Reminiscing

 

I’ve been in a rather nostalgic mood lately.  I’m so excited to see Abbie growing up and getting big and learning new things every day, but it makes me sad.  I’m losing my baby.  I remember so many times during her first few months thinking that I couldn’t wait for her to be older so I could play with her and talk to her and watch her experience the world (and sleep through the night), and now that I can do all that, I wish I could take back all those wishes and enjoyed her being little more than I did.  I feel like I was always looking forward to her next stage instead of enjoying the one she was in and I regret that.  I vividly remember thinking to myself many times when I was holding her during those first few months, “Don’t ever forget this moment.  Remember what it’s like to hold this tiny person and what she looks like and feels like and smells like.”  I remember thinking that numerous times, but I don’t really remember those things.  Thank God I have a zillion pictures to remind me, but I wish I could remember all the sensory parts of those memories, instead of just what I was thinking.

Abbie is going to be a year and a half old in four days.  I just cannot believe how fast the time has gone by since she’s was born.  That’s probably the #1 thing you hear as a new mom.  “Enjoy it because they grow up so fast.”  I feel like I took that for granted during parts of her first year of life, but now I’m realizing more than ever that she’s growing up way too quickly.  And despite the fact that she’s getting older and growing up, I’m enjoying every minute with her.

A trip down memory lane.

Newborn

1 month old

2 months old

3 months old

4 months old

 

5 months old

6 months old

7 months old

8 months old

9 months old

10 months old

11 months old

1 year old!

13 months old

14 months old

15 months old

16 months old

17 months old

18 months old

Catching up

 

I feel like I’ve hardly taken any pictures of Abbie lately.  It’s hard to get a decent picture of her because she’s such a little busy body and she’s ALWAYS on the move.  So most of the pictures I take are blurry.  And it’s been crappy weather here lately which equals no natural light coming in the windows, which means that I have to use my flash, which means I can’t take rapid fire photos.  I’d love to get an external flash for my camera but they’re like $200 so I need to save up first.

I can’t believe how much Abbie is talking lately.  Mark just left a little over a week ago and I feel like she’s changed so much in the past week!  Friends here have told me numerous times they can’t believe how much she’s changed since we got here.  I took her to a party last weekend and one of our friends didn’t even know who she was because she’d changed so much.  I look back on pictures from a month or two ago and she looks different and acts completely different.  She’s really turning into a goofy little girl now and she’s not at all a baby.

Overall, Abbie and I have been having fun together while Mark’s been gone.  She’s screaming a lot less lately because she’s able to talk now and she’ll tell you what she wants.  I have fun with her when we run around doing our errands and it’s not such a chore to have her along.  I usually just stick her in the Ergo on my back and away we go.  Gives me good exercise and she likes being up high where she can see everything.  Usually she’s a pretty happy girl, but occasionally she has her moments.  The following pictures were taken about 10 seconds apart.

I’ve started giving her a cup at meals now with water in it and letting her figure out how to use it.  She actually does really well with it and I was surprised.  I still give her bottles during her nap and at bedtime.  Her bottle is her one comfort thing.  She’s never really used a pacifier, she doesn’t suck her thumb, she doesn’t drag around a blanket, but she likes her bottle.  I feel with Mark being gone as much as he’s going to be, I don’t want to take away the one thing that comforts her, so I’m going to hold off on weaning her from the bottle.  She only gets 2-3 a day and the rest of her liquids come from sippies or cups so I’m not going to push it at this point.  I’m sure she’s not going to go to high school with a bottle tucked into her backpack so I’m not too worried about it. 

Luckily Abbie has been sleeping REALLY well for me since Mark’s been gone.  (I’m probably jinxing myself here…)  She goes to bed around 8pm every night and is up at 8:30am every morning and takes a 1.5-3 hour nap around 2pm.  She hasn’t given me any issues when I put her to bed and she hasn’t been waking up screaming either.  It helps that she’s not currently teething, I think.  I’m praying our good sleeping streak continues!!

I’m just excited for Mark to get home so he can see how much she’s changed!

Thoughts about going home.

