Daniel is growing. And lots of mosquitoes in town.

Little man Daniel is growing so fast!!!  I feel like he is developing a lot faster than Emma.  At first, I felt that one of the advantages of having a preemie is that you get to spend more time with him.  I got two more months of life to get to know him (ok, one of those two months was not particularly pleasant for anybody, given that it took place in the NICU, but the second one was definitely a bonus).

Anyway, I digress.  He got some oral thrush, and he is so busy chewing on everything in sight in order to relieve his itchy mouth, that I have no idea whether he needs more milk (i.e. whether I am keeping up with his requirements for breastfeeding) or whether he simply needs to chew on my nipples.  I was quite in doubt of my boob-ability the other day, when he sucked me dry and continuously asked for more, when I realized that:
1.  He is making enough urine to water a whole garden, and I keep on changing his diapers/clothes/sheets/my clothes every five seconds.
2.  He is growing at 30.6 g per day on average (that's one ounce).  Which is fantabulous.

All in all, that realization has restored my boob-confidence.
Why doubt myself in the first place?  Well, here is a bunch of reasons:  firstly, I did not have enough milk with Emma, by far and wide, and secondly, I train every day for at least one hour, which is a lot of physical activity for somebody who was formerly confined to bed just two to three months ago.  The level of training together with the time away from him can definitely contribute to decreasing milk supply, so I have to be on guard and watch it.

I am planning on completing the local Olympic distance triathlon next summer, so I have decided that I had better get the 40 km bike ride under control this year, because the triathlon is in June and we can only start riding after defrost (which happens in May or so around here).  Therefore, I had better start with the road balance and gear shifting and clip less pedals and overall road testing this year, because although I have the winter to do some stationary biking, I won't be able to practice all of those skills before the event, and I will stress out about falling off/getting run over by a semi truck/eaten alive by bear/getting a flat and not knowing how to change it, blah blah.  The swim is completely under control, and the run is totally do-able on the treadmill, but the bike is another story.

In case anybody wants to do a newbie triathlon, come along for the ride.  Before this bug itched me, I had no idea what those funky road bikes were for, i.e. I had never ridden anything that does not allow riding in a skirt and have a basket in front.  Now I am considering installing aerobars on my new-used bike.  Go figure.  I have even gotten myself cycling shorts after the lady parts started hurting.  And I just did 30 km on the bike yesterday without blinking, after which I went for a 7 km run during which I blinked a lot.  A fair bit of the blinking was due to mosquitoes and other bugs.  Some of the blinking was due to the newly installed sign at the entrance to the forest trail "BEAR IN THE AREA".  A momma bear with her cubs lives there now.  Bye bye trail running for a while.

There are numerous bugs around here in summer, but this year they are so bad that we cannot live outside without oozing DEET from every pore.  I went with the kids to a park play group, and it was ridiculous that we all huddled up in the rain when it started to drizzle instead of hiding under the tree where it was dry, because the mosquitoes run away from the drizzle under the said tree.  Rain is infinitely preferable to mosquitoes.  The bugs are another reason why I have to train in the mornings, because in the evenings bad things happen.

I took the kids in a double stroller for a jog through the forest path, and unwisely gave Emma a cookie that I had made with dates.  Within a few minutes, the hornets started circling her menacingly. I stopped just for the second that it took to retrieve the cookie and hide it, and in that second, the mosquitoes, all 150 of them, surrounded us.  Daniel had about ten on his face, Emma had thirty bites on each leg, and I did not even care to stop and count because it was freaking terrifying to see my kids covered in mosquitoes.  So we started running even faster, to get away from them, but they followed us in a thick cloud.  I stopped again to spray DEET all over everybody again and over the back of the stroller, and that helped things for about two minutes, but the mosquitoes continued to threaten us every time that I dropped my running pace below 6 mph.  That is pretty fast for trail running pushing a double stroller, and I got tired, but could not stop until we got to safety, so I had a gruelling workout.  Now, as a mother, I had to do it, but my running partner, who did not have her kids covered in mosquitoes because she had not stopped to get rid of the hornets, had no need to run so fast, and I think I unnecessarily fatigued her on a day that was supposed to be a "easy run".  It turned out into the run from hell for both of us.  When I got to the car, and quickly threw Emma and Daniel inside, folding the stroller and launching it with both hands like it was a stroller-launching Olympic event, quickly hiding in the car myself and closing all the doors and windows, we had about forty mosquitoes with us for the free all-you-can-eat ride.   You try and concentrate on driving when your right ankle is currently attacked by the bastards.

If any of my friends want to come visit, I highly recommend winter when it is -40C.  Much better to be outside in those conditions.  (Just kidding.  I love summer.  I am just in awe at how tenacious these insects are).