Stroller

Cleared to Run

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For years I had been ignoring a substantial pain in my right knee, thinking it was something that required surgery. Finally, in September, I stopped procrastinating and made a doctor’s appointment. The doctor was quite confident I was dealing with patellar tendonitis. He signed me up for physical therapy, prescribed nitroglycerin patches, and sent me on my way.

Six PT sessions, including two dry needling appointments later, I am pretty confident that the doctor was right. I have a slew of exercises and stretches which have kept the pain to a minimum. Ideally, when you really want to heal the patellar tendon, you eliminate running or jumping exercises first and then do the physical therapy exercises. I have opted for a different route, simultaneously doing the PT and beginning to train for my first 10k on Thanksgiving day. So far, so good. My knee hurts almost every time I start a run, but a mile or two in it does not bother me at all. Couple the exercises with the knee strap I wear, and my right knee feels excellent the whole latter half of the run.

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Swimming days at UW. 2005.

My interest in running first grew when I was swimming for Wyoming. In the fall and spring, the team would often run a 5k before getting into the pool and swimming one, as in another 5k, not a 1k. I wasn’t the fastest runner at practices. There would always be a couple guys ahead of me who were just built for longer distances, but I always enjoyed those runs, even though they were at 7200 ft in elevation. In the years since, I have loved running for exercise, but I haven’t ventured into competition that much. I ran in one 5k in Milwaukee a few years ago and that is it.

With a Thanksgiving 10k on the horizon, I really wanted to do some formal training. Not knowing where to start, I did some googling, naturally, and I found this (the intermediate 10k training program from Hal Higdon). Feeling like that was as good a place to start as anything else, I enlisted myself in a solo training program. Of course, it’s not entirely solo. On many of my runs I have had to push London in the Mountain Buggy. She enjoys it tremendously. I, on the other hand, sort of prefer the days I can run by myself. Although it rests on three wheels, the Mountain Buggy with London in it is no light load. The max distance I have pushed London is six miles. In the beginning, pushing London for 3 or 4 miles was very hard, but now, six weeks in, I can push her for a four mile run and quite easily run under eight minute miles. Progress.

Come race day, I’ll have two big breaks. One, I won’t have to push London around the course. And two, perhaps even more of a boost, the race takes place at about 1000 ft in elevation. There is some bad news though. There is a decent chance it will be cold enough to watch your spit freeze right after it hits the ground. At the start of last year’s race it was 12 degrees.

The Mountain Buggy

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I never expected to receive a stroller as a surprise birthday gift. Nor did I expect to be happy when receiving a stroller as a surprise birthday gift. When both of those things happened, I knew I had fully arrived as a SAHD.

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With the latest edition to the stroller stable.

The picture here is just moments after I came in the door to find London locked in and ready for a stroll in this Mountain Buggy Terrain, the tallest, most beautiful jogging stroller I have ever pushed around. We had thought about making this stroller our everyday stroller for a while, but after using it for nearly three months I am glad we did not. To be clear, the Terrain is amazing. At its tallest, it’s actually too tall if I want to run with it. (I love having something that’s too tall). The stroller is rock solid on bumpy trails and there is more than enough adequate storage below the seat and in pockets on either side of the sun shade.

But the thing is a beast! When collapsed it barely fits in the back of our Toyota Highlander. It’s no light stroller. Lift with your legs, not with your back. Lugging it around for everyday tasks and errands would have been a hassle. I am still ever so grateful for our Uppababy and the Chicco umbrella stroller we now have.

Again, the tall strollers are consistently one of the most expensive models in the market. However, our Terrain was a spotless floor model so it was discounted nearly $200. Phew.

I’ll never forget the first time I took London for a run in the stroller. She started giggling as soon as I started off on the trail. She kept laughing so that in ten minutes she had worn herself out and was snoozing. So even on gravel, the Terrain provides a smooth enough ride for the occupant.

I had given the Uppababy some stroller love on this blog back in September. The Mountain Buggy is worthy of the same praise. If you’re tall and want a jogging stroller, look no further.

