Adventures of M-Squared

5QF

2012-02-17T15:29:00.001+01:00

1. What do you do when you are really upset to calm yourself down? Talking to my husband usually calms me down more than anything else, and if he’s not available, I try to talk to one of my friends. I’m definitely not one to “suffer in silence”. I need to talk about it with someone (or blog about it) and then I feel better.

2. Do you go all out for V-day or is it just another day? Depends on the year. This year it was pretty low key because we have some much traveling coming up. So we just exchanged cards.

3. Are you more or less productive when Hubs is away? That is directly related to the age of my kids when he leaves. The deployment wasn’t as bad since Abbie was pretty independent and didn’t require quite as much attention at all times, which allows me to be somewhat productive. This past TDY was really tough because I had a newborn and preschooler fighting for my attention, so I spent 90% of my time in a chair nursing Ben and caring for Abbie and the other 10% of my time trying to sleep. So I got pretty much nothing else done besides the bare necessities.

4. What is your favorite time of day and why? Whenever Mark walks in the door, that’s my favorite time of day, for obvious reasons.

5. What is your go to karaoke song? I don’t have a go-to karaoke song because I don’t sing karaoke. I’d have to be WAY drunk to get enough guts to actually sing in front of people, and since I don’t really drink, I don’t see me having to worry about picking a song any time soon. =)

Down 3 ounces

2012-02-16T16:09:00.001+01:00

So my little guy is getting even littler… Ben had another weight check today. Six days from his last weight check and he dropped from 9lbs 5oz to 9lbs 2oz. The doctor I like was able to look at him today (even though I didn’t have an appt) and she heard a slight heart murmur (that the doctor didn’t hear last week??) so we’re taking him for an echocardiogram on Monday so they can see if there is anything wrong with his heart. She said 98% of these murmurs are nothing serious and just a matter of his heart moving around as he’s growing, but she wanted to rule out something more serious just in case. She also wants me to meet with a lactation consultant, but I REALLY don’t think it has anything to do with his latch or my supply. I know I have enough milk for him, so I’m fairly certain it’s not my supply. I leak all over the place and I can squeeze my boob and shoot milk across the room. (Sorry for TMI, but it’s the truth.) I don’t think it’s a latch issue either because I know he’s nursing well and getting milk because I can hear him swallowing. He’s having 6-8 wet diapers a day and he’s pooping also. So I know he’s getting enough, which is also why I don’t think it’s anything to do with his heart either. I think if he was having issues with his heart, he wouldn’t be able to nurse on both sides plus top off with a bottle (which he usually doesn’t want anyway), without being fatigued. And he wouldn’t be able to scream for extended periods of time like he sometimes does.

My gut tells me that it has something to do with the way that he’s metabolizing his food. He doesn’t act sick normally. His eyes are still bright and his cheeks are still puffy and he’s active and smiles and coos. Occasionally he’ll get really cranky and he’ll go from bringing his knees up to his belly and then arching his back, which leads me to believe that his belly hurts. I think it has something to do with his stomach or thyroid or something having to do with his digestive system and him not absorbing the nutrients that he needs. But as I said, his diapers are fairly normal, so that doesn’t make sense either. And I don’t think why he gained weight just fine his first month and then he stopped gaining weight, and now he’s losing weight. I don’t know what changed, but it has me pretty worried, to say the least.

I’m trying to be patient about this, but I just want answers, like, yesterday. It worries the heck out of me that he’s LOSING weight, and he’s barely 9lbs to begin with. He still weighs less than Abbie did at BIRTH, and he’s over 9 weeks old. I just want to know what’s going on before he gets even skinnier. I’d appreciate any prayers for him that you’re willing to spare.

2012 travel plans

2012-02-13T09:35:00.000+01:00

Mark and I just went through our calendar and decided what days he should request off of work, and where we wanted to travel to during our last year here in Italy. Here’s what we came up with.
We’re going back to the States for Mark’s training for 2 months. We really weren’t planning on going back to the States at all our last year here, but the Air Force had different plans so we adapted our plans to fit the Air Force’s.
In June we’re going to go to Croatia for a long weekend - to the beach and Plitvice Lakes National Park. The Croatian coastline is well known with Europeans and is a major vacationing spot for them. I’ve heard Plitvice be compared to the Garden of Eden and it’s some place we’ve wanted to visit since we heard about it shortly after we moved here.

(Photo source)

In July we’re going on an 8 night cruise to the Greek Isles and Turkey. This was on the top of both Mark’s and my lists of things we wanted to do before we left Europe. I am really excited about this. We’ll be going to Athens, Santorini, Olympia, Corfu, Katakolon and Bari. I’m a little nervous about cruising with a 3 year old and an 8 month old, but beggars can’t be choosers, right? This will be our first cruise ever, and hopefully not our last!

(Photo source)

In August we’re considering going to Belgium for a long weekend because I have a friend that lives there. She was an exchange student and we went to high school together for a year and became good friends and we’ve kept in touch over the years. I would love to go visit her and meet her family, but that might be an expensive trip, especially right after the cruise, so we’ll see. If we don’t go there we might do something else a little more locally.

(Photo source)

In September we want to go to Munich and visit Dachau and Hilter’s Eagle’s Nest. This is about a 4-5 hour drive for us, and I wanted to visit a concentration camp the first time I was in Germany in 2003 and the second time I was there in 2008. So now that we’re so close to it, I really want to drive up there and see it.

(Photo source)

October will be a big month for us. Mark’s brother is being ordained in Rome, so Mark’s family will be down in Rome in the beginning of the month. We’re going to go down to visit them for a day, but we’ve already been to Rome twice, so I want to head down to Pompeii to see that while we’re down there. We’re also planning on going to Ireland for a week in October. We plan on renting a car and driving along the coastline. Ireland is also at the top of Mark’s and my lists and neither of us has been there before, so I’m excited about that trip.

(Photo source)

We also have two 4 day weekends in November where we’ll try to go someplace, but pretty much every place we want to travel is north of us, which means November might be a bit too chilly, especially since we’ll be traveling with kids. I would love to go to Salzburg and Vienna, Austria and also Budapest, Hungary. I want to do the Sound of Music tour in Salzburg. (That’s where the movie was filmed.) And I would love to see the Lipizzaner Riding School in Vienna. So I’m not sure November will be the perfect time of year to visit those places, but we’ll see. I also want to visit Vintgar Gorge, which is about 3 hours from our house. But again, that’s more of a summer mini-trip.

(Photo source)

Two big trips in one year will be a lot, but we didn’t get to travel much last year due to Mark being deployed from April – October, so we’re making it up for it this year. All of these places, with the exception of the cruise, Belgium and Ireland, are within a 5 hour drive of our house. So while this sounds like a lot (and it is more than normal for sure), most of these will just be weekend driving trips.
Mark loves to travel as much as I do, which is a great thing. I feel like we had traveling with Abbie down to an art, considering she’d been to nine countries before her 2nd birthday. Hopefully we can figure out traveling with two kiddos as easily as we figured out how to travel with one. We’ll let you know!

Ben’s 2 month pictures

2012-02-12T08:18:00.000+01:00

Here are Ben’s 2 month photos that I took. He is so long and skinny, but Mark’s mom said he was the same way when he was a baby. I’m still going to try to fatten him up some.

It was a little hard to get photos with the “2 months” showing since he likes to keep his little arms tucked up by his chest, but I got him to relax a little for some of the photos.

I’m trying really hard not to freak out about him losing weight, but in reality, I am pretty worried about it. Yesterday I had to do my fourth diabetes test (getting rather tired of them), and while I was at the clinic on base, Brittney had me meet with the pediatric nurse while I was there. (I hate that Brittney works because I want to spend more time with her, but it is VERY convenient have her work at the clinic on base. I feel like she’s totally my hook-up there and she gets me answers about the kids and can make me appointments when other people don’t call me back to schedule appointments, etc. It’s been nice, but I’ll be glad when she doesn’t work anymore too! Thanks Britt! You’re the best!!) So we weighted my skinny boy, and he was still 9lb5oz totally naked, and with his diaper he was 9lb6oz. So at least he hasn’t lost weight in 2 days. The peds nurse also measured him again and she measured him at 23 1/4” so he’s gained 3/4 of an inch since birth. He’s pretty long. She said that he should be gaining 15-30g per day and right now he’s only gaining about 9g per day. She said he doesn’t look or act malnourished, which is what I was concerned about, so that made me feel a bit better. I’m just going to nurse him more and offer him a bottle occasionally until he’s gaining weight the way he should be.

And just for fun, here’s the comparison of Ben’s and Abbie’s 2 month pictures. (At 2 months Abbie weighed 10lb14oz and she was 10oz heavier than Ben was at birth.)

5QF

2012-02-10T16:25:00.001+01:00

1. How often do you shave your legs in the winter? Every time I shower. Feels weird to not shave my legs when I shower.

2. Valentine's Day cards for your spouse: funny or romantic? Usually romantic. I like him to know how much he means to me. Sometimes I get him two though – a romantic one and a funny one.

3. What are you most looking forward to about spring? Warmer weather and all the flowers blooming. Springtime in Italy is gorgeous, although I’ll probably miss most of it since we’ll be back in the States for 2 months.

4. What's your favorite way to pamper yourself? Paint my fingernails. I always feel prettier with my nails painted. Kind of weird, but true.

5. Does your tax return go into savings or do you spend it instantly? Normally we put it into savings or towards paying down loans. This year we’re spending it on a Mediterranean cruise to Greece and Turkey. I’m SOOOO excited!!

Ben’s 2 month appt

2012-02-09T07:54:00.001+01:00

I took Ben to his 2 month appointment today. I had a list of questions that I wanted to ask his pediatrician, but it turns out his normal ped. is gone, so he had his appointment with some other fill in guy that I wasn’t very impressed with at all. I really wanted to talk to the pediatrician that saw him for his 2 week appointment and saw him after he was born, and she’s also Abbie’s doctor. So the appointment started out bad, right from the start and only got worse from there.

The good news is that Ben is on track physically and developmentally. He’s doing everything a 2 month old should do – smiling, cooing, responding to voices, turning his head, holding his head steadier and lifting it up when he’s on his tummy. His heart and lungs sounded good, ears looked good, belly sounded good. The doctor did that stretchy test on him where they move his legs around and that was fine. (I still don’t know what exactly they’re looking for when they do that.)

The bad news is that he weighed 9lbs 5oz. …. So essentially he’s gained 6 oz in 2 months, which isn’t good at all. And what makes me worry even more is that when Brittany and I weighed him when he was a month old, he weighed 10lbs 1oz with his clothes on. So he was just in his diaper this time, but still – his clothes don’t weight that much, so he’s lost weight in the last month. This weekend when Mark and I weighed him on our digital scale he was weighing around 10.4lbs with his clothes on, so apparently he’s even lost weight since this weekend because when we got home from the doctor I weighed him with his clothes on and he was 9.8lbs. I’m not sure why he’s lost half a pound in the past few days Needless to say, I kinda freaked out and I had a whole list of things to ask and after I saw his weight, none of them seemed important anymore.

The doctor was very “relaxed” about it all though. He said that he thought we should do a weight check in 2 weeks to see where he’s at, and I said I didn’t want to wait that long, so he said that we could do them every week. He said that he looks good with everything else and that his temperature was good. I asked him how he knew his temperature was good and he was surprised that the tech hadn’t taken his temp. ??? So he took it and it was 97.3… Is that good? I also showed him Ben’s diaper, which has been having peachy colored spots in his pee diapers occasionally, and this time all of the urine was that color and he said that it shows that Ben is dehydrated and his pee is really concentrated, but again, he wasn’t all that worried about it.

Normally Ben has been sleeping from around 10:30pm (between 10:15 – 11:15pm actually), and waking up once around 3:30-4ish to eat, and then sleeping until 8:30am, although that last half of the night is still really tough for us. I can get him to go to sleep by himself just fine during naps and when I put him down at night, but getting him to go back to sleep by himself after he wakes up to nurse in the middle of the night is next to impossible. The past 2 nights I’ve been up with him for over 3 hours trying to get him back to sleep in his own bed, and then I finally give up because I’m exhausted so I bring him to bed with me and he’s out like a light. Maybe him not sleeping well the past two nights has something to do with his weight loss? I’m not sure.
The doctor basically said to just try to nurse him more and to just let him sleep with us at night instead of fighting him with trying to get him to sleep in his own bed until he’s gaining weight better. He also said to give him gas drops when he’s fussy to see if that helps anything.
So I’m just going to try to nurse him more than I have been, but nothing has changed really in his 2nd month. I’ve been nursing him the same as I have all along, so I don’t get why he’s losing weight. He is a skinny little thing, but he’s built just like Mark is. His head circumference was 39.1cm I think, and his length was 22.8”, so he’s only grown .3 of an inch since birth. That doesn’t seem like much either, but what do I know. I wish there was a more accurate way to measure their length since people seem to stretch them out different every time they measure him. I think he might be a little longer than that, but probably not much.
I’m going to try REALLY hard to not worry about this, but it’s hard. I’m surprised I didn’t burst in to tears right then and there. Wish us luck. Hopefully I can fatten my little peanut up some!

To go or not to go?

2012-02-08T08:44:00.000+01:00

We found out last month that Mark has to go to SOS (squadron officer school) towards the end of March for two months. We were really hoping that he would get to go en route to our next base, meaning he’d go in between moving from this base to our next base, but I guess the Air Force had other plans, as they usually do. The kicker for this is that if he went en route, the AF would pay for the kids and me to go, but since that’s not the case, they won’t.
Mark’s schedule here in Italy is VERY busy. Aviano is just a really busy base, in general. Normally Mark works 12 hour days – that’s pretty much the average. It’s a good day if he gets to come home after 10 hours. So we don’t get to see him a ton. Now he’s going through the FLUG (flight lead upgrade), which means he’s even more busy than he normally is with studying, taking tests, preparing for and doing check rides (flights that he’s graded on), etc. They’re trying to get him through this before he goes to SOS, so he’s going to be extremely busy between now and then. Plus they have exercises going on, so he’ll be working weekends occasionally also, in addition to studying on weekends at home and on base. Basically, it’s going to suck. And then he’s going to leave for two months. Yay.
The stupid thing about SOS is that they just combined a course that you have to take when you first join the AF with SOS, which made SOS 2 weeks longer. Mark took that other course (ASBC) already, and he’s also already did SOS online – he’s done all the reading and taken the tests, but the AF has this 100% capacity rule now that they have to fill these courses 100%. While Mark is at SOS, he’ll pretty much work a 9-5 job, with an hour lunch break every day and all weekends off.
Mark and I have been toying with the idea of the kids and I going back to the States with him since we found out he’s going, and I think this week we decided that we would all go back to the States. The huge downfall to that is that we’ll be paying 2 months rent on a furnished place, which is going to be about $2000/month, plus paying for a rental car, along with still paying our rent back in Italy. So it’s going to be really expensive, but really that’s the only downfall. We had to decide if the money was more important to us, or getting to spend that time together, and we decided that the time together is invaluable. The military lifestyle takes him away from us a lot, and while we have this chance to actually spend two full months with him (IN THE STATES!!!! and not working 12 hour days), we should take it. I found decently priced airfare (under $700 r/t), so I think we’re going to pull the trigger on this and get it.
Thinking about going to Alabama is bringing back a lot of memories for me. Mark and I started officially dating right before he commissioned into the AF and he immediately left for ASBC in Alabama after he commissioned. I got a wild hair one night while he was down there and decided to drive from Milwaukee to Montgomery to see Mark, so I packed up my little Jetta and left WI at 10pm, drove straight through the night and got to Maxwell AFB in AL around 10am the next morning. We took a little trip down to Destin and went jet skiing and ate at The Crab Trap and had a good time. Seven (7?!?!?!!!) years later, with our two kids, we’re going back. I’m so excited to get to spend that time with Mark and have him not miss Ben’s 3rd – 5th months. I think my parents are going to come down for a week or so to visit us while we’re there also, and meet Ben, and we’re going to try to tack on a week of leave after SOS is over so we can go up to IL and introduce Ben to the rest of our families and friends.
It’ll be a lot of planning and preparing and packing (again, but I’m a pro at that now), but I am so excited that we get to go back with him!

Catching up

2012-02-06T14:14:00.001+01:00

Mark is home and we are all pretty excited about that. He surprised Abbie Sunday morning when we went in to get her up. (I hadn’t told her he was coming home.) She was pretty stunned and it was fun to see her reaction. And of course, she’s been Mark’s little shadow since he’s been back.

Ben had changed a bit in the 2 weeks Mark was gone and Mark commented on how skinny he looks now, which completely freaks me out. Luckily we have his 2 month appointment this week so I’ll be able to see what his pediatrician says, but now I am worried about it. As much as I would love to have chunky, roley-poley babies, I don’t. I have long, skinny babies (that tend to cry a LOT in their first few months of life, which is another thing I’m going to ask his doctor about). But Mark is 6’3 and very lean and I’m almost 5’9 (and currently not at all lean), so I guess it makes sense that our kids are built the way they’re built. I’m just excited to go to his appointment to get my questions answered.

This week is also our AOCSC (Aviano Officer and Civilian Spouse’s Club) (you never run out of acronyms around the military, that’s for sure) is having their bingo night. I’m super excited about that because it’s fun to play bingo and you get to win some really neat prizes!! Plus I’m going to send Ben home with Mark after Mark gets off work, which will be my first time not being in the same dwelling as Ben. It’s hard to play bingo while taking care of a baby though! Hopefully he’ll be a good boy for Mark.

Hopefully I’ll be able to keep up with my blog a little more now that Mark’s home, even if he won’t be much help. I only had 11 blog posts for January, which isn’t very much at all for me! I miss blogging when I don’t do it. I haven’t been taking very many pictures lately though either, which also bothers me. Just today I finally got a picture of Ben smiling with my dSLR because Mark was holding him. I’m too close to him when I hold him to use my big camera to capture his smile, so all the previous pictures have been with my iPhone, which isn’t the best quality, but it’s better than nothing. So I need to start taking more pictures of the kids also. It’ll be nice when I can take them outside for pictures, but it’s been ridiculously cold here lately, so we’ve been staying inside a lot! Hopefully it warms up soon!

January 2012 Abbie-isms

2012-02-04T16:59:00.000+01:00

Sorry there aren’t any pictures this month, and there aren’t many Abbie-isms either. She says tons of hilarious stuff, but I don’t have time to write them down and then I forget them. But these are the ones I did manage to remember. Enjoy!

**We saw jets flying around on our way home from base today. Abbie told me that jets “have pointy things like sharks”. (I’m assuming she was saying the vertical stabilizer on the jet looks like a shark fin, which was kind of impressive to me.) Then she told me that “sharks have very sharp teeth and sharp eyebrows”. (That wasn’t as impressive, but it was pretty funny.)

