Hello Spring!

The weather has been fantastic in Chicago lately with temps in the mid 60s to low 70s. Many of the fair-weather-runners are out (grrrr) running along Lakeshore path. Lisa and I welcomed the arrival of warm weather with lots of walks and runs with Zoë. However, there have been times when the temp was a bit more brisk than expected resulting in some very ruddy cheeks! Regardless, Zoë loves our walks and especially loves her ride in the running stroller! Check out the picks below. Yes, I'm post-call in one of the pics.

Cuteness to the max

Lisa snapped this photo of Zoë that is now our favorite picture of her.

Semper Fi Baby!

My buddy Joel, a comissioned officer in the Marine Corps, made a surprise visit this weekend. I unfortunately couldn't hang out too much since I had to be on-call this weekend, but he and my other friend Vinh were able to trek into our Lakeview neighborhood for an early dinner to catch up. Joel did 2 tours of duty in Iraq and now flies in fighter jets as a weapons specialist. You can tell he handles large weaponry by the way he's holding Zoë.

More milestones

Zoë has been more interactive and has exhibited more skills such as rolling over on her belly and then back, playing with toys, standing with support, grabbing her feet (and sometimes sucking her own toes), smiling and giggling. Here are some pictures of these moments.

Applesauce

The next solid introduction. The title says it all. We think she likes this a bit more than the rice cereal.

Running

We haven't made a blog entry in awhile because we're really busy in the household this month. Lisa is in her traumatic brain injury rotation, and I'm back in the neonatology intensive care unit (NICU). Both of us are therefore in our busiest rotations dealing with the most critically ill patients. I just finished another call last night and have been up for about 40 straight hours. Definitely not enjoyable on the mind and body. Lisa and I have been somewhat lucky in that we've been able to have most of our call nights opposite of each other with the exception of one day when we had to call Uncle Bryan in for help to babysit Zoë. It has therefore worked out so far.
To stay healthy, Lisa and I have started running again. It's the first time out in almost half a year. We ran a lot before Zoë was born and in fact were pushing our bodies to the limit just like in residency, but the difference was that long distance running was by choice. Since Zoë has been exhibiting excellent head control, she's now ready for the running stroller. We bought a top of the line running stroller a few weeks ago and have been running with Zoë who seems to really enjoy the runs! She either babbles during the run or simply falls asleep. I've been really out of shape and therefore running one of my slowest paces of around 9 minute miles. Running with a stroller also is much different than what I expected and requires greater expenditure of energy per mile. It has therefore been an adjustment for us in our runs. I'm hoping to get back into shape and to put in good times for road races again. I have a lot of friends in my residency program who are also into running, and we've all thought about running a big race together. Zoë can run with us on our training runs now!