Things on the brain...

I can't express how excited I am right now. Tonight will start Daniel's 1 week 2 day Christmas vacation! Tomorrow night is his Christmas party (maybe we'll win something good!) Sunday morning we fly off into the great blue yonder headed to Atlanta!!! I can't wait to see our families and hug my parents. Mostly I can't wait for them to see Eli. He was about 6 months old the last time they saw him! It's unreal how much he's grown!!! He's a little man now. I've been mentally preparing for what all we will need for the plane ride and physically preparing for everything else. Mostly I just want my house to be clean for when we come home. I hate coming home to a dirty house.

Our British dryer is a lot slower and smaller than American ones that we are used to. It takes almost twice as long to dry clothes which makes me hate doing laundry even more than I already do. I've literally done the bare minimum for the past couple weeks so I am trying to get caught up so we will at least have fresh underwear to take with us. ;) I always say I won't get behind on my laundry again but every 3 weeks or so I spend days washing, drying and folding everything we own. We got a letter from the OB stating that we are pregnant so now that we have two children we can get on the list for base housing!! Woo-Hoo!!! (there are American dryers in the base housing if you're wandering about the connection here) My biggest hope now is that we can get a house before Daniel deploys or at least a date for when one will become available after he does deploy. If it isn't too long after he deploys Eli and I will stay here and get everything moved in (not necessarily unpacked) before we head back to the states.

I also have been getting excited that this baby is going to be a summer baby! I absolutely hated winter maternity clothes. They were bulky and I prefer wearing dresses as often as I can anyway. I will be taking Eli to the pool/lake as much as possible and I'll have a nice little glow... I was a gross, pasty ghost with Eli. My theory is that being tan and fat is better than opaque and fat.

Another thing I'm getting excited about is that I'm pretty close to the weight I was when I first found out I was pregnant with Eli. However, I don't look like I did. My weight is distributed in places it wasn't before. I've always had a belly pooch and I feel like it's already started growing?! I know that people say you show earlier with 2nd babies but really? I'm only like 5 weeks. Not cool. One thing I have decided about this pregnancy is that I will not eat whatever I want like I did with Eli... I would literally eat like 6 cupcakes or 2 cheeseburgers, large fry and coke from McDonald's... or maybe all of it together. I gained about 56 pounds, what women with multiples gain. I was knocking on 200's door. How sad.

Anyway, all this has just been on my mind. Sorry for the all about me post! Just to make it worth your while, here is Eli Tuesday night around 10 fighting sleep. He kept putting this hoodie over his head and crawling around... He only bumped into 1 or 2 things!

Two more to go...

This past Saturday we had Eli's Christmas since we are leaving this Sunday to go home to Alabama! We I wanted to make sure that Eli got to play with his toys all week instead of waiting until this Saturday giving him only 1 day to play with all his new and amazing goodies. That morning Eli woke us around 8 and we laid in bed and snuggled and tickled and wrestled around until we were all ready to get up. I ran into the living room to turn on the Christmas tree lights and pull out the video camera to get Eli's sweet expression as he noticed all the toys that weren't there the night before. I would love to post the video on here of him as he kicked his way out of his daddy's arms and crawled as fast as he could to his Mickey Mouse poking out of his stocking. Touching one toy and the next, smiling in all his sweet baby Christmas glory. I really would. But smart Mommy didn't push the record button. What... an idiot.

It truly was how I had imagined it. And as a new mommy, a lot of things I imagine just aren't so. This was perfect. I still can't get over it... Oh well. I will never forget it whether or not it's recorded on video, it's in my crazy brain.

Eli got lots of great new things. He did a great job unwrapping presents. We only wrapped 3 and had the rest sitting out, thank goodness. It took about 30 minutes just to get those couple toys all out of their high security cardboard boxes. Eli didn't mind. He pushes his little trucks around, loved on his Mickey Mouse, tried his little hand at his new xylophone and knocked down his new set of stacking and nesting blocks.

Finally we introduced Eli to the greatest thing this child has ever known: Cozy Coupe. Daniel and I both had one as children and now that they have a floorboard he can sit in it without falling out! We have pushed that child around our house I know a million times since Saturday morning. He loves it! I make "car noises" as we travel through the house and he has started picking up on it and making them himself. One thing I didn't think through was that I am the only one here during the day to push him around... Gets a little boring and repetitive, and as soon as I stop he gets upset. But this is definitely what I wanted. I knew he would love it and he does.

Needless to say Eli had a wonderful 1st Christmas. Now we have two more, one and each of our parents' house. Here are a few pictures from our Christmas morning!

(please excuse his wild hair and runny nose!)

Mommy's Purchase

That's right... you guessed it... Mommy bought a pregnancy test.

Y'all, I'm not going to lie... As soon as Eli started that crazy melt down and scary transformation into Monster Baby, I wanted to cry too. As the older man checked me out with Eli STILL crying I know he was praying that I wouldn't return to his line with two kids!