**Abbie has a habit of standing RIGHT in front of the TV while she watches her shows. She was bugging me to watch one of her shows and I said, “No, I don’t want you in front of the TV all day Abbie.” to which she replied, “Well I’ll sit back on the couch then.”

**While Mark’s brother was visiting, the five of us took a trip in the car, so Mark sat in the back between the two carseats. On the way home, Mark was getting in and Abbie said, “Your frickin butt is too big to fit back here.” LOL!

**Abbie loves to talk to Mark when he calls me when he’s on his way home. Today I handed her the phone and she said, “How was your flight daddy?”.

**The guards at the gates on base always salute Mark after they check his ID. (That’s just typical protocol.) Abbie has started noticing that they salute him. So after we go through the gate, she’ll ask, whether it’s me or Mark driving, “Did they just do this?”, while imitating a salute. She also asks why they do that, which is a little harder to explain to a 2.5 year old.

**Abbie often says things like “I really like our Benj. He’s a good Benj, isn’t he?”

**We have issues with Abbie going to bed at night. We tuck her in and then she’ll call us back in 5+ times for different reasons (and if we ignore her she COMPLETELY freaks out). Anyway, last night I went down for the 4th time since we’d put her in bed. She said, “Mommy, I have to tell you sump-in.” I asked her what she had to tell me and she said, “There’s a ka-ren-too-la outside my window.” (She was watching Max and Ruby and they read a book about a tarantula that Max was afraid of being out his window. That’s the last time she’s watching that episode!

MFF and 5QF

2012-02-03T09:25:00.001+01:00

What is your favorite winter memory? Going to a Christmas tree farm when I was younger and finding and cutting down our own Christmas tree. I miss doing that.
What is your current favorite TV show? Parenthood. I love that show!!
What was your favorite thing that happened in January? Ben started to smile for the first time, around 7 weeks old!!
What is the best sound in the world to you? Right now it would be my husbands car pulling into the driveway. It’s been a long two weeks without him, and I would say this short TDY was almost on par with the 6+ month deployment we just went through in terms of difficulty. Thank God it’s almost over.
What is the biggest lesson you have learned as a MilSpouse (or significant other)? That nothing is set in stone and plans change ALL the time. Flexibility and a fairly laid-back attitude is the key to survival!

1. What have you done recently that you are proud of? Kept both kids and myself alive during my first TDY as a parent to 2 kids – one being an extremely defiant 2.5 year old that I wanted to strangle half the time, and the other being an extremely colicy newborn, who is currently screaming his fool head off beside me, as he usually is. It has been a LONG two weeks, that’s for sure.

2. What is your favorite way to work out? Or if you don't workout, what are you wanting to try? Horseback riding!! It really is a full body work out plus cardio. I miss it a lot.

3. If you knew you best friend was cheating on spouse would you tell? No, I would not tell her spouse. It’s not my place. I would tell her to stop though.

4. If you could afford a live-in maid or nanny, would you have one? Oh boy…. This is a TOUGH question to answer right now. Normally I would say maid, but I wouldn’t want her to live here, unless she was going to get up with the baby in the middle of the night – so that would be the nanny…. I don’t know. Can I have someone that’s maid half the time and nanny the other half the time? (And they can be nanny from 8pm – 8am – that’s Ben’s fussiest time.) That would be perfect!!

5. Do you stress out about birthdays (specifically the age) or do you enjoy them? No, I don’t stress out about them at all. Getting older is a rite of passage and I’m looking forward to seeing what my future holds.

And, a bonus question from Scott, that I wasn't brave enough to put in as a regular question...answer at your own risk, or not at all! (Or something...)

Bonus: Lights off or on? Haha! Kind of a moot point since I had a baby 8 weeks ago and my husband has been gone for 2 weeks…. You do the math.

**TO MY REGULAR READERS: I have completely fallen off the blogging bandwagon, and I miss it so much! I just haven’t had time to recently with trying to keep up with two kids. Mark will be home soon and also my MIL is coming to visit for a week and a half this month so I’ll have lots of time to catch up on blogging soon. I miss it!! Thanks for sticking with me and being patient!

Above water

2012-01-26T17:41:00.001+01:00

So I’ve been keeping my head above water with both kids on my own for the first time. It hasn’t always been pretty, and it’s definitely not easy, but we’re getting through it. The fact is, that this single parent kid-raising thing is helluva hard. And I have a hard time not being bitter about the situation I’ve been put in at times. It doesn’t mean I’m not grateful for everything I have, and that I’m not thankful for my husband’s job, but this is tough.

Ben is a pretty fussy baby. I would say that at least 70% or more of the time he’s awake and not nursing, he’s crying. Abbie cried a lot also, but it is absolutely exhausting to try to take care of Abbie and also deal with Ben’s incessant crying when I know I’m never going to get a break and just be able to pass him off to Mark for a few minutes so I can regroup. He’s my responsibility all the time, and it’s extremely frustrating when I’ve fed him, changed him, rocked him, swaddled him and done everything else I can think of to get him to stop crying, and he still is. It makes me start to think something’s wrong with him, even though I know that’s my over-active imagination. When he’s crying, a lot of times he arches his back and throws his head back to scream, so I googled that. Big mistake. The two things that came up were autism and cerebral palsy. So I worried about that for a good 48 hours, but I’m pretty much over it now. His crying is subsiding a little bit, and I’ve read that the peak of their crying is around 6 weeks and it’s usually a lot better by 8 weeks. (He’ll be 7 weeks tomorrow.)

Abbie has been VERY hard to deal with. Her favorite word, and first reaction to ANYTHING I ask her to do is “NO!”. It is beyond frustrating and half the time I just want to smack the snot out of her, which is flowing abundantly now as it is. She is an incredibly strong-willed child, and I’ve gone more than one round with her about showing her who’s boss. (No, I don’t hit her.) It took me a good 45 mins to get her to pick up her markers she had thrown all over the living room the other day. I would tell her she could go into time out or pick up her markers and she chose the time out more often than not. She can be absolutely infuriating at times, and it’s hard to like her when she acts like that. I go between feeling sorry for her that her dad is gone and that she’s not the only one receiving my attention anymore, and just wishing she would behave and do what I ask and entertain herself for more than 5 seconds quite a bit.

Mark’s schedule, as it almost always is when he is gone, is much more free that it is when he’s home. So he’s been going out to dinner every night with his co-workers/friends and going go-karting and going to bars, etc. I’ll admit, I’m extremely jealous, especially when I talk to him when he’s on his way out the door to go have dinner with friends, while I’m dealing with a screaming baby and fighting my 2 year old to eat any dinner, all while going on not much sleep since I was up with Ben eight times during the night.

Thank God I have amazing friends over here. My friend, Jessica, brought dinner over on Monday, and held Ben for me and kept an eye on Abbie so I could take a quick shower. It was so nice to have her company and her food was great! And Cassy came over last night and brought part of dinner for us and again watched the kids while I took a quick shower and kept me company. I really, really appreciate their help. Tonight I’m going to dinner with Jennifer and we also have plans tomorrow, so I’m trying to keep busy to make the time Mark is gone fly by.

Sorry I haven’t been blogging much lately. I have a lot I want to say, but I just don’t have the time to get on the computer. Hopefully when Ben is a little less fussy and I can put him down for more than 3 minutes without him screaming, I’ll be able to write much more often. I miss it!!

I’m famous!

2012-01-23T15:11:00.000+01:00

A couple weeks ago I was at the post office. I had to mail a stack of birth announcements I was sending out and also buy stamps. I handed my stack of mail to the person behind the counter, who handed it to her boss who was behind her. A third worker came to join the group and the boss handed it to him. He looked at my stack of mail and said “Ohhh. YOU’RE <my last name>! You’re famous around here.” I kinda looked at him, unsure of how to take his comment and he said, “You like to write letters huh?” I told him I did and I was just trying to keep them in business. =)

Apparently I send more mail than the average person, which doesn’t surprise me too much. I’ve sent well over 200 letters in the last month between Christmas cards, birth announcements, birthday and anniversary cards and letters to friends. I think letter writing is a lost art. Hopefully I can pass my love of letter writing off to my kids. I’m lucky enough to have friends and family that actually hand write me letters back also!

I do have to say, I miss having a normal mailbox to go check every day. I have to go to the base post office to get my mail and they give you a ticket if you leave your kids in the car by themselves while you go check your mail. So carrying a car seat with an infant in it, and wrangling a 2 year old while trying to check your mail and carry any packages back to the car by yourself is a real trick. But getting real mail makes it worth the hassle!

We’ll see how this goes

2012-01-20T14:49:00.001+01:00

Abbie watching the jets fly by.

It seems like every time Mark goes TDY, I get sick right before he leaves, and this TDY was no exception. The day before Mark left I started getting a stuffy nose and sore throat. My ears hurt, I had a ton of sinus pressure and a little pain and I had a fever. Perfect. Luckily ibuprofen is helping all my aches and pains, because that’s really all I can take at this point. The joys of breastfeeding. If I take any sort of decongestant, most likely it will dry up my milk supply also and I’m not willing to risk that.

I tried to warn Abbie that Mark was going to be gone this time. She’s been really attached to him lately and every single morning when I get her up she asks where daddy is. I tell her he’s at work and she says “Well he’ll be home later.” And then when she gets up from her nap, she also asks when daddy is going to be home. So I wanted to warn her that he was going to be gone for a couple weeks instead of him just disappearing and we’ve been talking about daddy leaving all week. Mark also talked to her the night before he left and told her he was going to be gone for a while and she said “But you’ll come back, right?” After we’d put Abbie to bed that night, she’d call out a couple times and ask Mark if he was still here or if he’d left yet. He’d say he was still here and she’d reply with “Okay daddy. I love you.” It was pretty hard to listen to. It’s to the point where I don’t get sad for myself that Mark is leaving, but my heart breaks for Abbie that she’ll be missing her daddy. Thank God Ben will be oblivious to the fact that Mark is gone for a while yet.

I’m not sad that Mark is gone (well a little), but I am scared this time around. I’m nervous about handling both kids on my own for the first time all day AND all night, especially with my lack of sleep and the fact that I’m sick (which is probably caused by my lack of sleep). I still haven’t exactly figured out when I’m going to shower since I always do that when Mark gets home from work so he could watch the kids for me. And I’m hoping I can handle Abbie’s bedtime routine by myself since Mark always helps with that also. One of us would get Abbie ready for bed while the other handled Ben, since he’s pretty screamy in the evenings. I’ll figure it out somehow and hopefully I’ll have it all down by the time Mark gets back.

Luckily things have been pretty good so far. Ben is getting past his “cry all the time” stage, which is really nice, and Abbie has been really good about taking naps for me lately. Today I told her it was naptime and she walked in to her room and was in bed by the time I got in there. That is most definitely a first. Now if she goes to bed at night that easily I’ll be so happy. And if I can get Ben to go back to sleep without crying for an hour after his early morning feeding, I’ll be even happier. I’m really hoping I can get him sleeping better in the next couple weeks. I’m going to try to get him into a routine during the day to help him switch his routine at night. I’ve been just letting him sleep when he wants to sleep during the day and now I’m going to try an adapted version of Babywise. I don’t even have that book, but I know what it’s about and I’m going to take try to get him onto a loose schedule during the day so he switches his days and nights. Wish me luck. I could really use some more sleep right about now!

Ben’s baby shower

2012-01-15T12:58:00.001+01:00

This weekend my friends here in Italy through us a baby shower. Brittney, Jennifer and Cassy coordinated the whole thing and they really went all out! It had a Winnie the Pooh theme and they thought of everything!

The favors were jars of honey! I loved that it was something that people could use! And Brittney did a great job with all the tags.

And check out this cake!!! Can you believe it? It was almost as big as my wedding cake! I wish there was a way I could keep all the characters on it, but they’re made of fondant. Anyone know how to preserve fondant?

We ate good food and had fun talking. Ben got passed around quite a bit, as he usually does when I’m around friends. I love that everyone loves to hold him and help with him. It makes up for the fact that family isn’t here to admire him.

Ben with Lisette, Tisha, Julia, Cassy and Taryn and Felicia!

I feel so lucky that all these people came out on a Saturday to celebrate Ben’s arrival, especially when we really don’t to spend that much time with our husbands. I am so lucky to be surrounded by such great people while we live in Italy.

They had a onesie decorating contest and people got quite involved in it! It was fun to watch everyone be creative. I got to pick my favorite (which was REALLY hard) and the winner one a prize.

Jessica and her trio of iPhone’s for inspiration.

Cassy hard at work!

We also played a game where Jennifer brought out a tray full of things and then we had to try to remember everything we saw on the tray. My memory has been pretty much shot so I didn’t stand a chance at winning that one.

Me with Jennifer, Cassy and Brittney and their onesie, which says “This is how I rock my moose-stache”. (Mark’s call sign is Moose – hence the moose theme). That’s also the diaper cake that Tracy made me!

Me with Taryn, Felicia and Kelia and their onesie that they used a Kleenex box for to get the lines straight. Really cute idea!

Me with Kristin and Jennifer and the onesies they made. I thought the iPood one was hilarious!!

Jessica and me – I chose her onesie as the winner. It was a moose with a mustache drawn on it. So cute!

I can’t believe all the work that Brittney, Jennifer and Cassy put into this! I’m sure Brittney put hours of work into all of the things she made on her Cricut machine. It really makes me one, because everything she made was adorable! Jennifer hosted the shower at her house and had the whole place decorated with balloons and other decorations. Cassy made these really cute Winnie the Pooh sayings in frames, which I will post about later since I am going to hang those in Ben’s room, along with some of the decorations Brittney made.

I’m really, really lucky to have such great friends! (And now you need to all have babies so I can return the favors!!) *grins*

Staying busy

2012-01-13T11:58:00.001+01:00

The month has turned out to be pretty busy for me, which is a good thing. I like being busy and having some place to be every day. It keeps me focused and gives me something to look forward to. It’s just a lot more challenging to get out of the house with a newborn and a 2.5 year old in tow, but I’m figuring out our morning routine.

One of the things I have coming up next week is an appointment to get all of Ben’s paperwork done. The base here tends to make things as complicated as humanly possible for just about EVERYTHING, and getting Ben registered is no exception. We have his Italian birth certificate (which must be hand typed or something because they gave us 3 copies of it and every single one of them has the certificate number cut off of it….), but we still need to get his US birth certificate, social security card, tourist passport, no fee passport, visa and get him added to our soggiorno. So you have to make this appointment on base, but they only do them M, W, and F and then they only have 3 appointments per day that you can come in to complete the paperwork. And conveniently the entire office is closed between 11am and 1pm, when most other people on base would be available. I swear this base purposefully tries to make things complicated and as inconvenient as possible. Oh, and here’s a picture of part of the list of things we need to have together for this appointment…

Mark is leaving soon and I’m going to be on my own with the kiddos. It’ll be a pretty big learning curve for me trying to handle the evenings by myself. That’s what I’m most nervous about. I’ll have to figure out how to make dinner and feed Abbie, while keeping Ben content. Normally he’s pretty fussy in the evenings. And when Mark is here, he usually gives Abbie a bath and gets her ready for bed and reads her books and then we both tuck her in. Obviously I’ll have to do all of that myself and pray that Ben isn’t screaming his head off the whole time. Abbie has a REALLY bad habit of wanting “just one more kiss” like 6 times a night and I don’t know how I’m going to deal with that because when I put her in bed, I’m going to be more than ready for a break from at least one kid, since Ben still doesn’t sleep worth a crap at night so I’ll have to deal with him all night. Although, they do say things start improving around 6 weeks, so maybe I’ll get lucky and that will ring true, because Ben will be 6 weeks old next week. I think I’ll be fine after I have the first few days under my belt, it’s just the anticipation of the unknown.

My friends here are throwing a baby shower for Ben tomorrow so I’m pretty excited about that. Three of my friends have been planning it so I’m excited to see everyone and see what they have planned. Abbie is going to stay home with Mark, so hopefully they’ll have fun also.

Time to go get something else done while Ben is sleeping and Abbie is at the sitters!

Ben is a month old already!!

2012-01-09T16:18:00.001+01:00

It’s hard to believe that Ben has already been with us for a full month! Although, looking back, it’s been a pretty “interesting” month, to say the least. I have decided that I’m really not that big of fan of the “newborn” stage. Don’t get me wrong. I love Ben to death and wouldn’t trade him for the world, but I do not function well on little sleep. I am a night owl, but by that, I mean I stay up until midnight most nights. Ben’s version of being a night owl was at first to scream bloody murder from about 1am – 3am, and then he transitioned into the “won’t sleep by himself in his own bed from 4am-8am” stage, which is where we currently are. Newborns cry a lot, and Ben has done his fair share of that, but his cry is much more “muted” than Abbie’s was, so it’s much easier to tolerate. When Abbie cried, you could, no kidding, hear her outside and 2 houses over when she was this age. Ben does more fussing than full on screaming, and even when he does get worked up, he just sounds like a grumpy old man. It’s pretty cute.

Abbie is doing much better now that she’s had a month to adjust, thank God. For a while there I was really wondering what the heck I’d gotten myself into with having two kids. But Abbie is doing better and her meltdowns aren’t nearly as frequent as they were. She constantly asks to hold Ben and she loves to help with him. I’ll be holding him and she’ll come up and say “Give him to me.", like I’ll just pass him off to her. I have no doubt she’d try to carry him around if I gave her half the chance. Instead, I let her “carry” his feet when I carry him around. He’s pretty tolerant of her being in his face and being a little bit rough at times. Ben loves to watch Abbie and many times he’ll calm down if she starts to talk to him when he’s worked up. She loves to give him his paci and put blankets on him when he’s in his swing.

I had lunch with Brittney today, who’s a nurse at the clinic on base, and she did a quick weight check on him for me. (Thanks Britt!!) He was 10lbs1oz with his clothes and diaper on. So we guesstimated that he probably weighs around 9lbs 13oz without his clothes on, which means he’s up a full pound from his 2 week appointment. I don’t doubt he’s getting enough to eat at all, which is a huge difference from when Abbie was this age. I was constantly worried about my milk supply with her, but I’m not worried about it this time, mostly because I feel like I have enough milk for 3 babies most of the time. I leak quite a bit, and I flood him sometimes when I’m nursing him. Some nights we give him two ounces of formula in a bottle so he will drink from a bottle later on and also take formula when we’re out and about. Makes my life a lot easier, but I’ve noticed I’m not nearly as self-conscious about nursing him when we’re out in public as I was with Abbie. Ben doesn’t nurse nearly as much as Abbie did though. Abbie used me as a pacifier half the time, but when Ben is done eating, he doesn’t want me to nurse him any more and wants his paci back. Abbie was latched on to me pretty much the first 4 months of her life straight.

