Friday Fill-in

1. Have you and your spouse agreed to live in separate locations (a geographical bachelor tour) knowing that the short-term inconvenience would have long-term benefits for your family? How did it work for you? submitted by When Good People Get Together  We haven’t had to do that yet, thank God.
2. What is your favorite thing about being a MilSpouse? submitted by Sarah Ruth Today  All the amazing people I’ve met due to the military lifestyle and all the traveling we’ve been able to do.
3. If you could still have your spouse/significant other and your family, but take the military life out of it…would you?  submitted by Trust. Love. Believe. Bake.  I don’t really mind the military part of it.  I guess the deployments stink and TDY’s get a little bit old and the 12-14 hour days are annoying and the going in on Sundays gets pretty old.  If I could take those parts out, that would be really nice.
4. What have your homecoming experiences been like after a year long tour of separation? submitted by Army Soldier, Army Wife  I haven’t had to go through a year long separation, thank God.
5. If you have a child(ren) why you chose their name(s)? If not, why you would name your child something?  submitted by Tiara’s & ACU’s  I chose her name based on what I like for her first name, and her middle name has meaning.  That’s how it’ll be for future kids too.

Abbie’s bad mood explained

This might very well explain why Abbie has been so hard to deal with lately.  I really think she just misses her daddy and she’s not old enough to express her feelings any other way, nor is she old enough to understand why he’s gone or when he’s coming back.  All she knows is that the person she loves the most isn’t around anymore.  I can feel her pain.

(All these pictures were taken in March 2011.)

Abbie’s first hibachi experience

My parents and I took Abbie and my grandma to a hibachi restaurant in Dubuque tonight.  My grandma had been to one a long time ago, and this was Abbie’s first time.  She was pretty fascinated with all the action and seemed to like to food too.

The fire scared her a little bit.  She was checking to make sure I was right behind her and she wanted to sit closer to me, but she liked it.

She really liked when he did the train thing with the onions.  She made the train noise with him.
On the way home we spotted some deer, so we stopped so Abbie and my grandma could see them.  I’m not sure who enjoyed seeing them more!

Abbie and Luke

(These pictures were taken Jan 30, 2011.)

My friend, Jennifer, has a little guy, Luke, who’s 7 months younger than Abbie.  Abbie LOVES Luke and she is always talking about going to see “baby Luke” or Luke and Jennifer.  I had the privilege of watching Luke for Jennifer one night and I took these pictures of our two kiddos.  They have a great time playing together and seeing how Abbie is with Luke gives me hope that someday she’ll be a good big sister.

Abbie loves to help Luke drink his sippy cup, to the point where she’s always shoving the thing in his face and you have to rein her in a little.  She thought it was great when he’d actually drink.

Since we’ve been back in the States, Abbie’s still been talking about Luke, except now it’s “buddy, buddy Luke”.  Haha!  Before we left Italy she started calling him “buddy Luke” and somewhere between there and here it turned in to “buddy, buddy Luke”.  She really likes Luke, but look at him!!  What’s not to like?

Crabbiness and sheep

(I found this picture on my little camera – taken sometime late March.)

This week has been interesting.  Abbie has been harder to deal with this week than she has ever been before.  She is CONSTANTLY whining.  She just walks around whining.  She has an incredibly short fuse and if she doesn’t get her way, she throws a HUGE fit.  Today I brought her inside to warm up when she wanted to stay outside and she proceeded to rip apart one of my mom’s plants that she knows she’s not supposed to touch.  We had to run errands today also, and she whined, cried, kicked, screamed almost the entire hour and a half we were in the car.  I’m not sure if this is the aftermath of Mark leaving or if something else is going on, but it’s exhausting and frustrating.  It pretty much takes both of my parents and myself to keep her entertained all day.  I hope this gets better soon, because I’m not sure how much more of this I can take.  I just don’t know what to do when she gets out of control.

I started her on some Claritin today.  I think she might have allergies since her nose is almost always dripping and lately her eyelids have been red and puffy.  I’m not sure if she’s miserable from allergies and that’s contributing to her bad mood or what, but at this point I’m willing to try anything.  I made her a 2 year appointment for the end of May so I’ll ask the pediatrician about it then.

