Say Cheese! Well... almost

Recently, the little one has taken to making a variety of sucking noises with her tongue. I had attributed this to the fact that we had taken away her pacifier at the beginning of the month, but apparently it was in response to the pressure her little gums were feeling from the start of her first tooth coming through! I know... bad mama! How could I not notice?! In my defense, this weekend I noticed her little gums looked a little red and possibly swollen but when I cleaned her gums after her meals I didn't feel anything (see, I'm really not so bad :). Well, grandma decided to take the initiative yesterday and low and behold she felt the tiny tooth breaking through! It's her left central lower incisor (look at me getting all technical). I can't see it yet but I can feel it when I run my finger over her little gums and... ahem I can also feel it when I'm nursing. I'm crossing my fingers that she has, shall I say, a gentle disposition and wants to continue nursing. I know I want her too and don't want to switch exclusively to bottled breastmilk. I guess we'll see! It's the beginning of the end for my favorite little gummy smile! I just love that glistening, pink mush mouth! Soon, she'll be able to say cheese with the best of them! But for now I'll soak up all of the little gummy moments I can!

That's an Olympic Sport?!

The other day, while catching up on some Olympic news, I came across an article about Olympic athlete Alex Schwazer had been disqualified from the 2012 Olympics for blood doping. It's alway sad to me when an athlete believes the best way to win is by cheating in an attempt to chemically enhance their athletic ability. I went on to  read that Schwazer, an Italian, had won the gold medal in 2008 in his event and he thought it necessary to blood dope in order to defend his title. Oh yes, I forgot to mention what his event is, it's race walking. Now if you're like me, you had never heard of race walking before. Maybe it's just me and I live in a bubble but I would have never guessed race walking would be considered a sport, much less an Olympic event! I had to Google "race walking" to make sure it was what I thought it was, and sure enough... it was! It's a little funny to watch but apparently it's been a part of the Olympics since almost the beginning of the official Olympic games. I can imagine, though it may seem easy, how hard it would be to race walk 20 km (12.76 miles) and you're trying to win so it would be irritating to me to watch someone wiggle past you (because that's what it looks like they're doing from behind) and you can't run to pass their wiggly butt! But seriously... blood doping?!

VS

On another note... so I can kind of understand how race walking can be an olympic sport but what about ping pong?! Oh, excuse me "table tennis". How can table tennis be an Olympic sport but softball didn't warrant enough votes from the IOC to remain part of the games?! I say softball is more of a sport. Ping Pong is more of a hang out in the basement holding a tourney with your college buds kind of talent in my opinion. What do you think?

Olympics 2012

The 2012 Summer Olympics are getting ready to come to a close. The United States currently leads the medal count at 90 to China's 80 with just a couple more days to go! It's been a busy and exciting games starting off with Danny Boyle's magnificent opening ceremony and loads of excitement in swimming with our local girl Missy Franklin taking four golds, a bronze and two world records! There's been some amazing and laudable firsts such as the first Saudi women to compete in the games. On the lighter side of the games, there's always some interesting "bet you didn't know"moments. I came across one of those while I was catching up on the latest events and winners articles.Did you know there's an official Olympic condom provider? I didn't either! Why did this make the news, you might ask?  The story of "Condom-gate", as it has been dubbed, broke yesterday when a bucket of "unauthorized" condoms was found in the Olympic Village! For shame! How many condoms could a village of athletes really need?  I'll tell you, this year sets a record for the number of condoms provided to the Olympic athletes. Take a guess how many... I'll give you a hint, in the 2000 Sydney games, 70,000 condoms were not enough and 20,000 additional condoms had to be provided! In the 2008 Beijing games 100,000 were provided. This year, a whopping 150,000 condoms were provided for the 10,000 athletes! That's 15 each! Holy rubber raincoats batman! Now, I must first commend the IOC for promoting safe practices for the athletes, but really? 150k condoms! Ok, perhaps some of them are taken from the games still in the package as keepsakes or souvenirs and others, possibly may be used to make "balloon" bouquets/animals but honestly what are they doing in that village!?

Tomorrow, strange Olympic sports...

If the shoe fits

Whenever I have time to organize things I always find things that are either going to Goodwill or things that have reached the end of their useful life. I always try to find a way to recycle but in the past have been lazy and if I don't find something right away, I end up throwing it away. But no more! This morning I had some time as the baby was down for a nap and I decided to try and do some organizing in the "room of no return" as I call it, that is, the room where everything gets tossed and the door closed. I hate having that room like that and I intend to organize it once and for all! Anyway... I had just started organizing when I found a cute pair of wedge shoes that Drake had chewed on. It's a good thing I don't buy expensive, name brand shoes because more often than not they have become a chew toy. And it's only my shoes! He won't touch Marc's shoes! So the one or two times I've forgotten to put my shoes away, Drake gives them an all too early retirement. Well, I thought that there has to be somewhere that recycles shoes that are no longer wearable. So, I grabbed the trusty MacBook and ran a search. It turned out it wasn't as easy as I was hoping. Several blogs offered suggestions like "give them to a thrift store" or reputable organizations like SoulsforSoles, all good suggestions for shoes that still have life in them, but I'm pretty sure someone's not going to appreciate shoes with gnaw marks on them. I did find that Nike has a program to recycle old athletic shoes called Reuse-a-shoe This is actually great because during my short organization moment, I also found an old pair of tennis shoes that would be put to better use as interlocking gym floor, playground surfacing or other athletic surfaces than on someone's feet. So, one goal down... now what to do with those chewed on wedges? Another website suggested making them into small planters

I thought that was a really neat idea except that I really have no where to put them where Drake won't be able to reach and they definitely wouldn't last very long as planter or shoe in that scenario and then I'm back to square one. So I'm determined to find somewhere and someway to recycle them. Anybody have any suggestions!?

Well, there went my chance to organize because the baby woke up!