Headed Home

We leave for Idaho in T-minus 39 hours and counting! This trip is going to be a whirlwind of running around trying to see everyone we want, but I think it's going to be so much fun. We are so excited to go home, it's been 7 months for me and almost a year for Kolt. I can hardly believe that it's been that long already. So much has happened in the last 12 months, we're a totally different couple now.

Leila rolled over for the first time yesterday!! I'm not sure if it was a fluke or not though. I put her on her tummy and she kept her head up 90 degrees. Well, she kind of lost her balance and her head that high up made her fall over to her side, and then she kicked herself the rest of the way over. I tried to catch it on video, but I was too late. She hasn't done it again yet, but she will :)

This week has been pretty crazy getting everything ready to go. We've been making lists like crazy to make sure we don't forget anything. Kolt has a small pile of stuff in the living room going. Short of packing our clothes and toiletries I think we're pretty dang close to ready.

We may be taking a camp trailer with us. The base rents them out for about $100 per week for the tiny ones, so I'm going to check it out in a little bit. It all hinges on the trailers ability to hold Kolt's new hard top for his car. He bought one from a guy in SLC a month ago and we're picking it up while we're home, but it's kinda big and awkward and so it might not fit in this tiny trailer. I'm meeting up with one of his friends who has a hard top and he's going to take a look at it to see if it will fit or not. I'm kinda ambivalent about it, while it would be nice to just pack our stuff in there and not stuff the Touareg, I'm afraid it'll be a pain in the butt to haul it around when we're driving around SLC and Idaho. We'll see how it goes.

Alright, this may be my last blog for a few weeks as we'll be having a blast with all our family and friends. We'll be taking a lot of pics and I'll definitely post them when we get back.

Lots going on!

So we're in the middle of our October awesomeness. My sister Piper just left, we had our 8th wedding anniversary, and Kolt got promoted to 1st LT today. We're leaving next Thursday for Utah/Idaho, yay!

Having Piper here was wonderful. She's had

kids since I was 10 and I realized before she came that we've never really gotten to just hang out without having to run around and take care of her kids. Of course Leila is here now, but all you do is snuggle her, so she's easy :)

We went shopping and spent time with some of her old friends and just got to BE together. It made me realize just how much I miss her, and all her kids. Taking her to the air port today wasn't too hard because I know I'll see her again soon, otherwise I'd have been a mess!

Monday was our 8th wedding anniversary. Piper watched Leila for a few hours on Sunday night and we went for a drive and out to dinner with one of Kolt's S200 buddies. To be honest, I have no clue what he was doing there and it wasn't the most romantic date we've been on (his friend has ADHD something fierce though and he was rather entertaining to hang out with haha), but it was nice to just get out and be alone. I had a hard time leaving Leila though, I cried when we pulled away. I was also very anxious most the 2.5 hours we were gone, but Aunt Piper swears she did great and so hopefully the next time I leave her I won't worry so much.

Today was Kolt's pin on ceremony for his promotion to 1st LT. It was great to go up to the army hospital and watch it happen. I got to pin on one bar and our friend Capt. Annie got to do the other. We had Kolt's mom on the phone so she could listen in since she couldn't be there. Even though this promotion is a given and he's still "just" a LT, I'm so proud of him. Watching him raise his hand in front of the flag and swear to protect and defend the constitution just sends chills up my spine. In a time where most Americans in my opinion take for granted the freedoms we enjoy as citizens, it's nice to be reminded of how those freedoms came to be, courtesy of our military past and present.

Fun weekend

I haven't been lazy, just busy! I didn't realize I wouldn't be able to do my normal Friday blog until late on Thursday and by then it was too late. No biggie, but it's funny with 10 days goes by and you have a hard time remembering everything that was worthy of blogging.

This past weekend we went to Laughlin AFB in Del Rio to visit our friends, the White's. Leila slept in the car the whole 3 hour ride there, and the whole ride back. This leaves me VERY encouraged that our trip to Idaho should go pretty well. She really loves car rides so hopefully we can make good time.

Kolt and Stephen competed in a 3 gun competition while we were there and Kolt finished 5th over all. He had a blast and is hopeful at the next one with his own shot gun, and some more practice, he can do even better. It was really fun to watch him compete even though Leila, Emily, and I had to stay in the car to protect Leila's ears. A few times we stepped out of the car though and shots were fired and Leila never even flinched. LOVE that girl's ability to sleep.