The Troubling Loss of the Car Seat

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Fully functioning baby in the now retired car seat.

I felt the familiar bite of envy today when I saw a dad walking into a bookstore carrying his baby in a car seat. Oh, those were the days. Yes, they were.

But wait, you might say. Aren’t you excited for your baby to grow up? To walk? To be freer? Of course I am. She is crawling right now, but all she wants to do is stand at the coffee table and cruise around. In a little more time she will be walking with me, but right now we are in a cumbersome interregnum between the too-big-for-the-car-seat size and the not-yet-walking stage.

Benefits of the car seat era include easily carrying baby during any errand, including, but certainly not limited to, a stroll through the bookstore, a coffee run, and going to pick up a book at the library. Also, easily transferring baby from house to car, to inside bookstore, back inside car, back to house, and up to room if baby has fallen asleep in car seat. All this used to be done with one convenient baby bucket (receptacle or repository I like much better, but it just sounded weird, “baby repository”).

But now upon arrival anywhere we must transfer baby from big, new, giant booster-type seat for extra-tall babies to the stroller, also great for extra-tall daddies.

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Fully functioning much bigger baby in the new, custom-built-for-huge-people, booster seat.

The other option, and this is a big ask, is to carry her sans stroller. Since she’s 25 lbs and 31 inches, one better hope the errand does not take longer than expected if you spring for this non-stroller option, especially if you have already lifted weights that day.

This might be the first of many posts in which I sort of (or jokingly) mourn losing the conveniences of the infant, but also recognize the perks of getting older and growing bigger, like her booster seat (which is one indestructible gadget) and her current obsession with pulling to stand. These are great things.

But the other point of this post is that I cannot shake the memory of the days when I could carry London around in her car seat, sometimes with just a few fingers wrapped around the handle and the other two fingers carrying a six-pack. The ease. The comfort. The convenience. Oh my.

 

 

New and Exciting Things About Fatherhood

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I did not expect to be a stay-at-home dad. Thus, I did not expect to be as excited by some things related to stay-at-home parenting as I currently am. This post is about some of those things.

Level 3 Nipples

Anything that helps the baby blast through a bottle faster is a godsend. When London first got home it would take her an hour IMG_5059to finish off 65 mL! And that was if you were lucky enough to keep her awake for an hour straight. That was next to impossible during her first weeks home. Eventually, she became more alert, but taking a bottle would still take up to thirty minutes. I remember when we moved to level 2 nipples and that time was cut down to fifteen or twenty. But just recently we tried level 3 nipples and she polished off a 160 mL bottle in eight minutes. These are the magic moments.

Grocery Shopping With A Stroller

I am ecstatic when I go to the grocery store and I can get buy with pushing London around in the stroller instead of using a shopping cart. London’s stroller has a large basket under the seat that can hold a lot of goods. Using it for the first time instead of a shopping cart I realized how easy it would be to just push the stroller right out of the store with groceries stashed away under a diaper bag. I have not tried that out and do not plan on it, but every time I fling goods into that lower storage net I expect a store employee to say I cannot do that anymore because, “You could just walk out of here with that stuff down there and nobody would know.” Anyways, I love ditching the shopping cart for the stroller. A just tuned up and thoroughly-oiled cart is no match for the smoothness of the stroller too!

Accomplishing Tasks With Baby In Arms

Last week I successfully held London and with one hand held a beer and with the other hand held a bottle opener. The execution was flawless. In seconds I was sipping a cold one and baby was never at any risk at all. I need to set up a tripod with a camera remote to record these moments. The things I carry with London or the tasks I manage to do with my hands while holding her are certainly worth recording.

Beating The Moms Through The Grocery Store

Yep. I said it. It feels damn good. I have my grocery store down pat. I did most of the grocery shopping long before London arrived and since moving to Denver I have done most of that shopping at the same store. I would say I probably am a little more aggressive with the shopping cart than most moms I come across. Once I know London is locked in, then it is liftoff. I have my strategies, but I am not revealing them here. I might reveal some secrets of the trade over beers…if I get tipsy enough.

