18 month check-up.

So apparently I confused my WIC appointment with Lili's check up...well mostly I thought the date of my WIC appointment was Lili's check up and totally forgot I go back to WIC this month. Anywho, she was such a big girl! She got one shot, which she whimpered for a second when she was first pricked, then she just stared at the nurse. When the doctor was in there, she had set her oto/ophthalmoscope next to her and Lili on the cot and was using her stethoscope to listen to Lili's heart and lungs. Well she had the ear piece on it, ready to look in Lilian's ears when Lili picked it up and put it to her ears herself! She started alternating between her ears while Dr. Bagnall was still listening with her stethoscope. It was too funny that she actually remembered where that goes, AND Dr. said that's advanced for her age by about 6 months. I also mentioned how she likes to help me put away dishes and actually knows what goes where and she said that's advanced too. Normally kids don't do that until about 2-2 1/2 years old! I was one proud Momma walking out of that office today. Now here's her measurements. I have a blog on my myspace that I updated every appointment, but haven't done it since her 12 month check up so I'll kinda just copy/paste it here for whoever wants to see how she's growing (probably mostly family):

May 6th, 2010 [18 months, 1 day]
Weight: 22lbs 1.5ozs (10th-25th percentile)
Length: 31.75 inches (50th percentile)
Head: 47.75cm (75th-90th percentile)

February 8th, 2010 [15 months, 3 days] (apparently blogger doesn't have underline?)
Weight: 21lbs 3ozs (25th percentile)
Length: 30.5 inches (50th percentile)
Head: 47 cm (75th-90th percentile....I'm not even going to bother doing the conversion to inches)

November 10th, 2009 [12 months, 5 days]
Weight: 20lbs 5ozs (25th-50th percentile)
Length: 30 inches (75th-90th percentile)
Head: 18.31 inches (they gave me inches this time!!! lol 75th-90th percentile)

August 10th, 2009 [9 months, 5 days]
Weight: 18lbs 10ozs (50th percentile)
Length: 28 3/4 inches (80th percentile...she's gonna be a tall one!)
Head: 46 cm=which is just a tad over 18 inches (95th percentile...back to a bobble head lol)

June 8th, 2009 [7 months, 3 days]
Weight: 17lbs 10ozs (50th percentile)
Length: 27inches (75th percentile)
Head: 17 1/2inches (75th percentile)

April 24th, 2009 [5 months, 2 weeks, 5 days]
Weight: 16lbs 2ozs (50th percentile)
Length: 26 inches (75th percentile)
Head: 17 inches (75th percentile)

March 10th, 2009 [4 months, 5 days]we missed her 2 month due to out of town & didn't get caught up again until 9mo
Weight: 14lbs 6ozs (75th percentile)
Length: 24 3/4 inches (75th percentile)
Head: 16 3/4 inches (90th percentile)


November 5th, 2008 [birth]
Weight: 7lbs 2.3 ozs
Length: 20 1/4 inches
Head: Not sure, no one ever told me/wrote down that one


She clearly isn't gaining weight very fast anymore, but they don't seem concerned about it. "Tall and skinny" is usually what she says about that so until they worry, I won't worry.

So just a funny little note about today...Lili is wearing this cute little sundress and had her flip flops on. She was following the nurse back to the room and as we rounded the last corner to the hall our room was down, she trips...twice. I was holding her hand so I just pulled a little to help her up each time since she usually gets distracted and takes forever. WELL she kinda stumbled a bit and I bent down to pick her up...to find her diaper around her ankles...I wish I had my camera out and on at that moment. It was too funny....until during the time we waited for the Doctor to come in after the nurse got her vitals she decided to explode in her fresh clean diaper.

Her cute little dress. It's a halter! :)





















And her crazy woman hair. Half straight, half curly haha.

18 months!