So I have pretty much decided to go home for the entire time during Mark’s deployment.  I decided this a while ago and I felt much better about the whole situation after I decided to go home.

But I still have my reservations about it all.  I have about 30 friends here that I could hang out with on a regular basis if I wanted to.  We’d all be in the same situation (husband-less) and we could all keep each other company.  During the day.  I’d still be alone (with Abbie and the dogs) every night, and I’m not big on being alone.  Especially not for months on end.  I’d have to deal with Abbie by myself, and we’re going on week 2 of this current TDY and I’m completely pooped from dealing with her all the time by myself.  She’s a really good little girl, and we’ve had a lot of fun, but the evenings are rough, and I find myself counting the hours until her bedtime once she gets up from her afternoon nap.

So I’m excited about going home, but I really only have about 5 friends in the area that I’m in contact with on a regular basis.  I’m hoping to get to spend bunches of time with them and catch up on the past few years, but I’m going to miss all my friends here too.  I already feel out of the loop here and I haven’t even left yet!  The girls are making vacation plans already and listing all the things they’re going to do while the guys are gone and I’m kinda bummed that I won’t be joining them.  Granted, most of these girls are child-less, and if I was child-less I think I’d have great fun traveling around Europe with friends too.  But traveling around Europe with Abbie by myself sounds like a nightmare, no matter how many friends are there to help.

I’m worried about living with my parents again.  For some reason we seem to have different views on how I should raise Abbie and it’s been an issue before and I really don’t want it to come to a head while I’m home.  And it’s hard to go from having your own house, your own space, your own way of doing things, where you’re the adult to being the “kid” again and not the person in charge of the house and how things are done.  It’ll be tricky, but hopefully it’ll work out.

I’m excited for our families to get to spend some quality time with Abbie.  Every time I talk to my parents they’ve thought of another thing they want to do with Abbie while we’re home or they’re asking me what she’ll think of ____ .  It’s pretty funny and I know she definitely won’t be bored.  I’m also going to try to go visit Mark’s family in Chicago once a month so they can spend time with Abbie and I can spend time with them.  Hopefully she’ll do okay with all the changes in sleeping arrangements.

Overall, I’m looking forward to going home.  I’m not looking forward to being away from Mark for that long, but I’m trying not to focus on that right now.  I think the hardest part of the whole thing, for me, will be knowing how much Mark is missing Abbie.  I know how much he loves his little girl and how much she loves him and all the attention he gives her, and no matter how hard I try, I can’t make up her daddy’s absence for her.  We’ll get through it, because we don’t have a choice, and I’m hoping it won’t be half as bad as I’m anticipating.

Styles changing

I’ve written fairly frequently about my clothes issues lately, and they’re still at the forefront of my mind.  I’m finding myself gravitating towards more stylish things than I have previously, but unfortunately that also means more expensive.  Ick.

Yesterday I bought my very first pair of skinny jeans.  I’ve been very hesitant to buy any because people either look great in them,  or they look like a pear shaped sausage.  And I’ve been too sure I’d look like a pear shaped sausage in them, so I avoided them.  But yesterday I went shopping for the first time with a new friend and I tried them on with a long sweater, and I actually liked them!  So I bought them.  They’re not skin tight, but they’re narrow enough at the ankles where I could wear boots with them if I wanted.  I bought a long, off-white sweater, a dark pair of skinny jeans and black leggings.  I’m pretty darn excited about my new outfit.

But that brings me to my next point.  I’ve really, REALLY been wanting a pair of boots.  As I’ve said before, I know exactly what I want, but I have yet to find them  However, zappos.com is amazing and I’ve found what I love.  THESE (pictured below)  The only problem is that they don’t come in black in my size.  Bummer.  But they do come in the reddish-brown in my size, so I might settle for those.  I actually would love to get a brown pair of boots and a black pair eventually, but I had been planning on getting the black pair first because I felt like they’d go with more outfits.  But I guess if I have black leggings and dark skinny jeans, the brown ones will go with those too.

Otherwise, these are my runner’s up pair that I’m also considering. (Again from zappos.com.)

