The Double Edged Sword

Today marks the first day of returning to running.

If I were to be strictly accurate I would tell you that today was a run/walk event. It is based on the Couch to 5k training schedule found at Coolrunning.com. So more than half of my time today was taken up with walking.

Since I was taking this giant leap, or many short steps, back into the world of running I thought I would review my running goals as per my old page here on the blog. I had a good giggle at them.

1. Run 5km in under 30 minutes. (Told you I was no Olympic runner!)


2. Run the Taupo Half-Marathon. (Definitely no time goals here.)


3. Run a minimum 30km each week.


4. Run Round The Bays in 50 minutes.

I'm a long way from any of these little puppies.
I think the renewed goals for 2008 should read something like:

1. Run more than once a week.


2. Learn to run with the stroller in such a manner that neither I nor Miss OWW lands in a heap on the pavement.


3. Overcome rebellious gluteus maximus muscles that insist running is too hard!


4. Eventually replace the grimace of determination with a smile of relaxation.

Once these four simple (hah!) tasks are completed I should then be in a place to take on my old "go for glory" goals.

As for the double edged sword - it's the idea that running and exercise in general is good for you, yet your body complains and aches and you find yourself asleep on the sofa at 3 p.m. in the afternoon exhausted from a twenty minute trot around the block.

If I go missing in action here for the next little while don't send out a search party, I have simply slumped onto the sofa and all areas of my body will have mutinied and refused to sit at a computer screen let alone stretch themselves to actually typing. Perish the thought.

For those who may be asking themselves - why are you inflicting this on yourself? The answer is simple. It's my attempt to pre-empt the dreaded XBox 2017 or PlayStation 29. After all it's unlikely she will take kindly to the hypocrisy of "go outside and get some exercise" if her Mum is sitting on the sofa munching her way through a double packet of Chocolate Chip Cookies (yum). And I may be getting old, but I'm not so far gone as to remember how much that sort of hypocrisy really ripped my britches. Although I am now old enough to wish that "do as I say, not as I do" really did work. ;)

I'll see you all once the aching has subsided. 8O

Little Divers

Ever wonder what your baby looked like under water, but didn't have Sir Robert Winston's film crew with you when you hit the local swimming pools? Now you can see what they're up to under the waves.

Our little diver provided us with this photograph today, courtesy of her Gran's camera. Ours doesn't do wet, so she kindly lent it to us to take some action shots.



Miss OWW always blinks and closes her eyes as she is lowered into the water, so it was a surprise to see that she opens them up once below the surface. You live and learn something new about your baby every day.

I can highly recommend attending swimming classes for little tots. It's a great way of getting them confident in the water, a good opportunity for socialising and excellent for learning tips and tricks that you can take away for your own private swimming time.

If you're not comfortable in water then it would be a great idea to get some lessons and confidence yourself before taking your child to classes. In our class it is subtle but obvious who doesn't feel 100% comfortable with being in the water and this definitely seems to translate over to their baby's enjoyment.
And one last tip - don't take the baby to swimming classes (or the pool with the family) if they've been up for ages, they just can't take it and will have a melt down. After about 30 minutes of being in the water Miss OWW begins to get irritable and wants to get out, then after the follow-up washing, drying and feeding she will easily sleep for the best part of two to three hours.

Happy paddling everyone !

A Family Milestone

Today at 7:35 am we had a family milestone.
Miss Oh Waily has now been out in the world with us for a whole six months.
That's half a year.

Good God, where did the time go?

Ah, right. Changing nappies, feeding, walking around as a new parent sleep-deprived zombie, living with family, renovating our house and having your spine fiddled about with. That's how you make six months disappear as though by magic. Feel free to take note in case you want to whiz through your life a bit faster.

Here is a photograph of the little Miss, taken this morning with her new best friend, Sneezy the Dragon.



P.S. Mr OWW is still disappointed that they wouldn't upgrade the titanium screws used for his discectomy to adamantium. ;)

P.P.S. Not sure what adamantium is? Here's a description.

Goals Update: January

The beginning of every year tends to bring it's share of goal setting and I'm no different from the rest of the world in that respect. I set out some of my goals in an earlier post, at least the ones that I was willing to make public, and like every other goal-setter I knew that my chances of maintaining any sort of enthusiasm past the first week was slim.

In fact I've already let one goal start and then stop, so I thought I would attempt to keep on track for the year by posting progress notes on a monthly basis. I won't be revisiting each individual goal mentioned earlier, only those that I have something to say about. So here is the first of twelve issues.

Parenting Goals:

Introduction of solid food

This one is underway. We are currently a rabbit. Carrots. Carrots. Carrots again.
We have discovered that the Watties *cram as many items into one type of baby food as possible* concept is stupid. If there are multiple vegetables in the jar, which one is causing the gripey, sleepless, gassy baby? In our case it was the sweet potato. Turns out that Mum (me) was being dim. I had read a while back that one should not be giving babies starchy foods until there are a few molars in the little mouths, as babies prior to that don't produce enough ptyalin (sp?) enzymes to deal with the starch successfully. So there I go, spooning starchy food into the little one's mouth. Carrots on the other hand could be scoffed until the cows, sheep and any other farmyard animal decide to come home. And given the chance to get her hands into the bowl, would be.