I cannot believe baby girl is 18 months old today! Where has the time gone??? All I know is it has been a fun, amazing, happy 18 months. It's so fun to watch your babies develop personalities and independence. And let me tell you, Lili has a lot of both. My child is crazy, she does the weirdest things and we are always laughing at her because of it. But all too soon, she has a lot of the independence thing. She's in the climbing phase, trying to climb on the couch all by herself. Sometimes she gets frustrated and accepts help, other times if you help her she'll jump back down and try again. She also refuses to let me brush her teeth, she wants to do it. Which is cute and perfectly fine, as long as I get in there at one point to make sure each tooth is pearly white since she doesn't do it properly yet.
She also likes to throw things away now. I didn't even know she knew what to do with her wrapper one day until I saw her walking to the kitchen with it and then heard a cupboard slam shut. I went to go see what she was getting into, saw she didn't have the wrapper anymore, then started checking her favorite cupboards. It wasn't anywhere! So I checked the cupboard with the trash can and sure enough, her wrapper was in the trash! So now, I can tell her to throw something away and she does it! Very helpful with her own dirty diapers too haha.

She also will voluntarily lay down for me to change her--sometimes. A couple of days ago she did it every time I asked for a few days, but not at all yesterday. Still, it's better than her running away lol. She even holds her feet up for me now.

She also LOVES to help me put away the dishes from the dishwasher. She hears me open it and comes running. Of course I quickly get the silverware and any knives out of there first, but then she puts away everything in the lower cupboards, the drawers if I open them for her and she hands me the things that go up high. And she knows which ones those are, she's never tried putting the plates/bowls/etc away, just handed them to me. She knows when we say to put something away/back, that she puts it where she got it from...or at least tries to lol.


Lilian even likes to help me put clothes in the washer....now if only I could get her to FOLD them instead of destroying them....

She loves to dance, she'll start busting a move to just about any song haha. Her vocabulary consists of "juice", "Georgia", "Shoe", "Dada", "Bye", "Ow", "Kiki" for cat, "Cracker" and "cheese" while she's giving a cheesey smile...she tried "coat" the other day and we are working on thank you--which sometimes we get something that sounds similar, or similar to "thanks" lol. We get close to saying "dinner" too. She knows what everything is to, they aren't just words she says. I ask her where her juice is, she gets her sippy cup. If I ask "do you want to go bye-bye?" she goes and gets her shoes. The only one she relates something to that she shouldn't is Georgia. Not only is Georgia Auntie Courtney's dog, but it's Auntie Courtney herself lol.

["Cheese"...she even does it when brushing her teeth lol]

So that's my little monster for now. Her check up isn't until the 13th, so I'll post her measurements then. :)

Bored.

So I thought I'd update again...instead of a month from now haha. Adam should be home from JRTC sometime next week. I finally dropped off the application and deposit fees at the new apartment today. Not really looking forward to this at all but whatever. We gotta do what we gotta do. The guys are gonna hate me though (Adam and whoever we scrounge up to help move big stuff). The apartment is on the third floor. Hehehe. Oh well, I need a damn balcony. I can't stand feeling so trapped in my own home. Especially since our apartment is one of those INSIDE the building. I need to have the option to step out side for a quick second and none of the other apartments they had open had a balcony. So that's that. I should hear back in a few days about the application approval. Then we Adam gets home we can send in his app and be done with it until moving day. I hate that we are downsizing...it's a good thing there is a storage unit literally across the street that offers a military discount AND a discount for leasing with these apartments (well the lady in the leasing off said we get the double, I need to call and find out for sure). We'll put our bed frame/head board/foot board in there, possibly Lilian's changing table that I now use as a storage shelf for her extra blankets and towels, the microwave since the apartment has one built in over the stove...one of the bathroom sets, the tons of extra blankets we have since it'll be Summer soon, and since it's across the street I'm hoping to convince Adam to store his gear in there and he can go there to get things out if he needs to. We'll see how that goes. So that's the moving stuff.

Lilian has another ear infection. This time just the left ear and not as bad. Again, she didn't tug on her ear, it was the loss of appetite that clued me in. The after hours doctor told me that it probably wasn't an ear infection since not eating isn't one of the signs (coughBULLSHITcough). She also decided to lecture me on how ear infections really aren't that bad, and when she was a kid (she's the oldest pediatrician in Colorado Springs, so she says) they didn't even treat ear infections unless they started heading towards the brain. Lovely right? I called first thing Monday morning (I had called on Saturday thinking it was Friday still) and got her in. And I was right. I hate how doctors think they know everything. Even after I tell them that the last time she had a loss of appetite she ended up having a double ear infection. So now we are taking the yummy pink Amoxicilian twice a day, but I spilled some this morning (apparently I don't know how to close lids all the way) so on Monday I'll call again and see what they say about that since I know I spilled enough to not last the full 10 days she's supposed to be taking it.

