my nomination for mother of the year.

no. i'm serious. zeke is going to nominate me. he told me tonight when we got back from our run.

i don't typically run with the kids in the double-jogger. they're just too d*mn heavy. at nearly 30 lbs each, plus a non-aero-dynamic-20-lb jogging stroller, it's like i'm running against a tornado. or a headwind. a really stubborn, but super cute headwind.

i try to schedule my runs to take place either a) on my lunch break at work, b) after 7pm when the babies are down, or c) when the babes are with their bio-dad for a visit. but last night, i just had the itch to run, and  had the kids all to myself. so i packed them up, headed out with two of my newly acquired running friends, and off we went for 3.5 miles in the fall air.

it's been a while since i jogged with the babies (yes, they are still babies, even though they're almost two). i had forgotten how difficult their double jogging stroller can be to navigate. but by mile 2, i was feeling pretty confident in my twin-mama-on-the-run abilities, and the babies were happily humming along.

we had been running in the streets, as the route we run is pretty quiet and void of traffic. but as we approached a busy intersection, we decided to pop up onto the sidewalk. this is easier said than done with a double jogging stroller. i found a little onramp via a driveway, and up we went, only hopping over a small little hiccup in the sidewalk.

zeke promptly started to scream his lovely, blonde head off.

being the compassionate mama i am, i said something along the lines of "aw, zekey, you okay?" to which he responded with more screaming. after 30 more seconds of jogging along, i figured he was doing his typical zekey thing - he's a sensitive little guy, and often if he gets scared or surprised by something, he will initially cry from the fear or surprise, but then KEEP on crying, even though nothing's wrong, simply because he's, well, sort of embarrassed. i figured that the abrupt change from road to sidewalk simply scared or surprised him, and that's why he was crying.

nearly five blocks down the road (this fact will be important later), he was still screaming. so we decided to stop our little running group to check on the little man. i leaned down in front of the stroller and his mouth was, quite literally, filled with blood. apparently, in our little jaunt from road-to-sidewalk, he bit his lip. and that's why he was screaming.

and i had kept pushing him. for five blocks.

so there we are, now standing in the middle of the street, setting an excellent example of street-wise-safety, trying to mop up the blood from zeke's mouth with my shirt, his shirt, my finger... i was not prepared at all for this event. i had neither a diaper bag, nor any sort of baby wipe anywhere nearby. and we were about 2 miles from home. i did the best i could to clean him up, kiss his sweet face to soothe him, and we looped back home. after another 30 seconds, he seemed fine, albeit with dried blood all over his face and shirt.

so thank you, zeke, for writing in my nomination for mother of the year. i'm pretty sure it's a shoe-in.