Who’s pregnant?

Reese stuffed herself full of baked ziti tonight and when she got down from the table I couldn’t resist taking a few belly comparison shots.

Reese’s First Day of School

Last week I was able to get Reese signed up for the part day enrichment program for two year olds on base, it’s basically preschool for 2 year olds.  I was so excited to have her signed up because she’s such a social little girl and I don’t want to stunt that by keeping her home with me all the time, granted we were always doing playgroups and other activities with kids but I was still eager for her to be in a social setting without me.  She was so excited for her first day of school, ever since we went to sign her up and she'd played in the classroom she'd been eager to go back.  Today ended up being a very rainy day so I took a few of her school photos inside the house but still forced her to the porch for the obligatory first day of school photo.  She looked so big in her backpack with that excited smile on her face.  When we went in her classroom we put her stuff in her cubby and then ran over to sit at the computer, I kissed her goodbye and she was not the least bit sad to see me go, I even peeked back in through the window a few minutes later to find her happy and content.  When I got home the house was quiet and I was all alone for the first time in a very very long time, it was quite enjoyable.  I sat there eating Cheez Its wondering when the last time that I was able to eat food without sharing it with someone else was.  When I returned to get her 3 hours later she was too busy picking up the toys to even notice that I had come in and then when she did notice me she was excited to see me but in no hurry to leave despite the fact that all the other children were leaving as well.  When we were walking out to the car she asked if she was going to school tomorrow, I'd say that's a good sign.  All in all I’m so excited that I made the decision to enroll her, she had fun and is excited to go back and adding the structure to our day was really nice.  I hate to sound mean but I’m eager for her to go back as well, it was so nice to have some quiet time to myself and I found myself being far more patient throughout the rest of the day because of it.  She starts gymnastics tomorrow and then back to school on Thursday, it’s going to make for a more hectic schedule but I’m excited for her to get out and start doing more.     (nevermind the zoned out look on the last photo, she was totally preoccupied and wanted me to go away)

Dr. Franz-Rudolph Jerono

The question isn’t why would I post the hospital websites photo of my doctor on my blog, but why WOULDN’T I?  Don’t you all feel like you’re missing out by not getting to have this man as your doctor?  I’ll have to get a recording of him someday but he sounds like Mr.Bean with a German accent.  I guess Nate and I will have to be done having kids after this one unless we somehow end up back in Germany, because I just can’t picture myself going to any other doctor for my pre and post natal needs.

Deja Vu

I had my third check up for baby #2 last week at 13.5 weeks along.  They were trying to do an ultrasound to check for signs of down syndrome but the baby was moving so much that they couldn’t get it to sit still long enough to look, she did however tell us that baby #2 looked like a boy.  If you’re wondering how much I believe this you can look back in the blog archive to see how I was burned the first time around when they told us at 11.5 weeks that Reese looked like a boy.  Since they couldn’t get baby to sit still long enough to measure they sent us to lunch and had us come back an hour later hoping baby would be quieter.  When we came back my doctor was out of surgery so he did the ultrasound and was able to get the measurements he needed, baby looks healthy with nothing to worry about, and once again told us it looked like a boy.  Please see the above statement about me lacking confidence in a gender guess at this point in time.  The following is a photo of something in between our child’s legs.  Now we would enjoy having a little boy join our family, but I know from experience that my little girls like to tease Mommy so I’m holding off judgment until my next appt when I may or may not believe what the doctor says.

(the arrow is pointing to what the doctor labeled “the mark of a boy”)

Phantasia Land

We had planned to do something Labor day weekend months ago, but our plans to go to Prague for the long weekend slowly fell through as the prospect of a 7 hour drive two weeks after our trip to Spain and two weeks before the arrival of a guest seemed a little too much for even us to handle.  We were still trying to figure out what we wanted to do right up until the last minute when we decided to take Reese to Phantasia Land for the day.  Phantasia Land is a theme park just outside Cologne and only ended up being an hour and fifteen minute drive from our house which was exactly the length of time we were willing to sit in the car.  We had looked online and it looked like Reese would be tall enough to ride the majority of the rides and we were pleased when we got there to find out that despite the fact that she was 1cm too short for the majority of them, they only measured her at one ride so she was able to go on all the rest.

   

Right as we walked in Reese saw this red dragon and was very excited.  She was a little wary of getting close to it at first but ended up going over with Nate to shake his hand.

 

Reese’s favorite ride was, as always, the carousel.  She loves riding on the horses so we probably rode the carousel 10 different times throughout the day

 

Nate got the luxury of squeezing in to this tiny little plane with her, she had so much fun riding rides with Daddy all day long.

 

Reese told me that this mini ferris wheel, went fast and I laughed.

More carousel photos, I told you we went on it a ridiculous number of times.

