We have dates!!!

Yes, I know I've said that numerous times before, but hopefully this time I'm not "kidding".

As of right now, the movers are coming March 19 and 22-24 to pack up our house in 3 separate moves, so we will be completely out of this house by the 25th of March.  That night we'll drive to LA so we can drop our car off at the port on the 26th.  We're planning on spending Friday and Saturday in LA with friends we met in Enid, and then we'll head from LA to Venice (flying commercially) on the 28th.  The only way this is all going to work though, is if Abbie and I have our visas/passports back by the 25th.  If we don't have them back, then either we'll all rearrange our flights and fly together at a later date, or Mark and the dogs will go to Italy and Abbie and I will either drive back to Phoenix and wait for our visas while staying in a hotel, or we'll fly back to IL and wait at my parents house.  If we go to IL though, there's a chance that we'll have to pay for our tickets to Italy, and wait to be reimbursed for it all.  Those tickets alone will be around $4000, and considering we'll have to drop about that much to get into a rental house over there also, I'm not sure we'll be able to do that.  So if you all could please pray your hearts out that our visas are back by the 25th, that would be MUCH appreciated.

Now on to the task of videoing everything we have in the house and deciding what stuff is going in which shipment, what we're going to mail ourselves and what we want to take with us in luggage.  Luckily I have a week to figure it all out and get it organized.

That's the news for now.  We'll let you know if/when it changes.

Ready for Mark to come home

 
Mark’s only been gone for 2 days, but thankfully, he’ll be home tomorrow morning.  Abbie was really giving me a run for my money this afternoon.  She was so screamy!  And I had a headache, which didn’t help matters.  She’s at the age where she knows what she wants, but she doesn’t quite know how to tell you what she wants, which results in her shrieking constantly.  It’s not an upset scream, it’s just an intense scream at the top of her lungs scream.  A “the neighbors 4 doors down can hear easily” scream.  And she did that from about 5:30-7pm tonight.  Fun…  Thank GOD she’ll be out of this stage (I hope) by the time Mark deploys.  I’m ready for a break after 3 days, how on earth am I going to remain sane when I’m with her by myself for FOUR+ months??  That’s when you all get to visit and help me out.  =)

This is how I felt tonight…

On a side note, she was standing up in her crib for the first time this morning.  She stood up yesterday before one of her naps in her crib (and couldn’t sit down so I went and laid her down which pissed her off to no end), but she’s never been standing up waiting for me in the morning.  It was too cute, but very bittersweet.  She’s growing up way too fast.

 

I went shopping at Target and Ross today.  My 2 favorite places to get (cheap) baby clothes.  I’ve been asking people in Aviano where they get most of their baby clothes, and they all said they buy it online and have it shipped to Italy.  So I figured I’d just finish out most of her 12-18 month wardrobe, to last her until fall or winter.  I spent $75 at Ross and got her 10 outfits, they were all $5-8, which was pretty good.  And I got her a bunch of $4 shorts at Target.  I’ll try to take pictures of all of them tomorrow and post so you can see.  I truly love shopping for her.  It’s just like playing dress up with dolls.  I was laughing to myself today as I walked into Ross.  I’d realized I had Abbie all decked out in an adorable white onsie and a cute pink and yellow flowered skirt with leggings I made her and her Robeez shoes, along with a pink cardigan.  And I was wearing yoga pants and a t-shirt and flip flops…  Something is wrong with that picture.  Whatever.  Everyone looks at her anyway.  She’s my best accessory!

In quilting news, I’m almost done with the top!  Below are the strips that I sewed together.  I sewed 2 together, so when opened they look like the bottom picture.  And then I sewed 3 of those sets together so they were 6 strips wide.  Then I cut those strips into squares and arranged them so the quilt is 6 squares wide and 6 squares long.  Then I sewed the rows of 6 squares together and now I’m in the process of sewing the rows together.  The end (of this part) is in site!  I might have this done before we move!  I’ll be sure to post pictures of the quilt top when it’s done.  (Tomorrow or this weekend!)

 

Finally approved!

So after overcoming more obstacles than we even knew were possible, Mark has finally been approved to go to Italy.  Our next step is to get orders, so we can apply for visas and set up our move(s).  We really don't know when exactly we'll be leaving the country yet, because it's going to entirely depend on when our visas get back.  We still haven't heard if our passports are in either, and we need those before we can apply for visas.

