Growing, growing...

My new favorite thing is to watch Hayden eat. He has developed this amazing independence which will not allow me to feed him anything other than yogurt or the occasional apple sauce for breakfast. All other meals are nearly impossible to get through without a spoon in his wee little hand. Meal times are now mess times and require more constant bathing, but I love it! He has gone from this a baby to this assertive, confident little boy who wants to do things for himself. He loves the spoon, and requires it for all food, even bread. However, when eating rice he holds the spoon in one hand and eats his rice with the other hand. I love this developmental stage and I love watching him be so proud of himself when he can do it all on his own.

He is also starting to enjoy coloring. He does pretend to eat the crayon about every 30 seconds so that I'll say excitedly, "Don't do it!". Then he giggles, colors a little more and then repeats the process. I love watching his little hands move, and the fascination on his face when he's created something. I'm not one of those parents that sees his first drawing and declares him Picasso, but I gotta tell ya...it melts my heart to see little scribbles on a piece of paper courtesy of my very own probably-left-handed baby boy.

He is also terrible smitten with his dog as of late. He wants to hug him and hold him and lay on him, none of which are much fun for Oscar. He takes it in stride, but I find myself having to separate them at least once a day by putting Oscar on the other side of the baby gate to get a break. Hayden means well but sometimes Oscar can't take all the poking, prodding and pulling. He's a good sport.

Well life seems to be returning to normal around here. My birthday was this past week and I got to celebrate on Friday, thanks to Parents' Night Out at the CDC. We dropped the kids off at 6:30 and headed to dinner at Habanero's. All my friends were there, the food was great and the margaritas were just as I remember them...from two years ago. We haven't been in a loooooong time and the last time we went I was still nursing Hayden, and the times before that I was pregnant. So I haven't had a Habanero's margarita since my birthday party in 2008.

This weekend Hayden and I finally got a break from sickness and too much to do, and we just hung out together. We still have some stuffy noses, but it was nice to just relax, sleep in and bum around the house. Today we left to get gas, groceries and lunch and I finally tackled my mess of a bedroom while Hayden took his afternoon nap. We seem to be back on his schedule of 2 two-hour naps and 11-12 hours a night, along with meals and snacks and playing, he is enjoying his normal routine. But not as much as I am!

We are still struggling with the issue of childcare for my job. My friend Cassandra is watching him at home still, but I have a pretty full schedule in March so we've been working on other options. None of them seem to be panning out yet but I'm not giving up hope!

This week will hopefully be a normal one for us. After work on Friday we're loading up three cars full of girls and kids and heading to Belgium for the weekend. Let's hope for good weather, and at least the end to snow for a bit!

Finally, a normal and lazy weekend for us. We really needed it after our two weeks of craziness. We got home Friday afternoon and did NOTHING. We just hung out around the house, unpacked a bit and got settled back into home life. Saturday was a quick trip to the commissary which turned into a long one. They had a lot of bulk items out and veggies on sale, so I stocked up for our next round of packages for Jay. Then we took a ride through the car wash to get off two weeks worth of snow and salt. Hayden is fascinated by the car wash, so we had a blast. It's been a challenge to get him back on track but for now I'm just concerned with getting him back to 100% healthy and then we'll work on sleeping like he used to!

Today we were up early and had to run to the PX for a few things. Our mouse stopped working so I bought a replacement, only to get home and find that it was working again! So now at least I have a backup. We made dinner and watched movies and had a few emails from Jay, not bad for a valentines day at home!

On our last night in the hotel, I let Hayden run amok and he took full advantage of it! He turned the bidet on and let it run, and pulled all the toilet paper off the roll so he could play with the empty roll. He looks like such a big boy with all of those teeth!

So maybe it was pinkeye, maybe it was a viral infection. Either way, it also produced hives on Monday and kept Hayden out of the CDC on Tuesday. So we made a trip to Schweinfurt on Monday to drop him off at Megan's for the night. Aka, my first night away from my baby boy. Also my first night without baby, husband or dog since April 2008. I handled it, I won't say well but I made it. Now he has a wee baby cough, and it took us 4 hours to make our 2-hour trip today. But we are all home, including Oscar, and training is over. It went well, at least! I have never been so happy to see a dirty house...

Some new ones!

Quick recap

The short of this week is that I broke a shoe, thought I lost my ID twice, got lost multiple times, broke my keyboard andgot very little sleep. I also replaced said shoes, did NOT lose my ID at all, finally found my way and got extra snuggles with Hayden. Hayden had a slight fever, popped through two more teeth, locked my cell phone, threw up six times in two days this weekend, and woke up with what I thought was pinkeye today. He also learned to blow kisses, had a blast at daycare, hasn't thrown up today, and made me two delightful pieces of artwork at school.

A two-week course with a baby in a hotel is not easy, but we are making it through. My instructors and the staff at the CDC are extremely helpful and understanding of our situation, and really what matters is that Hayden is doing very well and my class is going well. We are one week down and one to go, we can do this! Today Hayden had some yucky stuff in his eyes so we went to the hospital to check it out. Since our clinic isn't open on the weekends, we have few options but Leopoldina is a good hospital. Typically we're in and out in no time, but today we were there for three hours. It's not pinkeye, thankfully, and is hopefully just part of his little cold.

Tonight is laundry, packing, cleaning and hanging out with my little buddy. We are already looking forward to next weekend!

A good day

There are good days and bad days during a deployment. Yesterday appeared to be a bad one. Nothing earth-shattering, just one of those days. I left my house at 10:15am and it takes about 12 minutes to get to work. So imagine my surprise when I was still sitting at the gate to get on post at 10:55 am. I finally got through the lights, the gate and was headed to work when I realized there was NO parking. Anywhere. Not close to, not far away from the bank. Not ANYWHERE. I drove around post for another 10 minutes before I finally found a spot outside of a maintenance bay that's about a 4 minute walk from the bank. Of all days, this is when I decided not to be a slave to the snow and wear cute shoes. An unfortunate decision, since I had to walk four minutes in the snow to get to work. And it turned out to be unfortunate again when that afternoon I had to walk QUICKLY to my car to avoid towing. It may have been an idle threat from the MPs, but I definitely did not need to deal with that. I had a parking ticket, which we don't pay for if it's on post; it just goes to our commander. I called Staff Duty to give them a heads up on the ticket, and to protest its validity. Situation is as of yet unresolved.

It had been a long day, but I did have a fun evening to look forward to. I made a cheesecake Monday night and before I left for work, I put a spinach lasagne in the crock pot. I came home to a delightful smelling stairwell and a silly baby boy. A few girls from work came over and Erica brought a fabulous strawberry-spinach salad with her homemade dressing, and we were in heaven. After dinner we played a few rounds of Scattergories with some hilarious results, and started to teach some of the girls to play Spades. Our game was interrupted by an unexpected phone call from Jay, which was awesome! I hadn't talked to him in a week or so, and it was really nice to hear his voice. Hayden woke up to play with the girls for a few minutes, and was in a super snuggly mood. It's amazing how quickly a day can turn around thanks to good friends, great food and a wonderful family.