So not only am I super excited about Adam coming home next week (hopefully) but Hanson is supposed to be announcing their tour dates too. I'm hoping they come to Denver again. The Denver crowd isn't as good as every other show I've been to so I wouldn't blame them. And hopefully I have the money to go...I might have to go by myself to, but I don't care. I can always make friends, the fan club members are always so sweet and will make plans to meet up with other members. :)

Ugh

Hubby is gone til the end of April...not even for his own benefit either. His brigade is helping their sister brigade train for their Afghanistan deployment at Fort Polk in Louisiana...the other guys (who are idiots btw...they fall asleep on guard duty. Nice to know that's what's protecting bases overseas right?) didn't want to use the guys who train every other brigade from Fort Polk. So that leaves us home alone for about 3 weeks, he left the day after Easter.

On top of that, we are moving. Now. Just to turn around and move again in December. We got in trouble for having dogs (I told them I was dog sitting for friends who are out of town....but since they are puppies I technically can't even do that. And people have apparently been complaining because Cairo is a whine baby.) But also the crime rate just keeps getting worse. Our lease is up anyway and we were debating on moving, but the dog situation and the crime going on, we are just going to move somewhere super cheap and deal with that until December. The downfall to this going on right now is that because Adam was only going to be gone for 3ish weeks, and I'm on all of our accounts so I can take care of things, we didn't get power of attorney. So that's an issue as far as putting in HIS applications and what not for apartments. But this one we are looking at basically said "I don't want to know" if I take it home and have "Adam" sign it. So we'll see what I do with that. I could wait, but do I want to? Idk yet. AND they don't have a breed OR age restriction for the dogs! Just a weight limit which Cairo will surpass in no time, but she said since we wont be there that long and as long as he isn't a turd, there shouldn't be a problem with it. So yay! We've looked into this place before, but for the 1 bedrooms. I'm gonna try tomorrow to look at a 2 bed...these apartments are inside a locked building and have AC which my apartment now doesn't have. AND it's super cheap. $499 a month before pet rents and utilities we pay to them. Our apartment now is $735 before all of that.

So kinda excited, but I HATE moving....and just the thought of moving next month, then again in December is making me stressed already.

Fail!

Ok well maybe not fail as in a F but yea...in my EMS class you have to get an overall of 80% in the class to take your ride-along and hospital clinical rotation. My teacher averaged it out to not missing more than 10 on 3 tests. Well guess what, I've miss more than 10 on my first 3 tests...my lowest score was a 72% and my highest 78%. Still a C...but not what I need to "pass". My teacher said he will work with the 78% one since I do well with the hands-on labs, but I had to pass the next test (which is tomorrow). Normally I'm not a bad test taker (unless it was math class). But you know how normal, multiple-choice tests are...you look at your answer options and if you know it, you know it right away and if you have to think about it, usually you don't know it. Now with these tests, there are so many "trick" questions. Ugh I guess trick questions really aren't the right thing to call them...there are so many steps in EMS and they vary depending on the patient and the nature of the call. So for these tests you do have to think about the answers. But if you think too much, you'll most likely get it wrong. So where do you draw the line?

It also doesn't help that I go once a week. Sundays from 9 a.m.-6 p.m. It's a long class, it doesn't feel that long and it was a good deal with the assumption I would have a job by now...buuuuuuut my teacher teaches the chapters on power point...and doesn't do a lot of class interaction. Most teachers will do things like "why do you think this...?" before elaborating. He doesn't. He'll answer our questions and he's really cool and really nice, I just don't think he's a good teacher. This isn't just me, a few of his classes have only had like 10 students out of 30 pass....