No Ramp, No Problem

I have been out and about a few times with London when we have come to a flight of stairs where I was expecting a ramp. The first time this happened to me I turned around to search for an easier way down, but when I did I thought, what am I doing, I can probably pick up the whole stroller with the carseat attached to it and walk down the stairs. I have long enough arms that I can easily secure my arms on opposite sides of the stroller when facing it from the side. Remember, lift with your legs, not your back, and you are free to move about the stairs, up, down, and all around. Don’t mind the onlookers. They’re just jealous. These arms aren’t just for decoration.

Stroller Love

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Remember when BOB strollers were cool? Yeah, well, in this household the BOB fell short, quite literally, right from the start because I am 6’9″. There’s no point in asking if you’ve tried pushing a BOB stroller when you’re 81 inches tall because you haven’t. I’ll just tell you. It is freaking miserable, like walking around bent at the waist, stretching your hamstrings wherever you go.

BOB strollers have a great reputation, so when I first tried pushing one in a store I was so discouraged because I mistakingly thought BOBs were the pinnacle of strollerdom and if this stroller wasn’t going to do (and it clearly wasn’t) then what’s left?

Let me tell you what’s left…the just-as-short Graco strollers, the Eddie Bauer BOB look-a-like strollers (EB, really? I thought you learned to not branch out after the Ford Explorer Eddie Bauer Edition, but after a quick Google, it appears the EB edition is still a thing…how?), Britax (practical, a little taller, but Jony Ive needs to redesign them because they’ve been hit with the ugly stick so many times their wheels have two spokes…what were they thinking?), and Chicco (which just seems like a mashup of Graco and Britax). I could go on, but you get the point, right? All of these strollers, despite their own unique flaws, are all too short.

All hope was lost until we walked into the Right Start, sort of a posh baby store, and an actual employee listened to what we were looking for and walked us over to this beautiful stroller she was calling the Uppababy something, I didn’t catch the name right away because she said it right at the moment I looked at the price tag. While laughing in my head at the absurdity of paying that much for a stroller, I obliged the employee and took it for a little spin, but right before I strolled off, the employee reached to the center of the handle, gripped, and pulled. The handle raised a few inches higher off the ground. It was love at first step. My hands didn’t have to go down to my knees to push this thing. My feet didn’t hit the rear axle of the stroller because it’s not there, leaving plenty of room for my full-stride with size 15 shoes. The Uppababy Vista moved like butter around the store. Each and every step was a little more painful because I was falling more and more in love with the stroller but knew we weren’t going to IMG_3720drop that kind of cash on such a ride.

After that initial trip to the Right Start, we kept looking for strollers. We pushed around cheaper models at Target and Babies R Us. We pushed around much more expensive models (didn’t know that was possible, but makes sense, the celebrity parent needs something to push around) at a boutique stroller store. But always, the Uppababy Vista was there, lurking, pulling us back to its many wonderful features. However, it was always the height that appealed to me. Other bonuses, like the included bassinet, seemed unnecessary. The brand name, Uppababy, even bothered me. It was too pretentious sounding and it looks like it was missing an umlaut.

We kept resisting, but the stroller search was leading us nowhere. Before we formally spoke about it, I think we both knew the Uppababy Vista was going to be ours. It was inevitable.

We eventually were ready to buy and then we received an incredibly generous gift certificate to the Right Start from friends we met in Milwaukee. This made the purchase easier to stomach. And so it was, a week after I made a few fast clicks on the Right Start’s website, the Uppababy arrived at our doorstep and I immediately assembled it. Since it was April 14th, the stroller sat in the living room for a month like a piece of precious furniture that no one could sit in.

Months later, I can’t imagine having a different stroller. The cost of the stroller, even without the gift certificate, would have been worth it. Never once have we regretted the purchase. That unnecessary bassinet became indispensable. The car seat attachment beautiful. The height always right. However, I still think Uppababy is missing an umlaut.