9 Months

Reese is 9 months old, as of this past Sunday, and so I decided I would do blog of Reese stats and facts mainly to remind myself how much she has grown and changed.

*I took her to the dr. Tuesday for a 9 month weight check since they don't do 9 month checkups and in the past 3 months she had gained 1 lb and grown 2 in. putting her at 18 lbs and 29 ins. I was a little concerned that she had put on so little weight considering she eats more food than I've ever seen a kid her age eat. Apparently my genes are kicking in so we've added an extra meal to the day in order to try and help her pack some extra pounds on. (The picture is of Reese and her friend Lukas who is 7 weeks younger, about 4 lbs heavier and an inch or so shorter. I thought Luke was big but apparently my non weight gaining child is just thin)

*Speaking of food, Reese loves it but she especially loves cookies. I'm talking real homemade (or in our case buying the frozen dough from the bakery and baking them at home and considering them homemade) chocolate chip cookies that I pick out the chocolate chips from. She's only had cookies a handful of times but whenever she sees a cookie she gets soooo excited and starts reaching for it. We went to subway yesterday and after she ate her turkey sandwich and peaches I started giving her cookie and I swear she probably would've eaten 3 or 4 if I'd have let her. She had cake for the first time last night at Nate's birthday party and she loved that too.

*Reese just started crawling last night, though I feel this needs a disclaimer. Reese is a very stubborn "know-it-all" child, she started getting around the living room at a very early age but as soon as she found that she could roll anywhere she wanted she was perfectly content doing that. She wasn't interested in finding a new way to get around because as far as she was concerned rolling was by far the best method out there. Then she discovered that she could just worm her way in an army low crawl and then she did that for over a month. She would get up on all fours but then drop down and worm across the floor, truth be told she was quite fast at it. Then finally last night she got on all fours and crawled across the room, I don't think it'll take her as long to decide that walking would be faster because she's already taking steps around the furniture, granted they are wobbly steps but steps non the less.

*She sleeps 12 hours a night and then takes a 45 min nap in the morning and a 2 hour nap in the afternoon. I have no complaints about the amount of sleep I get, I guess she takes after her daddy in this way.

*She's always had good hand-eye coordination and has been a good self feeder for awhile, but when she tries to clap she looks hilarious. Her hands only occasionally make contact so they're really just waving past each other really quickly.

*She says hi and knows what it means...I think. Every time I get her up I say hi and wave to her and now when Nate gets home from work and says hi she says hi back to him. She also loves to talk, but her favorite way to talk is very loudly. We were at the bowling alley and she was chattering away and even in the noisy bowling alley with tons of people having lunch and talking, Reese was the loudest thing there, we kept having to shush her.

*She's a people person, she loves to wave at people and smile at them. She'll stare at anyone til she gets their attention and then she smiles and talks to them, she definetly needs to be the center of attention.

*She loves to swim. My friend Sarah and I take Reese and Lukas to the pool about once a week and Reese has so much fun. She likes to splash and to put her face and head in the water. Yesterday we were in the deep pool and I was holding her up while she swam to me and it was the most hilarious thing ever, she was doing her usual worm crawl but in the water. She looked like she was doing the butterfly with her arms and some kind of half frog half dolphin kick with her legs, but she was having fun and it was working for her.

*Reese LOVES Jaeger!! She tries to follow Jaeger wherever she goes, she's always trying to put Jaeger's toys in her mouth or trying to pet Jaeger or in general trying to do whatever Jaeger is doing. If Jaeger crawls up in to my lap then Reese thinks she needs to be in my lap, if Jaeger is laying on a pillow then Reese wants to be on the pillow.

*Finally, Reese is mischievous. She gets into anything and everything and now that she's figured out that she isn't stuck in the living room I fear it will only get worse. We put all the plastic kitchen stuff in the bottom cabinet for her to play with so that she thinks she's getting into things without really letting her get into things. In the living room she's constantly pulling the DVDs off the racks or trying to get the computer cords. I put her toys in bins and she likes that because now she can pull them all out as opposed to them already being out.