While we were in Del Rio we had a bit of an accident that may result in some unwanted puppies. Reina is in heat and we've done a really great job and keeping Rex away from her (we haven't had a litter in 3 years), but we got distracted at our friends' house and sure enough, nature took it's course. Now that we're home they are not allowed out of the kennel at the same time and we're hoping that just one mating wasn't enough to get the job done. I have no clue how I will deal with puppies in this small house, and with a new baby. The chance of successful breeding with only one shot at it is 40%, and I'm just really hoping that we're on the 60% side of that. We've wanted to breed Reina again, just not yet. We should be able to figure it out in 3-4 weeks so now it's just a waiting game. Ug.

Leila has been sleeping better. She's been giving me anywhere from 3-5 hour stretches and it's been so nice, but she's still a little restless in the mornings which some how seem to negate the long stretches. Of course, this morning she slept GREAT after we took Kolt to the shuttle, but this was a morning we had to wake up so I couldn't even enjoy her extra sleep.

I swear Leila can almost roll over. I've read that they're supposed to go from tummy to back first, around 2-3 months, and from back to tummy at 5 months. Well, she has all but rolled over from her BACK to tummy :) This to me means she's highly advanced, which surely mean we've got a little genius here. I tried to video it but she didn't do it, and I'll keep trying. Hopefully when she does do it, I'll catch it on video!

Kolt seems convinced that if he holds Leila, she screams, that I'm the only one who can console her and keep her happy. I keep trying to tell him that she's fussy for me too (she's actually crying right now in my arms as I type this), and the only way to get her over that is to keep TRYING. I hold her most of the day, every day and so she's getting used to me. It's almost like he's afraid to hold her now or something. This is something that HAS to change. I want to be able to leave for an hour or two if I want/need to. I'm really hoping to go to the gym and lift some weights and exercise, and just get out of the house on my own occasionally, or take a shower/bath longer than 20 minutes. I'm not sure what to do about this or to how to help him feel more confident when he takes care of her. The only solution may just be to do it. If I can't leave her at all for the next year, I may go crazy. Don't get me wrong, I love her more than anything, but every mom, especially a new first time mom, needs a bit of her own space.

My sister Piper will be here TOMORROW!!!! Late tomorrow night, but she'll be here, hurray! She's staying for about a week and honestly, it couldn't come at a better time. With Leila potentially becoming clingy to only me, it'll be nice to get Aunt Piper here to mix things up a bit. Also, our 8th anniversary is next Monday and she volunteered to babysit so Kolt and I could go out to dinner. I just might have to take her up on that offer, the thought of going out to dinner with just the two of us seems so weird at this point.

Taking the good with the bad

Leila seems to have a very bad case of baby acne. It started last week and was just a little on her cheek. Then it spread to her neck, ears, back, chest and I started to worry. It looked so red and irritated so I called the doctor and got her an appointment. Kolt's family has a pretty bad history of severe skin issues, allergies and eczema, so I figured I couldn't be too careful. The doctor looked at her for two seconds before saying it was just a bad case of baby acne. Thank goodness! It looks awful but she's not in any pain or at risk of infection, so I'm relieved. I have some friends who's kids have had it and they said it should go away around 6-7 weeks. The good part of the appointment is she got weighed, and she now weighs 10 lbs 2 oz!!! She's growing up so fast and so well. She's not a chunker, but she's got little rolls that are just darling.

I've been trying for about a week to get Leila to smile to no avail. Then Wednesday night Kolt comes home from work and holds her for about two minutes and he gets a HUGE smile. Little stinker. Wide open mouth, nice gummy smile. It made me cry, in part because I was jealous and partly because I'm so happy. She's such a beautiful little girl! We tried to get her on skype with her Grandma Harris so she could see it as well, but by the time we got connected she had a tummy ache from her vitamins and wouldn't do it.

Then Thursday morning I got up with her and fed her and rocked her for a while. I could tell she was in a good mood and not only did I get several smiles, I got a giggle! That has to be the most beautiful sound in the world.

I'm getting the hang of managing the house and taking care of her at the same time. Wednesday we went for a long walk with her in the snuggli, then when we got home I vacuumed, cleaned the bathroom, kitchen, and straightened up, all with her on my chest in the snuggli, and she slept! Even through the vacuuming. Later on that day I went to the grocery store. I've been afraid to do that alone but with her in the snuggli, she just slept and I was able to get all my errands done.

She's had some rough nights of sleep, and some awesome ones. I'm hoping to get more into a routine at bed time and hopefully get to the point where she goes to sleep around 11, sleeps until 3, wakes up to eat, and then sleeps til 6, eats again, and then sleeps til 9 or 10. Through the night her routine is pretty consistent, but her bed time varies depending on how upset her tummy is. Stinking vitamins.