Just in the past week Ben has become easier. He’s much more alert now and he’ll watch me as I move around and turn to look at you when you talk to him. He’ll be perfectly content sitting in his swing or bouncy chair just watching what everyone else is doing for about 15 mins at a time. He doesn’t cry as much in the evenings like he used to. And we’re trying to get him to go to sleep by himself instead of us holding him and then trying to get him in bed without him waking up. We learned that lesson with Abbie. He definitely gets fussy when he gets tired so I usually nurse him if he wants to nurse, or we rock him until he’s drowsy and then try to put him in the bed while he’s still somewhat awake. Usually he’ll wake up and cry when we put him down, but we just pat him and keep putting his paci in his mouth until he falls asleep. Last night was our best night yet! He slept from 12am-4:15am. I nursed him from 4:15am-5am. And then I put his paci in at 5:15am and 6:30am, and he stayed in his bed until 7:30am. It was REALLY nice not spending most of the night in the chair.

And just to keep up the tradition, here are the Ben and weina dog pictures. Some people measure their kid’s growth by having them hold stuffed animals in pictures (great idea!). We’re the weirdos that put them next to the weina dogs. (Sadie wasn’t a big fan of his screaming.)

Our little stud striking a pose.

Love them!!

Still here

2012-01-07T10:57:00.001+01:00

I’ve had a few requests from friends to put more pictures of Ben up on here. I had my camera set to take pictures in RAW format, and then discovered I couldn’t post pictures on here in RAW format, so I’m still trying to get those other pictures converted. But here are a few pictures that I’ve taken in the past few days. I’m not going to talk about him too much, because he’ll be a month old tomorrow and I’ll give all the updates in that blog.

But just to tide you over until I find the time to get that post up, here are a few pictures of our little Ben.

And here are a few of the pooks eating cookies.

5QF

2012-01-06T10:10:00.001+01:00

1. What is the weather like where you are and do you like it? It’s been fairly nice here. In the 50’s and sunny, although we did have a storm last night. I don’t mind the weather, but I do miss snow, especially for Christmas. At least we can see snow on the mountains.

2. When you're sick what do you seek comfort from? My bed and a book or lots of sleep. And ibuprofen.

3. What do you need to do before the end of the month? Figure out how to parent 2 kids by myself since my husband is leaving for a few weeks for work. I have to admit, I’m pretty nervous about it because it’s been a HUGE adjustment for Abbie since Ben was born. She’s a bit more than a handful at times. Wish me luck!

4. Have you ever served on a jury? Nope, not yet!

5. If you could be any animal, what would you be and why? I think a horse, because I think they’re beautiful and majestic, and I would like to know how it is for them doing dressage and jumping like we make them do. It would be interesting to experience it from there point of view.

December 2011 Abbie-isms

2012-01-03T07:57:00.000+01:00

**Abbie was ordering Mark around and he wasn’t doing what she was telling him to do. Finally she said, “Daddy, you’re driving me nuts!” HAHA! I suppose she’s heard that a time or two…

**We were in the BX yesterday and we walked by the bra/underwear section. Abbie starts pointing at the bras and said, “Mommy, those are boob pads.” I kept walking and muttered, ‘Uh-huh. Come on Abbie.” hoping she would just keep following me. Nope. She didn’t. She turned around and ran back to them and then yelled, since I was 20 ft away from her, “Mommy!! Boobs go in these! They’re boob pads!!” *sighs* I went back to get her and told her they were called bras, not boob pads, so as we were walking away she said, “Oh, they’re called bras.” I would love to see how Mark would react if she did this stuff when he was around. He’d ironically disappeared when all this was happening.

**Mark was reading Abbie a book in the car and she said, “Daddy, this seal is driving me nuts!!”. (She has a little plastic bath toy seal that she likes to carry around with her.) Mark asked her why and she said, “Because he’s not looking at you!”.

**Abbie loves orange juice. She would drink it 24/7 if given the chance. I like to water it down when I can, but she’s caught on to that. Mark was putting some juice in her sippy cup for her. She brought it to him and he was dumping out the water and tried to just dump out part of the water before adding the juice. However, Abbie was standing there supervising and when Mark didn’t dump it all out she said, “No Daddy. Dump it all out.” And when he did she made him let her see that there was no water left in the cup. Unfortunately it’s hard to get anything past her these days.

**Abbie calls me her sweetie sometimes, since that’s what I call her. Usually she’ll say, “I love you mommy. You’re my sweetie.” =)

** We were in the car and the song “Jar of Hearts” came on. When we were in the States, I had this as the ringtone on my phone. Abbie listened to the song for a bit and then she asked me if it was on the radio or if it was my phone. I just cannot get over how she’s able to relate things at time. That hasn’t been my ringtone for over 2 months and yet she still knew that that song was on my phone.

**Abbie calls taking pictures “taking smiles”. She always asks if I want to take a “smile” of her or she says that she’s taking smiles of her babies. And Abbie has called Ben “Benj” pretty much from the beginning. She refers to him as baby Benj.

**I was nursing Ben in the living room chair (which is next to the Christmas tree) while Abbie and Mark were eating dinner. Abbie looked over at me and said “Mom, when you’re done feeding Benj on your boob and keeping the Christmas tree company, are you going to come eat with us?” LOL!

**Today when we were in the car to go see Mark, Abbie said to me, “Mommy, you really love Daddy, don’t you?” I told her I did and she said, “Well it’s okay if you give him kisses then.” Thanks to my 2 year old for giving me permission. =)

Looking forward

2012-01-02T08:35:00.001+01:00

The thing to do, especially in the blogger world, is to make New Year’s resolutions. And you all know I’m all about lists, so this really is right up my alley, partially because I like to check things off my lists as I accomplish them, and partially because putting it on here is going to hold me accountable for it. And I wouldn’t call these resolutions really, they’re more like goals I have for this year.
1. Get Abbie potty trained. I’ve been half-heartedly working on this and it’s not going very well at all. This probably isn’t the best time to potty train her since she’s already adjusting to having Ben in our lives, but I KNOW she’s ready to do this and it’s just a matter of her being stubborn. And the reason I know this is because when we took her to the nursery at church last month, she told them she had to go potty and actually peed when they took her. I’ve been putting her in training underwear at home, trying to get her to go on her potty, but more often than not, I’ll ask her if she has to go potty, she’ll say no and leave the room and go pee in her pants and then come back with new underwear and pants and ask me to change her. GRRRR!!!! It’s beyond frustrating and I don’t really know how to deal with this. Anyone have any tips??
2. Expand on my photography skills. I love taking pictures. I like the challenge of trying to get the shot I’m aiming for and I like having all the photos of the kids and places and people to look back on. I’ve been shooting mostly in manual mode lately and I feel like I have a pretty good grasp of how to get the camera to do what I want it to do, so it’s just a matter of getting faster at it and better.
3. Be more comfortable in my own skin. I’ve talked about this before – about how most of my friends here have a very “polished” appearance. They have the super cute skinny jeans with the nice pair of boots, along with nice fitting shirts, accessorized with scarves and necklaces, bracelets and earrings. Their hair almost always looks great and their make-up is perfectly done. I, honestly, have never been like that. Ever. At least I don’t feel like I have. I’m all about comfort and convenience, so put me in a pair of jeans (preferably loose fitting), and a big sweatshirt over a t-shirt, along with a pair of tennis shoes, and I’m good. Pull my hair back in a pony tail so it’s out of my face and, on a good day, put on a little mascara, and I’m good to go. That’s how I’m comfortable, until I get around a room full of my friends who are dressed up and “polished”. Then I feel quite frumpy and like I don’t fit in at all. I either need to conform and get a new wardrobe or repeatedly wear the three things that might make me fit in with the rest of them, or I need to get over it and just be comfortable with the way I am. This one is going to require some work, and some soul searching.
4. Spend more time on my marriage. Mark and I have a good relationship. I’d say we’re both pretty happy and he truly is my best friend and the person I’d rather spend time with more than anyone else. But with that being said, I think we get complacent in our marriage sometimes. We tend to be more like roommates than spouses and we fall into these ruts where we get so caught up in daily life that we forget about “us”. He turns in to daddy and fighter pilot and I turn in to mommy and maid and we don’t really put any effort in to our marriage because it’s all going in to being parents, working and running the household. Anyone that has kids knows that having 2 little ones can suck all the life out of you pretty darn quickly and when you finally get them to sleep all you want to do is crash yourself. And while iPhones are a great things, they’re also the devil too since Mark and I both spend more time messing with our phones at night than we do talking to each other, mainly because that’s our ways of catching up on what’s going on everywhere else. I’m going to try really hard to spend at least 30 mins a night just talking with Mark and discussing whatever, without the distraction of kids (ha, yeah right) or electronics.
5. Get healthy. This is my main goal for this year. And it’s not so much about losing weight (although I definitely do want to shed a few, or 30, pounds), as it is about being fit.
This picture was taken in September of 2003. (That’s me jumping my horse, Billy.) I remember thinking I looked horrible in breeches (riding pants) back then and I wanted to lose weight. What the hell was wrong with me? I weighed a good 50+lbs less than I do now in this picture, and I was really toned from riding all the time and working at a barn teaching lessons and taking care of 30+ horses. I want to get into this kind of shape again. My goal is to attend at least 1 exercise class a week and to completely the Couch to 5K program. I want to be able to run 1 mile and still be able to breathe and move the next day. Right now I couldn’t run 1/4 of the way around a track without stopping, and quite honestly, I hate running. There isn’t any part of it that’s fun for me, but I hear that once you can actually do it that it does become fun. And I spent $700 on that jogging stroller, so I need to justify that purchase by actually using it for jogging. I want to get rid of the jiggling and the wheezing when I run and to lose weight. The good news is, 3 weeks post partum and I’m within 8lbs of my pre-pregnancy weight. The bad news is I have a good 35-40lbs to lose to be at my goal weight. Wish me luck! I might need it…

Looking back

2012-01-01T12:53:00.001+01:00

(Taken New Year’s Eve – 2010)

2011 has been an interesting year for us. Honestly, I’m glad it’s over with. It hasn’t been bad, necessarily, but with Mark being gone close to 9 months last year, it wasn’t easy, that’s for sure. I’m so glad that we have a deployment under our belt – that it’s not some big unknown looming in front of us like it was this time last year. I’m proud of us for getting through it and coming out on the other side relatively unscathed. Deployments aren’t a big mystery to us anymore. Now we know what they entail, how to cope with them, and most importantly, that we’re capable of surviving them. Well, with one kid anyway. With two kids might be a different story.

Abbie has grown up so much this year. She went from this:

(Taken Jan 2011)

to this:

(Taken Dec 2011)

..in what seems to be the blink of an eye. And I went from this:

(Taken March 2011)

to this:

(Taken August 2011)

to this:

(Taken Dec 2011)

to this:

(Taken Dec 2011)

I think Mark and I both grew in different ways, which I’ve touched on before. He’s much more confident now, than he was before, and I think I’m probably more independent than I was prior to the deployment. I think our relationship reached a different level since we spent so much time apart but were able to keep our marriage strong despite the separation. And adding Ben to the family was obviously a huge change that we’re still adjusting too.

I’m glad 2011 is behind us and I’m very excited to see what 2012 holds for us. I can’t wait for Ben to be a few months older to where he’s interacting more with us (and also sleeping through the night…) And it’ll be fun to watch Abbie continue to grow and to see the relationship that she and Ben build. And it’ll be nice to have my husband around a little more this year too!

2011 Top 5 blog posts

2011-12-29T15:55:00.001+01:00

I love looking at the stats on my blog. It’s really interesting to me to know what people view on my blog, how they get there, how they leave, where they’re from, etc. I love it.

I decided to review the top 5 blog posts of the year, according to my stats. I got this idea from my friend Jessica’s blog, except she did the top 11. My stats don’t show me the top 10 of the year, it goes from monthly to all time, so some of the top 10 are from other years. Oh well. Five is enough anyway.

So here are my top 5, most reviewed, blogs for 2011.

5. To my sweet daughter – My letter to Abbie for her 2nd birthday. It’ll be fun one day to look back and have a whole bunch of these letters to remember the years gone by. I’m glad we started this tradition. Which reminds me, I need to do one for Ben’s birth.

4. Girls weekend in Vegas - Seems like this trip was a LONG time ago. I find it funny that this is in the top 5. I think people just search for “girls weekend in Vegas” and then decide to look at my blog when it pops up in the search results.

3. I hate my haircut – This one REALLY cracks me up that it’s in my top 5. Again, I think random people just google phrases so they can get a good laugh, otherwise why on earth would this one be in the top 5? Out of all the things I wrote about this year… Really? By the way, I still hate that haircut. Thank God my friend Rachel fixed it while I was at home. I like my haircut MUCH more now!

2. Postage stamp quilt-along – This one also surprises me, but it’s fun to look back on this. I really, really miss quilting and I wish I had more time to devote to playing with all the fabric that I have sitting downstairs on the shelf waiting for me. I really love everything about quilting and I feel so productive when I finish a quilt. Too bad it takes me MONTHS to finish one quilt. Someday my kids will be grown up and I’ll have tons of time to devote to quilting, and then I’ll be wishing my kids were still the ages they are now.

1. This summer’s bucket list – Apparently people like bucket lists. I, personally, like any kind of list. I did manage to do most of the things I wanted to do this summer. There were a few things I didn’t do, and some things I wish had been on the list but weren’t, but overall, I was pretty successful with this. And if this was a top 10 list, This summer’s bucket list (REVISED) would have been #7 on the list!

Adjusting

2011-12-27T13:42:00.001+01:00

I’m still trying to decide if it was harder going from no kids to one kid, or from one kid to two kids. The verdict isn’t out on that one yet.

Ben seems to be an easier baby than Abbie was. Abbie was an exceedingly high-strung, high maintenance baby. That paired with the facts that I had no clue what I was doing and that Mark was so busy with training he was very little to no help at all made for a pretty rough transition. I definitely feel like I’m more in control this time around. I know what I’m doing and I don’t freak out over everything. I’m not worried about my milk supply or him nursing or peeing or pooping enough. I feel like I have a pretty good handle on that side of things. However, I never do well with sleep deprivation. I LOVE my sleep and you just don’t get much sleep with a newborn and a 2.5 year old around so that’s hard for me. Ben will sleep one 4-5 hour stretch at night, on a good night, but then he’s up every 30 mins to hour after that, unless I bring him to bed with me, and then he’ll sleep for another couple hours. I usually last about 1-2 times of getting up with him every hour before I just bring him to bed with me.

Abbie has had a really rough time adjusting, which is to be expected when she’s used to being our one and only for 2.5 years and all of a sudden there’s this other little thing taking up all of my time. The weird thing is, she’s perfectly fine with Ben. She loves him and loves to help with him and give him kisses and hold him. Occasionally she’ll get a little jealous when he’s nursing all the time, but other than that, she doesn’t show much resentment towards him. She has, however, turned in to our little Jekyll and Hyde. Normally she’s very sweet and listens as well as you can expect a 2.5 year old to listen, but then there are moments where I seriously wonder what the hell I got myself into. Abbie wants to be in control of everything, particularly who does what for her. And 10 times out of 10, she wants the other parent than the one that’s currently helping her. She won’t let you change her clothes or diaper if she wants the other parent. She won’t stay in bed, she won’t let you brush her teeth or hair or give her a bath. It’s a full on battle, with kicking, screaming, slapping, crying, etc. To say it’s exhausting would be a vast understatement. Getting her to go down for a nap or to go to bed at night is a challenge. At night, she asks Mark and I both to come in at LEAST 4 separate times to tuck her in or give her a kiss or any other excuse she can think of at the time. If we let her keep calling, it progresses to a full on screaming fit eventually, and she doesn’t stay in her bed anymore so she’ll try to leave her room. I know this is because she knows Ben is still out with us and she’s jealous and doesn’t want to miss anything, but I don’t know how to “fix” it. The other day Mark tried to change her diaper to put her down for a nap, and it was World War III. She was putting up a HUGE fight to the point where it took both of us just to get her diaper back on her. We ended up leaving her in her room with the door shut (while watching her on the monitor) for a good 15 minutes while she threw her tantrum. Finally she calmed down enough so we could go in, and she apologized without us prompting her too and then went right to sleep. …??? All I can say is I’m very thankful that Mark was home for a while to help me through this phase with her. However, he’s leaving for a few weeks in a couple weeks and I’m going to be doing this by myself for a while, and I’m honestly scared about that. Hopefully Abbie will be mostly adjusted and Ben will be sleeping a little more than he is now (at night). My fingers are crossed.

Does anyone have any suggestions as to how to discipline a 2 year old? How to you respond when your child flat out tells you "no, I’m not going to do that” when you ask her to do something (or not to do something)? Mark and I have a game plan for the full on tantrums, but just for general disciplining, what do you do? And especially, what do you do when you’re tied down nursing a little one the majority of the day? Any suggestions are appreciated!

Abbie’s visit with Santa

2011-12-23T22:45:00.001+01:00

During Mark’s 10 days off for paternity leave, he was able to take Abbie to the base library for story time and a visit with Santa. This was the first time Abbie’s really seen Santa, but she wasn’t afraid at all! Mark said that she was completely in awe of him and that she LOVED story time. I was bummed that I wasn’t there to witness it, but I’m so glad Mark was able to take her. He loves doing that stuff with her and never gets the chance to because of his work hours.

Mark said that she had no hesitation going up to him and was really excited to talk to him. She asked Santa if he was going to come to her house, although I don’t think she quite gets the theory behind that yet. (That he brings presents.) I think she just wanted him to come to her house.

Hopefully next year I won’t feel like I just got run over by a truck and all four of us will be able to go visit Santa together!

PS: I’ve talked to Abbie babysitter and asked if we could switch days so I could start taking Abbie to story time on a weekly basis. I know she loves being around the other kids and she loves going to the library, so hopefully we can work that out where I can start taking her there regularly. Plus they have dogs at the story time that the kids can pet and Abbie loves anything to do with animals also!

First week home

2011-12-20T15:44:00.001+01:00

Our first week as a family of 4 has been a little rocky. Between me getting sick, Mark getting sick, Abbie going through an “adjustment phase” and Sadie (our Dachshund) losing function of her back legs again, it’s been a trying time.

I felt great on Friday and Saturday and even Sunday morning. Friday we stopped by the commissary on our way home from the hospital and I ran into the flight doc there. He was shocked to see me out and about, but I felt pretty good, considering I’d just pushed out an almost 9lb kid 26 hrs before. Luckily he was there because I had a question for him about what to use on Ben, so I chased him down and he was kind enough to go to the medicine aisle with me and telling me exactly what to get. Our first night at home, Ben slept from 2:30am to 8:30am. What a tease…

Saturday we just hung out at the house all day, mainly trying to deal with Abbie. She seemed to be fine with Ben – she loves to give him kisses and wants to hold him constantly – but she was having melt downs left and right. Pretty much any time she was told no, it was a HUGE ordeal and she’d cry and throw a huge fit. I was wondering what the heck I’d gotten myself in to. She was very abstinent about EVERYTHING and she was more exhausting than Ben was. Thank GOD Mark actually got paternity leave this time around and he was home to help me deal with her. He’s been playing with her a lot and I’m a ~~little~~ lot worried about how she’ll deal with him going back to work, because I can’t play with her for 8 hours a day like he has been.