Have a happy, healthy and active daughter

Apart from the sweet potato fiasco, Miss O is generally happy and healthy. At last Plunket visit she weighed in right on the average mark for her age. She is now sitting unaided, although protected from serious head trauma by pillow surrounds and attentive Mum. This came on in a bit of a rush. From requiring a steadying hand to simply needing a catcher's mitt was a matter of about 10 days. I'm not sure if this is normally how it goes, but that's how it went for Miss O.
No major signs of crawling yet, other than the odd inverted triangle as she manages to dig her toes in and lift her hips up only to be thwarted by not knowing what to do with those things her hands are at the end of. She has begun to roll in all directions, and there is no guarantee that she will be in the same place on the floor should I turn my back for a minute. However, since we have learned to sit unaided, we are not particularly happy with being laid on the floor and we let our Mum know about it too.
On the active front, we have been going to swimming classes once a week for the past month and are enjoying the whole splashing around thing. We are very brave and manage to dive under water multiple times during the class.

Creativity Goals:

Blog consistently

I think that up until the last week of January, this was going pretty well. At very least there was a minimum of one entry per week, with 13 posts overall for the month. This is certainly an improvement over the last few months, but not quite what I had in mind when I made the goal, so there is room to improve here.

Twelve months of photography challenges

This one is well under way with a vigorous debate over what makes up a Still Life. I still don't know how much size matters Bruce. You could argue for and against the 747 parked on the M1, but I tend to agree with you that this is more like installation art than still life.
For those who have missed the debate, check out the comments on the Still Life posts, and feel free to add your opinion.

• Photography Challenge - Still Life


• Still Life Challenge: Update

Finish Noah’s Ark

So this is a bit of a joke one. Since making this goal list I have managed a massive four stitches. This might be pie in the sky for 2008. :(

Personal Pleasures, Treasures and Measures Goals:

Read 24 books or more

This has been a bit of a hit and miss so far in January. I have read two whole books and a couple of chapters or more in at least five or six other books. One of the books that I managed to get through was The Dark Room by Minette Walters. The other was a book about babies and sleeping.

Lose “X” kilograms of weight

This is the sorry goal that has been started and abandoned, and is about to be re-started again. We purchased digital scales today with the aim of keeping a rough track of Miss O's weight gains between Plunket visits, and of course I had to try them out to make sure they worked. Ah, yes. I hear you. Fatal mistake.
This one gets a full make-over starting tomorrow. Time to shift all the excess baggage.

Spend some time on family history research and break through one brick wall

This has been the hobby of choice for January and part of the reason for fewer blog entries. I have managed to get a little bit closer to breaking one of my brick walls. Or perhaps I have just managed to make it a little more complicated? Hmm. Family history research...the patience tester.

Work Goals:

Create the new website

At the moment just doing the part-time things for work is taking up a fair portion of my non-baby time, so the website update is going at a snail's pace. I have begun the process of learning how to use CSS to design the layout as well as look of a website, and I've been enjoying that. I need to create a new MindMap for the alterations and additions so that I can at least see what's needed. That's February's task I think.

[For those who may be interested in such things, I use MindManager software from Mindjet to generate my MindMaps.]

That would be the wrap up for January. Here's to more success in February.

Still Life Challenge: Update

So following Bruce's comments regarding the definition of still life, I went back to the drawing board for two of my subjects, the Sheep and the Souvenir.

Here's an updated version of each. What do you think? Is this a bit closer to the idea of still life?

Photography Challenge - Still Life

So the end of the month has arrived, and I have photographs to share.
Some I posted previously in the OWW Photography announcement, but I have also included a few new ones. Don't laugh too hard or be too cruel with your comments please. :)

As always, you can get a much better view of them by clicking through to the Flickr album. And in a couple of cases, this would definitely be beneficial.

I would also like to thank those of you who kindly gave advice on the depth of field issue. I think I finally have the idea embedded. Now I need to put it into regular practice and see what transpires.

















And now for next month's challenge...

Black and White Images.

Family Update and Blog recommendation

I'm sorry for being so quiet lately. It was my intention to be here at least a few times a week, but Real Life seems to be jealous and has been stamping her foot while demanding my attention in a very loud voice.

As you know I have Mr Oh at home, along with Miss Oh, and that has made the workload a little bit on the heavy side. Please don't run your fingers along the tops of any surfaces before you leave, okay? I promise the dusting will be done some time. Maybe before my daughter enrolls in primary school. Maybe not.

Anyway, Mr Oh is progressing well. We are still very cautious about what he can and cannot do. One of the hardest cannots is picking up and carrying Miss Oh. :(
Which means I get to do all of the fetching, carrying, settling, moving and general womanhandling that a baby requires. This leaves me a little bit tired at the end of most days. And in the middle of most days too, if truth were to be told.

While Real Life's back is turned I manage to read a couple of blog entries every so often, so if I haven't visited lately and left comments, it's just that I am a slave to RL and her minions, Housework and Childcare.

One of the little gems that I have discovered in my sneaky visits to the internet is a wonderful blog that I added to my "try them out" RSS feeds a month or so ago. I must recommend it to anyone who loves food. I have been drooling over the pictures and recipes for some time now, and have several earmarked for trial here in the Oh Waily kitchen. If you have a moment, take a stroll over to Food Blogga's blog and enjoy a wander through some stunning food.

Here's a sample of what I mean:

• Ricotta Hotcakes or Tom Brady


• Biscotti and My Mother-in-Law


• Strawberries and Rhubarb; So Good, They're a National Holiday

Don't drool on the keyboard, just add the RSS feed to your reader and enjoy.