There's soooo much more that I could go into about Reese but she's up from her nap now so I should probably go get her before she figures out how to climb out of her crib.

NEW CAR NEW CAR

As I've discussed before, Nate was supposed to deploy in February and so we had been planning on getting a new car when he returned, but then as soon as I sold his beater wagon so that I wouldn't have to deal with it while he was deployed I suddenly could no longer restrain myself to wait for my new car. It took me all of a day to convince Nate that we should go ahead and order the car now instead of waiting, I won't go into my long list of rational reasons but they covered everything from finance to my insane desire. We had already done a lot of car research and test driving when we were in the States so it was just a matter of ordering and purchasing. We knew we wanted a Rav4 but Nate wanted the 4wd and I wanted the third row stow and go seat which according to the website were not options that you could get together so since it was to be my car (ALL MINE!!!! and Reese's) we were set to get the third row seat (which let me add is the most practical and amazing feature to ever be put in a smaller suv. I mean think of all the times when you're going somewhere with friends and you have to take 2 cars because you don't have enough seats, now that is not an issue for me. Nate doesn't understand that 5 years at BYU taught me that the more seatbelts your car has the better that car is, Sharon's car had 6 seatbelts and thus was the best....but I digress...). When he told us what he had available in the base model we were looking at it was either the stripped down no frills version or the pimped out v6 4wd THIRD ROW SEAT version, I was ecstatic as was Nate that we both were able to get the features we wanted most. So we ordered our car Feb. 7th and they told us that it would be here by the end of the month since it was currently on a boat in the middle of the ocean.
Well our decision to get the new car early paid off because Nate is still here (for who knows how long) and sharing one car for the past 2 1/2 weeks was quite a trial, having 2 cars for the past 8 months really got us out of the habit of sharing. The dealer called yesterday to say my car was in and he needed me to come over today so that we could go to the German customs office to finish up the paperwork. When we finished up he put my plates on and with the odometer reading 6 miles I drove my brand new 2009 Toyota Rav4 home. Nate was home on his lunch break with Reese so we took a quick drive around our village and then Nate went back to work while Reese and I did every errand we could possibly think of and loved every minute of it. I think this car had to be designed with us in mind because it fits us so perfectly. The middle row slides forward and back which means Reese can seat behind the passenger seat and Nate still has enough room to sit comfortably (in the passenger seat, remember it's my car), something that was never an option in the Jetta, and she can see out the back window so I don't have to listen to her complain anymore....it's a good thing. Anyways, as I'm sure you can tell from my braggadocious post, we're very excited to have our new car.

Happy Valentine's Day

YA

I asked Reese today if she could say Momma, she responded "Ya". The funny thing is she never said Momma, so either she's holding out on me or she's lying to me.

I got a bike for my birthday and last week we bought Reese a seat and helmet for it, then as soon as we got the seat hooked on the decent weather that would've allowed us to use to disappeared and it'll be at least a week before we get to go out. Reese had to settle for trying it out in the kitchen, I think she looks pretty cute.

Here's to hoping winter ends soon!

Prepare? We don't need to prepare!

I'm beginning to realize that Nate is leaving for Iraq in the near future, okay the very near future, and we've yet to get things ready. It's funny how my outlook has changed between the first deployment and the second. The first go around I talked to tons of people to find out what he should take, I made lists upon lists to make sure nothing was forgotten, I packed and repacked his bags to try and fit everything in the most efficient manner, and of course I had his bags packed and ready to go a few weeks out. This time things are different, a lot different. Nate just got his uniforms on Friday and I haven't given any thought to taking them to alterations and getting his stripes and nametapes sewn on, I figure he already has two ready to go and I'll just take these in whenever I get a chance and send them to him once he's there. I haven't pulled his trunks of deployment stuff up to go through, or gone to the store and picked up the list of toiletries he's supposed to take. I guess that's the difference between the first time and the subsequent times, this time there isn't as much to worry about. I know when he'll leave and I can guess when he'll be back, based on the completely inefficient travel schedule the military likes to operate on, and I know that he'll just be doing his day to day stuff only with mortar flying around. All in all there isn't too much unexpected about this deployment and there's quite a bit of peace in that, at least for me. Now the thing I am scared about, hmmmmm, those days when I can't wait for Nate to get home from work because I can't even go to the bathroom without Reese getting into things, scary.