To complicate things, Mark is going on a TDY to Texas for 2-3 days, so he'll be gone until Thursday night or Friday, which means we can't move forward on any of this until he's around to do it...  Talk about perfectly bad timing..  But at least we know things will be moving forward eventually.  That's very good news.

On a side note, I picked up my new machine today and am about to go use it for the first time.  Yay!

An Abbie update

 







Things have been pretty stressful for us here lately, but luckily we have our little Abbie Rose to cheer us up.  This little girl brings such an unbelievable amount of joy into our lives, and it’s hard to think that anything is really that bad when we look at her.  We ask each other all the time how we got so lucky to have a baby like she is.

She’s been getting in to EVERYTHING lately.  Her favorites are electrical cords and anything she can dig out of the pantry.  Yesterday I went to pick her up since she was getting into something she shouldn’t have been in, and the little turd took off crawling as fast as her little legs would carry her, laughing the entire way.  And she’s done it a few times since.  It’s pretty cute when she does that.
The other day Mark and I were getting ready in our bathroom, and had her sitting in there with us.  She decided she’d have enough of the bathroom floor and took off.  I followed her as she crawled through our room, opened our bedroom door (it was cracked open and she put her fingers underneath it and pulled it all the way open), crawled all the way down the hall and stopped at the top of the stairs.  From the bathroom to the top of the stairs was about 10 seconds.  Pretty scary and a good wake up call for us.

(Here’s a picture of her little plumbers butt!) 

She has no problem pulling up to a standing position on things by herself now.  Her problem is sitting back down.  She often stands somewhere and just screams because she doesn’t know how to sit back down.  It’s pretty funny.

She still is completely fascinated by her books.  I’m so worried that if we do end up moving overseas, they’ll lose all our junk in the process – mainly her books.  (I’ve heard of that happening on more than one occasion…)  We might just ship them to our APO address ourselves, if we get one, if we move…  She doesn’t mind if they’re upside down even, she just likes looking at them. 

I was in the kitchen today cleaning up, and I turned around and she was trying to stand up by herself in the middle of the floor.  She had her hands and feet on the floor, with her little butt in the air and knees off the ground.  She’d get one hand off the floor, but couldn’t get both.  She’s going to be walking soon….

She is completely fascinated by Sadie’s feet and tail.  She loves them and tries to suck on them any chance she gets.  (Gross!)  Luckily Sadie does amazingly well with Abbie, and doesn’t seem to mind.  Ollie, on the other hand, is a different story and he still avoids her like the plague, but at least she has her BFF Sadie Roo.

A slew of updates

So here's a bunch of updates, in random order.

I changed the commenting section on the blog, so it should be easier to leave comments now.  You don't have to type in the word verification now.  I find that annoying.  I'll leave it like this, as long as I don't start getting a bunch of spam comments (cuz I hear that happens if you change it sometimes).  If I start getting a bunch of spam comments I'll change it back, but we'll try this for a while.  Leave a comment!  I LOVE getting comments.  Those of you that comment frequently - thanks.  I truly appreciate it and it makes me feel like people are actually reading when I write.  =)

We went sewing machine shopping today and I think I decided on one.  I think I'm going to get the Janome 6260QC, which is an entry level quilting/sewing machine.  I was looking seriously at the Brother NX-450, but the owner of the shop said she recommended Janome over Brother, and the Janome was $100 cheaper anyway so I went with that one.  They didn't have it in the store, but they're getting it from another one of their stores in the Phoenix area.  I'm going in Tuesday to pick it up and take a class.  I'm excited.

Supposedly we're getting orders early next week.  Apparently it was a "close call" according the Mark's squadron commander and we almost didn't go to Aviano, but he said we "barely squeaked by".  Long story... If you want to know all the details, let me know.  But we're hoping to get orders next week.  I'm not holding my breath until we're on the plane there.  The whole thing just doesn't look promising at all, but hopefully his commander wasn't "kidding" and we actually are still going to Aviano. 

That's about it for now.  Keep your fingers crossed for us...

Sewing machine research

Still no words yet on orders because Mark’s email still doesn’t work.

