Abbie’s 9 month appointment

Today Mark and I took Abbie to her 9 month appointment.  In all honesty, I was much more worried about Mark at this appointment than I was Abbie.  Mark has only been to one or two of her other well baby visits, and he was quite nervous about her getting a shot.  For the past few days he’s been asking me how she’ll react and what we have to do during the appointments, etc.  It’s pretty cute.  I’m happy to say, both Mark and Abbie survived the appointment.  =)

Abbie now weighs 19lbs7oz, which puts her just over the 50 percentile.  She’s 29.5 inches long ( 95%) and her head circumference is 17.5 inches (50%).  In other words, she’s right on track – the same track she’s been on since birth.  We still have a long, skinny baby on our hands.

She had to get one shot today – her polio vaccine – and Mark was VERY nervous about that.  But Mark held her arms, I distracted her with a toy and the nurse held her legs and gave her the shot.  She sort of jumped a little and got a startled look on her face, but by the time she started to pucker up, Mark was already picking her up.  She let out a little whimper, a big sigh (not as big as Mark’s though), and then she was fine, and Mark was breathing normally again.

I cannot believe how fast Abbie seems to be progressing lately.  It seemed like she was working on crawling forever.  Since the 14th of February, Abbie has started crawling, she can easily pull herself up to a standing position, she’s cruised along the couch by herself once, and any time she’s in the upright position, she’ll move her feet to walk now.  NONE of that was happening 11 days ago.  I cannot believe it.  Maybe all of this is normal, but since she’s my first, I have no clue how fast kids usually pick up on these things.  She’s growing up way too quickly.

She’s babbling quite a bit lately.  Any time she sees us drinking, she wants some of it, and she does fairly well drinking out of a cup.  I still nurse her 3-5 times a day, and she’s wearing size 3 diapers.  She’s in only 9 month clothes now, although there are a set of Gerber onesies that are 18 months that fit her!  That brand’s sizes are so far off from the rest of them.  She’s still taking 2 naps a day (except for today…), and she sleeps 10-12 hours at night.   She’ll wave bye bye sometimes and you can ask her where Abbie’s tongue is, and she’ll stick it out.

It is increasingly harder to get pictures of her with her little signs.  These ones are the best we could do, although all the zoo pictures where taken on her birthday.  I need to get a bigger SD card for my camera because I took 1.6 GB of pictures at the zoo alone and our SD card for the camera is only 2GB.  I think I need at 8 or 16 GB one.

My cousin sent me an article from the New York Times online that was about traveling in Venice with an infant.  Apparently Italians LOVE babies, and you get preferential treatment over there, if you have a baby.  This article was talking about how these elderly Italian ladies thought their 10 month old was great and the writer said something like “We knew that she was spectacular, we just weren’t sure everyone else knew too”.  It made me laugh because I’m fairly certain that every parent feels that way about their child.  (And if they don’t, something’s a little off…)  But reading that article made me excited to go to Venice with Abbie, and since we’ll only live about an hour from Venice, hopefully we’ll get to go there often.  (And the article even mentioned how perfect it was to have the Ergo in Venice since a stroller would have been a pain with all those bridges.)  

Anyway, that’s the news for now!

Uneventful update

So I thought I’d update everyone on our move process, and sadly, there is nothing to update you on.  We still don’t have orders (or any of the move set up) and we still haven’t even gotten our passports back yet, let alone our visas.  So… yeah.  I really don’t know how this is all going to turn out.  It’s going to be a major act of God to have this all fall into place at the last minute, but I’m really not holding my breath at all.  We’re supposed to be leaving AZ in 11 days, and I just don’t see how that’s going to happen.  We have an appointment with our landlord for the final inspection of the house set up in 10 days.  Ha!  I’m terrified that for some reason we’re not going to get to go to Italy.  Mark’s PRP approval is taking forever.  We thought we’d have it sometime last week, and we still don’t have it, which is why we still don’t have our orders either.  Even if he does get orders though, Abbie and I can’t leave without our visas.  We expedited our passports, but it’s been over a month since we sent off for them, and we can’t apply for the visas, until we get our passports back.  It’s a huge mess and a hurry up and wait situation, as is typical with anything involving the military. 

So that’s the “update” even though there’s nothing to update you on.  Bummer.

2nd trip to the zoo

To celebrate Abbie’s 9 month birthday today, we went to the zoo with grandma and grandpa Maresh.  Abbie LOVED it.   She does this funny thing when she’s so excited she doesn’t know what to do – she does this ear piercing, earth shattering scream at the top of her lungs.  It’s pretty darn funny.  She just tenses up and full out screams.  She did that a lot today since she was so excited and she didn’t know how else to express it. 

Heading into the park.  Ready to go!

