Happy Birthday Reilly!!!!

I can't believe it has been almost six weeks since my last point. There have been a few reasons for this absence but I will get into that in another post.


First and foremost I need to recognize a special little girl's birthday, Reilly Roo!!!! Today Reilly is 5 years old and what a journey the last 5 years has been. Even though we have had some considerable ups and downs it is amazing how quickly 5 years can pass. We were invited to a friends bowling birthday party for their two girls that were having a combined birthday. The two girls turned 4 and 6 and also have birthdays about 3 weeks apart. We were told in advance by other friends with special needs children that they actually have a "wood frame device" that can be used to push the ball from. It was great to be able to include Reilly, although truthfully she probably cared less.

Seeing all the other children at the birthday party I got a little ticked at how much Reilly has been robbed of and how lucky the other parents are with respect to really seeing the personality characters of each of their children. I often wonder who Reilly would have been should she have been normal. Would she still sport her beautiful smile all the time and be the centre of attention or would she be a little reserved and the one who observes others before acting. The worst is not knowing what is going on in her mind and whether we are truly meeting her needs and desires. Damn Rett Syndrome. Well Reilly Roo I love you dearly and will continue cherish your smile and the desires you do express and will do my best to make the next 5 years of your life as happy as possible for you.

On a running note, I am just getting back to running after a huge set back from a bout of pneumonia 5 weeks ago now. I did a 14k run last Sunday and today I was aiming to do 17k. Unfortunately I had to run alone today which I am not used to for long runs and started off very stiff and slow. To help with the run this morning I uploaded all new music to help distract me. I must admit at about 5-6k I wondered how the heck I was going to do 17k today and I was looking at my Garmin obsessively at my progress each kilometer. I tried to refocus and eventually at about 9k I fell into a nice groove and then at about 13k I realized that if I wanted to follow a certain path home then this route might actually bring me to about 18k. Well let's just say I estimated wrong and I ended up having to do 20.5k. However, I actually felt stronger and more confident in the last 5k then in the first 8-10k of my run and felt like I passed both a physical and psychological milestone.

As I mentioned earlier I am clawing my way back from illness and my pace has suffered terribly. Today I managed a 6:15/km average for the 20.5k run. Given the circumstances I am ecstatic with that pace.

Juliana