So here is what my plan is. I hate saying it,but for this term I give up. I'm going to keep going of course (the class is already paid for!), keep attempting to learn, but I'm not going to fret over the tests. I am going to take the class next term, more days a week with a different instructor. I don't learn by reading a text book, and I don't learn by the teacher zooming through a power point. Seriously, we do like 5 chapters a day and then test on it the following Sunday. I'm just going to look at it as extra practice. It's not that I can't do these things, this guy's tests aren't easy. PLUS I have to switch from the nursing side of health care to the EMS side, and trust me, they are so different! And I'm trying to not get too discouraged. It's hard though when financially I need to be working (which I kinda sorta am. I have agreed to babysit a friend's 5 year old son, but his mom works odd hours so it's not every day...they agreed to pay me $100 a week and they bring him here and bring some food with him...so I'm not wasting gas and food. I've only done it one day so far so we'll see how it goes.)

EMS is something I really want to do! I already love this career and I haven't even gone out there and done it yet. I can already see the rewards and I enjoy the chaos in my work day that I will be. Just pretending with manikins is a slight rush. I just can't retain the information for tests when a ton is being crammed into my head one day a week. AND I've always been horrible at studying. :(

Upcoming months...Wow I write too much haha.

As I said in the last post, Adam reclassed. He discovered his orders already posted on his AKO account and here is the verdict on the new duty station (as of now...and if you haven't been keeping up on my FB lol): Fort Bliss, Texas with a reporting date of December 20th 2010. Of course it isn't one of the four on his wish list but whatever. We didn't get our hopes up about any of those for this reason. So where in Texas is Fort Bliss? El Paso....Where is El Paso? The corner of Texas. Which corner? Where New Mexico AND Mexico meet. At first we thought "ok cool, we can venture into Mexico now"...well my mother decided to tell me she just so happens to be in El Paso right now and that it is not a good place. From what I've been told, Juarez, Mexico (the biggest city closest to the American border where we will be) is a horrible city. Which then reminded me that lots of illegal Mexicans like to smuggle drugs and their kids in their rectum (ok well maybe not their kids in their rectum...but I hear they get pretty creative when smuggling these days lol) into our country. Now I'm not against Mexicans in anyway shape or form...unless you are here illegally. Anyway, so I can only assume the crime rate is probably somewhat high and I'm probably going to have to brush up on my Spanish just to live in my own country. Before we heard all that (in the hype of our excitement to finally know where we are going--or might be, you never know with the military) we looked up the BAH rates and apartments. WTF? Our BAH is almost $100 less AND all the apartments within the BAH range are either ghetto as all ghetto can be OR it will take the entire BAH (maybe even more) just for RENT. Not including electric and what not. And I don't do good with a lot of humidity so my AC will be running constantly. So we decided to go for base housing. We looked at the Fort Bliss website. From the pictures, that base is 10837401374019374 times better than Fort Carson. All but two of their "neighborhoods" are nicer than what we have here. Their "icky" ones are just the same as the normal ones here, which really aren't THAT. So we were happy about that. Plus they are opening a REAL shopping mall on post in the fall. No mini-mall for me!! So we got really excited. Then we started hearing all the bad things about El Paso and Juarez and were anxious to get on the waiting list for military housing. So today I called to see how to do that. Apparently not only do you need the duty orders stating you are going to be stationed at Fort Bliss, you have to have some leave form too. I'm assuming this is the leave Adam gets between the time he leaves Fort Carson and his reporting date at Fort Bliss he gets to move. So now we can't even get on the waiting list until it's practically moving time. BUT THEN they decide to tell me that the waiting list is 12-18 MONTHS! Freakin fantastic right? We get to take our daughter and live in the Bronx of Texas until they decide to give us a place to live in military housing.

But before we get to move, Adam gets to go to AIT for 2 months starting August 13th. The dumbass in retention told him 2 weeks, we found that hard to believe anyway, but it was a nice thought. I'm thinking of going home for a week or two the beginning of October to visit and go to a Twilight convention with a friend. I should be able to squeeze that in financially with Adam being gone. But we'll see. I need to look into how this whole PCSing thing works. Do we pay then get reimbursed? Or do they pay off the bat? So many things to figure out. First is first though, Adam leaves for JRTC in April for 3 weeks. I think he leaves the day after Easter? Ugh too much time apart already.