Sunday we got up and went to church and actually got there on time! We dropped Abbie off in the nursery (which she LOVES) and took Ben to church with us. We held him and he slept through it all and then the chaplain introduced him to the church, which was fun. We sang “How Great is Our God” by Chris Tomlin, and I cried through the whole thing. I just can’t believe how lucky we are to have two beautiful, healthy kids.

After we got home from church, I was pretty tired, and I started getting the chills. I didn’t really think anything of it, I just piled on the blankets and put a space heater on in front of the chair I was sitting in and pretty soon I was sweating and taking my sweatshirt off. A while later I started to get chilled again (the kind of chills that make you shaky), so I took my temp and it was 100.2. So that freaked me out because it said in my discharge paperwork that if I got a temp over 100.4 that I needed to go to the ER and I REALLY didn’t want to go to the Pordenone hospital ER. I progressively got worse and my fever got up to almost 103 and I decided to call the base to see what they said. They told me to take Tylenol and call first thing in the morning for an appointment.

So Monday morning I went to the clinic on base and they diagnosed me with mastitis, but all along, I didn’t think I had mastitis. They put me on a high dose of antibiotics and gave me Percocet and told me things would get much worse before they got better, but that never happened. And the next day Mark got a fever, so I’m about 110% sure that whatever I had wasn’t mastitis. We both felt better within 24 hours, just still really sleep deprived since Ben pretty much doesn’t sleep from about 11pm – 3am, and he’s almost inconsolable during that time also. It’s completely exhausting and frustrating, but I keep telling myself that this phase doesn’t last long and I need to enjoy him being tiny while he is tiny.

Ben sleeps great from like 9am until almost 2pm. He’ll wake up to eat and then usually goes right back to sleep. He doesn’t sleep very well in the bassinet we got him, but he sleeps great in the swing and in this travel sling thing that was given to us. I think because he’s not flat in the swing and the sling, but he is flat in the bed. I tried to prop up the head end of his bassinet last night though, and he still didn’t sleep very well in it, so I’m not sure what that’s about or how to get him to sleep better in his bassinet. I’m sure it’ll come with time, I’m just not very patient when I’ve been asleep for 15 mins and he’s up screaming for the next 3 hours.

Overall, though, things are going alright. I’d forgotten how tough the newborn stage is, although Ben is a relatively easy baby, compared to Abbie. I’m very nervous about Mark going back to work and me having to deal with both kids by myself after having not slept most of the night, but I guess that’s part of the rite of passage. Luckily Mark won’t be going TDY until Ben’s over a month old, so hopefully I’ll have the hang of things by then. He sure is a cute little thing!

Our hospital stay

2011-12-15T23:10:00.001+01:00

The worst part of recovering was waiting for my epidural to fully wear off. The nurse kept threatening to put the catheter in again if I didn’t get up and walk to the bathroom by myself, and I REALLY didn’t want that happening, especially since the epi had worn off everywhere except for my right leg. My left leg was fine, but basically from just below my right knee to about 5-6 inches above it was still numb for a few hours afterwards. I did get up to go to the bathroom, with the help of Mark and the nurse, but I don’t think I could have walked by myself that time without my knee giving out. It was really weird sitting in the bed and having to ask Mark to move my leg when I wanted it moved. It would start falling off the side of the bed and there was nothing I could do to stop it.

We were moved to another, much smaller, room during the night because they were inducing someone else in the morning and needed the room we were in. The new room didn’t have a tv though. Bummer. The night nurse was kind enough to wait for my epi to fully wear off before she gave him a bath so I could help. I had wanted to help give Abbie a bath, but they gave her one very shortly after I had her. They waited almost 10 hours for me to be able to stand on my leg comfortably to help with his bath. He wasn’t a big fan, but he did like his hair being washed.

I felt really good after having him. I wasn’t very sore, and I was able to take a shower, which made me feel a ton better. Mark spent the night in the hospital with us, which I was thankful for. He slept most of the time, and got really mad when I woke him up to nurse him, so I gave up after a half hour and he just went back to sleep.

The next morning Mark went home and got Abbie to bring her to the hospital. Brittney was up visiting on her lunch break so she took these pictures for us. (Thanks Brittney!) Abbie came in to see me and walked right by Ben without even seeing him in the bassinet. I asked her if she wanted to see her baby brother and told her he was right behind her and she very slowly turned her head around to look at him. It was really cute. And she immediately wanted to hold him.

She was really in awe of him, and it was so cute to watch her just stare at him. We were both released from the hospital less than 26 hrs after I had him, so we only spent one night in the hospital. SO different than the 4 we spent there with Abbie. I still cannot get over how easy this birth was. I hope any future births go this well!

Our 2nd birth story

2011-12-12T22:36:00.001+01:00

Ben’s birth ended up being WAY different than what I was expecting it to be. I told Mark that whether or not I wanted more kids depended on how his birth went, and if all the rest of my births could be just like this one, I’d have 5 more kids! (If someone else was paying for all their expenses, that is.)

We got up at 6:09am, and I was really nervous. VERY nervous. Like, feeling like I was going to puke nervous. As the day went on, I got less nervous, but I was ready to call the whole thing off in the morning. We got ready, I talked to my friend Jennifer about last minute stuff (she came and stayed at our house to watch Abbie and the dogs for us) and we were on our way. We got to the hospital at 7:32am and I was in the gown, in the hospital bed by 7:45am.

One of the most painful parts of the birth, was getting the stupid IV in. On a scale of 1 to 10 (10 being high), the pain was about a 5, and it took them 2 tries – one on each wrist. Luckily they got it in in 10 mins, vs the almost hour and a half it took with Abbie’s birth. I had made sure I drank water though, to help make my veins bigger this time around. They started an IV drip around 8:15am and I was started on 6ml/hr of Pitocin at 9:13am. I’d been having contractions for days and this made them be a little more frequent, but my pain level was 1 out of 10.

At 11:15am, the put the IV drip at max flow and the Pitocin was up to 12ml/hr and my pain level during contractions was 3 out of 10. They were coming about every 4 minutes and lasting 30 seconds. Nothing unbearable. Mark and I were watching TV and I was fairly relaxed at this point. They took my blood sugar every hour while I was in labor and it got down to 64, so they let me have an orange juice to get it up some. Otherwise I wasn’t allowed anything to eat – not even ice.

Around 12pm, the nurse told me that the Dr wanted to break my water to pick things up after he was done with a surgery he was doing, so they advised me to get the epidural so they could make sure everything worked before he did that, since that would probably pick up the intensity of my labor a little bit. I agreed, but I’ll admit, I was nervous. Everything just seemed so “synthetic”, and I know that when you force labor to happen instead of letting it come on it’s own, your chances of c-sections go up quite a bit. So the anesthesiologist came in and gave her little schpeel about risks of an epi and all that. And then at 12:15pm she gave me the epidural. It took her about 8 minutes (according to Mark’s notes), and it hurt some, but again wasn’t TOO unbearable, and it only hurt for a bit. It basically felt like someone was pushing really hard on a bad bruise for a few minutes. I wanted to squeeze Mark’s hand during that part and I did some deep breathing, but looking back, it wasn’t too bad. Pain was probably 6 out of 10 again. At 12:33pm, they gave me Ropiphicane (sp?) in the epidural which started to numb me.

Around 12:45pm Mark ran to Subway to get some lunch and at 1pm, they gave me a catheter, and said I was 6cm dilated. (The nurse had checked me earlier – which hurt a LOT – and she said I was around 4cm dilated.) Around 1:40pm I rated my contraction pain at 4 out of 10. I could feel them, and they hurt, but again, nothing unbearable. Even with the epi, there was one spot under my belly on my left side that I could definitely feel the contraction pain. I could still feel my belly get hard all over, but that one spot hurt a bunch. The nurse checked me again at 1:39pm and said I was still 6cm and he was at –1 or –2. We were still waiting for the Dr to be done with surgery to break my water. At 1:55pm, the anesthesiologist gave me more meds in the epi to help with the pain I was feeling during the contractions.

After she gave me more drugs, I finally found a decent position and actually fell asleep for 10-15 mins. The problem was I had pretty much zero use of my legs from the extra medicine she gave me. I couldn’t get comfortable in bed and my back was starting to hurt and I couldn’t move myself at all, so I had to try to tell Mark and the nurse what position I wanted to be in, and if it didn’t work they had to move me again. Mark was pretty agreeable to helping me obviously, but the nurse wasn’t, so it was kind of awkward. At 2:40 the nurse discovered my water had broken on its own. I had kind of figured it did because I felt a little pop, but I didn’t say anything to her about it since sometimes I felt like I was bothering her anyway.

So around 3pm I told her I had the “I have to poop” feeling during contractions. I knew he was low. I don’t think she believed me though, so she waited though about 5 more contractions and me telling her every time that I think he’s coming, to check me. She finally checked me at 3:15pm and I knew as soon as she did it that he was coming. She got a funny look on her face and said “I’m going to get the doctor”. I was fully dilated and he was at a +2. She left the room and I laid there on my side and cried. This was the part I’d been worrying about for the past month and a half and if there were going to be problems, it was going to be now. Mark reassured me and told me it would be okay and I told him that I really had a feeling that this baby was smaller than Abbie was, but I didn’t want to say that publicly and then be wrong about it.

The doctor got in there and I was still on my side (bc I couldn’t move at all) and he said, “Ok, show me what a good pusher you are.” (I’d told him before that I did well pushing with Abbie.) So while I was still on my side with them holding my leg up, I gave like half a push and he was like, “Ok! Stop”, and started getting his gear on really quick. They got me on to my back and switched the bed quickly and when he was positioned he told me to push with the next contraction. So with the next contraction I pushed for like 10 seconds, took a breath, and pushed for maybe another 5 seconds and out came baby Ben! It was a weird feeling because I could feeling him come down and out when I pushed. It didn’t hurt at all, but I could feel him coming out on the inside. He was born at 3:32pm on December 8th, and he cried when they put him on me, and so did I. He ended up being 8lb 15.2oz and was 20” long. All that worrying for nothing!!

To be continued…

A day in the life….

2011-12-08T13:48:00.001+01:00

I’ve seen a few people do this on their blogs, and I decided to join in, while I still remember it. I like to look back on my old blog posts, and I thought a few years down the road it would be fun to look back and see what my daily life is like now.
So here’s a look at my daily routine. I’ve estimated times since I don’t have the time, or energy, to go through the day writing down a minute by minute summary of what I do. But this is the jist of it.
Sometime between 4:30am and 7:30am: get up and make Mark’s coffee and breakfast for him and get his lunch ready to go, while he’s taking a shower. Say goodbye to Mark and go back to bed.
8:30-9am – Wake up. Get dressed. Do make-up (sometimes) and hair. Let dogs out and give them food and water.
9 – 9:15am – Wake Abbie up if she doesn’t wake up on her own. Change her, get her dressed. Sometimes we snuggle for a little bit before she gets out of bed, if we have time.
9:15 - 9:45am – Make Abbie and me breakfast. Try to convince Abbie to eat all of her breakfast. Check my emails and blogs and Facebook and talk to Abbie. (On days Abbie goes to the sitters, we leave at 9:45am and I drop her off at 10am and then go run errands and/or eat lunch with friends or come back home and clean or do crafts until 1pm, when I pick her up.)
9:45 -11am (ish) – If we’re at home, Abbie usually plays while I clean or do laundry or write blogs or letters. Sometimes I’ll turn on the TV for her to watch while she drinks her milk, sometimes she just plays in her room and the living room.
11 – 2pm (ish) – We almost always go to base. Usually we try to meet Mark or a friend for lunch and we’ll go check the mail and get groceries. Sometimes I take her to the park, or I’ll take her (and her baby) for a walk in the stroller if I’m feeling up to it. Lately I’ve been going to my NST’s or other doctors appointments also. We try to leave base between 1:30 and 1:45 to make it home by 2pm.
2 – 4:30pm – Abbie naps. I usually try to get her down between 2 and 2:30pm, and she’ll usually lay in there and talk for 10-20 mins before she actually falls asleep. Usually she’ll sleep until at leave 4pm, but sometimes as long as 4:45pm. I don’t let her sleep past 4:45 and usually try to wake her up by 4:30pm if she isn’t already awake. While she naps, lately, I’ve been napping too. “Lately”, as in, the past 8 months… I love naps, but especially right now.
4:30 – 6:30pm – Abbie and I hang out. We read books and do puzzles and usually eat a snack. Sometimes we snuggle on the couch and watch TV or I’ll turn one of her shows on for her to watch while I work on the computer or clean again.
6:30 – 7:15pm – Mark usually gets home and we talk while he plays with Abbie and I get dinner ready.
7:15 – 7:45pm – Eat dinner and try to carry on a conversation with Mark, which usually doesn’t happen. Sometimes it does, just with 14 interruptions per sentence from Abbie.
7:45 – 8:45pm – Clean up kitchen from dinner, play with Abbie, try to get more cleaning/chores done, make lists for next day, clean up living room and Abbie’s room.
8:45 – 9:15pm (ish) – Get Abbie ready for bed. Bath (usually every other day), books, brush teeth and tuck her in to bed. Mark usually does her night time routine with her, except for brushing her teeth. I do that and then we both tuck her in to bed together.
9:15 – 10pm – Try to finish stuff up in the kitchen/living room. Sometimes we’ll try to watch TV or I finish stuff up on the computer and Mark messes around on his computer too. Abbie usually calls me in once or twice for a few more kisses or to tell me something. If she can hear us downstairs, she’ll keep calling for us, so we try to either come up to our room or to go to the basement so I can sew and Mark can be on the big computer.
10 – 11:30pm – Mark and I watch shows upstairs, or read or talk and then we go to bed. Mark usually falls asleep before me since he doesn’t get the 2 hr naps every day like I do.
12:30am – I get up to pee.
2:45am – I get up to pee.
4:30 – 6:30am – Sometime in there I get up to pee again, usually when Mark gets up to get ready for work.
So there you have it. That’s our typical day. Sometimes on the weekends we’ll sleep in until 9:30am or so if Abbie lets us. She goes to bed later than a lot of kids her age I think, but that’s because I don’t want to get up with her at 6am and Mark usually doesn’t get home from work until close to 7pm at night so he wants to spend a few hours with her before she goes to bed anyway. It works out well for us and I hope I can get the little guy on this sort of schedule sometime also, although I realize that’ll probably take a few months.

We’re having a baby tomorrow! (Take 2)

2011-12-07T13:23:00.001+01:00

I’m being induced tomorrow. I was looking back on my blog at my account of Abbie’s birth and how I was feeling the day before I was induced with her. (You can read that here.) It’s kind of amazing how differently I feel this time around. I really wish I felt the same way I did with her, but I don’t. Honestly, I’m scared. I feel guilty because everyone is asking me if I’m excited to meet my little boy, and I am, but I haven’t even thought about meeting him much. I’m so focused on getting him out and all the problems that I could have with that, that I haven’t really thought much past the actual birth. I’ll probably be so relieved to actually get him out okay that I’ll pass out after he’s born. I did that once with a tetanus shot. I was SO worked up about it that I passed out after I got it because I was so relieved it was over with.

Monday I had another NST and I met with the doctor who will be delivering our baby for the first time. They have three doctors and a midwife on base, and I’d met the other 2 dr’s and the midwife, but not this dr. I wish I had met him a long time ago. I’d typically be nervous about having a male ob/gyn, but I REALLY like this guy. He has a very calm, soothing demeanor about him, and he almost immediately put me at ease. He was easy to talk to and smiled a lot and threw in a few jokes where appropriate and he knew when to be funny and when to be serious. I pretty much drilled him with questions and he answered all of them honestly and without delay. I didn’t feel like he was trying to beat around the bush at all, or sugar coat things for me, but on the other hand, he was very reassuring at the same time. I told him all of my concerns, what I was afraid of, my experience with Abbie, what I was hoping for this birth and he was agreeable with everything I said. He told me that he doesn’t see why there’s any reason I won’t be able to deliver vaginally and if that’s what I want, then he’ll do his best to make that happen. I told him how people have me all freaked out about a shoulder dystocia with this baby and he said part of that is because on of the doctors here had a shoulder dystocia when they were in their residency and they lost the baby. So that person is extra sensitive to shoulder dystocia’s and takes a very cautious approach to them. But this doctors approach was that he thinks everything will be okay. He said it’s his job to worry about that if the time comes and that he will be prepared for the worst but planning for the best. There are a whole list of maneuvers they can do if a baby does have a shoulder dystocia and he said he’s never had to go past the fourth maneuver in his 10 years of being an ob/gyn. So all of my chat with him was pretty reassuring, but I’m still scared. I just want the birth to be over with, so I can start focusing on my baby boy and not worrying about the birth.

I had an ultrasound on Friday. I was 38w1d and he was measuring 40w5d and weighed 9lb5oz. My dr was laughing because the cut off for them offering me a primary c-section was 4250g, and baby boy was like 4232g, so he BARELY missed the cut off for that. But it’s a moot point anyway since I don’t want a primary c-section at all. If it comes to that, eventually, then fine. But I’m just happy they’re going to give me an opportunity to have him vaginally.

I’ve been having some contractions lately. They’re not consistent, but my whole belly gets as hard as a rock and it gets a little hard to breathe and is just kind of uncomfortable. They don’t necessarily hurt, but sometimes I have to breathe a little funny through them. I was timing them a few nights ago and they were coming about every 10 minutes and lasting about 2 minutes. If I’m out and about, I have them pretty regularly, but if I lay down or put my feet up, they usually go away. I had one of them wake me up last night, but it was mainly because I had to pee and the contraction made that even more noticeable. Hopefully that means I’ll be more than 3-4cm dilated tomorrow when they induce me. A few of my friends have said I look like I’ve dropped quite a bit, but I have no clue. I can’t tell if I have or not.

So tomorrow is the big day. I’m hoping and praying that everything turns out okay and that he doesn’t get stuck. I’ll be very glad once the birth is over with. Abbie is pretty excited about having a baby brother. My friend, Jennifer, is going to come over early tomorrow morning to stay with Abbie for a day while Mark is with me at the hospital. Then he’ll come home to be with her and he might drop her off with other friend later on so he can spend more time with us during the day without having to chase Abbie around.

Time to go get a few more things done and ready around the house!

