Yesterday was fun!  We crewed on our friend Brett’s boat for a regatta on Cascade Lake.  It was the first time Andy and I have done something together that didn’t revolve around the baby (besides one date night) since Belén was born.  Plus, it gave us a sailing fix which we have both been jonesing for.  It had been over a year since I sailed and Andy hadn’t been out since last fall.

We recruited my mom to come with us to watch the little chicky.  After packing up half the house, pumping, an hour and a half drive and then making sure everything was okay with my mom and Belén, Andy and I walked down to the dock and joined Brett on his 22-foot Catalina Capri sailboat.  Brett showed me how to secure the Genoa sail on a tack and we practiced tacking back and forth.  At noon, the first race started and we approached the start line very modestly as Brett is new to racing and stated that our goal was to finish and return everyone safely to the dock.  I told him that when Andy and I used to race in Shanghai, our goal was similar until we started getting a little bit better and then we quickly realized that it is easy to get competitive in the races (even though we still generally lost.)

In our time in Shanghai, Andy racked up many hours at the helm racing and also learned a lot of strategy from some very experienced sailors in the Shanghai Boat & Yacht Club.  He has read more books, magazines, websites and blogs on sailing than I can count.  So despite not starting until his 30s, he has a very respectable amount of sailing and racing knowledge.  For this reason, Andy served as an informal tactician and mentor to Brett in the races.  Under his tutelage, we went from second to the last in the first race to actually leading the fleet in the second race (although we lost speed on the last turn and ended up finishing second.)  We had a very respectable finish in the third and longest of the races as well.

The boat was great to sail on.  My favorite feature of it was its port-a-potty.  In the races in Shanghai, by the second or third race, we generally had to pee so bad that we were suffering for the remaining time on the boat if we were not willing to jump into Dianshan Lake to relieve ourselves and subject ourselves to all of its funk.  Yesterday, we could properly hydrate and relieve ourselves…what a concept!  It might sound silly, but it really is a huge plus.  The boat also heeled well in high winds which we were able to test out in third race when the wind really picked up.  Brett convinced me that they had accidentally tested out the boats abilities in a previous occasion at the lake and that the boat would not capsize on us.  I was glad he had that knowledge because it felt like we were nearly vertical sitting on the edge of the boat on a couple of occasions during that third race.  Once I got over my small amount of fear it was really a kick in the pants.

It was such a fun day and we were very appreciative of both the opportunity to be on the boat and to my mom for watching Belén.

Once we were back on shore, I fed and changed Belén and then we headed back to Boise.  Immediately after our return to Boise, we showered and packed up a different subset of our baby stuff and went to Anna and Derik’s for a Father’s Day dinner.  Derik always grills something amazing and last night it was coupled with Andy and I’s favorite beer, Schneider Weisse, corn on the cob, a fancy potato salad and chocolate cake for dessert.

We brought our Pack N’ Play portable crib to their house and attempted to put Belén to bed once we arrived at their house as it was already passed her newly imposed bedtime of 8pm.  I think our family was disappointed that they did not get an opportunity to hang out with her, but we are trying to be consistent with her and get her on a night time schedule.  Her new sleeping rules include not being awake for more than two hours at a time (day or night) and then bed time at 8pm.  If she cries when we put her to bed, we let her fuss for 15 minutes before going to check on her, but she usually falls asleep in that time frame anyway.  It is sad hearing her cry over the baby monitor but she seems to be getting the hang of soothing herself.  Last night at dinner though she sounded different so I checked on her and it turns out that she was hungry and also had a doozy of a diaper brewing.  After we had appeased our little girl, we put her back to bed and she cried herself to sleep in less than 15 minutes.  She wasn’t the life the party as usual, but she is closer to having a bedtime and sleeping through the night.

This sleeping stuff has been challenging.  I think that I finally have a strategy that is working for her as she does not get overtired and is no longer fussy at night if we follow the strategy.  But, it is hard to get anything done during the day if we only have less than two hours to get home so she can sleep.  On top of that, I feel like people question why they cannot hold her or wake her up so they can hang out with her when I am trying to hold the line and get her to nap every two hours.  Anyway, one of many scenarios we will have where we don’t know if we are doing the right thing as parents but we are just doing the best we know.  And when we don’t know, I look for advice from friends, in books or online even though I know it sometimes seems a little bit over the top.

This morning as badly as I wanted to sleep in, I drug myself out of bed for a run.  I intended on going 3 1/4 miles but I came back a different way than I went out and it turned out to be four miles.  Four miles, yay!  It felt great and it was so nice to be running in the hills.  It continued to be slow, but I will work on the speed once I get a bit more distance up.  My high was disrupted by trying on a new swimsuit I purchased online but we won’t talk about that.

Later in the morning we went to a Father’s Day breakfast with Andy’s family.  After a nap and some relaxation we went down to a fundraiser for St. Mary’s Church where they were selling authentic Mexican food!  Mmmmmm, tacos!  Andy enjoyed his Father’s Day even though Belén for some reason refused to eat in the afternoon as if my milk was poisonous and also turned into a fussy girl.

Tuesday, Belén will be eight weeks old!  I cannot believe how much she grows and changes every day.