I’ve been researching sewing machines like crazy and my dream machine would be the Husqvarna Viking Sapphire 835… But it’s like $1200.  So yeah.  I would also like the Bernina Aurora 440 QE, but that’s like $1800.  This weekend Mark and I are going to go to a bunch of sewing shops around here and look at them all.  Hopefully I can find a good beginner quilter machine for a lot less than that, that’ll last me a while.  I know a few of the features I want, but online research is hard.  Everyone has an opinion about everything and people lists the pros and cons of each machine and some people love them and some people hate them.  When you get such varied opinions on the same machine from people you don’t know (online), it’s hard to decide.  They all have their advantages and disadvantages.  Hopefully we’ll get a better picture of things this weekend.  Unfortunately we’ll have to go to about 6 different places to view all the different brands because most places only carry 1-2 brands.  It would be nice if they had many different brands in one location.

I’ll let you know what I find/buy.  I’m so anxious to start (continue) on this quilt.  I have all the pieces of fabric cut and pinned together and it’s sitting there in a pretty little pile waiting for me.  I did learn online how to bind a quilt yesterday so I’m super excited to try that.  Just watch, I’ll get all into this quilting thing and then we’ll get our orders and I’ll have to pack everything up and say goodbye to it for 2 months while it’s all shipped to Europe.  How much you wanna bet?

Climbing, books and waves

 
Our little girl is just bucket loads of fun.  We’ve been working on waving with her lately and today when Mark was standing at the door ready to leave, she waved bye bye to him all by herself.  We didn’t tell her to wave or wave at her or anything.  It was just too cute and Mark almost didn’t leave after that because he wanted to stay and play with her.
Today she climbed 2 stairs all by herself.  We didn’t touch her once and she was completely on the 2nd step, ready to try for the 3rd.  (I was ahead of her on the stairs and Mark was behind her.)  Time to put a baby gate at the bottom of the stairs.

Last night Mark and I were watching “Up” before Abbie went to bed.  She normally doesn’t pay any attention to the TV but it was like she knew that it was a kids show and she was completely captivated by it.
She sat there and stared at the TV for a while and then decided to sit up and watch.
And then, as she always does, she whipped that little pointer finger out and had to point at it for a while, while making her cute little sounds.
She doesn’t let you sit her on her butt anymore if you try to put her down.  She’ll get her feet under her no matter how much effort it takes.
Abbie is completely fascinated by books.  During this photo shoot, she sat there for a good 20 mins and flipped through all her books, touching all the different pages.  Her little ET finger touches everything, and it’s so cute to watch her sit there so intently and concentrate.  We hope that she loves books as much as we do as she gets older.
 

Go figure…

Admittedly, I’m not the most patient person on earth.  So this waiting around for orders thing is getting increasingly more difficult.
The latest news, the damn base email has been down for the past 3 days, and Mark will receive his PRP approval by email.  So he could be approved for orders and we have no way of knowing.  PERFECT timing..  To add salt to the wounds, the idiot lady on base that is in charge of passports and visas is taking leave Thurs – Tuesday.  How convenient.  So our passports will most likely be there on Thursday, along with our orders, and she won’t be around to do anything with them until Tuesday.  Nice.
Mark was able to get us on another rotator for March 15 (a Monday).  They had 3 human spots open up on it, and still had 3 canine spots available, so we switched.  Everyone has been telling us to fly commercially, but because of the dogs, we’re more comfortable flying on the military rotator.  We can take a direct flight from LA to Baltimore, have a long layover there where we’ll have to dogs with us in between, and then have a direct flight from Baltimore to Aviano.  Just a better situation.  The only downside is that the only available direct flight from LA to Baltimore was a red-eye flight on Sunday.  It leaves LA at like 10:30pm and gets to Baltimore around 4am.  Our flight from Baltimore to Aviano doesn’t leave until 10:30pm on Monday.  And spending 18 hours in an airport with an almost 10 month old and 2 dogs isn’t my idea of fun, but at this rate, it won’t happen anyway because we won’t have our visas.
This entire situation is aggravating and it’s getting increasingly more so.  If you could say a prayer that we get orders and the passports TOMORROW that would be great.    Thanks.