2011 Christmas card demographics

2011-12-05T22:49:00.001+01:00

I love doing Christmas cards. This year was a little different because I wasn’t sure if I should wait until after the baby is born, or do them before. I decided to send Christmas cards out before and then I’ll do birth announcements later on. I thought I had done the demographics on my blog for my 2010 cards, but I can’t find them anywhere. I did find the demographics for 2009 though. I sent out 116 cards in 2009, and I think it was a few more than that last year. This year I’ve sent out 150 and they’re all officially mailed!

Here’s where they went.

43 of them went to APO addresses here in Italy. (Most of these are people in our squadron.) I sent 25 to IL, and 24 to IA. 8 went to CO, 7 went to WI, 5 went to FL, 4 went to OK and 3 went to AZ, IN and VA. Two went to MO, NC, SC, TX and UT. And I sent 1 card to CA, GA, MI, NE, MN, NM, NV, SD, TN, and WA.

I also sent one to an APO address in Germany and one to an APO address in Japan. And then one to Spain, Sweden, Belgium, Vatican City and Italy. The nice thing about sending mail from an APO address to an APO address is that it’s free! You don’t need to buy stamps, which saved me quite a bit of money.

So I sent cards to 8 different countries and 24 different states! Part of the fun being involved with the military is that you end up knowing people from ALL over the place. I’m going to try to keep track of where I receive them from this year. I’ve only received one so far, unless you count the one I already got back in the mail that I’d sent… I’ll have to resend that one.

There are probably few people in this world that love sending out Christmas cards (or any mail) as much as I do. I get so excited when I get the cards I’ve ordered in the mail and I’m pretty happy with the way the Shutterfly ones turned out. And I love hanging all the cards and pictures I receive all over my window sills for the holiday season. I actually keep them all and put them in dated plastic bags. Hopefully someday I’ll get around to actually organizing them all, but I have a bunch of other stuff to organize first.

Happy mailing and happy receiving to those of you that like Christmas cards as much as I do!

November 2011 Abbie-isms

2011-12-03T15:08:00.000+01:00

**We picked Abbie up from a friend’s house and she was bouncing off the walls. She got in the car and said, “I’m wound up!!!”. On the car ride home, she said to Mark, “Daddy, do you want to wind me up when we get home?”. (I occasionally tell Mark to not wind her up before bed time. Apparently that didn’t slip by her.)

**Abbie loves bologna and could probably live on the stuff if we let her. However, she refuses to eat bologna unless you cut a face in it. (Thank you very much, mom, for starting this wonderful, time consuming tradition.)

**Last night I got home from a squadron function and Abbie came running down the stairs into the garage to greet me. I said hi to her and she said, “Hi mommy. I’m so proud of you.” Occasionally she’ll ask if I’m proud of her, or she’ll tell me one of her stuffed animals is so proud of her.

**At least a couple times a week Abbie will say, “Mommy!!” and I’ll say, “Yes Abbie?” and she’ll say, “I love you.” It’s pretty sweet and makes me melt every time.

**Abbie and Mark LOVE to play together. I think little girls need to be “roughed up” as much as little boys do by their daddies, and Abbie is all giggles and shrieks when Mark is wrestling with her. Now, as soon as Mark walks in the door, Abbie will run up to him and say, “Daddy, do you want to tease me?!” “Tease” is her code-word for rough house, but it’s amusing to hear her ask him like that. We’ll also be in the car and she’ll ask him if he wants to tease her when we get home.

**Often times Mark and I will be trying to talk while we think Abbie is entertaining herself. We’ll be in the kitchen and she’ll be talking with her stuffed animals in the living room. Yesterday, this was the case, and I asked Mark if he looked in the bucket in the driveway. (There is a HUGE beetle in there – seriously, the thing is over 2 inches long.) Abbie and I had seen the beetle earlier and she had said she wanted to show it to daddy. So I had no sooner asked him if he looked in the bucket and Abbie comes RUNNING over to us yelling that she wants to show daddy the bug. It truly amazes me how that kid can monitor the airwaves. She was literally talking with her toys and in a different room, but as soon as I mention the bucket, it triggers something in her brain and all of a sudden she’s part of the conversation. We’re going to have to be careful about what we talk about when she’s around because she doesn’t miss a thing.

**We’re still working on Abbie not interrupting us when we’re trying to talk, and her waiting her turn. Sometimes we won’t be talking at all and Abbie will ask out of no where, “Is it my turn now?” We’ll tell her yes, she can have a turn and then she’ll say, “Uuuhhhhhmmmm” and try to think of something to talk about. She’s not one for enjoying the silence at all. Bummer for us…

**Abbie recently learned the word “frustrated”. She was having some difficulty changing her baby doll’s diaper and she said, “Baby, you are really frustrating me! I am getting very frustrated with this!”

**In one of Abbie’s favorite “Olivia” episodes, one of the characters says, “I cannot work under these conditions!!” and we have heard Abbie saying that a few times around the house now.

**Jets were taking off as we were walking in to the commissary on base to meet Mark for lunch. Abbie did her normal excited yells about them and then added, “Goodbye jets! Have a nice day!” as they were flying off. I asked her if she thought her daddy was in one of those jets and she said, “No, there are other daddy’s flying those ones.” Guess she understands that now, after all!

**Abbie and I had lunch with 2 of my friends and I was talking about how they had to break my water with Abbie’s birth. Abbie picked up on that right away and asked me about it. I told her they had to break my water to get her to come out. She contemplated it for a second and then went back to eating. That night at dinner, out of nowhere Abbie said, “Daddy, they had to break mommy’s waters to get me to come out.” I think she kinda caught Mark off guard.

**Every time I try to get up from the couch or from sitting on the floor Abbie always asks me if I need help getting up and will RUN over to me to grab my hands to pull me up. Or she tries to get behind me and push me up. Such a big help!

**Tonight Abbie came up to me and told me it was time to take her blood sugar. Ha. I wish she didn’t even know what that was.

MFF and 5QF

2011-12-02T09:51:00.001+01:00

If I could be on any reality TV show, I’d want to be on the Amazing Race with my husband because I think we’d kick butt at it, or Survivor, but I’m not sure I could handle it. I wish they’d do a couple’s survivor so Mark and I could go on it together. I think we’d do well then too.
This past Thanksgiving was kind of a drag. I couldn’t eat anything because of having just been diagnose with gestational diabetes and I was freaking out about my blood sugar the whole time and not exactly enjoying myself. Plus we weren’t around family at all, so it didn’t feel the same. But we did have a few nice dinners with friends, which was fun.
I’m looking forward to December because I am having a baby this month! Well this week actually… And I’m looking forward to the birth being over with, more than giving birth, if I’m completely honest...
One thing I’d like to accomplish this month is successfully give birth to a healthy baby boy, preferably with no shoulder dystocia or emergency c-sections.
To me, winter is a time to cuddle up by the fire or go play in the snow. Unfortunately, we don’t have a fireplace and it rarely snows in this part of Italy. Oh well!

1. What is your favorite Christmas decoration in your house? The Christmas lights that Mark hung up everywhere. They really set the mood.

2. Do you finish your Christmas shopping early or are you a last minute type? Usually I’m a mix of both, but living overseas, you kind of have to get things ordered way in advance so you have time to receive them and then ship them back to the States to all the appropriate people. So you can’t really do anything last minute. Although I did order stuff in advance, and it’s still not here, and most likely I won’t get it mailed out before baby boy arrives so it’s all going to be late anyway… Oops!

3. When do you turn on your heat? When it gets cold, whenever that might be. But here in Italy, I don’t think it’s legal to turn it on before October 15 or something like that.

4. Do you ever wish your blog was private? Sometimes I do, because I do use it as a journal of sorts, but then again, I’m a very open person and I welcome people’s suggestions and advice, so I’m okay with it being public. I guess sometimes I just wish it was private from certain people.

5. Do you put your deodorant on before of after you put on your shirt? Usually after, otherwise it gets all over my shirt!!

38 week appt

2011-12-01T13:53:00.001+01:00

Today I had my 38 week appointment. Mark was able to go with me, so that was really nice. My blood pressure was a little high (140/85ish), but that’s not surprising since I was a little nervous about the appointment. She checked me and I’m 3-4cm dilated, either 25 or 50% effaced (can’t remember what she said) and he’s still at a –3, so his head isn’t engaged at all. Normally those exams don’t hurt, but wow… This one hurt a lot. I don’t know what she was doing, but it wasn’t pleasant, that’s for sure.

They have agreed to induce me in a week, so on December 8th, if they have room. Since there are only 3 beds available at this hospital, they fill up rather quickly, especially since so many people are due around this time. So HOPEFULLY I’ll be induced next Thursday, or even more hopefully, if I go in to labor on my own before then, they’ll have room for me. I really don’t want to have to go to the Italian hospital, but I guess I’ll survive either way.

I also had an NST today – my quickest one yet. I’m still fairly certain these things are pointless and they’re just covering their own butts by following protocol, but I was only hooked up to the machine for 10-15 mins and he was so active they got all the info they needed. That’s usually the case, but I think today they needed the bed for someone else, so they wanted to get me out of there. Whichever works, I guess, I just wish they wouldn’t waste my time on days when they’re not in a hurry.

My GD glucose numbers are a little bit all over the place, so I asked her if she could put me on a low dose of the meds to help control it and she’s putting me on 1/2 a pill, once a day. Some of my numbers are in the 150-160’s, and they should be under 140, so she agreed to let me take the pills. I just want to make sure he doesn’t have blood sugar issues when he comes out and I’m still trying to figure out serving sizes and what triggers my blood sugar to spike and what doesn’t. I would rather take the pills to help me out in the meantime, even though I’m still going to be watching what I eat and trying to stick with the GD diet.

My next appointment is tomorrow for an ultrasound and then they’ll discuss those results with me and talk more about the induction on Monday, if I haven’t had him by then. Part of me is excited we’re so close to the end, and part of me is pretty nervous. They have me really freaked out about this birth and I’m worried about something going wrong and either him or me not being around for Christmas. Morbid, I know, but it has crossed my mind more than once.

So we could use your prayers if you have any to spare – that they have room on base for us when the time comes, and that everything goes fairly smoothly. T-7…..

PS: And maybe one of these days Mark will have time to take pictures of me when I don’t look like crap. We only seem to think about it when I’m around the house in sweats and a t-shirt, which I suppose is about 90% of the time now anyway. Hopefully we’ll get a final picture of my belly before I give birth!

Christmas Questionnaire

2011-11-30T23:09:00.001+01:00

I saw this on Jane’s blog, and thought it would be fun to do!

Egg Nog or Hot Chocolate? Hot chocolate all the way. I’m a chocolate fiend anyway, and I never pass up cocoa. Well I do now, thanks to my gestational diabetes, but normally I don’t. I like egg nog in small doses, but I LOVE cocoa!

Colored lights on tree/house or white? I think white lights are very elegant and colored lights are very fun. So it depends on my mood and the setting.

Do you hang mistletoe? Nope, I don’t. I don’t need a reason to kiss my husband and that’s really the only reason you hang mistletoe right?

When do you put your decorations up? Depends on the year and when we have time. This year they went up right after Thanksgiving since we’re not sure when baby boy will be making his appearance. It was either then or possibly never, so we opted to be on the safe side and put them up early. And I shouldn’t really say “we” since Mark pretty much did everything by himself. Thanks Mark!

What is your favorite holiday dish? My mom has always made a really good shrimp dip that she only makes during holiday dinners. I love it!

Favorite Holiday memory as a child? Sitting around the tree with my family opening presents. It was always fun when there was a huge mound of presents and my cousins and uncle and grandparents were there.

When and how did you learn the truth about Santa? I don’t remember how old I was, but I started figuring it out when I noticed that Santa had the same wrapping paper and handwriting as my mom. I remember her telling me that was because Santa wanted to blend in, but I don’t think I bought it.

Do you open a gift on Christmas Eve? Yep, we always got to open one present on Christmas Eve. I’d like to continue that tradition with my kids.

How do you decorate your Christmas tree? With a bunch of random ornaments we’ve gathered over the years, and lights. We have a decent collection of sentimental ornaments, fancy ones, and kid-friendly ones. I’d definitely like to add to them though!

Snow! Love it or Dread it? Coming from the mid-west, it doesn’t feel much like Christmas without snow. I definitely missed snow when we lived in FL, OK, AZ and now Italy, where we very rarely get it. I definitely like having four seasons.

Do you remember your favorite gift? I honestly don’t, which tells me one of two things. Either I have a terrible memory, or it’s more the whole atmosphere that I enjoy. Although I took the Five Languages of Love test and my love language was giving and receiving gifts, so that kind of surprises me. Now I pretty much remember most things people got me/us and I can go around the house pointing out who gave me what, so you’d think I’d remember a favorite gift. I will say the year I was hoping Mark would propose, he got me a laptop instead. Haha! My co-worker asked me if I balanced it on my finger and said, “Look at the way that delete button shines!” *grins* (For the record, no, I didn’t… and he proposed in February!)

What is your favorite Holiday Dessert? Puppy chow!! I actually was just talking to Mark about this last night and how I associate the holidays with eating puppy chow! (Crispix covered in chocolate chips,butter, peanut butter and powdered sugar.) I made some, even though I can only eat it in very small doses right now (due to the diabetes). That might be a good thing though because I could easily eat an entire bag of that stuff. SOO good!

What is your favorite holiday tradition? Again, just sitting around the tree with family, opening presents. I’ll miss having more family around this year, but Abbie is lots of fun to watch and we’ll have new little guy to keep us busy too. I also love going to the candle lit service at church.

Candy Canes: Yuck or Yum? They’re not terrible, but not my favorite thing either. Again, I’m much more of a chocolate person.

Favorite Christmas movie? I don’t really remember watching many Christmas movies, besides Love Actually, so does that count? I need to watch some of the classic Christmas movies.

Saddest Christmas Song? For some reason I always cry when we sing Silent Night at church. Or songs about people not being together at Christmas.

What is your favorite Christmas song? O Holy Night. I love it.

Adding to the clan

2011-11-28T09:55:00.000+01:00

So our baby boy should be here within a few weeks. Possibly in less than 2 weeks if they decide to induce me. I am so excited to meet him, and I’m to the point where I get all teary-eyed when I see other newborns. But to be honest, I am a little nervous.

Over the summer I somehow got caught up in listening to this psychologist, who’d done a ton of research on sibling relationships, talk on this radio interview. He said that it is human nature for parents to have a favorite child – that it’s natural to be more bonded with one child over another. And that scares me. I obviously want to love my children equally, and I’m wondering how our relationship with Abbie will change once the little guy gets here, or even more so, how he’ll ever fill the huge footprints she’s left.

Abbie is just a special little girl. I truly believe all kids are special in their own ways, but obviously I am biased towards my own. We often have people who interact with Abbie tell us how special she is and we have strangers comment on her beauty frequently. She has a huge personality, but is very sweet-natured and generally is a joy to be around. I know that won’t change once this little guy shows up, but I am worried that we’ll always be comparing him to Abbie, even though we know Abbie is pretty advanced in a few areas.

I guess I’m just anxious and excited and nervous to add a member to the family. I love the way our family dynamic is now and I know it will change. I’m sure it will change for the better and I have no doubt I’ll love this baby boy as much as I love Abbie, but I know things will be different also. I’m eager to find out the difference of raising a little boy verses raising a little girl and I’m thankful that I will have the opportunity to experience both.

A night out

2011-11-27T16:35:00.000+01:00

Last weekend we had a Hail and Farewell. (For you non-military folks, a get together to welcome new people and say goodbye to people leaving the squadron.) It was at a hotel and restaurant about 45 minutes from our house. I don’t know what I was expecting, but it certainly wasn’t this! The place was just gorgeous with all the lights and the stream in front and behind it. Apparently this place was an old mill of some sort and they still had all the old mill parts in the lobby and the watermills behind the place. I would love to go back and visit it during the day, but it was completely enchanting at night.

Everyone else took buses to get to the place, but since I’m so close to giving birth we didn’t want to risk us having to ruin everyone else’s fun by me going in to labor. So we drove separately, which was nice because we got there a few minutes before everyone else and that’s when we took all the outside pictures!

The food was AMAZING! We had a guessing game at our table to try to figure out what most of it was, but whatever it was, it was good. One of the courses were fig stuffed dumplings and another was some sort of cheese something under crispy proscuitto. REALLY good. I loved it all, but I was afraid to eat most of it since I’d just been diagnosed with gestational diabetes earlier that day and I still didn’t know what I could and couldn’t eat.

We had a wonderful time with our friends and a really nice evening out. I didn’t get any pictures of Mark and me (bummer!!), but I did get a picture with my friends, Laura and Jennifer. Next time I’ll get a picture of Mark and me!

Thankful

2011-11-26T12:01:00.001+01:00

I’m a few days late on this, but better late than never. I’ve been in a bit of a rut this past week or so. I’ve been in a lot of pain, which is completely exhausting. And this gestational diabetes diet is making me all sorts of pissy. I feel like I can’t eat anything I want to eat and I’m having a hard time being positive about the whole thing.

I decided to make a list of the top 5 “little” things I’m thankful for – things that can easily be taken for granted. I’m going to leave out the obvious things – my family, friends, health, shelter, food, etc. – and focus on the less obvious things.

1. I’m thankful that my husband has a good job. He earns enough for us to live comfortably and have nice things, and it allows for me to be a stay at home mom, which I wouldn’t trade for the world.

2. I’m thankful for modern technology. I loved being able to talk to Mark every day while he was in Afghanistan and I was in the States. To be able to video chat with him and see his face a couple times a week was really a sanity-saver for me. And on the same note, I love that we can video chat with our families and that Abbie gets to see and talk to her grandparents that live on a different continent.

3. I’m thankful for the opportunity to live overseas. It’s a huge adjustment, and a tad bit frustrating at times dealing with a culture that’s pretty different from what you’re used to, but I’m still glad we’ve had this opportunity. I think you gain so much by stepping out of your comfort zone and our time in Italy is time I will always treasure.

4. I’m thankful for other people’s creativity. I’m definitely not the most creative person in the world. I can follow a pattern or recipe or read music, but as far as creating things from scratch, I’m about worthless. I’m thankful that there are people in the world who can create things from scratch. They inspire me.

5. I’m thankful for our military. I think it’s easy to take our freedom for granted since most of us haven’t ever known anything different. I’m also very thankful that there are people willing to volunteer to defend our freedom. For years I took for granted that there were many, many people spending months and even years away from their families and loved ones to defend my freedoms. Obviously I’m a lot more aware of that now that I am directly affected by it, but the truth is, we’re all directly affected by it since we’re all receiving the benefits our military provides us.

I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving and that you survived Black Friday if you dared to venture out!

