New toy and new exercise stuff...

It's my new toy! My NIKE+ Sport Band. Cool toy to track my success (or lack thereof) with learning to run. I want to run the 5 km in the Mother's Day run next spring. Maybe I can get there. Seems a long way off at the moment. I'm up to 2.5 min. running with 2 min. walking in between. The old knees complain a bit, and I'm sure the extra weight doesn't help, but I'm working on that too... :)

To Dress up or Not??

Funny thing, us humans. My son (5) asked me on the weekend "Why do I have to wear my good clothes for my piano recital?". Great question. Why do we get dressed up to get in front of other folks. For adults, sometimes it is about confidence, and we say that we feel more confident when we have our 'good clothes' on. But when we're little, and getting on stage is presented as a normal process and part of learning, we don't need a special 'costume' to feel confident - we KNOW we're good !! Wish adults could retain that confidence.

And then there is the 'respect' line. That is that you respect the other person (or your audience) by taking care to dress up and look nice. This one makes a bit more sense to me - if you respect yourself (e.g. taking time to look good), then others will respect you as well. But to explain that to a 5 year old... Not sure I can actually put words around what respect really means even to myself!

Which brings up another point - is it OK for a 4 year old to tell her family and herself that she is pretty and beautiful? I think so! We tell her that all the time, why shouldn't she repeat it? The trick is, how do we get her to not repeat this to other people and sound boastful or proud? Tough line to draw....

My First Blog

Holy cow. i actually feel like i'm in the 21st century. now to go add this to my facebook page...