My weight loss has seemed to stall. Everyone kept telling me not to worry about the weight gain because breast feeding just melts the pounds off. I always knew this was too good to be true, and it looks like it is. Five weeks post partum and I flipping GAINED a pound this week. Argh, I could cry. So all I was able to lose with the breast feeding train was 22 lbs. Which is great and I shouldn't complain. But I was really hoping to get down to 10-15 to lose on my own. 27 is seeming like such a huge number. Since I can't really cut calories it's going to take forever. I see myself in the pictures with Leila and I can't stand how huge I am, it's like it's ruining those precious pictures for me. We're doing family pics when we go to Idaho next month and I was hoping to be much closer to my pre pregnancy weight. Once the doctor clears me to run, I'd better get on it. Thankfully my foot no longer hurts, so I'll have no excuses.

Spoke a little too soon

This week has been a lot harder. I wouldn't say Leila has colic, but we've had some bad bouts of tummy aches and I just feel so awful for her. Wednesday night I did everything I normally do at bed time, sang to her, fed her, played calming music, rocked her, for over an hour and it didn't do any good. Kolt came to bed at midnight and took over and she was screaming for another hour before we finally got her burped enough to go to sleep. I'm hoping it's only temporary, but who knows. I've heard that colic usually sets in around three weeks, and she's four weeks now. I truly hope it's just been a few bad days and she'll be ok. I hate feeling helpless when she's screaming.

I keep trying to figure out if she has a schedule or not. Most of the days this last week she'd settle down for a long nap at 10:30 but the last two days that didn't happen. She ended up crashing around 1 and would wake up long enough to eat then go back to sleep on Thursday. This is all well and good except that it means she's not going to bed at a decent time and sleeping well at night. Friday she hardly slept at all during the day and did manage to sleep for 4 hours straight last night. It does seem that no matter what around 7 or 8 in the morning she's awake and doesn't want to sleep anymore. I need to just start getting up then and when she goes down for a nap around 10 or 11, get some more rest. It doesn't do me any good to try and get her to sleep longer so that I can when she doesn't want to.

Leila is getting bigger everyday. We ran out of the new born diapers and decided to just go on ahead and use the size 1 that we have. They're big, but they fit her. She is still in some new born clothes but is slowly graduating from them and moving on to 0-3 months. She really is such a sweet heart, I'm so lucky to be her mother!

I'm getting really excited for October! October 1st-3rd we're going to Laughlin AFB in Del Rio to visit our friends, October 6th Piper is coming to visit for several days, Kolt is getting promoted to 1st LT on October 5th I think, and then we're going home for two weeks!!! September is winding down and soon the awesomeness that will be October will be here :) That will be so much fun, not sure I can handle it all.

I have a friend here, Annie, that I wanted to brag about. She works with Kolt and is also known as Capt. Nesbit. Annie is in Maryland for a training for her upcoming deployment in November. She was out jogging the other day with some other officers and apparently one of them had a heart attack during the jog. Like full on collapse, unconscious, the real deal, heart attack. Annie, being the AMAZING nurse that she is, kept her wits about her and performed CPR on the man. He went on to have bypass surgery and is expected to make a full recovery. Thanks to Annie that man is alive today. She is truly a hero in every sense of the word and I'm so proud to know her and call her my friend.

The whole weight loss thing kind of sucks. I'm down 21 lbs so far, but I gained (can't believe I'm going to admit this) 47 during the pregnancy. So I've lost almost half of it, not really doing anything besides walking and some sit ups. I try to eat well but I'm not stressing over it yet. I'm looking forward to my 6 week appointment so I can get the green light to start running. I'm not going to lie though, the 1 mile walk I'm currently doing leaves me winded by the end of it, so it's going to be a LONG road back to a 5k. I keep meaning to look up a race in November to run, but haven't done it yet. I read on my friend Chrissy's blog that she plans on starting to run too, so maybe it's something we can do together. I will of course ask Annie and Kolt to run it with me, but they're in a league SO far ahead of me I can't hope to keep pace with them anytime soon. Eventually, I hope, but not yet.

Reflecting back on 26

I am now 27 years old. At first I was kind of having a hard time with it. I know most people would laugh at me for any kind of discomfort for a twenty something age, but I finally realized why I was struggling with it. 26 was pretty much the best year of my life. So many wonderful things happened to us this past year that I'm hard pressed to believe that it can get any better. Here's a recap of 26.