5QF

2011-11-25T17:06:00.001+01:00

1. Is there a special dish you prepare that you are famous for? No, not yet anyway, or not really. We don’t normally do Thanksgiving with family due to the fact that we’ve always lived at least 12 hrs away from them, and since we’ve moved 5 times in the past 5 years, we’re never with the same people for Thanksgiving either. (The joys of the military lifestyle.) But this year I did take Oreo Truffles to the squadron Thanksgiving dinner and got lots of compliments on them and requests for the recipe.

2. Are you (did you) go Black Friday shopping ? Nope, I’ve been checking out deals online, but the BX is the only place in Italy that would have black Friday deals and there wasn’t anything there I absolutely had to have.

3. What are your strangest holiday traditions? Probably the strangest thing is that we really don’t have many traditions yet. Although now that Abbie is 2.5, we should probably start making some since she’s old enough to know what’s going on and possibly remember.

4. Pecan or pumpkin pie? (She actually asked "Apple or pumpkin?" I just T-giving'ed it!) Definitely pecan! I don’t really like most pies, but pecan is one of the very few that I do like.

5. When will you put up your Christmas tree? Hopefully we’ll get it up this weekend. Let’s face it. I’m almost 37 weeks pregnant and if it doesn’t get put up soon, it won’t get put up at all.

**Hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving!!**

More to think about.

2011-11-21T08:53:00.000+01:00

My appointment on Thursday went fairly well. She checked me and I’m not at all dilated, which I’m a little bummed about. By 36 weeks with Abbie, I was 4.5cm dilated. The midwife told me that they’re not going to force me to do anything. That they’ll give me my options with the risks and benefits of each option and they’ll make it known what they would prefer me to do, but ultimately, the decision is mine. Good to know.
Saturday I had my third glucose test, and I failed it. I passed my fasting test. My 1 hr was 170 out of 180, my 2 hr was 165 out of 155 (failed) and my 3 hr was 142 out of 140 (failed). So I’m not a “full blown” diabetic since my number were close, but they have diagnosed me with gestational diabetes at 36 weeks and now I have to start in with the finger pricks to monitor my blood sugar and they’re going to try to have me control it with diet and exercise, I think.
Honestly, I feel guilty about this whole GD thing. I feel like I have it because I was overweight to begin with and if I was athletic and in super good shape, I wouldn’t have GD issues. I’ve had to go this whole weekend without really knowing what I can and can’t eat and it’s made me paranoid to eat pretty much anything. I always feel hungry, but I don’t want to eat a lot because I’m afraid it’s going to raise my blood sugar, which in turn, raises baby boy’s. I know I’m supposed to avoid carbs, so I’ve been reading labels like a mad woman and EVERYTHING has carbs in it. I know I’m supposed to eat the good carbs vs the bad carbs, but besides knowing sugar is a bad carb and whole wheat is a good carb, I don’t really know what that means.
Tomorrow I need to go in for another NST and fluid check and they’re going to show me how to use the finger poker and give me all of that stuff, and then I’ll have to make an appointment with a nutritionist to figure out this diet, but I probably won’t be able to do that until Tuesday at the earliest. It’s great having to go on a diet RIGHT before Thanksgiving…. I’m frustrated and angry, to say the least. And I’m worried that I’ve really had GD this whole time and for some reason was just passing the tests and I want to know what that’s done to baby boy in the meantime. I have a lot of questions and I’ve had a lot of time to dwell on them over the weekend, which isn’t good.
And because I am officially a gestational diabetic now, they’re going to treat my delivery differently also. As I said before, because of my GD, they now lower the maximum birth weight to 4500g, which is 9.92lbs – almost Abbie’s exact birth weight. So if he’s measuring over 9.9lbs according to an ultrasound (which can be up to 20% off, easily), they’re going to recommend I have a c-section. It’s easy for my first reaction to be to dig my heels in about that and say no way, I’m not having a c-section, but it’s much more complicated than that.
We had a squadron dinner the other night, and I managed to corner the flight doctor, who has experience delivering babies, and ask him a TON of questions. His whole take on my situation was that doctors would prefer to do a c-section because it’s a very controlled situation. Since shoulder dystocia is a known problem with macrosomia (large babies), you have to weigh the risks and benefits, and the bottom line is that delivering a large baby can be risky. It’s not always, but sometimes it is, and how much am I willing to risk? His take, partially because he’s a doctor and partially because he’s a guy, I’m sure, was, as long as I take home a healthy baby, why does it matter so much how I deliver him? I told him I’d like to have one or two more kids (maybe) and that I know c-sections have their own risks involved also and how that could affect my future pregnancies. He said they were valid concerns and something to think about. I should also add that the hospital on base is very small. They don’t have a NICU and they only have room for 3 people in labor at once and the ONLY thing they do at the hospital is deliver babies. So that also needs to be factored in. I have no doubt in the base doctors capabilities, but they have very limited resources to work with.
So basically I have to decide what I’m more comfortable with. Since we don’t have any absolute positives, besides the fact that I’m having a baby, everything I have to make my decision is going off of guestimates, which makes this REALLY hard and is causing me to lose quite a bit of sleep. I could just agree to having a c-section, have a major operation, with a longer recovery time and possible complications later on with future pregnancies, but most likely baby boy would be fine. Or I could say I at least want a trial of labor, which could end one of two ways. One, everything goes fine without complications or two, he does get shoulder dystocia, which could end very, very badly. So what do I choose? Something that I want to do, that could potentially be life threatening to him, or something that I don’t want to do and might not be necessary at all? How do you make these kinds of decisions when it could literally be the difference between life and death and all you have to deal with are the “what if’s”? Can someone else just make this decision for me?
I’m hoping and praying that I’ll go in to labor on my own before the date that they would induce me and then the choice won’t be mine anyway. That would be the ideal situation, except for the whole trying to figure out what to do with Abbie last minute, but hopefully we’ll be able to deal with that when the time comes, if the time comes. I’m just ready for it to be mid-December and have the birth and all these decisions and unknowns behind us.

Abbie’s big girl bed

2011-11-20T10:34:00.000+01:00

Last weekend we moved Abbie into a big girl bed so we could put her crib in the baby’s room. I wanted there to be a little time between when she transitioned to her big girl bed and when he showed up, so it didn’t seem as though he was stealing her bed. However, since we live overseas and only the shoppette here sells beds and mattresses (American sized), we were only able to get the box spring and mattress. They didn’t have any full sized bed frames or headboards in stock, so we’ll have to order them and then wait 2-3 months for them to arrive. But in the meantime, this works out well for her.

She seems pretty excited about her big girl bed and she loves having all her stuffed animals sleep with her. She won’t get out of bed unless I’m in there with her, which is a HUGE relief for me. She’ll call for me and ask me if she can get up, but she won’t get up unless I’m in there. I’m hoping this lasts for quite a while because it makes my life a lot easier, for sure. I still have a monitor on her so I can keep an eye on her when I’m in my room.

We took away her bottle and moved her to a big girl bed all in the same week, but she’s handled it well. Now we just need to put her new dresser together and get her old dresser/changing table into the baby’s room, but I’m not in any rush to do that, especially since I still use the changing table with her. And I still need to order her a bed spread and more sheets, but I’ll get around to that eventually…. I think.

5QF

2011-11-18T13:44:00.001+01:00

1. Do you have a go to song that always puts you in a good mood? Christmas music. I could easily listen to it all year round.

2. Are you a real Christmas tree kinda person or do you go with a real fake one? I love real trees, but they make huge messes and are a pain to get rid of after Christmas, so we’ve been using a fake tree for now. When our kids are older, we’ll go to Christmas tree farms and pick out our own tree. I remember doing that as a kid and always loved it.

3. What are you thankful for? I am thankful that my husband came home safe and sound from this deployment and that I have a very supportive family and wonderful friends.

4. Which fashion fad from the past do you wish you could wear today? Ya know when you’d use massive amounts of hair spray and hold your hair away from your face and spray it so it stuck out some by your ears and then poofed your bangs up with hair spray too? It looked ridiculous, but it was easy and my frizzy hair actually cooperated with that. I wish that was “in” again and everyone did it, because I could actually do that. That and banana clips. Those were super easy too!

5. Do you wait until the "low fuel" light comes on before you fill up the gas tank? No, not usually. That kind of stresses me out. Especially here in Italy when gas stations are only open at certain times so you can’t just fill up any time you’d like. Well you can, but you have to pay European prices for gas, which is something like $8/gallon. So I like to go when we can use our gas coupons and get gas for cheaper.

Happy Friday!!

Abbie Rose is 2.5 years old!!

2011-11-17T21:19:00.001+01:00

Sometimes I can’t believe I’m lucky enough to be this little girls mom. She has brought so much joy to Mark’s and my life that, at times, we don’t even remember what life was like before she came long. I could sit and stare at her all day and her perfection amazes me.

Abbie has changed quite a bit in the past few months. Her vocabulary is far above most kids her age and most people don’t believe me when I tell them she’s two and a half. Their next question is always “When is her birthday?” so they can do the calculating themselves. This past month, I got her off the bottle (WOOHOO!!!) and we also moved her to a big girl bed. (More on that in a different post.)

Abbie has started pretending quite a bit recently. She loves dragging her stuffed animals all over the place, and she puts bibs on them all and lines them all up at her little table in her room and feeds them. And then she’ll stuff about 14 of them into her tiny doll stroller and take them all for a walk. This obviously makes her much easier to deal with because she’s able to entertain herself for an hour or so at a time. She also loves looking at books still and asks me to read her about 15 books a day, or she’ll “read” them to herself. And she’s all about “Olivia”. She LOVES the TV show “Olivia”. I got her 2 more “Olivia” dvd’s for Christmas because, quite honestly, I’m tired of watching the same 10 episodes over and over.

Abbie knows all the basic colors now and can pretty much say her ABC’s. She loves singing songs like Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star and You are my Sunshine. She can repeat nursery rhymes by herself and we discovered right after we got back from the States that Abbie can say the entire “God is great, God is good” prayer by herself, so she says the prayer for us at dinner every night. I really need to record that.

I think Abbie is going to be a great big sister. She loves helping me around the house. She’ll throw things out for me and pick things up for me, and she’ll go get things that I ask her to get, or put things back. She can open all the doors now, including unlocking our front door, so she’ll let the dogs in and out for me, or sometimes when I don’t want her to. (Don’t worry, I have an alarm on it that I set if I’m not right by it to watch her.) She has no problem opening the fridge and will bring me the milk or juice when she wants more of it. We’re working with her to not get into the fridge without permission and she’s getting better at listening to us. She also has no problem whatsoever climbing on to our pub-height kitchen chairs, which freaks me out because I’m afraid she’ll fall. But she’s pretty careful and hangs on pretty well. I think we’re going to move her to a booster seat pretty soon because her high chair is getting a little tight.

We’re still working with her on her “strong-willed-ness”. There are times we’ll ask her to do something and her immediate response is, “No, you do it!”. She definitely has an agenda of her own and it takes some coercing at times, to get her to do what you want. She also likes to dictate who does what for her if both Mark and I are around. Surprisingly, she seems to usually want me to do everything for her. I thought she would be all about Mark doing everything for her once he got home. She usually wants Mark to play with her and me to do everything else for her though. I’m still deciding if we want to try to get her partially potty trained before baby boy arrives or just wait until after he’s here to deal with it.

Abbie still loves all animals. She’s usually all over Oliver, who in turn is wrinkling his nose as high as it’ll go along with growling with all his might. Abbie is completely oblivious to it and doesn’t at all hesitate to get right in his face. She loves looking at and touching bugs (ew) and would spend all day out in the yard if I let her. She’s been asking a lot about my parents lately. I usually talk to my parents every day and Abbie will always come running up and ask if she can talk to them. When I hand her the phone, she’ll start wandering around the house and pointing out everything she sees to them, or she’ll tell them about her day or what we’re planning on doing tomorrow. And every single time she talks to them she asks when they’re coming to see her. (She’s talking to my dad in the picture on the right below.)

We’re really excited to see Abbie interact with her baby brother once he arrives. She often talks about how he’ll be little and she’s big, and she’ll find things that she wants to give baby brother or that she wants to share with him. I just can’t believe that she’s already two and a half. I really wish we could just keep her little forever because she’s at a really fun age right now.

Third times a charm?

2011-11-16T23:26:00.001+01:00

I promise this blog isn’t going to turn into only talking about this pregnancy for the next month, but right now, it’s a subject very near and dear to my heart. Bear with me and I promise that eventually I’ll start blogging about the cool stuff like traveling. I don’t see me being in a “travel-worthy” state anytime in the near future though… Just saying.

I pretty much feel like, in the month I’ve been being seen here in Italy, my pregnancy has fallen apart. The clinic here seems to be very “doom and gloom” and they don’t have a positive outlook on anything. I feel like they’re just looking for problems and grasping at straws to come up with things, and it’s making it really hard to feel comfortable with giving birth here. I honestly feel like the OB clinic here is scared about something, and they’re doing everything for their own best interest, instead of mine.

I had an NST appointment on Monday. Again, everything is fine. My bp was like 130/78 (aka: not hypertensive) and baby boy was fine. So then a new doctor, that I’ve never seen, comes in to do my fluid check (which again, was fine). He no sooner gets the ultrasound wand up to my belly and gets an image on the screen and asks, “Have you had a growth scan lately?” I laughed and said, yeah, I know, he’s huge. He kind of backtracks a little bit and then starts laying it all out…. He said that he wants me to do the 3 hr glucose test for a second time since one of my four numbers was close to the cut off and one was under. So I failed one of the four tests, and here, they only allow you to fail one. He told me their numbers are pretty conservative, and I passed the 3hr, but he wants me to do it again, just to make sure. I asked him about inducing me before 39 weeks (as in 38w4d), and he said that they don’t consider size to be a reason to induce. And then in the next breath, he said, but if the baby is measuring over 9.5lbs, that would be a reason to do a c-section. …. um, what? So you’re telling me you won’t induce me before 39 weeks due to his size because that’s not a “medical reason”, but yet you find his size to be reason enough to do a major surgery and not even let me try to labor naturally first? Give me a freakin break. Every time I start asking questions, they pretty much say ACOG (American Congress of Obstetrics and Gynocology) recommends it and that’s always their blanket statement. I feel like they’re putting me between a rock and a hard place and it’s either their way or no way and they’re not going to let me have any say in the birth of my own child.

I got home and called my OB I went to in the States, just to ask about their cut off for the 1 hr glucose test, that I passed by 1 point. She basically said that that’s the standard their lab came up with and that’s the number that they go by and it’s worked fine for them. She also told me that in their practice you can have two numbers in the 3 hr glucose test over the limit and still pass it.

Tuesday I had another growth scan ultrasound. (I was 35w5d.) Baby boy was measuring 38w3d and weighed 7lb14oz… and I still have 4 weeks to go. So I’m pretty sure he’s going to be a big boy. Honestly, he just feels bigger to me. I don’t ever remember feeling this big with Abbie, not even at the very end, let alone with a month to go. That kind of scares me quite a bit, but I’ve given birth to one big baby, so I think I’ll be able to get another one out.

I have yet another appointment tomorrow, so we’ll see what they say about his size and what they want me to do. I’ve talked to Mark’s squadron commander’s wife about it and she’s said that if his commander needs to get involved in the whole situation, he will, but that’s about the last thing I want to do. I don’t want to piss everyone at the clinic off and make them feel like I’m going over their head, but at the same time, I don’t want them to push me into doing something I don’t want to do either (aka: a c-section), unless it’s absolutely medically necessary. I would much rather have them induce me a few days early than just automatically schedule me for a c-section. Wish me luck!

Not much time left to guess!!

2011-11-15T13:52:00.001+01:00

We’re getting closer to the end now! Technically I have a month left, although I’m fairly sure he’ll be here before his due date, one way or another. If you’d like to make a guess as to what his birth date, time, weight and length will be, go HERE. Or you can click the link on the bottom of the blog. Happy guessing!!

PS: Those of you that have guessed him to be under 8lbs, you’re sweet. I appreciate it. But if you’d like to change your guess, let me know and I can edit it for you. =)

New addition

2011-11-13T18:33:00.001+01:00

Last month, Mark and I picked up our 2012 Volvo XC90 R-Design. We ordered it while he was in Afghanistan and I was in the States. We picked out which options and packages we wanted for it, along with a few accessories, so we were and are pretty excited about it.

We had always said we’d never get a brand new car because it’s a waste of money. As soon as you drive it off the lot, it depreciates so much in value and it just didn’t seem worth it to us. However, Volvo has a pretty good military program in here, so we could buy this vehicle over here for like $8000 less than you could get it in the States because of the discounts they give is. So we felt like it was a pretty good deal and we wanted to take advantage of it.

We had a tough time deciding if we wanted a silver exterior and dark grey interior, or if we wanted a black exterior and a light interior. We ended up going with the black exterior/ light interior, and we’re both pretty happy with it. It might be harder to keep clean, but we have kick guards on the back of the front seats so the kids won’t be able to scuff them up with their feet. We also decided to splurge on the rear seat entertainment system, which hopefully will help us out on longer car trips. The kids can either watch a DVD together, or one can watch a DVD and you can hook the other TV up to a game system. Should come in handy eventually.

This car is pretty cool. It has a TON of safety features, which is why we liked it in the first place. But it also automatically detects my phone via bluetooth as soon as I get into the car, and will automatically start playing music I have on my phone. This probably isn’t as big of a deal in the States where you have radio stations that are all in English, but most of the stations here are in Italian and some of them play American songs, but some don’t. I like having my music with me and not have to do anything except get in the car. My phone stays in my purse, but I can make calls from the car using the bluetooth system, so it’s always hands free. It’s really, really nice, and I love it. It also has the active bending headlights, so when we go around corners, the headlights turn in the direction we’re going. It actually makes a pretty big difference as we found out on the winding mountain roads around here.

The only complaint we have about the car is that the turning radius absolutely sucks. The faster you go, the better it turns, but turning at slow speeds is horrible. Our garage/driveway area is pretty tight and we had to mess around with the Volvo and our VW for a few days before we found a parking configuration that worked where we didn’t have to do a 24 point turn to get one or both of the vehicles out. The first few days we had the Volvo, I’d be out on the driveway telling Mark how far he could back up and go forward without hitting the other car or the neighbors fence, and it would literally take 5-7 tries before he’d be clear of both and we could pull out of the driveway. But we have it figured out now, so it’s better.

I wish it still had 6 miles on it. I think it has over 700 miles on it already, but we’ve gotten a lot of use out of it, including two trips to Ikea. And the double BOB fits great in the back of it, so I’m excited about that. Hopefully it’ll last us quite a few years!

Friday Fill-in and 5QF

2011-11-11T09:53:00.001+01:00

Freedom is most definitely not free, and often taken for granted .
Veterans are too often overlooked and not given the credit they deserve .
This country is one of the best on earth, and I don’t think I realized it as much until I lived out of the country .
Veteran’s Day means my husband has the day off work! Yay!
A hero is hard to come by in this day and age.