Catching Up

Since it's been almost a month since I last posted I figured I'd just toss some pictures up and let them speak for themselves. We had a great Christmas, Reese did really well opening presents as she was dying to eat the paper and she got a lot of fun new things. She's becoming very independent which I find odd to say about an 8 month old that literally needs to be dependent upon her parents but it's true. She pretty much only likes to eat food that she can feed herself and gets a little upset if you try and give her too much "baby food", she'll play nicely with her toys until the second you walk out of the room and then she speeds over to anything that she knows she's not supposed to have. A funny example of this was a few days ago after breakfast she was playing with her toys on one end of the living room and on the other end there were a few sweatshirts and a pair of shoes or something on the ground, since it was cold outside I left her inside with her toys while I took Jaeger to the bathroom. As soon as I got outside I went to watch her through the living room window while Jaeger peed and in a manner of about 10 seconds she had gotten over to the sweatshirts and was looking for trouble. I tapped on the window and she looked up at me and when she realized she had gotten caught she smiled and started laughing and rolled back on over to where her toys were as if that was what she had been doing the whole time. Crazy little girl.
This picture was actually taken this morning, Nate got a bowl of cheerios and since Reese loves cheerios she went right over and dug in. It was soooo cute the two of them sharing and naturally Jaeger strolled in to pick up the ones that fell.Here she is eating her raviolis and pears since I am no longer allowed to feed her with a spoon.
I love making Reese laugh, she has the cutest laugh ever and it makes me laugh. Here she is trying to get into Jaeger's toybox, once she realized she was caught she tried to pull off an innocent look.This is how I found her one day after naptime, just lying in her crib with her feet propped up. She always either turns sideways or goes and sleeps in the corner, she likes to be cuddled and cramped.Nate and I each got Reese one gift that the other didn't know about and my gift to Reese was these nursery letters. The artist matched them to her bedding set exactly and they totally completed the room.Well I think that's the past 4 weeks in a nutshell, Reese popped both her bottom teeth at the same time the first weekend in January but I have no pictures because she won't move her tongue and we're getting ready for Nate's deployment so I plan to do a photoshoot of the two of them in the next few weeks. That's us.

Christmas Soon Will Be Here

Nate, Reese, Jaeger and I have really gotten into the Christmas spirit this week. We've got presents under the tree and Christmas music can almost always be heard in the background at our house. I've gotten really into making baked goods this year, I decided that it's what moms do and since I'm a mom now I need to get started. I've made 6 lbs of fudge and a bunch of magic cookie bars thus far and I have 6 more lbs of fudge and a few more cookie bar batches to make before Christmas.This past Saturday our friends wanted to go to the Trier Christmas Market and despite our experience last Saturday we decided to go back and soak in the Christmas spirit. Luckily, it was actually less crowded this time than it was the last time. We wandered through the stands looking at the crafts and of course had to get a Nutella and banana crepe to cap off the evening.

On Sunday we took Round 1 of Reese's Christmas pictures, she looked way cute in her dress. My friend Lindsay made a cute bow for her hair which totally completed the outfit, I'm definetly indebted to her since my attempts at finding anything for her hair were fruitless.

Merry Christmas everyone!!