On a good note though, Lili's face is already healed. Actually it only took about a week to be almost gone! It's just a little red on her cheek area still but no more scabs. I don't think she'll have scars, but maybe I should get some Mederma anyway?

Lili's firt BIG boo-boo and some other updates...

So it's been a while since I wrote on here. I'll start with the most recent and big thing that happened. Lili's first ER trip for a boo-boo. Most of you have seen the pictures on Facebook. It was horrible. It still makes my stomach queasy remembering it. She and I had been driving around in the Focus all day (yes, I've been driving it by myself. I'm much better at it without Adam lol, but we'll get to that later). We were getting ready to go grocery shopping. We had just gotten home from getting the Expedition fixed so all of us were outside. Adam wanted to take the Expedition to make sure it was running good again but he needed to clear out his gear and some trash. Since we weren't leaving right away I put Lilian on the back seat of the Expedition to let her play around instead of making her sit strapped in her carseat. I do that all the time. I shut the door and turned back to the focus to get her diaper bag. Then I turned again to the Expedition and opened the door. I have no idea where my head was. I always check to make sure she isn't near the door. Always. But this one time, I didn't. And she was leaning against it. I think I had been talking to Adam so I wasn't looking at the door when I opened it, and by the time I turned to put the bag in there, Lilian was already halfway to the ground. I screamed before she even hit the pavement and had her flipped over checking her out before she could even start crying. I was expecting at least one laceration that would need stitches. Thankfully I could just tell it was a little bit of road rash, but I told Adam we needed to go to the ER to make sure she didn't have a concussion. I jumped in the back seat while he moved everything lying on the ground to the Focus and we left. I didn't even grab my purse and we were heading to the military hospital. I knew they would let me on post though, once they saw Lilian. And I was right. Lili had been crying the whole time, it wasn't a bloody murder scream either, which also surprised me. But then she tried falling asleep and that's finally when the little EMS training kicked in and I knew I needed to keep her awake. She tried so hard to sleep but we managed to stay awake. We got to the ER, got her admitted, they cleaned the dirt and bits of pavement off her face and got her triaged. When she finally got looked at, it was literally only long enough for the doctor to look at her eyes, ears and nose and ask the questions about lose of consciousness and vomiting. That's the only part of the look-over that comforted me. If I had stayed calm when it first happened, I would have realized she probably didn't have a concussion. But better safe than sorry and I would have taken her anyway. She's much better now. This happened on March 1st, she's still got road rash on her face, and a black eye that showed up later on. But she's normal and active and happy. :)

So that was that. Her first ER trip for an injury. Not fun. But on other good news, I've been driving the Focus by myself! :) As I said before, I've been doing a bit better without Adam in the car but I still have my moments. Monday I stalled a bunch, but only in like parking lots and twice going on post. Tuesday I didn't stall at all but was having a rough day shifting. No idea what was going on but I kept putting it in the wrong gear!

Still working on finding a job. Helzberg hasn't called me back, but I am still working on a YMCA interview I did and I had another one on Tuesday at a different YMCA location. I have a good feeling about that one, though I'd rather work at the first one. It's closer and a much nicer facility. But I will take what I can get for now!

For those of you who don't know, Adam has re-enlisted. But he chose to re-class (change his MOS/job) so we don't get much of a say in PCSing (moving...sorry Military is all code talk lol). We were surprised to find out he got a wishlist so hopefully they'll take that into some consideration. He got to choose four locations and he chose Fort Lewis, WA to be close to my family; Fort Bragg, NC which is close to his parents; Fort Sill, OK which is where his AIT (job training/school) is; and of course Fort Shafter, HI....of course I'm rooting for Hawaii but financially we'd benefit more from Fort Bragg. We plan on at least renting a house when we move next and I started looking at housing in those 4 areas, assuming we'd get one of them. Fort Bragg's BAH is $1065 a month and their housing is like $800-900 for decent houses. So we'll see, he goes to AIT for two weeks starting August 13th then after that we move. His re-enlistment ceremony is next week and we are hoping they'll give him his new duty orders soon so we can start planning this move. I'm excited to get out of Colorado. Not happy about leaving the like 2 friends we have here, but we can always visit each other. :)