I also really like these shoes from Zappos.com.  I think I could wear them with leggings and skinny jeans and they’d look cute but still be comfortable.  I’m all about comfort.  My problem now is that I don’t really have shoes that look good with my new types of pants, except for my open-toed, 4 inch heel shoes and obviously those aren’t really practical for every day wearing.  I’m surprised I haven’t broken an ankle while wearing them already.

And while I was having fun window shopping online, I found a coat on zappos.com that I liked too.  (BTW, I’m not getting paid by zappos or anything, I just discovered they ship over here and have free shipping AND free return shipping if things don’t fit so I’m kind of excited.)  Here it is.

Ideally, I’d LOVE this coat in a light grey or even a red.  I mean, I absolutely LOVE the white, but I’m not sure how practical it would be with a toddler and with me being a klutz, and with having a black dog.  I’m afraid I’d have it stained the first time I wore it.  But this coat only comes in black or white and I’m really trying to venture out from my black phase.  I really do need a new coat since my current pea coat is boxy shaped and I got it in high school (10 years ago).  But I’m going to have to save up my money because if I got the boots I want, plus the shoes, plus this coat… that’s like $450…  I need to get on "What Not To Wear”…

And while I was online window shopping, I saw these at target.com and I thought they were super cute.  A few of my friends have these boots in different colors and they said they’re comfortable.  Next time I decide to go to Venice in the rainy season I’m wearing something like these!

Sadie update

I took Sadie to the back vet today.  I was so nervous he was going to give bad news, saying that she’d need surgery and that she’d never be “right” again, but thank GOD that wasn’t the case.  (And thank you SO much Brittney for going along to help me with Abbie.  You definitely made things much easier, as usual!)

The vet was very pleased with the progress Sadie has made.  He said, especially since she didn’t have surgery and she was dragging her legs around behind her 3 weeks ago, she’s doing VERY well.  He said that he doesn’t see dogs recover that quickly very often from a spinal cord injury, so she’s doing really well.

The vet told me to cut her down to 1/4 of a steroid pill for the next 3 days and then take her off them completely.  He said that she should still be on cage rest and not moving around much for the next week, but after that I should start letting her play outside for 15 mins three times a day.  He said it’ll take 3-4 months for her to full recover from the trauma to her spine, but that she’s doing really, really well and we are lucky.  Again, thank God.

(These next two pictures were taken the day we brought her home, but all of them were taken in May 2007.) 

So overall, she’s doing really well.  She seems to have made improvements even in the last day or so.  He said it is definitely affecting her left side the most and that she should never really do stairs or jump on and off furniture again, but she also needs to keep her muscle density up to help her stay strong to avoid injury again.  So I’ll keep an eye on her and get my arm work out 4-6 times a day hauling her up and down the stairs.  Thanks for all your prayers and everyone asking about her all the time.  Your concern for my animal really touches my heart and I’m blessed to have so many caring people in my life.  Thank you.

Friday Fill-in

1. Were you named after anyone?  My middle name is Rose, after my mom, Rosemary.  I don’t think my first name is after anyone.  My daughters middle name is also Rose.
2. What color, if any, are your toenails usually painted?  Usually they’re not painted, but if I do paint them, the color depends on my mood.  It’s usually some sort of pink or red though.
3. How do you flush a public toilet? Hands? Feet? Something else?  It depends on how clean I feel the bathroom is.  If it’s filthy, I use my foot, otherwise I use my hand.
4. When you were a little kid, which TV character did you have a crush on?  Uncle Jesse from Full House  And Joey from Blossom.
5. Let’s say you had to lose one of your five senses (sight, hearing, touch, taste, and smell).  Which one would you choose? Why?  Probably my taste or smell.  I think the 2 are kind of interchangeable.  I don’t think you can taste much if you can’t smell, but I think I’d still rather lose smell, as long as I could still taste.  I love food!

In between good and great.

 

So far, this TDY is worlds apart from the last one.  Granted, we’re only 3 days into it, but I was completely falling apart by this time during the last one.  Now I’m doing great though.  Well maybe not great, but good at least.  In between good and great.