1. What's the last thing you spent too much money on? Our new car. So expensive, but totally worth it! I love it! (2012 Volvo XC90)

2. What celeb chef would you want to make you dinner? Ina Garten, preferably at her house. Better yet, I would love to be able to cook like she does.

3. Where do you hide things when visitors pop over or do you let them see the real deal? Totally depends on the visitor. For friends and some family, I leave things as is. For people I don’t know as well, I try to pick up some.

4. Who is your oldest living family member? My grandma, who is 96!!

5. What is your favorite DQ treat and/or Sonic drink combo (ie: cherry vanilla dr. pepper)? I miss DQ! I get the Blizzards with chocolate ice cream and either Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups or Oreos. Yes, I love my chocolate!

Have a good weekend!!

London

2011-11-10T23:16:00.001+01:00

London was amazing. We absolutely loved that city and would love to go back someday, preferably when I’m not almost 35 weeks pregnant…

We left Thursday morning to drive down to Venice to catch our flight to London. I cried on the way to drop Abbie off with our friends and while we were dropping her off. Grrr. I tried to keep it together, but couldn’t. Maybe someday…

FYI: if you fly the budget airlines in Europe (Easyjet, Ryanair, etc), they require you to have a doctors release allowing you to fly up until you’re 36 weeks pregnant. After that, they won’t let you fly. I had a note from my doctor in the States and I also got one from my doctors here at Aviano too, thank GOD. I figured it was just a formality incase anything went wrong. Nope. Every single airline personnel we encountered asked to look at my letter. And they didn’t just glance at it, they pretty much memorized it and then discussed it with co-workers nearby and asked me to confirm how far along I was and called supervisors. That was going and coming back. It was no joke. So if you fly when you’re pregnant over here, make sure to have the doctors release!

The flight from Venice to London was 1 hr and 45 mins and then it was a 30 min train ride from Gatwick Airport to Victoria Station in London. Then we had to figure out our way to our hotel using the Tube (subway), which was pretty easy. Our hotel was only a block from the Lancaster Gate tube stop. We got settled and then set out to find the Hard Rock Café in London. It’s become our tradition to eat at Hard Rock’s throughout Europe since they’re about the only places that you can get fountain Pepsi, and American burgers and a military discount. Then we decided to go on a London by night tour. It was fun being out and about at night. Normally we don’t get to be out after dark because when we have Abbie with us, we’re back at the hotel for her bed time.

(Royal Albert Hall)

(London Museum of Science)

(Harrod’s and Westminster Abbey)

(The London Eye and House of Parliaments)

(St. Paul’s Cathedral)

(The Tower Bridge and Piccadilly Circus)

I will admit, our first day there, I was pretty worried about having a baby in England. I was having cramps/ contractions and was feeling pretty uneasy about it all. The walking was really getting to me and I was so torn between wanting to see everything we wanted to see, but needing to take it easy so I didn’t overdo it. It took some of the fun out of it, but I eventually relaxed some and by Sunday I was handling all the walking around and going up and down stairs in the Tube much better.

Friday we decided to go check out the area by the House of Parliaments and Westminster Abbey. I would have loved to go into Westminster Abbey but it was £16, which equals about $25 PER PERSON, so we didn’t feel like spending $50 to see the inside of a church.

These cabs were all over London. All of the cabs are this shape, but most of them are black. I liked the ones with the British flag on them the best.

We decided to take a river cruise from the Westminster area down to The Tower of London, so here are a few pictures from that trip. It was entertaining and informative and we both enjoyed it, despite getting sprinkled on a little bit.

I would have loved to tour the Tower of London, which houses the crown jewels, but it was like £20 per person (so $32) and we only had an hour to tour the museum before it closed. We decided it wasn’t worth it since we didn’t have much time and I was moving pretty slowly, so we wouldn’t have gotten to see much. Maybe next time.

We went back to the room to relax a little and then headed to the Piccadilly Circus area again to have dinner at Bennihana’s. All during this pregnancy, I’ve been craving Japanese food, so it was pretty good. Mark and I shared a meal, like we usually do, which saved us a good $25 or more.

Our hotel was decent, but I guess I was expecting more for what we paid. ($630 for 3 nights) I had issues picking out a place because I wanted someplace nice since it was our one and only kid-free vacation while in Europe (while living here). It was nice, but TINY, as you can see below. The bathroom was so small you could BARELY open the door all the way because of the toilet. And there was mold in the bathroom too, so it smelled horrible, especially to my “Bloodhound-ish” nose. (I always have a heightened sense of smell when I’m pregnant.) It was okay, but I was hoping for something a little nicer for paying $200/night. Welcome to the super crappy exchange rate.

Saturday morning we wanted to check out the Notting Hill area and the Oxford Street area, but we technically didn’t make it to either. Mark got his Starbuck’s fix and then we took the Tube to Kensington Gardens to check out the palace.

On our walk to the Palace, we walked through this neighborhood full of ambassador’s homes. This was probably my favorite part of our visit. This street was GORGEOUS, especially with all the leaves on the ground and the homes were gigantic. Unfortunately there were “No photographs” signs pretty much EVERYWHERE, along with security cameras, so I couldn’t take pictures. Otherwise I probably would have spent an hour taking photos on this walk. I loved it. I snapped these two photos from the street before we actually got in to the gated area.

Kensington Palace is located on the west side of Hyde Park and our hotel was on the street bordering the north side. So we walked through the park after our visit to the Palace, and again, it was one of my favorite parts of our visit. The trees were beautiful and it was fun to see people walking, running, biking and playing games all over the place. And there were dogs off leashes everywhere, which was neat to see. They’d just run everywhere and play with each other and chase squirrels. I loved it.

(Kensington Palace and Gardens)

We did go on a tour of Kensington Palace. They had it done up in some sort of weird fairytale-ish setting with tree branches and stuff throughout the rooms. I would have preferred to just see it normally, without all the weird lights and displays. I would absolutely LOVE to be given free reign in a palace like this and just wander through it and see what it’s like. We only saw a small portion of it, but it was still huge and it was neat to see all the big rooms and intricate details. Even the stair cases were huge – like 8+ feet wide and spirally, so the rooms for the staircases alone were like 3 times the size of our living room. It’s hard to believe places like this were built for just one family. Apparently William and Kate are going to move in to Kensington Palace in a year or two and it’s where Princess Diana lived also.

After our walk through the park, which about killed me since I had to pee so bad, we rested at the hotel for a bit and then headed down to the Victoria Station area to eat at a pub and to see Wicked. I’ve seen at least 10 to 15 professional Broadway shows and Wicked was definitely in my top two. Both Mark and I thought it was excellent. I didn’t really know what it was about, besides the Witched Witch from The Wizard of Oz, but I still had high expectations for it, and it didn’t disappoint. I could have listened to the girl that played Elphaba sing all day. Her voice was amazing. If you ever get the chance to see Wicked, GO!!

Overall, our trip to London was a success and I had fun waddling all over the place. It was so nice to spend time with my husband without having to play the parent role also and the trip just refreshed my memory as to why I love him so much. We have so much fun traveling together and I love how relaxed and at ease I feel with him. He makes me laugh more than anyone else and we laughed a lot on our trip. It was great to reconnect with him before we become a family of 4 (plus 2 weina dogs).

Pushing for an induction

2011-11-08T23:39:00.001+01:00

(34.5 weeks pregnant)

I am much more nervous about giving birth this time around than I was with Abbie’s birth. The size of this baby alone, is enough to make me nervous, but there are more factors than just his size.

But just for kicks and giggles, let’s talk about his size first. I am hoping and praying with all my might that the u/s’s are off and he’s not actually 3 weeks ahead of schedule, but I really don’t think they’re that far off, for a few reasons. Abbie was 9lbs 9.2oz at birth, and boys tend to be bigger than girls at birth. Big babies run in Mark’s family and since Mark and I are both tall, our odds of having another big baby are pretty high. I have a ton of stretch marks from my pregnancy with Abbie, except already, at 35 weeks, they’re getting bigger. Not wider, but they’re getting higher on my belly than they were before. Hopefully that means that I’m just carrying him higher, but I don’t know. And this little guy moves a LOT. Like almost non-stop, to the point where he’s bouncing around in there so much it actually wakes me up at night. The NST’s they’re making me do are a complete joke. His heart rate is supposed to go up at least two times in 20 mins while I’m hooked up to the monitors, and I think the least amount of times his HR has gone up during one of our sessions has been four times. If he’s, by chance, actually being still, all I have to do is poke him and he squirms. I’m not sure if I feel him so much because he’s so big and just doesn’t have much room to move or he’s even more active than Abbie was. Either way, it’s scary.

“Shoulder dystocia” keeps being brought up because of his size. This is a huge fear of mine – that he’s going to get stuck. I would love to give birth vaginally, but it scares me to think about what could happen if he does get stuck. I’d like to think my body can handle giving birth to a 10+lb baby, but that’s a BIG baby.

I’m also worried about the possibility of having to give birth in an Italian hospital due to space not being available at the base hospital. Since they’ve labeled my pregnancy a “complicated pregnancy”, I really don’t want to have to go through a complicated birth in a foreign hospital and having to deal with the way they do things and the language barrier. If things are going to go wrong during the birth, I want to know exactly what’s going on and not have to rely on a translator to relay info to me. Plus if I end up needing a c-section, they don’t allow dads to be in the room and they immediately take the baby away from you for a few hours and don’t let either of us see him. (From what I’ve heard anyway.) I’ve also decided I do want an epidural in case there are complications. I’d rather not have to go through a bunch of maneuvers and stuff while I can fully feel everything if he does get stuck. And if I give birth in an Italian hospital, there’s no guarantee that you’ll get an epi, even if you ask for it. It basically depends on if someone is around to give one or not, and if they’re not, they won’t call an anesthesiologist in to do one unless they deem it necessary. I’ve also heard people say that they didn’t let the baby stay in their rooms with them while they were recovering. They kept the babies in the nursery. So pretty much having to give birth in the Italian hospital terrifies me… like REALLY terrifies me, and I’m not going to know if I have to go there until I go into labor and call base to see if they have room for me there.

Lastly, if I do go in to labor on my own, I’m worried about what we’re going to do with Abbie last minute. I’ve asked a few friends if they’d be willing to watch her for us, but one of them works full-time, so that really limits when she’s available and one of them works part-time and lives 45 mins away, so if we’re in a rush, I’m not really sure what we’re going to do. Another one has said that she’d help, but I really don’t know her schedule or if she’s willing to stay at our house. I think it’s going to be a matter of us scrambling last minute to get Abbie and all her junk and her car seat to someone else’s house on our way to the hospital, which really isn’t the ideal situation at all, but it’s either that or Mark stays with her and I go by myself.

So basically, I want them to induce me. If they could induce me between 38 and 39 weeks, that would be ideal. I would like to experience going in to labor on my own, but there’s so much at stake here. If they induced me, he wouldn’t be as big as he would if he came on his own, they would induce me on base, so I could give birth there, and we could set up care for Abbie in advance. It would pretty much solve all of my problems, with the exception of him getting stuck, but again, he’d be smaller than he would if I carried him full term, so that would help. However, they said that they wouldn’t induce me unless he’s measuring over 10lbs or I have blood pressure issues. (Which, by the way, at all my NST’s, my blood pressure has been 100% normal…)

I’ve pretty much lived at the clinic since Mark got back. Two weeks ago I was there Mon, Tues, Thurs and Fri. Last week I was there Mon, Tues and Weds. This week I’m there Mon, Thurs and Fri. Next week I’m there Mon, Tues and Thurs. It ridiculous. Between NST’s, fluid checks, growth scans, OB appts, and classes, I might as well just move there. My 36 weeks appointment is next Thursday and I’m going to talk to them about inducing me then, to see if they will. I’ll let you know how it turns out. Wish me luck!

Abbie-isms October 2011

2011-11-03T07:54:00.001+01:00

**We were walking around my hometown with my in-laws and Abbie apparently got tired. She looked up at her Uncle Alex and said “How about you carry me now?”. Too bad I can’t say that to people! Lord knows I’ve thought it!
**Last time she saw Uncle Alex, a month ago, he had gotten a boo boo on his hand. As soon as he walked in the door, Abbie asked him how his boo boo on his hand was. I have no clue how she remembers that kind of stuff.
**We were riding in the car and the sun was shining in Abbie’s window. She said, “Mommy, the sun is shining in my eyes. I’m just going to turn my head the other way.”
**On our second trip to base, Abbie was telling my mom about the park I took her to a few times before we left Italy. We were a few blocks away from it and she told my mom that it was coming up and to keep watching. I asked her if it was on the right or the left (while pointing to the right and left) and she said it was going to be on the left (which is was). When we got to it she yelled “There it is!!”. I can’t believe she remembered that park.
**On that same car ride, Abbie told me that there was another park coming up. I honestly had no clue what she was talking about. I told her the next park would be on base and she said, “No mommy, it’s before that.” We passed a restaurant that had a swing set and slide in front of it on our way to base and Abbie pointed it out also. I couldn’t believe that she remembered where that one was also. She obviously has her eyes open for the parks.
**Abbie still gets SUPER excited when she hears jets flying around. Pretty much anywhere we are, as soon as she hears a jet taking off, she’ll start screaming, “Jet! Jet! Quick, quick!! Let’s go see them!” And then when she’s done watching them or listening to them, she says very matter-of-factly, “My daddy flies those.” The other day we were in the library when she started her jet routine. My mom and I quickly shushed her, and that made her cry because she didn’t want to not announce the jet. We taught her how to whisper her excitement.
**Abbie, Mark and I were driving on the autostrada (highway) in Italy and Abbie spotted an F-16 flying out her window. She did her normal, “Look! Look! Jet! F-16!” And then she said the usual, “My daddy flies those!!”, which was followed by her getting a very confused look on her face. She sat there for a few seconds and then said, “But my daddy is right there?” We had to explain to her that “other daddy’s” also fly the jets and that not every jet she was had her daddy flying it. I think she understood.
**Abbie calls “Piglet” (Pooh’s friend), “Pliget” sometimes. And she refers to a rubber ducky as a “ducky rubber”. Occasionally she asks the question, “What is that called thing?”
**Abbie has heard me say to Mark, “You’re flippin’ hot.” a few times. So now Abbie frequently looks at Mark and says, “Daddy, you’re flippin’ hot!”. Or she’ll look at me and say, “Mommy, daddy’s flippin’ hot!”
**”Damember” is a very common word for Abbie. She frequently asks “Damember when ____?”. (Translation: Do you remember.) It’s pretty funny that she says it as much as she does.

*Sorry, no Abbie pictures in this post this month. Been too busy and I don’t have time to get them all off the other computer. I’ll put more pictures of her up later.*

Abbie’s 3rd Halloween

2011-11-02T08:24:00.001+01:00

This year we took Abbie trick or treating on base at the Fall Fest. It was basically a bunch of vendors handing out candy to all the kids and some of them had games set up for the kids to play. They also had haunted houses, bouncy houses, mazes and a pumpkin patch, but we didn’t make it to any of those things. We’ll try to do it next year.

Abbie really enjoyed looking at all the other kids in costumes. I think she was a little bit overwhelmed because she went from being super excited to really quiet and back to excited a few times. She didn’t know where to look or what to do next. I’m glad Mark was around to witness it. (And so was Mark’s brother, Ryan, pictured below.)

Abbie got the hang of trick or treating pretty quickly. She was pretty shy, but she’d say “trick or treat” and a few times I reminded her to say thank you. Sometimes she’d start walking away from the person and then go running back saying, “I forgot to say thank you!”

Mark helped her with the bean bag toss. She had fun trying, but she missed the holes even when she was 6 inches from them. =)

She really liked choosing a duck at this vendor. The ducks had numbers on the bottom of them and the prize you got was based on the number you pulled.

And then we ran into this guy… Abbie was terrified of him.

She wanted absolutely nothing to do with him, but she kept a VERY close eye on him. She had to walk a few feet away from me to get candy from a lady, and she started out a few times towards the lady, but watching the dog. As soon as the dog would move anything, she’d come running back to me. She told me she didn’t like him and that she was afraid of him and that he scared her. And 4 days later, she’s still talking about how she didn’t like the puppy.

Finally she couldn’t take it anymore and wanted Daddy to pick her up, but even walking away, she still kept a close eye on him. He rode by on a fire truck while we were getting food and of course, she spotted him right away then too and had to keep a close eye on him to make sure he wasn’t getting any closer to her. Guess now’s not the time to take her to Disney. =)

And of course she had to get her face painted. She loves having her face painted.

Luckily, Abbie isn’t big into candy so she hasn’t really wanted to eat a bunch of it, and the few she has picked out, she hasn’t even finished. That’s fine with me. Mark, Ryan and I dug through it and got the few pieces out that we liked anyway. The rest of it will be around for a month before she gets around to finishing it.

Venzone Pumpkin Festival

2011-11-01T09:34:00.000+01:00

Mark and I had been hearing about the Venzone Pumpkin Festival from a bunch of different people so we decided to go check it out. The entire trip was pretty much a bust, but we still had a good time, even if we won’t be going back. We got caught in traffic for over an hour going there AND coming back, so we picked a perfectly bad time to go.

Tiny Italian towns, like Venzone, are not built for massive crowds of people. The entire town was so full you could barely walk around. The main draw of this festival is to try the various foods made with pumpkins. Mark and I made the mistake of thinking we’d be able to get Euros out of an ATM in Venzone. The town had 2 and both of them were out of money around. Luckily we ran into friends from the squadron who loaned us 30E so we could get food. However, the parade came through just as we were going to find a place to eat, so we ended up just leaving because we were tired of fighting the crowds.

I had fun taking pictures of Abbie though, as usual. She’s at a fun age to take to things like this because she asks questions and is so interested in what she sees. It’s fun to watch her take it all in.

I don’t quite understand the purpose of the procession, but it was kind of neat to watch everyone in costumes go by, for the first 10 mins. About 25 mins of trying to get out of the town, away from the crowds, going against the parade, it got a little bit old, especially since we were carrying Abbie so she didn’t get trampled. (Most of the alleys were MUCH smaller than the one pictured below, and people were lined along both sides of them.)

Our GPS took us some crazy way home and Mark and I were worried it was going to take us on this crazy mountain road that it’d taken us on before, but luckily it wasn’t the same one. Similar, but not NEARLY as long, thank God. We were trying to figure out where we were and where the GPS was taking us and Abbie was in the back seat asking, “Where are we going?”, “What are we doing?”, “Are you going to turn up there?”, “Go that way.”, etc. She’s quite the little back seat driver, for sure.