 

This ride scared me the most because she had to go all by herself, but she was so happy to get to ride with all the other kids (I was scared for nothing as it was the least scary ride that every existed)

 

We ended the day by all going on a log ride, we had gotten fast passes to any ride in the park earlier when a ride we were waiting in line for broke down so we walked right past the long line and jumped on.  By the end of the day Reese was ready to pass out, she’d stayed awake the entire day and she’s definitely a nap girl.  The second we got in the car she fell asleep and didn’t wake up until we were turning on our street. 

Barcelona Spain

       I'm kind of a jerk because we've been back from Spain for a week and a half and I still haven't posted anything about it. I'd like to chalk my lack of blogging up to a busy schedule or pregnancy woes, but I can't it's just laziness. Anyways, so here's the story of Spain:

Nate went TDY to Spain in May and Reese and I were supposed to fly out and see him while he was there but between appointments that we had and the trouble of getting to his exact location it just didn't make any sense for us to go, so Nate suggested that we instead take a week in August and go to Barcelona. We asked some friends if they wanted to go as well and it turned out to be a lot of fun to take a relaxing trip with other English speakers :) We had a wicked early flight on Monday, and by wicked early I mean we had to leave for the airport at 4am. We flew into Girona and had to take an hour bus ride to Barcelona. Reese was such a champ for the entire journey, we'd been potty training and while we were on the bus she said she had to go and despite the fact that it took us 20 minutes before we could get to a bathroom she didn't have an accident. We had a nice hotel just outside the main districts so it was nice and quiet and our first order of business was to get to the beach. Reese LOVED the beach! I was wondering how she would react to it but she went down to the water and was having fun collecting rocks and then I took her out in the water to ride the waves and she thought that part was awesome too. I was so excited to see her enjoying the beach, she even let Nate bury her in the sand...well to tell the truth he dug a hole and then she climbed inside and started pulling the sand on herself so he helped push the rest of the sand in. That night we called it quits early and got some much needed sleep after our very long day.

On Tuesday we went to La Sagrada Familia and it was pretty amazing. Most churches are the extremely similar inside and out but this one was so different and I was really glad that we went. After that we wandered over to some other buildings that Gaudi had designed and then went back to the beach for the afternoon. The day before we had noticed that a little ways down the beach it was less crowded so we decided to head down that way, BIG MISTAKE! That part of the beach was less populated because everyone was nude and though it doesn't matter either way may I please just say Why is it that only old people go nude on the beach? Anyways, we headed back down to the crowded part of the beach and found a place amongst the merely topless women to toss our towels. After awhile on the beach we were all laying out and a huge wave came out of nowhere and tried to take our stuff out to sea. Luckily the only thing we lost to the wave was a toy rake, but our towels were soaked since I'd had to chase them down so it effectively ended our beach day that day. That night we wandered Las Ramblas which is a busy pedestrian zone with street performers and shops, but after dinner Nate, Reese and I called it a night because I was having some contractions and figured it was a sign that I needed to take it easy.

On Wednesday we hopped on the train a little ways out of Barcelona to the monastery at Montserrat. It's high up on a mountain so we had take a cablecar to the top which was fun. We went to the Basilica there and then Nate and I just relaxed while our friends hiked down to see where they'd found a statue of Mary, after the contractions the night before I was trying to take it easy. When they finished with that we took a funicular higher up the mountain for some nice views and by then it was getting late so we took our train back to Barcelona.

On Thursday we went back to Las Ramblas to do some souvenir shopping and find churros con chocolate. The churros were good but I would have preferred a sweeter chocolate, still delicious none the less. After some shopping we were going to head back to the hotel and go to the beach but while on the metro someone stole my wallet, burn on them that they only got 10 euro, but burn on me that they got our only credit cards (long story short Nate and I each had one but I'd taken his when went to the beach and forgot to give it back) and my ID cards. We went back to the hotel and cancelled everything and then wallowed for a bit in the fact that we had a day and half left on vacation and absolutely no money, luckily we were traveling with friends who were able to loan us some money for the rest of the time but by the time we had done all that some bad weather had set in so the beach was a no go for the day. That night after dinner we went and saw the Magic Fountain show complete with lights and dancing water, Reese really enjoyed it.

Friday was our last day and since we had to check out of the hotel in the morning we decided not to go to the beach and be covered in sand until we finally got home at midnight, which ended up really sucking because it was by far the hottest day there. We went to Parc Guell and it was a massive hike up to the top, I felt bad for poor Nate pushing a sleeping Reese in her stroller to the top and then when we get there and Nate is pouring sweat Reese wakes up and tells him that it's hot, it was really funny. It was pretty cool but it was so sweltering hot outside that we just skimmed through it and headed back to some air conditioning. That evening we caught our bus back to the airport and flew home. Despite the whole stolen wallet thing it was a really fun trip, perhaps the best part was where Reese finished potty training while we were there. She'd been good on peeing in the toilet for awhile but was fighting me on pooping in it but she pooped in the toilet everyday we were in Spain, I had been worried about it but somehow it just clicked and I was immediately de-stressed.