My first attempt at a quilt

Yesterday I got all the supplies I needed to make my first quilt.  I’m following an online tutorial that a friend sent to me.  (Thanks Em!)  I already had thread, but I needed the mat, rotary cutter and edger, pictured below.  That mat was originally $28, but I had a 40% off coupon!
Here’s the fabric I got for the quilt.  12 half yard pieces of fabric.  I’m making it for Abbie.
So using my new tools, I had to cut each of those 12 pieces of fabric into 2.5” strips, seen below.
Now I have to sew 6 of these strips together to create my panels, but this is where it got tricky.
The strips are about 44” long.  As I was sewing my first 2 strips together, my damn sewing machine broke the thread at least 4 times.  I adjusted the tension each time and nothing helped at all.  And I’m using Gutermann (top of the line) thread.  This is the same damn problem I have every single time I use that stupid machine and it frustrates me to no end.  If it can’t sew 2 THIN pieces of cotton together, what good is it?  The answer, not much. 
So I finally got my first 2 strips sewn together and was on to sewing a 3rd strip on to the first 2.  I got less than a foot into it before I just gave up.  The machine doesn’t work.  The ladies at the sewing shop in Enid couldn’t even figure out how to get the tension right and prevent the huge rats nests from forming on the under side of the fabric.
The good news?  Mark’s going to buy me a new machine!!  Pretty darn excited about this.  The bad news?  I know absolutely nothing about machines really so this research is intimidating.  And they’re expensive.  But I want to get something that’ll last me a while and that I can use for quilting, including doing the top part – the quilting stitches all over the top of the quilt.  They have long arm machines that will automatically do it (and cost like $3000), but you can also do it manually on smaller (and cheaper) machines, which is what I would like to do.  I think that costs like $80-$150 to have that done to quilts so I guess 4-5 quilts in, you’ve made up for the cost of the machine.  We’ll see though.  I’m going to go check them out with Mark (and Abbie, who will be a huge help, I’m sure…) this weekend. 
Again, I’m open to any and all suggestions!  

On to plan B… kinda

So we are officially having to change our move dates now.  We were originally supposed to leave Phoenix on Thursday night, drive to LA, drop the car off at the port on Friday, fly to Baltimore on Sunday and then fly to Aviano from Baltimore on Tuesday.  But, since we still don’t have orders, that’s not going to happen.  Mark and I held out as long as we could, but there is no way we’re going to get orders, go through 3 separate moves, have both passports and visas, and be out of this house 3 days from now.  So our original hotel reservations and car reservations have all been cancelled.  Boo.
So it’s on to plan b, except we don’t exactly have a plan b.  We know that if we don’t make the military rotator from BWI to Aviano (it flies directly in to the base) on March 9th, that basically we won’t be taking the rotator.  I guess I should rephrase, Abbie and I won’t be taking the rotator.  There are 2 other flights to Aviano in March, both of which have pet space now, but only 1 seat available.  Technically the military can force Mark to fly on the rotator and Abbie and I would fly commercially, but we’re hoping they’ll grant him a waiver and allow him to fly commercially with us.
So the problem with flying commercially is the dogs.  I have to decide whether or not I want them with us for our almost 24 hours of traveling (like 18 hrs of flights alone) or if I want to put them in cargo.  The problem with cargo is that we’ll have at least 2 layovers.  We’ll probably fly from LA to Washington DC and then from DC to Frankfurt, Germany, and then from Frankfurt to Venice.  If they go in cargo, I kiss them goodbye in LA and won’t see them until we get to Venice.  So if they don’t make a flight or something happens, I don’t find out until we’re in Italy.  Also, supposedly airline workers give them water and let them out to go potty somewhere.  There’s no way in hell Ollie’s going to get out of his cage for someone he doesn’t know in a strange place.  He won’t get out of his cage in our HOUSE for a stranger.  And if Sadie gets freaked out (which she will since Ollie will be scared) and gets away from someone while they’re trying to let her out, they’re going to have a hell of a time catching her.  So you can see my reservations with putting them in cargo.  However, I don’t know if putting them in their carry-on bags for 18 hours is exactly humane either.  They’d be happier with us, but I don’t know how we’d get out of the airport to let them out to go potty and back through security and on our next flights during our layovers.  And I don’t know if airports have potty places for dogs where you don’t have to go all the way out through security and back in.  ??  Also, we’ll be flying Lufthansa most likely for our European flights and they have different carry-on restrictions and weight limits, which both dogs are over.  So there’s a possibility if we carry them on, when we get to Germany, we’d have to check them for the last leg of the flight.  But at least we’d know they’re in Europe with us and not back in the States on some loading dock somewhere.  Or running around the airport with workers chasing after them.
It’s kind of a big decision and I really don’t know what to do.  It would be much easier to put them in cargo, but I would be worried the entire time we were traveling and I would about die if we got to Venice and they weren’t there with us.  If you were in my shoes, which route would you take with the dogs?  I’m open to any and all suggestions!