Abbie really is a daddy’s girl.  She really loves Mark.  She has a very special bond with him and people comment on it all the time.  She’s been asking for Mark first thing every morning.  “Da-ee?”  “No, daddy’s not here right now.”  “Da-ee bye-bye?”  “Yes, daddy is bye bye.” <10 second pause>  “Da-ee?”  Well, you get the picture.  She asks about him all the time.  Any time we go on base and go through the gate she starts asking for daddy.  And any time she sees a guy in a flight suit she points and says “da-ee?”  Last night she had a rough time getting to bed and when I went in there she asked for Mark.  And before she went to bed, she was looking for him behind a door that he’s hid behind before when they were playing.  Kinda breaks me heart, but at least he’ll be home in a few weeks.  Mark does her night time routine with her when he’s home so that’s when she really starts asking for him.

Abbie is a LOT of work and by 6-7pm, when Mark usually gets home, I’m about at my rope’s end.  But this time I can laugh about it instead of cry.  I took these pictures about 15 mins after she got up….  She’s a little tornado!

She’s definitely moving into her “independent” stage.  It’s VERY hard to get her to cooperate sometimes and she’s pushing every button she possibly can with me, multiple times.  And she spends half her time awake bossing the dogs around.  She tells them to sit and stay and “no!” and to get in their cage and to go outside and to stop it…  I guess she hears that a lot from me.  I’ve finally gotten her saying “good girl” to Sadie when she’s being good.  Yesterday she took a helmet off this Harley stuffed dog from my parents and put it on Ollie!  I’ll have to get a picture of him next time!  (I would LOVE for her to leave barrettes like this in, but it was in for about 3.26 seconds before she ripped it out.  Just enough time for me to take a picture!)

When she’s not bossing the dogs around, she’s in their cage.  Sadie was thinking “What on earth did I get myself into this time..”  =)

Today we got our pictures taken by the jet.  Obviously Mark was supposed to be there, but he’s not, so Abbie and I did it without him.  I thought it was fitting anyway.  “Here we are by Mark’s jet, without Mark.”  Typical military lifestyle.  Everyone got a kick out of Abbie running around pointing at the jet while yelling “JET!!  JET!!”.  As I said, daddy’s girl.

I have 5 more blocks (out of 36) to quilt and then my quilting is done and I just have to bind it!  I’m hoping to get that done this week!  Then I have a zillion other things to work on, but it’s good.  It’s making time fly by!

That was then…

 

Sadie still isn’t 100% better, which is worrying me some.  I have a feeling something is wrong and it’s going to cost a lot of money to fix.

I remember, pre-child, having a few friends that got rid of their dogs after they had kids, and I pretty much thought they were horrible for doing that.  Not horrible people, but I just couldn’t fathom giving up my pets “just because I had kids”.  My pets were my babies and I just knew that wouldn’t change when I had kids.

Wrong.  Yet again, I’ve proved myself wrong.  Don’t get me wrong, I don’t have any plans on getting rid of my pets, but I’ve noticed my priorities have changed since I’ve become a parent and I’ve definitely become that person I once thought did horrible things.

I’ve always been an animal lover.  I couldn’t walk into a Humane Society without coming out in tears.  My dogs were my best friends growing up and I couldn’t imagine my life without animals in it, and I still can’t.

I find myself thinking a lot about the “what-if’s” with Sadie.  What if she does need this $2500+ surgery?  If she does get it, there’s no guarantee that that’ll fix her forever.  So then what if she needs another surgery later on?  And these surgeries are $3-4000 in the States.  She’s not even 4 years old so her odds of needing two or more surgeries are pretty good…  Do I really want to spend $6-7000 on a dog?  That is a HUGE amount of money.  She’s not allowed to go up or down stairs pretty much ever again.  And as I previously posted, we just moved our room upstairs.  So every night I make multiple trips up and down the stairs to bring stuff up I want and then to bring Sadie up.  And every morning I carry her down the stairs.  What if I get pregnant over here?  Carrying a dog up and down stairs at 6+ months pregnant isn’t the smartest move.  And what if we do have a baby over here?  So then I’m going to have to carry the dog and the baby up and down the stairs multiple times a day?  Yay.