My Christmas Nightmare

I had been looking for a Christmas dress for Reese for a little while now and kept coming up empty handed. I checked the selections at both Ramstein and Vogelweh when I was there and all the ones in her size were ugly and if I saw one that I did like it was way too big. A few weekends ago I almost broke down and bought one at the BX just because I knew that if I didn't send the fam a picture of her in a traditional little Christmas dress my mom would ask why I hadn't gotten one, you know you would have mom, but after I had carried the dress around the store I just couldn't go through with it so I hung it in all its hideous glory back on the rack. (I'd like to insert an apology here to anyone who might have seen these dresses and thought they were gorgeous).

Since we were still dressless this weekend we headed over to Trier to give the German stores a try, which is where my Christmas nightmare truly comes in. I don't know why I wasn't thinking that the walkplatz and the mall would be a nightmare of German crowds, but I was just imagining a regular amount of people. There was only one parking garage that still had spots available when we got to Trier at 10am and from the time we first saw the sign advertising 122 available slots til we finally pulled up to the lot, the sign read 60 slots. There were soooooo many people there for the Christmas market, and apparently to do their Christmas shopping, that we could barely manage to get from one area of the walkplatz to another, not to mention my Christmas cheer was going out the window as store after store there was not a single dress, let alone holiday dress in the baby section. I seriously wonder where Germans buy baby clothes because all I saw in up to roughly an 18 month size were pajama like outfits, but whatever.

We decided to take a break from the madness to get some lunch and all we were looking for was a place slightly off the walkplatz where we could all sit down and not be bombarded by people for a few minutes. Instead we found all that we were looking for and more in a place called Lousiana just behind the main area of the walkplatz. It's the German version of a stereotypical American restaurant and we LOVED it. The word big is everywhere, "Big American Buffet Breakfast" and "Classic BIG Burger" we were cracking up. Our favorite phrase was "Traditional Big American Apple Strudel" we didn't realize there was any such thing but it looked delicious. We both got amazing, and true to the advertisement, big burgers with super yummy cajun fries, not to mention BIG colas with ice which doesn't often happen in Europe.

Our escape into the American stereotype energized us to get back out and get to task, so we hit up the mall where we found an H&M kids and a dress that while not the traditional christmas dress you would imagine picking up at JcPenneys, will still serve our needs and is quite cute. I'm still looking for some accessories for it as attempts to find a little black headband or bow for her hair were fruitless as was my attempt to locate a black shrug or sweater to go over the dress, but I will not be deterred. We're headed to bitburg to look for anything that will work. Needless to say when we got home after that amazingly long day, we decided to lock ourselves in our house where no one could enter the "BIG American zone of personal space" that I like to maintain.

Postage

How is it that postage rates go up so fast? I bought stamps in October only to realize that when I put them on my Christmas cards today they were a penny short, so now I get to go buy some penny stamps. My angry postage realization led me to go on a hunt for all our old stamps so consider yourself lucky if you're one of the people that gets two .37 stamps or an .80 stamp on your Christmas card because I was too lazy to go buy a ridiculous number of penny stamps and stamp up the whole outside of the envelope just to use up my old stamps. I hate it when the post office gets the best of me.

The News

Well, we just found out that Nate will be deploying again in March. His leaving doesn't come as much of surprise, I mean we were hoping he wouldn't have to but we knew that his groups time was coming up again. The only surprise is that he'll be leaving in March instead of May, which is what we were expecting, and he'll be going for 5 months instead of the standard 4, which by the way in Air Force terms that means he'll be gone 6 months. He'll be spending his summer back in the sandbox of Balad, Iraq so I'm thinking he'll need a whole lot of sunscreen to keep his pastey skin from turning lobster red in the desert sun. As for Reese and I, we haven't quite decided what we'll be doing during his absence but I'm sure it'll include a trip to the states and a big 1st birthday party. For now we're focusing on the brightside which is that we get to spend this holiday season together and that when he gets back in the fall we'll get to spend those hard earned deployment benefits on a trip to Egypt.