Us on our last date before Mark left

There is a large herd of sheep (with a few donkeys thrown in the mix) that had been roaming around the base for a few weeks before I left.  They seem to just roam from field to field and I’ve seen them all over the place on the south, west and east sides of base.  Abbie would get super excited every time she’d see them so I’d always look for them so I could point them out to her.  The herd was always surrounded by 3-4 guys and 5-6 dogs.  At night I think they set up a little pasture to put the donkeys in and the dogs watched the sheep and kept them contained.  The guys always drag this little trailer around with them.  That would definitely be an interesting way of life.  If you look closely at the last picture, you can see the donkey carrying it’s own supplies.

Abbie’s first haircut

On April 20th, I took Abbie to get her first haircut, which was more of a trim than anything.  She just needed things to be evened up a little, so my friend Rachel (who does my hair) did it for us.

THE BEFORE

THE AFTER

Going to get her stickers.

Overall, Abbie did really well!  She wasn’t a big fan of the cape, so Rachel took that off of her before she was done.  And luckily Rachel is fast so it only took 5 minutes.  But at least Abbie didn’t freak out like I thought she was going to.  Oh, and her hair parts like that naturally.  It kind of makes it hard to style because it’s always in her face and she rarely leaves barrettes in.  It’ll be nice when it’s a little longer and I can pull it all back into a pony tail.

Thanks Rachel!!

Friday Fill-in

 

1. How many pets do you have? And what type? submitted by Life and Times of a Displaced Jersey Girl

We have 2 Dachshunds, Oliver and Sadie.  Ollie is a long-haired and Sadie is a wire-haired.

2. What are your favorite projects to do while hubby is away? submitted by my-inspired-nest
I like to keep up on my blog (which I’ve been doing a TERRIBLE job of lately) and also work on my quilting.

3. What are the must-haves in your deployment care packages?  submitted by Christine’s Little Blog
I’m pretty new to this whole deployment thing, so I’m still trying to figure out what to send him.  I’m kinda stumped in this area so I’m excited to see what others write!

4. If you could star in any TV show, which would it be? submitted by Just a Girl

Dancing with the Stars.  I know that’s not a sitcom TV show, but I think it would be tons of fun to try that!

5. What was the biggest hurdle that you faced during your/your significant other’s first deployment? submitted by The Pavlik Perspective

So far the biggest hurdle has been getting over here, and that really wasn’t that bad.  And trying to get my stupid phone to work over here.  Let me get back to you on this one.  I’m sure they’ll be more….

Abbie Rose is 23 months old

One month to go before our little girl is 2 years old!  That’s really hard to believe.

I don’t think many of her stats have changed much since last month.  Still wearing mostly size 2T clothes and size 5 diapers.  She’s been going to bed around 9pm and getting up around 8:30-9am and still takes a 2 hour nap from 2-4pm.  She’s up to date with almost all of her shots except for Hep A and B.  We’ll be starting those ones soon.  She’s started jumping lately and she runs all over the place.  Her vocabulary is growing by leaps and bounds and you can almost carry on a conversation with her sometimes.  She’s starting to put sentences together, and she’ll repeat anything you say.  I always tell her “I love you whole bunches”, so she’s started saying “I love you whole bunches” too.

Abbie loves to dance.  We “dance” in the car all the time, and any time she hears any sort of music she has to stop to bust a few moves.  She’d prefer to be outside 24/7 if I let her, even if it is cold and rainy outside.  And she is definitely an animal lover.  She’s enamored with my parents cats and she spends quite a bit of time laying directly on top of their Golden Retriever.  She likes to sing “Rockabye Baby” to her babies while she rocks them, just like her daddy did to her, and she pretty much has a running commentary going the entire time you’re in the car.  She points out EVERYTHING she sees.

Abbie still has a strong personality. I’ve come to the conclusion that’s not going to change.  In general, she’s a very sweet little girl, but she definitely has her spit-fire moments.  She’s very good at saying please (which is 2 syllables for her – pa-leeze) and thank you (tank ooo).  I think she might be having a little bit of an issue with her daddy being gone.  She seems to be a little bit more short tempered than normal lately.  She’ll randomly bring up Mark throughout the day so I know he’s definitely on her mind.  She also might be ready to potty train in the near future.  She’s been telling me when she has dirty diapers and she likes to take her dolls to go potty.  We might start working on that in the next month or two.