I’m glad we went, so we can say we’ve been there and done that, and we know what the hype is about. It was fun even if it didn’t turn out exactly as we were expecting. Next time we’ll make sure we have Euros on us!

October 2011 goals revisited

2011-10-31T12:50:00.001+01:00

This month has flown by for me, as I knew it would. Time flies when you’re having fun, right? Thank GOD my husband was all about getting the house organized, since he’s done more of it than I have. I feel guilty about it, but Mark says he likes doing this kind of stuff around the house.

1. Get the ENTIRE house cleaned from top to bottom before Mark returns from his deployment. - Pretty much got this one done. It wasn’t organized, but it was pretty clean, thanks to paying someone to clean most of it before we got back.
2. Reorganize the kitchen and put things I don’t use much on shelves in the basement to free up space in the cabinets. I didn’t get this done as much as I would have liked. I put some stuff away, but still have more to go.
3. Unpack all boxes I shipped to myself and get things put away. I got over half of them unpacked, but still have more to go.
4. Wash all baby boy clothes and get it all organized by size in plastic containers. DONE!!! (Thanks for the help mom!)
5. Reorganize our storage rooms in the basement to make everything easily accessible. DONE!!! (Thanks to Mark, who did 90% of this.)
6. Clean up downstairs living room (which is currently being used as a storage room in part of it, and the guest room in another part of it). Take all storage items and find places for them in other storage rooms. DONE!! Again, thanks mostly to Mark and my mom.
7. Get Passat ready to sell and advertised. Not done, but for good reason. More on that later.
8. Get Abbie a big girl bed and dresser set and get that put together and in her room. Partially done. We have her mattress and box spring ordered. They’ll be delivered in 2 weeks, but we have to order her headboard, which will take 2-3 months to arrive. The joys of living overseas. And we still need to get her a dresser.
9. Move crib and changing table from Abbie’s room to baby boys room. Not done since Abbie is still using them
10. Turn current office/ craft room into baby boys room. Baby boy’s room is currently empty, which is a feat in itself. Once we get Abbie’s bed, we can move her furniture to his room.
11. Reorganize all of Mark’s and my clothes. Move one of our dressers from our bedroom into storage or downstairs living room to make room for glider and bassinet in our room. Again, partially done. I have most of our clothes organized, but still have more work to do.
12. Look into moving our wardrobe down to Abbie’s room and getting an Ikea closet organizer for our closet area to free up some space. Mark and his brother moved the wardrobe to the garage for us, but now all the clothes that were in the wardrobe are in a huge pile where the wardrobe used to be. We still need to get a closet organizer from somewhere.

13. Plan November trip to London!! We leave in 5 days and this still isn’t done. Oops.
14. Turn downstairs living room in to guest room/ play room/ office/ craft room. Yes, it’s big enough to do this, it’s just going to take some creativity. Mostly done! We just have more organizing to do and have to move more toys down there.
15. Take a big trip to Ikea to get different closet storage for our room, storage unit for main floor bathroom and Abbie’s new bedroom set. We haven’t had time to go to Ikea yet. This will be moved to my November goals.
16. Finish quilt and return sewing machine before I leave home. Still not done. RATS! I need to finish that quilt! Hopefully in November I’ll be able to get it done if I get my machine all set up again.
17. Get all cards written and sent on time. They’ve been done, but usually not sent on time… Oops.
18. Enjoy time with my husband after being away from him for almost 7 months!!!! I’ve definitely accomplished this!

Reintegration

2011-10-30T09:07:00.000+01:00

I had heard that sometimes families have a rough time with reintegration when military members come home from deployments. I wasn’t too concerned about having issues, but it was in the back of my mind a little bit before Mark came home.

Mark is an outstanding daddy. He is very involved in Abbie’s daily routine when he’s around and he is her favorite playmate. No one makes Abbie laugh like Mark does. I wasn’t worried about Mark falling back into our routine, but I was a little worried with how Abbie would handle Mark.

Abbie quickly took to Mark again and even before he could get out of his uniform, she was dragging him all over the place. I almost immediately took second fiddle and she wanted Mark to do everything for her, which was perfectly fine with me. (Unfortunately, almost 2 weeks later, that’s not still the case.)

Abbie, in typical 2 year old fashion, has been testing the limits with Mark. I’m proud of him because he didn’t let her completely over run him like I thought she would. Abbie is a VERY strong willed kiddo, and that combined with how smart she is makes her tough to deal with at times. But Mark didn’t let her get away with much, so she’s learning that she’s not going to get away with murder with daddy. I would tell Abbie she couldn’t do something and she would immediately go ask Mark if she could do it. Mark would always agree with me though, so she’s figured out now that we’re a united front and if one of us says no, we’re both going to say no.

I think when you’ve been away from someone for over half a year, you always kind of wonder what it’s going to be like when you’re with them again, especially when that “someone” is your husband. It’s hard, at times, to maintain that bond when you live on different continents and he’s fighting a war. But it truly was like he’d never left almost immediately. For a while, I couldn’t believe he was actually home, within my reach, and I just wanted to sit there and stare at him. Sometimes I still can’t believe it.

Mark has changed though. He has a confidence about him now, that he didn’t have when he left. He’s still the modest, kind and gentle man I married, but he carries himself differently now. I think him going to war and doing the missions they did over there gave him more of a purpose at work. He actually got to put to use all those hours he’s spent training in the jet. I noticed almost immediately that he now refers to the F-16 as “my jet” instead of “the jet” like he used to. He’s said he’s much more comfortable in the jet and flying it is second nature for him now, which is bound to happen when you fly as much as he did over there. I don’t think he was ‘unconfident’ before he left, but he is definitely a little more forward now, which I like.

I’m so proud of Mark, and all the guys he deployed with. I couldn’t imagine having to be away from your entire family for as long as they were away, and I have the deepest respect for those that endure deployments that were longer than Mark’s. Hopefully it’ll be a while before we have to go through another deployment.

Friday Fill-in and 5QF

2011-10-28T09:22:00.001+02:00

The best part of October was Mark’s homecoming!!!
The worst part of October was stressful OB visits and enduring a bunch of tests that I probably didn’t need.
For Halloween, I’ll be a mom chasing a 2 year old dressed as a cupcake around.
I hope that in November baby boy is born. Anytime after Thanksgiving would be good!
Wifey has posted MilSpouse Secret Santa. I probably won’t be participating. I already have too much on my plate for the holidays, especially with baby #2 being due mid-Dec. Hopefully I’ll be less busy next year though!

1. Do you prefer cotton, silk, or flannel sheets? Cotton for sure. Flannel are too hot and silk are too slippery. High thread count cotton.

2. What time zone are you in? Central European

3. What is your favorite part of the holiday season? The holiday cheer that most people seem to have and spending time with family and friends, although this year we probably won’t get to see family since we’re staying in Italy.

4. What is your favorite "wintry" drink? (It doesn't have to be an "alcoholic" drink!) Hot cocoa and hot apple cider, but admittedly, I drink hot cocoa all year round. It’s my favorite!

5. In your opinion, what is the worst job in the world? Any job where you don’t like your boss or co-workers. That’s the absolute worst and makes any job miserable.

Strong like bull!

2011-10-27T20:49:00.000+02:00

Monday of this week I had my first OB appointment at Aviano. It was just a consultation appointment with a nurse, going over my records from the States. However, she did an excellent job of completely freaking me out by telling me numerous things that could have gone wrong during Abbie’s birth. She brought up shoulder dystocia and how when the shoulders get stuck they put your legs up by your head and a nurse pushes really hard on your belly to get the baby to pop out. Sounds pretty pleasant if you ask me…. (By the way, Abbie didn’t really even have shoulder dystocia, so her telling me all of this was pointless.) And then she asked how many times the vacuum popped off of Abbie’s head. It popped off once, and she said, well that’s good because if it pops off three times, that’s an automatic c-section. … Yay. Again, probably didn’t want or need to know that just then. She then made me an appointment with the midwife for the next day, which I thought was a little odd since I pretty much had to beg to get the consultation appointment before 36 weeks.

I should preface this by saying that I have been told the OB care here at Aviano is pretty relaxed. They don’t do urine tests every appointment like they have done at all the other OB’s I’ve been to. And you go every 4 weeks until 36 weeks, and then you have appts at 38, 39 and 40 weeks and they normally don’t do any extra ultrasounds unless absolutely required. My OB that I was going to for the first 7 months of this pregnancy switched to bi-weekly appts at 28 weeks and then at 36 weeks you started going in every week. My OB for the majority of my first pregnancy did ultrasounds at every visit, which I know is pretty rare.

So when I went to my appointment on Tuesday, I was completely overwhelmed and frustrated by what she was saying to me. She started about by saying, “So I see you didn’t pass your 1 hr glucose test?”. I told her I had passed it by one point and I was worried about it so I had triple checked with my midwives in IA about it and they kept reassuring me that I had passed it. This midwife basically said that by their standards I didn’t pass it and that I had to come in to do the 3 hr test this week. That was the first blow. I think part of the reason it bothered me so much is because I was really worried about it before and it had taken me a week or two to finally stop worrying about it. This just opened up this entire can of worms again.

And then she said that she noticed I’ve had high blood pressure throughout this pregnancy. Granted, my BP is probably higher than the average persons, but my BP is ALWAYS high at the doctors office. For as long as I can remember, I would have high BP at appointments. And I wrote about this during my last pregnancy too, where I had high BP at the beginning of appts and if they’d take it again at the end, it would be much more normal. I told the midwife this and also how my midwives in IA weren’t concerned about it either and she basically said “Too bad, we’re going to test you for pre-eclampsia anyway.” *sighs* At this point I was fighting back tears because I was so frustrated. I am grateful that they are concerned and just want to be extra cautious and I realize they’re doing this for the sake of our baby and myself. I get that. But I didn’t really intend on spending the entire 2 weeks Mark has off at the hospital doing zillions of tests. We have a TON of stuff to do on the house and his 2 weeks off was when we planned on doing all that. Me being at the hospital 4 out of 5 days this week and 3 days next week wasn’t in my plan, at all. But I agreed to the tests and hopefully I’ll pass them all to relieve all of our fears.

The biggest blow was when she said that she’s going to require me to come in twice a week from now until he’s born for NST’s. (Non-stress tests – where they hook you up to monitors and monitor his heartbeat and movement.) I DO NOT have time for that. And naturally she wants me to come in either Monday and Thursday or Tuesday and Friday. Abbie is at the sitters Tuesday and Thursday, so one day a week I’m going to have to figure out what the heck to do with my 2 year old for 30 mins to 2 hrs while I sit at the hospital. I think this is being a bit excessive on her part, but she’s not budging on having me do these things. The first two weeks are fine because Mark is home to stay with Abbie, but after that, I’m not sure what I’m going to do.

Then she measured my belly and was like, “Whoa, we’re going to get you in for a growth scan ultrasound as soon as possible.” My belly was measuring 35.5 weeks and I am 33 weeks pregnant. I got in for an ultrasound later that day, and sure enough, baby boy is huge. His head was measuring 36w1d, his abdomen was measuring 36w and his femur (which is supposedly the most accurate measurement) was measuring 34w4d. When they averaged all the measurements he took together, baby boy is supposedly measuring 35w5d and is 5lb14oz. (Normally they are 4.5lbs at 33 weeks gestation.) This news did freak me out even more than I already was, especially considering all the “info” the nurse gave me on Monday about birth complications.

I really don’t understand how the measurements across your belly during pregnancy can tell them anything about your gestational age. They use the same thing for people that are 5’0” tall and 5’11” tall and have BMI’s from 20 to 40. Without taking other factors into consideration, how does just measuring the size of your belly tell them how big your baby is? I don’t get it.

Apparently I’m just destined to have big babies. I am glad they’re healthy and growing, or as Mark puts it, “Strong like bull!”, but having to push out 10lb babies is not my idea of fun. I would be THRILLED if this little guy was 9.5lbs or under, but if the ultrasounds are accurate, he won’t be. I’m a little jealous of people who have babies that are 6 and 7lbs and actually look like newborns when they arrive, instead of 2 month olds. Luckily I was smart enough to not buy baby boy newborn sized clothes since I knew he wouldn’t fit into them anyway.

This week has been a little bit overwhelming for me. It’s a lot of information to process and take in, especially when I had been thinking I was pretty healthy. I’m currently at the lab getting a whole bunch of tests done, so I should have some answers later today. My fingers are crossed for good results!!

He already looks as chubby as a newborn and he has 7 weeks to go!!

Homecoming!!

2011-10-26T12:03:00.001+02:00

**I did not take any of these pictures. They were all taken by my friend, Jessica. They just have my copyright on them since photos now automatically get my copyright when I upload them to my blog. But again, I didn’t take any of them. Jessica deserves all the credit. THANK YOU Jess!!**

It was finally the day Mark would come home, and oddly enough, I felt completely calm. I wasn’t nervous at all, like I thought I would be, maybe partly because I didn’t really think he’d actually make it home. The odds of 12 jets getting off without a hitch is pretty much a small miracle. I didn’t actually believe he was coming home until I saw him waving to us from the jet.

It’s funny, when I’d look at other people’s homecoming pictures, often I would get teary eyed seeing them. I wasn’t sure how I’d react to Mark coming home, but I mainly just felt sort of numb. I was excited, but I was looking around at other wives who were about jumping out of their skin, and I wasn’t anything like that. Maybe that had something to do with me not doing any sort of jumping in my 32 week pregnant state, I’m not sure.

<On the bus out to the hangars.>

One of the many cool things about being married to a fighter pilot is that sometimes you get your own private homecoming since they fly in in their own jets. We were able to go to the hangar to wave to him as he was taxiing to his hangar and then greet him when he got out of the jet.

<Watching all the other jets land and wives and kids greeting their daddy’s and husband's.>

Mark was the last jet in the 12-ship to land. I was getting a little worried by this point because we’d seen all the other jets go by and we were still waiting for Mark. I was sure he was the only one that hadn’t made it back and I kept asking one of our friends where he was and which direction he’d be coming from and why it was taking so long.

But finally we saw his jet come around the corner. This is the only time I got a little bit choked up. I was so relieved that he was actually on the ground and that we were going to get to hug him soon.

It was surreal to see him in the jet and for him to wave back at us. I tried to imagine what he was feeling at this point, but I couldn’t even imagine being in his shoes. I think Abbie understood when I told her that was her daddy in the jet and she seemed to get more excited too. She was ready to run up to the jet even as it was running.

We walked over to where he was parking the jet and waited FOREVER for him to open the canopy and get out. It seemed like we waited hours for him to turn off the jet, and I wasn’t sure if it was just because we were waiting for Mark or if it actually was taking 10 times longer than it did for the other guys to open their canopies after they’d landed. Turns out something was wrong with jet so the ground crew was making him do a bunch of checks on the jet before they let him turn it off. Even the commander of the other F-16 squadron on base, who was nearby, was giving Mark the signal to just shut the jet off since it was taking a long time. He sat there for over 15 mins with the jet running waiting for maintenance to do their thing.

FINALLY he turned the jet off and opened the canopy. Mark brought Abbie an Olivia doll back from Afghanistan. Mark was so excited to give Abbie the doll and kept it with him during the flight home.

Usually wives climb up the ladder to welcome their husband’s home, but I didn’t want to leave Abbie down on the ground by herself, and I’m not the most graceful creature on earth when I’m pregnant. With my luck I would have fallen off the thing and made a big scene. So I stayed on the ground, although I kind of wished I’d gone up to greet him.

I kind of figured that Abbie wouldn’t be too shy around Mark since she’s not shy about much these days, but part of me was a little worried that she might hesitate a little bit. But she didn’t at all. She was more than ready to go give him a big hug. This is what I’d been waiting for for months and Mark too, and it was really sweet to witness it.

She wasn’t the least bit nervous about giving him a big hug, even though he was in all his flying gear. And she was pretty darn excited about the Olivia doll too.

Finally it was my turn to give him a hug. I was hoping he wouldn’t have his mustache when he got home, but he still had it. Oh well. Baby boy got in the way of it being a really good hug, but what can you do? I basically just wanted to stand there and stare at him. I couldn’t believe that he was really home.

Abbie was completely in awe of Mark. She ran around looking up at him, trying to get his attention for the first 3 days he was home. She was perfectly happy when he was paying full attention to her.

And he was (and is) completely in awe of her too. (The stache came off shortly after he got home, by his own doing. He said he was sick of it.)

It’s still hard to believe that he’s home. His homecoming day still seems surreal to me, but I am SO thankful that he’s home safe and sound and we’re all together again.

197 days

2011-10-24T20:28:00.001+02:00

197 days is how long it’s been since I’ve seen my husband in person. And now he is supposed to be home tomorrow. I’m more than half expecting something to go wrong and him to not end up coming home tomorrow since that’s the way the military usually works. I’m trying hard to not get my hopes up, and right now they aren’t. They probably won’t be until we’re a few hours out from his arrival. But the signs are made, the outfits are picked out and the list of things that need to be done tomorrow before we bring him home are created.
For the past week or two, it hasn’t really felt like Mark would be home soon. I’ve felt like I still have at least a few weeks left before he gets home. Honestly, I still feel like I have a few weeks left instead of a matter of the hours that we’re down to now. It’s surreal to think that in 16 hours I could be in my husband’s arms again.
I’m very excited to be in a “wife role” again. I realize that I never stopped being his wife while he was away, but I basically didn’t have any “wife duties” for the past 6+ months. I didn’t have to make meals for him or clean up after him or do his laundry. I didn’t have my best friend around to talk to whenever I wanted to talk and I didn’t get to fall asleep next to him. We talked almost daily, but mostly it was me emailing him books and trying to keep him up to date on what Abbie was doing and how she was progressing.
Mostly, I’m excited to see Abbie and Mark together again. I’m excited to see her reaction to him and I’m excited to see his reaction to her. I told him that his 2 weeks off are most likely going to be spent with him watching her and me watching him. Abbie has changed A LOT in the 6 months Mark has been gone. She’s lost all of her “baby-ness” and she is a thriving little girl now. She talks non-stop and I think that’s going to be an adjustment for Mark. I think Abbie has forgotten that Mark is her favorite playmate, but I think it’s going to take her about 30 seconds to remember again once he’s home.
I’m nervous about seeing him again too. I wonder how much he’s changed and how much I’ve changed in the past half of a year. I’m sure we’re both different people now. And I’m 32 weeks pregnant so obviously my physical appearance is quite different from when he last saw me. As I predicted, quite a few of the wives in the squadron have lost weight. I haven’t seen everyone yet, but of the few I have seen, most, if not all, of them have lost weight, some as much as 20lbs. I wish I had an improved body like they do, but instead I’ve put on 25+lbs. I know Mark won’t care, but I care and it bothers me.
Here’s praying that everything goes according to play tomorrow and that he gets home when he’s supposed to. I’m ready to be with my husband again and have our family all together.