Quick family shot on the bridge before we went in.

First carousel ride!!  She wasn’t quite sure what to think of it and was diving for me most of the time, but she did stay on the rhino the entire time without crying at all.

Checking out the giraffe’s with daddy and grandpa.

We couldn’t resist the giraffe feeding encounter…  Abbie was just fascinated with the giraffe’s.  She wouldn’t take her eyes off of them, but if they got too close to her, she didn’t really want to touch them.  However, she’d reach for them if they weren’t paying attention to her.  It was really cute.

Mark’s mouth is open like this in 90% of the pictures I took.  Pretty funny!

Looking at the tigers.  If you look closely, you can see one laying there.  This is when she started to do her excited screams.  =)

I couldn’t pass up this cute photo op.  (These photos are completely unedited.  I wish I knew how to edit them, but I don’t…. yet.

Hitching a ride from daddy.

Looking at the baboon exhibit.  She watched the baboon walk all the way over to her and he got really close and checked her out.  Again, she was screaming.

Watching the otters, while screaming of course.

Another photo op by the lake.  Did I mention how much I LOVE this camera? 

The bird caught her attention.  She watched it walk all the way by and then was trying to look around Mark.

We were looking at some big birds, but I don’t remember what they were called.

Checking out the fountain.

Petting the goats at the petting zoo.  She has an ear fetish.  She loves all ears, Mark’s, Sadie’s, the goats.  At least she wasn’t screaming.  Much.

Grandpa Dan works for John Deere.  Couldn’t pass up this photo op!

Look at the elephants with Daddy.

She LOVES being tossed in the air.  (Side note – my grandma made me that sweater and now it fits Abbie.)

Being at the zoo sure is tiring!!

We had such a fun time with her at the zoo.  It’s so much fun experiencing things with her for the first time.  It’s a whole new level of enjoyment.  It’s funny, I remember when I went to zoo’s and actually took pictures of the animals….  But now I have a MUCH cuter subject to photograph!  Her first trip to the zoo was in July, when she was 8 weeks old.  I cannot believe how much she’s changed in 7 short months.   Here are a few pics from the San Diego trip.

This hat doesn’t even fit her anymore!!!!

Inside out day

On Wednesday, Abbie was exactly 39 weeks old, and I was exactly 39 weeks pregnant when I had her.  So it was her official inside out day.  Here are a few pictures from Weds.  (Outfit courtesy of cousin's Michael and Brenda.)

   

Burley’s maiden voyage

After watching Craigslist like a hawk for the past few weeks, our lucky day finally arrived.  I’ve seen a few Burley’s offered on Craigslist, but I debated about whether I wanted to spend that much money on a used bike trailer.  The Burley’s are about $350 new and they’ve been about $150-$200 on Craigslist.  Previously, by the time I decided I wanted one, they’ve been sold, and ever since they’ve been sold by the time I contacted the seller.  The things sell like hotcakes.  (What exactly is a hotcake anyway??)  So I saw one for sale for $150 on Sunday night.  I emailed the guy right away and heard back from him Monday morning.  I called him and he told me someone was coming to look at it that afternoon and that he was sure whoever saw it first would buy it.  I kinda figured that was going to happen too, so the race was on.  My mom and I got ready in record time and Mark printed the directions to his house and we were on our way.  We beat everyone else there and bought the thing.  He showed me how to hook it up to a bike and how to take the thing apart and fold it flat.

We hooked it up to Mark’s bike as soon as we got home and Mark took Abbie for her first ride.  Here are a few pictures. 

I need to get her a helmet before she goes for a “real” ride, but she seemed to like it.

Today my mom and I rode the bikes with the Burley down to the grocery store to get a few things.  My mom rode my bike and I rode Mark’s (which is pretty tall for me) pulling the trailer.  You can’t even feel the thing back there!  Even with all the groceries in it, I couldn’t feel it.  I’m SUPER excited about putting Abbie in it.  I think she’ll love it.

A few things I really like about it -

• it’s aluminum and super light weight
• it has a pretty good “trunk” space
• it has buckles for either 1 or 2 kids and if you’re only hauling 1, you can put them in the middle.
• it has guards around the wheels.  The tires stick out further than the bike and could get snagged on things if it didn’t have those guards.
• it has a mesh cover for the front and rear windows, along with a plastic cover for both.  The mesh will protect her from dirt getting thrown up from the back tire of the bike and the plastic will shield her from wind and rain, if I choose to use it.
• it has 3 pins that come out when you fold it down, and they’re all attached to strings that are sewn to the trailer, so it’ll be REALLY hard to lose them.

So Mark and I are both really excited about this purchase.  It’s a Burley D’Lite – which I think is their top of the line trailer.  I hope we get many miles and years of use out of it.