I Bet Santa Rides a Trek Too

A while back I asked Bear what kind of bike he wanted for Christmas.  Bear said "A red one!!"

Did you know that every decent bike model out this year is green or blue or orange or neon yellow or any color of the rainbow that's not red?

I knew the Trek Jet 16 (after exhaustive research, the model I favored anyway) came in red.  I just couldn't find one anywhere - all the bike shops had blue.  Turns out the red was from a previous model year.  Cue the fruitless searching.

One last ditch Google the week before Christmas turned up what might possibly be the last red one in existence, at a bike shop about an hour from here (and on clearance to boot!). 

I know this looks like Bear is more excited about the Percy train, but me asking him to stand by his bike was the first time he EVER he voluntarily posed for a picture... and he smiled!

Here's a better shot of the bike bling...

I was worried that it would take a few weeks or months for him to figure it out, but by the end of the day he was zooming up and down the hall, doing intricate loops around furniture and asking when he can "take bike outside go fast!!"

I think I know where my run workouts are going to come from this spring!

Cross Posted - Another Kind of Holiday Self Control

My newest post is up at ShesAlwaysWrite: Another Kind of Holiday Self Control

New and Old

I haven't been tri blogging much lately, but not for lack of interest or desire.  I've just had to be rutheless about priorities.

So many things are happening - some are new and exciting and some are new and scary and some are old and necessary.  All are for the better, and with diligence some of them will help bring me back to my beloved tri community sooner or later. 

In a nutshell...

Work
Work was great this year.  So great that I barely had time to keep up, now that Bear is napping less (and his therapy schedule wouldn't accomodate any more than 1 morning of daycare).  My confidence in myself as a consultant has skyrocketed, years of networking and skill development have paid off, and I landed a couple of high end international scope clients this year.  There are days I'm in tears from the pressure of getting it all done, and it's frustrating to have turned down a couple of jobs due to time limitations when I needed the money.  But I'm proud of myself and looking forward to what next year brings.

Health
I just got a long overdue PCOS diagnosis.  It explains everything that the thyroid problem alone does not, and I'm grateful to finally have these additional problems recognized. I started on the new scrip about a week ago and am having a moderately challenging transition. (If you've ever taken Metformin, you know what I mean.)  But if it means A) way better chances of having another baby, and B) way better chances of not following everyone in my family down the path of Type II diabetes, then I'll suck it up and hopefully I'll be one of the patients for whom the side effects dissipate in a couple of weeks.

Fitness
I've started seeing a trainer once a week.  It's not enough, but it's all I can manage right now.  I can already see the improvements, and in general it's incredibly motivational.  Just knowing I'm already taking this (big, time consuming, difficult at this time) step has made it easier for me to go back to making the positive choices of my heavy training days.  I'm also easing yoga back into my schedule. Because, well, yoga rocks.

Bear
My beloved Baby Bear turns 3 tomorrow.  The last few weeks have been an emotional roller coaster, with all the transition meetings as he ages out of Early Intervention and moves under the jurisdiction of the school district.  I just got out of his IEP meeting this morning and am now working out what our weekly schedule (group therapy, daycare, home therapy stuff) will look like between now and next August (when he can start preschool).

He's doing AM. A. ZING.  So much so that many people who meet him now have no clue that his bowl of alphabet soup is full of neurological acronyms.  I'm so proud of him I can hardly stand it.

Blogging
Over the summer I launched a blog at ShesAlwaysWrite.com to have an outlet for the deeply challenging and emotional ride that is life with a special needs child.  I now participate in a community of special needs mommy bloggers (our segment is SPD with a signficant overlap in Autistic community).  I've become a member of the SPD Blogger Network and was recently honored with an invitation to become a bimonthly guest contributor on the award winning author's blog Hartley's Life With Three Boys. 

I thought about it long and hard, and I decided to keep this blog alive too.  I know in my heart triathlon will continue to be a part of my life, and the girls over at the SPD network don't really care how much I improve my swim or that I negative split the Turkey Trot 5K  : )

I miss you all, and I do try to keep up with you in the rare moments I steal to peek at my Reader feed.  If you see comments from shesalwayswrite, please know it's just me too busy to log into my triathlon account.

Hugs & love to all my tri peeps!
Siren

Funny Cycling Jerseys

Found out about these from a cyclist friend on Facebook and couldn't resist sharing them here.  The only question for me is which one to get!

You can find these and more at ShareTheDamnRoad.com.

Big Boy Bike

Bear outgrew the little garage sale bike a friend got us as a joke for our baby shower. In fact, he was too tall for it before he could really even ride it. Guess it shouldn't be too much of a surprise, given that he's taller than one of the 4 year olds at our park he sometimes plays with.

We moved the seat on his trike all the way back, but he's all scrunched up and has lost interest because it's not fun to ride that way.

With his 3rd birthday fast approaching, we decided it makes sense to get him a Big Boy Bike. I immediately geeked out about it and took him last week to get sized. Sure enough, at 33 months old he already needed to move up to the 16" option.

I was so excited about the whole thing, thinking we'd have our pick of great bikes for him (I saved all summer to set aside $150, which to me, seems like a HUGE sum to spend on a bike for a 2-3 year old.) I thought I'd be able to walk into anyplace that sold bikes and look at options from reputable brands like Schwinn, Giant and Trek.

Turns out, unless you look really, REALLY hard... your options are Transformers, Spider-man and Cars.

And contrary to the box office take for the movies that spawned these overpriced preschooler marketing ploys, the reviews for these licensed character bikes are pretty wretched. I don't want to drop $90 on a bike that multiple parents reported have pedals that fall off on the first ride.

We started looking off the beaten path and did find a few options that fit my original fantasy. Problem being, the prices on those START at $180 and approach $300.

So my choice for Bear's special 3rd birthday Big Boy Bike appears to be a crappy bike I can afford, or a good bike I kind of can't. And I think that totally sucks.

That said, I'd rather scrape together a little more money to get a higher quality bike that will probably last him all the way through the 7" inches of seat post play that I know at least one of the good bikes has.

These are the the main choices we're considering.  Wide open to suggestions from anyone with experience in this area.

Diamondback RM 16

Giant Animator

Schwinn Gremlin

Trek Jet 16