Mark says we can just leave her downstairs if that ever happens, and to quit thinking about the “what if’s”, but I can’t help it.  Our dogs sleep with us every night.  Sadie would be miserable if we left her downstairs and she didn’t sleep with us anymore.  As it is, she already doesn’t ever want to go outside, which she used to LOVE to do.

It bothers me that my dogs aren’t my first priority anymore, like they used to be.  I remember talking to my friend Elyse when we were both pregnant about how our relationships with our beloved pets might change.  I guess I didn’t think it would, but it has.  I’ve talked to Brittney about it, and she’s understanding, more so that I was in her situation, but she’s where I was a few years ago, pre-child.   I also distinctly remember thinking I would never sell my horse… and we all know how that turned out.  (For those that don’t, I sold him due to the military lifestyle.)  But I don’t regret selling him.  Mark is 1000% worth it and I’d do it again if I had to.

I love my animals, and I wouldn’t ever wish harm on them at all.  But this is getting to be a bit of a hassle and the “what if’s” are eating at me.  I emailed her vet and he’s going to try to get her in to the back doctor sooner.  She seems to be doing a little better today so that’s good I think, but I’m not holding my breath.  I don’t want to have to make big decisions about Sadie by myself but Mark is 9 hours different from me right now so it makes it pretty hard to consult him about anything.  Fingers crossed.

New arrangements

 

The weather switches between to the two conditions above multiple times a day here in Italy lately.  But this is the view from our front porch.  I love the fall colors here.

As I mentioned before, we switched three rooms in our house around and I finally got around to taking pictures of them.  Abbie’s old room is now our office/ craft room.

And our old bedroom is now Abbie’s new room.  Looks MUCH bigger without all our large, dark furniture in it and I think she loves having her toys in her room.

And here is our new bedroom, which used to be the office/craft/play room.  I love having our room upstairs because it seems like our own little haven, away from the rest of the house.  Mark and I both really like the new arrangements.

 

And here is our TINY master bathroom.  But hey, at least we have our own bathroom now, which I love, even if you can touch all 4 walls while standing in the middle of the room.

And here is the view from our new bedroom window.

Blog readers

I love the new “stats” tab that the Blogger dashboard now has.  I love having an idea of who is reading my blog and I like to know that there are actual people reading it!  I’m shocked at some of the places though, that people are reading my blog from! 

Yesterday I had 47 people look at my blog. 37 were from the States.  Eight people were from Germany.  I’m guessing most of those are fellow military spouses stationed in Germany.  Four were in Italy – again military friends.  Two were in South Korea, which I’m guessing are also friends stationed overseas.  I had 2 views from Saint Lucia and I have NO clue who that would be.  I also had 1 from the Netherlands, 1 from Russia, 1 from Saudi Arabia and 1 from Taiwan.  And I have no clue who those people might be either.  It’s so interesting to me to know where my readers live!  And all of that was just from yesterday!

I also notice a bunch of people coming over from friends (Alison and Cheyenne) blogs, which I love!  From May of 2010 until now I’ve had close to 5500 views on my blog, which just shocks me!  Considering 6 months ago I wasn’t sure anyone was looking at it, except for friends and family that I email it to, it boggles my mind to know that THAT many people are reading it!

So thank you for following my blog!  And I love having followers so feel free to add yourself as a follower if you haven’t already!

Cheers!

Friday Fill-in

1. A different twist on last week’s question. This week, the first question is: what’s the nicest thing a MILSPOUSE has ever done for you?  One of my friends here saw that I was having a rough time with Mark being gone and dealing with Abbie by myself and she offered to come over once a week for 2 hours to entertain Abbie so I could have some “alone” time to do whatever I wanted.  Her offer was SO sweet and made me feel so valued.  I ended up taking Abbie to a babysitters twice a week so she never did watch her, but just the fact that she was willing to take time out of her BUSY schedule to help me meant a lot to me.  And of course all the help that Brittney gave us when we moved here, and all the help she’s given me since.  I couldn’t ask for a better friend and I am so thankful for the internet problems in Sarone because I never would have met her if it wasn’t for them!
2. How often do you drive faster than the speed limit?  Uh….  usually.  Especially over here.  The speed limit seems to be more of a guide line than anything else.
3. Did you have a nickname in school? If so, what was it?  No, I didn’t.  I was the shy, quiet kid so I think most people probably didn’t even notice me, let alone give me a nickname.
4. If your life was a book, what would the title be and how would it end?  This requires way more thought that I’m willing to give right now.  I don’t know what it would be called, but as of right now, it’d have a very happy ending.
   