However, I am so excited! I am shocked and excited. It feels just like it did when I found out I was pregnant with Eli except I have him to keep me entertained and love while we are waiting on the new baby. Also during this pregnancy I will be living at home (in Alabama) with my family since Daniel is deploying for 6 months in April. Actually during my pregnancy and the birth I will be at home. This is going to be a great chance for Eli to get to spend time with all of our families and for them to enjoy him. Who knows when we will be back to the states after we come back to the UK with two babies!?

Daniel won't be home form his deployment until a month or so after the baby is born.

I'm so sad that he is going to miss it, but I know it could be worse... he could be deployed for a year...

I'm trying not to think about that right now though...

I'm thinking about how excited I am to have two babies to love on. Two sweet faces that will melt my heart when I watch them sleep. I'm also thinking about Eli and how he is going to react to a baby coming home with us!

This is going to be fun/wild/crazy/scary!

A Scary Story...

This is a scary story about a mommy who ventured out today with her sweet angel baby. Now this mommy and her baby do go out on their own on regular occasion but this particular day had something up its sleeve. Mommy had to go to the BX today because there was something she NEEDED to buy. She also bought a couple of the Yankee Candles that smell like sugar cookies. But that's beside the point.

Mommy was walking toward the isle that housed her needed purchase when all of a sudden the sweet angel baby turned into a FEROCIOUS, TERRIFYING BEAST that mommy had never before seen in public. She didn't know what to do! She panicked! She pulled out a bottle- NO! She whipped out a toy-NO! She handed the baby treats-NO! Mommy had no choice but to "Keep Calm and Carry On."Mommy walked from the isle to the checkout line with lots of nasty stares from those who passed her by. Apparently they had never been in public with a child before.

Mommy bundled up her baby and trudged in the ice, wind and cold to her car that was parked 3 football field's lengths away. Once in the car, sweet angel baby slowly began to make his return as he drifted off into dreamland. Mommy thought about the purchase she made and the events of that slow 30 minutes and was overwhelmed with exhaustion and self-doubt...

What was so important for Mommy to purchase? Guess that's for another day...

*Surprises*

Can someone please tell me that I am not the only person in the world who hates surprises?? OK, let me rephrase that... If I know that I have a surprise coming, I hate it (the anticipation). HATE. I would rather not know that there is anything coming my way. Daniel has received birthday presents a week in advance just because I had already bought it and couldn't stand the wait any longer than it took me to get home from the store and wrap the gift. If we don't discuss that he has already bought me something for Christmas or whatever the occasion, it doesn't bother me. But if he tells me that he has something already or is thinking about it, I will drive him crazy with questions of yes or no nature, colors, sizes, shapes, brand, material... Usually he gets extremely irritated and tells me and I'm all happy knowing and he's pissed from the 20 million questions he's been bombarded with.

I hope that as Eli gets older I get better with surprises. I'm so excited about Christmas this year just because of him. I know he probably won't care for longer than 5 minutes about the toys we got him, but I can't wait! Thankfully for me, we are going home to Alabama for Christmas on the 19th so we will be doing our Christmas here before then. Maybe this weekend so he will have time to enjoy the new toys for a week? I can only hope! We'll see what the one who does love surprises thinks...

My little helper...

I have a little helper. He loves to help his mommy do all sorts of housework like unfolding folding laundry, unloading the dishwasher (sometimes he doesn't realize that I'm trying to load it), but his favorite thing to do is start the washing machine. He crawls into our laundry closet and pulls himself to stand on the washer and turns the dial. He would do this all day if I let him. Sometimes if I forget to shut the door he crawls in there (even in the dark) and just turns that little dial. I finally snapped him in the action.

That little finger is always pointing at something

Happiness...

Does happiness ever surprise anyone but me? Sometimes it just hits me, and I realize that I'm happy. For no reason. It's weird. Right now I'm just sitting at the table watching Eli eat his banana and some strawberry jam toast while listening to the Imagination Movers, but I feel like a little kid of Christmas morning. Eli makes most days like that... some, not so much.

Last Tuesday we sat in the hospital ER for 3 hours because we couldn't get an appointment with Peds and he was so good. I was so proud for all of the other sniffling, aching, nauseous patients to see how well behaved my sick little man was. He flirted and talked at everyone who would pay him any attention. He also put on a show for the Dr... A pitiful one. Apparently he wanted the good medication and he knew just how to get them. He turned on those big, sad, brown puppy dog eyes and just sat in my lap with his head on my chest. His work paid off pretty well, Eli got the yummy pink medicine that has to be refrigerated. That afternoon we went home and napped for a long enough time to get up the next morning for our Thanksgiving in Italy.

It's amazing how happiness can come from something someone so small and the little things they do... even if it is just being a sweet, sick baby.

Now I have to go change this babies' clothes. The mashed up bananas on his crotch just aren't going to work for us today.