Dance Moves

Reese and I arrived back home in Germany Tuesday morning after successfully catching a hop out of Baltimore on our first try. I have to admit I was a little worried, they got to my category and after calling one name they said the plane was full but they were still waiting on some ticketed passengers (i.e. people on orders) to arrive so to wait around, lucky for us some people decided not to show up so we made the flight. When Nate picked us up we headed straight for the doctor to have Reese checked out since she'd had a horrible cough for a few days, turns out she had an ear infection so she's being pumped full of antibiotics now and other than being crabby randomly throughout the day she's doing well.
We had a lot of fun on the East Coast with Sharon and I'll be sure to write a whole post about it complete with pictures in a few days when things have settled down around here, if that ever happens. I actually jumped on to post that Reese has gotten some sweet new dance moves that I've yet to get on tape but DESPERATELY need to. Whenever the mood strikes her to start dancing she busts out the pelvic thrust!! It is hilarious!! Music will be on and she'll be standing and start throwing her hips forward, she'll even do it while in a crawling position or even while you're holding her, it's a dance move without requirements. Her only other move is what I'll call the squat, which is when she kind of bounces up and down while standing, but I think the pelvic thrust is funnier so I'll be sure to get it on film soon enough and post a clip of it.

Fun in the Sun

Reese and I have been in California for about a week and a half now and we've definitely enjoyed all the sun and 60 degree weather. Reese has discovered life in the backyard and loves to go out and play in the sun on the patio and pull the grass out. I took her to the park a few times and she really enjoyed the swings.
This past weekend we spent the day in Monterey and went to the Monterey Bay Aquarium. Reese loves fish and the moment we arrived her eyes got big and she got very excited at the sight of the fish. The Aquarium had an area where you could touch starfish and Reese threw her hands right in the water and started touching them, there was also an area where you could touch stingrays but they were all sitting in the far corner away from where Reese was dabbling her hands in the water. In a few days we'll be leaving Sacramento and heading to the East Coast where we'll be visiting Sharon for a few days before we try and catch our hop back to Germany.

Space-A

Reese and I flew Space-A (that's a military flight for you non-military folk) back to the States so that would could recharge our vitamin D batteries. I've been wanting to try and catch a hop for awhile to see how it would work since tickets from Frankfurt to San Francisco are upwards of a $1,000 on average and I was not disappointed. My friend Sarah had said I would prefer it to flying commercial and she was right, though flying on a military flight has its downsides overall it was a nice way to travel.
The downside of taking a hop is that there is no set schedule and you only hear about possible flights 72 hours in advance. I'd heard of a flight on Wednesday and checked it constantly, but after getting up at 1am and getting ready to head to the airport the flight had been cancelled...luckily we hadn't actually left for the airport. There was another flight on Friday so we headed over to Ramstein and Reese and I got a seat on flight from Ramstein to Maguire (NJ) and then on to Travis (CA). It wasn't difficult to get on since there were 40 something seats on only about 10 of us wanting to get on the flight. We flew on C-17 which is a pretty large cargo plane; the center of the plane was filled with pallets and there were jumpseats along the walls that we sat in. The seats were nice because unlike on a commercial flight they weren't right up against each other, there was at least 4 in. between each seat so you weren't rubbing shoulders with the person next to you and there was nothing in front of us but pallets so there was plenty of space to stretch our legs. Once we were airborne I laid a few blankets out on the ground and Reese crawled around and played with her toys throughout the flight, which was a lot nicer than trying to confine her to her carseat for hours on end. The downside of the flight was that it was very loud and a bit cold inside the plane, they gave us earplugs but Reese's wouldn't stay in and I didn't want her trying to eat them if they fell out, also the flight was a bit longer than usual.

When we landed at Maguire they unloaded a bunch of the pallets and our flight from there to Travis almost the entire center of the plane was empty so Reese got to try and walk around (using my hands) and it made the time pass by a lot faster. When we landed in California the pilot opened the back of the plane and we got to look out on the sun and feel the warm air as we taxied off the runway.

Taking this flight made me feel really bad for my friend Abby and her story of traveling to CT with rude passengers. Everyone was so helpful the entire time. There was always someone who offered to help carry Reese's carseat for me and when we offloaded at Travis someone else offered to carry my bag so I only had to worry about carrying Reese. The pilot came down at the end of the flight and took a picture of Reese and I and talked about how good she was during the flight. Overall everyone was so kind and it was far less complicated than flying on a commercial flight, I mean I was able to go to the bathroom while a kind retired military personnel watched Reese for me and when we went through the security I was able to bring bottles of water which wouldn't have happened elsewhere. Best of all, the entire trip from Germany to California cost me a total of $8.25 which was for the two huge box lunches a bought at the airport to eat on the plane. I'm going to go ahead and say that we'll fly spac-A again, afterall I can a think of a lot of ways to spend the $991.75 I saved by not buying a ticket.

Tainted Puppies

Our band, the Tainted Puppies, competed in the Rock Band 2 tournament on base last weekend and won. I believe it's because we're awesome.

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.