A Pregnant Woman's Bladder

It is true what they say, pregnant women pee all the time. I could see why at Erin's last ultrasound. The baby is basically sitting on Erin's bladder and kicking it regularly. Erin is also always thirsty. In fact, last night she was so thirsty during the night that she dreamed of getting a drink of water to quench her thirst.

Erin is currently 29 weeks. Here is a quick look at her semi-weekly progression, starting with week 13.

Becoming Baby Wise

28 weeks! People keep telling me that my pregnancy is going so fast, which is great for them. So far the weeks have passed too slowly for me, well except for those days when I see an inconsolable baby or scary delivery. Then as far as I'm concerned time can stand still for a little while.

My little one has treated me quite well so far, I skipped the morning sickness and have just had an itchy belly. Randy has taken pictures of my belly each week which has just started to really expand.

One of the delightful things about being pregnant is the preparation. If you haven't been to Babies 'R Us you should go, it's an experience. There are so many cute little things that you would never even know a baby "needed". So along with the prep is baby showers, which are great fun. I had my first shower with Ellen and the Elenbaas side on New Years Day.

Cindy was gracious and hosted the shower for us and Paula planned a couple games. Molly informed me that it was the first baby shower she had been to so hopefully it was as memorable for her as it was for me.

This past weekend I had a work shower with Kelly who is 5 weeks ahead of me. Although the weather was not so nice we had a great time with soup, salads, bread, lots of baby stuff, and 'the Price is Right'. Thanks Amy, Kelly, and Marcy for planning it!

St. Louis Boys Weekend

Last week Jason mentioned in passing that we hadn't been to St. Louis to visit Darren in awhile and that we should try to go again. We then discovered that both our wives were working over the weekend so off we went.

The drive down was enjoyable as Jason and I once again solved the world's problems. We also discovered that Hardees has GREAT burgers. We had to meet Darren downtown instead of going straight to his apartment like normal so we had an excellent night-time view of downtown St. Louis. This picture isn't the best but it is all I could get. You can kind of see the arch in the center.

Basically we just hung out all weekend and didn't do anything too touristy besides checking out the brand new casino downtown. Darren hit a big winner on his second slot machine pull ever.

On Saturday we went for a nice 8 mile run and then played board games the rest of the night. Cities and Knights was the game of choice, but it is a good thing we had all night. The game is very involved and each lasted 3 hours.

Cheers to a fun weekend.

Juggling

Everyone repeat after me: "Randy, you are SO cool..."

Push-ups Analysis

As promised, here is a more statistical analysis of my 2007 push ups. 50,000 was a lofty number to reach and I knew it would mean a concentrated effort the whole year. Here is a graph of each day's output.

You can see I had a few huge days (best was 600 on July 1) and a general decline towards the end. Notice I didn't have a single zero day until July and then they became commonplace, especially on the weekend. By the end of the year I basically didn't do push ups on Saturday and was lucky to do any on Sunday. Also, there were a slew of zeros in November and December when I knew I'd hit my goal. Here is a chart breaking down the days of the week.

I got continually better through the week and then slumped off bigtime on Friday and Saturday. Thursday was my best day with an average of 171.8.

This next chart categorizes my daily outputs. I had 98 days were I did 100-149 push ups and 114 days at 150-199. I had 4 days over 300 and 26 days with zero.

And finally, here is a graph of my daily average. I hung around 170 push ups per day through June but then steadily declined until the end of the year. I made a strong push the last week of the year so I could finish with an average above 140 (140.03).

Happy New Year

Another year has gone by. Time to own up to my 2007 goals and lay out my 2008 goals. Here we go:

2007 Results
1. Learn to juggle 4 balls - This was my weakest effort but I'd say technically I reached my goal. I didn't start trying until December 15 and was really bad until the 29th. On the 29th and 30th I spent about 30 minutes practicing and can go up to 30 seconds without dropping a ball, but usually more like 5-10 seconds. I'll take a video and post it in the next couple weeks for proof.
2. Run 1,000 miles - SUCCESS! I ran a grand total of 1,219 miles this year for an average of 3.34 miles per day.
3. Do 50,000 push-ups - SUCCESS! I did a total of 51,110 push-ups for an average of 140.03 push-ups per day. This was a very annoying goal since I had to consistently work at it every single day. I noticed a huge amount of improvement over the year. Initially I couldn't do more than 30 in a set and after a few sets I could barely hit 20. Soon, 30 became my norm and I could push myself to 40. By the end of the year 50 was my normal set and I maxed at 100 (going as fast as I could and not doing each up and down justice). The first 5 months of the year I was motivated and averaged close to 170 per day, but by the end of the year I was so sick of push-ups I could puke. I'll give a graphical analysis of my daily count later this week.

2008 Goals
1. Learn to juggle 5 balls
2. Run 750 miles
3. Bike 1,500 miles
4. Do 30,000 sit-ups: 82 per day, I haven't decided how to count crunches yet
5. Do 5,000 pull-ups/chin-ups: 14 per day
6. Weigh less than 185 lbs at some point (currently 200 lbs)