Time to start planning her 2nd birthday party!

Getting to know you

1. what's something you've eaten and liked, but didn't think you would?  I never liked guacamole until I had some stuff my aunt made.  Since then I’ve loved it.

2. plastic surgery..yay or nay?  Ehhh…  in general, nay.  I think reconstructive surgery is fine, like getting a tummy tuck after being pregnant or something like that, but I think the Hollywood types that try to “fix” everything that isn’t wrong is kind of vain.

3. 2 things you love about spring are.....?  FLOWERS!!  And flowers.

4. when's the last time you went on a picnic?  Hmm..  It’s been a long time.  I don’t even remember the last time I went on a picnic.  Probably when we lived in FL and went to the beach and that was in 2006.

5. what's your favorite app?  I really like grocery IQ and I LOVE all the dash games – diner dash, hotel dash, cooking dash, wedding dash.

6. who does the grocery shopping in your house?  Well considering my husband is deployed right now, and when he is home he works 12-14 hours a day, I do.  Although now that I’m with my parents, my mom does a lot of it too.

7. would you rather take a spin class or zumba?  I honestly don’t even know what zumba is, but it sounds fun, so I’d like to try that.

8. how often do you go out to dinner?  Way too much.  I guess I eat out more for lunch than dinner though, just because it’s easier to meet friends in town since I live 25 mins away from most of them right now.

Happy Sunday!

Getting settled

So Abbie and I have been back in the States for almost a week.  Honestly, it’s weird to be back.  This isn’t what I’m used to anymore and this doesn’t feel like “my” home.  It pretty much feels like I’m on vacation, in a way.  It’s really nice to be back in the States and I’m finding more and more things that I miss about the US that I’d forgotten about.

The dogs adjusted fine.  When we’d moved to Italy, they got SUPER sick the first week we were there.  They were puking and pooping all over the place and I wasn’t sure if that was caused by stress or something else.  They did much better this time.  They love to chase my parents cats, but we’re quickly breaking them of that habit.

Abbie seems to be not affected by the switch too much.  She woke up the first few nights at 4:30am and then went back to sleep until 7:30am, and I’ve gotten her to sleep until 8:30am once.  Hopefully I’ll be able to get her back on her 8:30pm – 9am sleep schedule, but my schedule is still off too.  I used to go to bed around midnight or 1am and sleep until 9am, but I can’t stay up past 10pm lately and then I’m wide awake around 6:30am.  Once I even crashed on the couch at 8:45pm.  Oops.

It’s funny how Abbie just gravitates towards men.  I’m not sure if that’s because of the relationship she has with her daddy or if it’s just her, but she ALWAYS gravitates towards men.  Which means she is ALL about my dad.  She’s constantly asking about grandpa and she’s always talking about grandpa’s truck and grandpa’s motorcycle.  The other day my dad had one of his Harley’s (he has 2) out on the driveway and Abbie was MOST interested.  I let her sit on it with him while he started it and she’s STILL talking about grandpa’s motorcycle 4 days later.

Since I always like to know what people’s surroundings look like, here are a few shots of my parents house.  They live on a couple acres of land.

And here are my parent’s animals:

Madison, aka, Maddy, the ball-loving Golden Retriever that is great with Abbie.  (Which is good since Abbie loves her and has been laying on top of her quite a few times.)

Zeke, aka, Zekey Bean, my parents HUGE cat.  He’s bigger than the weina dogs and he looks like a puma.  And this cat is spunky.  He hides under my piano and jumps out at people as they walk by and attacks their legs.  He’ll actually slap you with his huge feet and he and Abbie have gotten in to a few slapping contests…  He’s interested in her and she’s not too sure about him yet.

This is Elsie, aka LC, aka Little Cat.  She’s TINY.  She’s barely the size of a shoe and weighs like 8lbs.  She’s all fur.  She’s a pretty old kitty, but she’s super friendly and didn’t even bite Abbie when she tried to pull her off the dryer by her tail….

Overall, the transition has been easier than I was anticipating, but it’s still weird to be back here.  Hopefully the next half of a year flies by so we can get back to our home and Mark.