take off their shoes and socks like most little ones do but I have no memory of looking up and watching as they ran naked to me when the last time I had seen them they had been fully clothed. Tyler has long been obsessed with taking off his pants though so I guess I should have expected this. He figured out that his shirt had a wide enough neck opening to pull it down his arms and off that way rather than going over his head. He couldn't have gotten it over his head anyway unless he had unsnapped the crotch. That is what I like about those shirts, they keep the kid clothed when they might otherwise be able to take everything off. But my kid decided he wasn't going to let those pesky snaps stop him from having some naked time. My biggest fear when I saw him was that he had peed on the carpet somewhere, but thankfully that didn't happen. Nap time will now be a little nerve wracking though unless I take to duct taping him into his clothes.
While Tyler has been busy learning to remove his clothes, Riley is starting to make her own choices or what clothes to put on. After discussing it with Paul, we have put into practice allowing Riley to pick out her own clothes without any input from me. It has worked surprisingly well and I have enjoyed my past three stress and argument free mornings. It just so happened that when we started implementing that, we had a cool front go through so she actually had to think about what she was going to wear rather than just putting on shorts or capris. She agonized about it more than I was expecting her to. Yesterday she wanted to wear a sleeveless tunic style top with some black leggings and her black boots that come to her knee. If I had had a say in it, I would have vetoed that idea from the get go. The high temperature for that day was supposed to be the mid-50s so the sleeveless top would be chilly. Plus the boots seemed like they might look funny with the top so I was concerned about that too. But I told her that was fine if it's what she wanted to wear. She asked me what I thought and I told her both that she might be cool and also that I wasn't sure how the boots would look with the outfit but she could wear it with no arguments from me. I think she wanted me to tell her what to do but I just said it was her decision. She ended up changing into jeans and a regular T-shirt that she wore a jacket over. I was actually kind of shocked when she didn't wear what she had really wanted to wear since she had the freedom to but I guess a lot of the conflict we had was she was free to want to wear what she wanted to but she knew I was going to stop her from wearing something that wasn't weather-appropriate. Now that it's entirely her choice she is going to have to actually consider how it will feel to wear what she would initially want to put on. She was glad too that she wore the jeans and t-shirt since it really was a cool day! It was still somewhat chilly today and she chose to wear capris but I didn't say anything. She'll learn what weather is comfortable for what kinds of clothes. Also, she has always been very hot natured so she may be completely comfortable in the capris today even though I'm wearing jeans, a t-shirt, a sweater, socks and my warm slippers and I'm still a little chilly. Overall I think she is going to handle choosing her own clothes really responsibly and I'm proud of her and her willingness to ask what I think and take my advice to heart even if she really wants to do something else.
Tomorrow my little Jakey graduates from preschool! I saw pictures this morning of my nephew, Garrett, at his graduation and he looked so big and cute! Jake has been singing the songs they'll sing at his graduation here at home the past few days and it sounds like it's going to be really cute. Riley remembers singing some of the same songs at her graduation too (she went to the same preschool). I'll be glad for school to be out for both of the kids and to get to a more relaxed summer schedule. I don't plan on doing any more sleeping in than I normally do but I always enjoy having all the kids home and no other priorities or places to go for a couple of months. Riley won't get out of school till June 6th though so we've still got some time left for her.
Next week I plan to start a jogging training program called "Couch to 5k". It's a training program put together by a site called coolrunnings.com that my good friend Rachel told me about years ago. She got started jogging and eventually running through this program after having her last child and she is now so addicted to running that she recently participated in a marathon! I tried doing the program years ago right after Jake was born and while I made progress with it the circumstances weren't conducive for me to stick with the program of exercising. For one thing, we were living in an apartment and I was working out at night in the exercise room while Paul stayed home with the kids. Paul was also in the middle of taking classes to be eligible to sit for his CPA exams so there were nights when he didn't get home till late so I wasn't able to be very regular with my workouts. Then we ended up moving out of state so that just disrupted the whole workout thing completely. But now we are coming up on summer, I have had my eyes opened to the benefits of getting up early in the morning and working out before my kids get up, and we just happen to live in a house that backs right up to a jogging trail! So I decided that while I have a perfectly good elliptical that I normally use, I have been feeling a little burnt out with that so moving my workouts outdoors while the weather is nice seems like a good idea. And though I am by no means an athletic person, there is something about jogging and getting through this program I'm going to use that I find extremely challenging. When I worked on it the first time almost five years ago now, I made decent progress and I can remember how proud of myself I was as I started being able to jog for longer and longer stretches. I don't know if jogging is something I'll want to do all the time or anything like that but while the weather is good and it's light enough at that time of morning, I might as well jog while I'm out there. If I start hating it I can always go back to just walking. But I already feel that sense of challenge and I'm actually looking forward to starting on Monday. I'm waiting till then because of weather this week and various other reasons. But come Monday, I'll be jogging my tush off (hopefully literally), at least 60 seconds at a time. :)
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