First real Burley ride

Last week Mark was home during the day and it was beautiful out.  (70’s with a nice breeze and sunny – pretty much perfect weather.)  So he wanted to take Abbie for a spin in the Burley and take her to the park.  We had gotten her a helmet, although it’s still big on her.  We can tighten it down so it’s snug on her head, but it sticks out so far in the back that it pushes her head forward when she’s in the Burley.  She didn’t like that too much.  So we took it off her and rode on the sidewalks and avoided cars.

Armed with her mixing spoon!

At the park.

There was another lady at the park with her 14 month old and her 2 Rhodesian Ridgebacks.  Abbie was fascinated by the dogs.  She was much more interested in them than anything else at the playground.

She really is growing up too fast.  She’ll consistently wave bye-bye or hi now, although her hand is still facing her, but that makes it all the more cute.  Mark will start beat-boxing and “singing” a rhythm and she’ll immediately start grinning and bouncing along to the music.  It’s the cutest thing ever and I have it on video, I just have to get Mark to put it on the blog.

Abbie’s impersonation

Abbie’s “Something About Mary” impersonation.

Introducing the new mei tai!

My friend Em K and her daughter spent a week with us here in January, while Em ran a half marathon.  While she was visiting, she noticed that the mei tai she’d made me before Abbie was born was one of her “older models”.  She said she wanted to make me a new one and asked what I would like.  I really didn’t give her much direction besides saying I liked green and purple.  So she took that and ran with it.  It’s a good thing I was sitting in the car when I opened it because I probably would have fallen over if I hadn’t been.  I don’t know what I was expecting, but it sure as heck wasn’t what I got.  The thing is beautiful!  It’s seriously a work of art!

This picture shows the purple the best.  It’s a beautiful, deep purple.  In the other pictures the flash made it darker, but this first picture is closer to the actual color.  I LOVE it! She used a really neat animal print on the main part of the mei tai.  I wasn’t sure I’d like the animal print on a mei tai (I’d seen other ones she made), but I love it and it’s perfect.

The back of the MT is lined with this vibrant green dupioni silk.   

This one also has a hood on it, which the old one didn’t.  And she appliquéd things she cut out from the main print she used.  This thing really is a work of art.  I wore it in  Barnes and Nobles (where we bought an Italian translation book) and I got my first compliment on it.  The lady said it was amazing and beautiful.  And I got lots of glances from people who didn’t want to stare but you could tell they wanted to look.  Haha!

Here’s a picture of the first one Em made me and the new one.  The old one didn’t have a hood and all the straps were shorter than they are on the new one (which made me feel sort of fat when I didn’t have much excess strap after I tied them).  This one also has more padding – she added it to the waistband and I think more on the shoulder straps too.  She also made the body of this MT bigger, which will be good as Abbie gets older.  And I just noticed today that she put a little pocket with a velcro closure on it at the end of one of the straps.  How perfect is that?!

I am just so excited about this new mei tai.  I wish I had half the skills that Em does with a sewing machine.  I think it would be fabulous to be able to make things like this for friends – something beautiful, but also highly useful.  But, I’m a VERY beginner sewer and half the time my stupid machine doesn’t work, which then frustrates me and I give up.  I would LOVE to learn to make quilts though.  How hard can it be to sew blocks of fabric together?  Maybe I could learn to do that in Italy (if we go to Italy).  Em has definitely inspired me to at least try to do something with my sewing machine.

Thank you Em.  I absolutely love it.  I know we’ll get lots of use out of it while in Europe.   I owe you big time!

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!