-Shortly after my 26th birthday we FINALLY got Kolt's orders and found out we were moving to Texas. We had been waiting for that information for months and we were SO happy when we finally got the news.

-Kolt's COT date got bumped up from January to October. While it was scary and hectic, this truly worked out for the best for us. Kolt met our very good friend Annie at COT and we were able to move on with our lives that much sooner.

-Kolt had PRK eye surgery and no longer needs glasses or contacts to see!

-I got pregnant. We weren't trying and that was the best part. We had been in San Antonio just over a week when I found out. One of the best days ever.

-I had a mostly worry free and easy pregnancy. After two losses in years past, I was SO grateful to have a complication free pregnancy.

-We've made some great friends. The Nesbit's, the Amport's, the Sanders', and most recently the White's. These are some of the most amazing people and I feel so fortunate to have met them and become friends with them all.

-And of course the most wonderful thing of all, Leila was born. How can you ask for anything more than the perfect child that we have?

When I look back at my birthday last year and think about all that's happened since then, it seems like a whole different life and world away. Last year we were living in a small apartment in down town Salt Lake, childless, pre-air force. I have a hard time even remembering what life was like before Kolt joined the air force.

Over all 26 in all honesty was likely the best year of my life, so far. 27 is going to bring with it new adventures and challenges. Watching Leila grow up will be amazing, sending Kolt off to Afghanistan will not. I don't like to think about that, but it's a reality we'll be facing soon enough.

My birthday ended up being really fun, courtesy of the White's. They came up from Laughlin AFB in Del Rio to visit and we just have such a blast with them. We went to dinner, then we shopping for a present for me. I was hoping to get some sort of peridot jewelry for Leila and for Kolt since they're both August babies. (Kolt argues and tells everyone it's NOT for him, but it is as much for him as Leila.) We got to the mall and shopped and walked out with a darling new outfit for Leila, a new iPhone 4 for Kolt, and nothing for me. :( There was a necklace that I did like, but I want to shop around a little more before I make the purchase. But regardless, I had a good time. We're actually going to go down to Del Rio to visit the White's in a few weeks and Kolt is going to compete with Stephen in a shooting competition. It sounds like a really fun contest and Kolt will LOVE it. It happens to fall on a 4 day weekend for Kolt, so we'll probably spend several days there. I can't wait!

Settling in

Well this week my mother went home and it's just been the three of us. I cried after she walked into the airport. Kolt looked at me and said "We'll see her again in a couple months, it's ok." I tried to explain that's not why I was crying. I mean, I will miss my mother, but I was crying because now we were officially on our own. No more moms around to do the laundry, or dishes. No moms to make three delicious meals a day. Just us.

We've actually done pretty well, although I will say our meals are struggling some what. I need to make out a menu so I don't have to stress about what to make every day, I think that will make things much easier for me. Kolt has still been home on paternity leave and we've mostly just been hanging out. However yesterday he went in to work for a meeting at 10am that I assumed would last an hour. At 1pm I get a text saying the leadership hadn't even shown up for the meeting yet and he would still be a long while. Leila and I did great though. She eats, sleeps, snuggles, repeat. Throw in an occasional diaper change and that was our day. I created her birth announcement and caught up with some friends with FB chat. It was basically like any other day before Leila came along, except I get snuggled all day now. Can't really complain about that. When Kolt came home is when she decided to get fussy lol. It actually lasted into the night and we are both dying today. Sucky thing is Kolt had to work an 8 hour shift today, Leila and I stayed in bed til 10:30. We didn't sleep much, but at least we got to relax. Now that we've gotten up and ready for the day, she's asleep, peacefully in her chair. Little stinker.

My birthday is tomorrow and at the moment, as far as I know, there are zero plans in the works. I had initially wanted to do a spa day, but none of my friends can go and I don't want to do it alone, so I'm back to square one. I've been debating asking a friend to babysit so Kolt and I could go out to dinner....but I'm not sure I can bear it. I've left Leila for an hour before but not any longer than that. I know she'd be fine and I'd be fine, but I wonder whether or not I'd actually be able to enjoy the night out because I'd be stressing about her. We'll see what Kolt comes up with but I kind of have a feeling 27 will be pretty uneventful. He unexpectedly had to go back to work yesterday and today, so any time he may have used is gone. But considering I got the BEST present ever this year, I can't really complain :)

We got Leila's new born pictures done this week. She is such a beautiful child. It's hard to see how much she's grown when I'm around her all the time but comparing her 3 day old pics to her 2.5 week pics, I can really tell how big she's getting!