5. Look back (in your planner if you have one) to September 14th… what did you do that day? I didn’t have anything in my planner on September 14th.  Bummer.
   

Trips, trips and more trips!

I feel like I haven’t written a blog in forever!  I’ve been pretty busy here, but that’s a good thing.  I love being busy.

Mark leaves for his TDY to Vegas tomorrow.  He’ll be gone a little over 2 weeks.  While he’s gone, I need to finish the quilt for my grandma.  I’m about halfway done quilting the top and then I need to figure out how to bind it.  I need to do all my Christmas cards (about 150 of them).  I have a few of them done, and I just got the pictures ordered.  I have the letter written but I think I’m going to try to emboss the letter since I’m just printing it on plain paper.  And I’d like to finish a few scarves for a few special people.  I should be plenty busy while Mark is gone.

Three days after Mark gets back we’re going to Cinque Terre for Thanksgiving.  Just us, Abbie and the dogs.  We’ve heard lots about Cinque Terre since we’ve been here, so we’re excited to finally see it for ourselves!

Four days after we get back from Cinque Terre, we’re going up to Amsterdam for 5 days.  I’ve never been to The Netherlands so I’m pretty darn excited about that.  Mark has to go there for a session in the altitude chamber and we decided Abbie and I would join him.  Mainly because we’d spent $375 on plane tickets for our Ireland trip that isn’t happening, and they’re non-refundable.   So we paid extra money to switch the tickets to this trip.  It’s expensive, but we won’t travel much next year due to Mark being done most of it..

Ten days after we get back from Amsterdam we head to Austria for our squadron Christmas/Ski trip!  Pretty darn excited about that too.  Childcare is included in the cost and I haven’t been skiing in forever.  We’ll get to go on a horse drawn carriage ride and drink hot cocoa and hang out with bunches of great people!  I wish it was longer than just a weekend, but we’ll take what we can get!

Two days after we get back from Austria Mark’s family is coming for Christmas!  Yay!  I’m pretty darn excited about that and Abbie won’t know what to do with all the attention!  It’ll be good for her to be around family and we’re all excited about sharing in her excitement during her 2nd Christmas.

Six days after Mark’s family gets here all of us are headed to Rome to spend a week there!  It’ll be fun to travel with everyone and to meet Alex’s girlfriend, who is going to meet us there.

Less than a week after we get back from Rome, Mark heads out on another month-ish long TDY.  And then a month or so after that I’ll be headed to the States for 5-6 months!

Life is a bit of a whirlwind right now.  Sometimes I have to just sit down and catch my breath, but as I said, I love it.  I love having lots of things planned and lots of things to look forward too and lots of things to keep me busy.  January will probably be a hard month for me because I get so excited about Christmas and all the activities surrounding Christmas, it’s kind of a big disappointment when it’s all over.  And on top of that Mark will be gone.  But I have lots of great friends to keep me company during his absence.  And honestly, I’ll probably spend the majority of the time preparing for worrying about our trip back to the States.  If I can survive the trip over there with 2 dogs and a 21 month old by myself I’ll be doing good.

In other news, Sadie had a vet appt today.  She’s maintaining, but not really getting any better.  She’s still on steroid pills and she will be for the next 2 weeks and the dr. wants to see her back in two weeks and then he’ll try to have the back dr look at her.  She’s still pretty wobbly in her back end and he said no stairs or jumping on/off furniture, ever again.  Good thing we just moved our bedroom upstairs….  But really good thing that she’s a little dog.  =)

Oh, and all 3 of us are sick right now.  Darn cold season!