New Years Eve!!!

Wowwwww another year has come and gone and I would like to think that we rocked it!! I cannot believe how fast time actually went for us. This time last year Mimi and I were snowed in, I was pregnant and exhausted every second and we sat in the basement of the house watching New Yrs Eve fireworks and concerts on TV and by 11.30pm I was in bed asleep haha. Here we are a year later and Mimi and I are together again as she has been staying with us for the past week. Mr Soldier is home, we have a BEAUTIFUL Baby Girl and we are again keeping celebrations low key tonight as we have to be at the airport earlyyyyyy in the morning and I do NOT want to travel hungover with a baby! I hope you all have a crazy night for us though and I can live vicariously through you all haha.

Florida Pics!

Jacksonville was beautiful!



Tailgating.....literally! It was 33 degrees with 20 mph winds and I have about ten layers on under that coat!

If I thought it was cold can you imagine trying to adjust from Baghdad temperatures?!!

 The Skins won in overtime!! Woop Woop!!!!

Freezinggggg but happy : )

 

All in all, we had a great few days away and I loved seeing a football game up close for the first time. This was our first time without Baby Girl and whilst we thought we would go out on dates etc instead we ordered room service and were in bed asleep by 7.30pm both nights haha. Gosh we are such married parents now! I loved it though and wouldn't have it any other way <3

Laundry Fairy

I think the laundry fairy has taken too much time off, I get that it is the holidays and all and she should be with her family but doesn't she know I need her with all of these quick turnarounds and road trips?!!

7 months!!

Baby Girl was 7 months old yesterday! She is more than half way to one year ahhhhh good God time please slow down this is scaring me! This month was HUGE for us as we got Daddy home and it was a big month of firsts so I am not even sure where to begin with this post but here we go.......

You are still in size 3 diapers but you are officially in 9 month clothes now. You still have a few 6 month outfits that fit but they are quickly being put away into storage. You are also about to swap carseats in January as you are just tooooo heavy in your babysit these days and mummy can't get you up into the jeep when you are strapped into the seat in the house. Luckily my old boss emailed me to say that she was giving you a pretty pink one with flowers so hopefully you will like your new "big girl" seat : )

In one month you have learnt to sit up, crawl AND stand up holding onto furniture. You are learning fast and we couldn't be prouder of you. You are hilarious when you crawl as you are definitely better at going backwards and when you go forward you are like a little inchworm. You were a nightmare around the Christmas tree and I know it is only going to get worse trying to keep secrets and presents from you as the years go by!

You have started eating solids this month and you LOVE food! Your favourites are the Gerber first stage green beans, carrots and sweet potatoes so we swap between those three for lunch. You are not a fan of fruit so we haven't pushed that on you and we will try again in a few weeks. You cracked us up though with your "ew thats gross" face! You also eat dissolvable rusks for snacks and you love them although we have to watch you closely as you can get enthusiastic and we have had a few gagging moments which have scared us. Apart from that though you are willing to try anything and say "mmm" after every spoonful!

Of course the best moment of this month was Daddy coming home. You knew EXACTLY who he was and after crying with every other stranger you rejoiced in being in his arms and you have both fallen head over heels in love. You are so goofy together to include me walking in on you two dancing to Katy Perry in the kitchen one morning! Our family is complete and I didnt think you could get any happier but you have proved me wrong and you just light up when Daddy walks into the room to includeeeeee saying Dada!!

Wow I didn't realise how much you had changed since I last wrote about you until I just sat down and thought of all the milestones. We love you Baby Girl and we can't wait for you to continue to thrive and learn.

Goooooo Skinsssss!!!!

Woop woop, Mr Soldier and I are in Florida!!! Wait, werent we just in VA?!! Ohhh yes, we headed out on the road yesterday afternoon after doing our big celebrations on Christmas Eve in order to accomodate us driving home. Mimi followed us down to GA yesterday, we got in late last night, got some sleep at home and headed out on the road to Jacksonville this morning where we are proudly cheering on the Skins and I am going to my first real football game woop woop! Mimi has stayed with Baby Girl which is huge for me as I have NEVER left her alone for a day let alone a night but you know what, I think she is in good hands haha! We are going to be here for two days to celebrate our wedding anniversary that we missed. I will be back to update and post pics of our trip soon!!! <3

Merry Christmas!!!

Merry Christmas everyone! I hope you all have an amazing day and that everyone stops and thinks for a second as to the real meaning behind this holiday. I hope you all stuff yourselves with yummy food and get spoiled with presents! I know this year in particular I cherish how lucky I am and I have the best Christmas present ever in the form of Mr Soldier being back with us safely after proudly serving in harms way for 358 days. To all of those who have their soldiers deployed this holiday, thank you to you and your men/women for your sacrifice and I pray you all get reunited soon.

Christmas Eve

Its the night before Christmas and all through the house, EVERY creature is stirring, especially the baby haha. Wow how holidays change with children! We are only in VA for three days so it is hectic and everyone has proudly welcomed Mr Soldier home and doted on Baby Girl. Dublin is in heaven being back in her old yard and we have been busy busy busy. Today is our main celebration with family as it was the one day the majority of us could get together which seems to be more and more common now with everyone having their own families and plans. It is another bittersweet year as my family are in England and I was away from them last year too due to immigration not allowing me to leave the country. However, I know they are all wrapped up warm in the house, a huge box of presents which cost an inordinate amount of money to ship is on the way to them on time ANDDDD we are going to England for Christmas next year so we have that to look forward to : )

On Leave

We are on the road tomorrow and off to VA to see Mr Soldier's family for a few days. We have been in GA until now because of Mr Soldier having ten days of reintegration training that really could have all fit into one day and been done but oh well! I know the next few days are going to be crazy and we may even get a white Christmas but I hope the drive goes smoothly, that everything fits in the car haha and that we get to see everyone in the short space of time we have before we are turning around to come back here! I know Mr Soldier is excited as none of his family made it down for his homecoming so this is the first time that they will see him back and safe on U.S. soil since our crazy R&R in June!

Baby Girl Stats!

Today we had Baby Girl's 6 month appointment even though she is a week shy of being 7 months old....thank you Tricare! mr Soldier got to come with us which was a great help because I think these appointments normally upset me more than Baby Girl! Also she is now at the age where lying her down for a Dr to examine her or give her shots is becoming impossible-she is our little wiggleworm! She definitely CRIED during those shots poor little thing but as usual was calm and asleep by the time we got her out to the car. So you want to know what our little chubster weighs?!! Wellll she only weighs 19lbs which may sound like a lot but it is only one pound more than her last appt so I guess all of that crazy crawling and rolling around she has been doing is working out for her! She grew an 1.5 inches and is now 26.5 inches which is the 93rd percentile....so overall we have a healthy baby : )

Questions and Answers!

Last weekend for my 400th post I opened up my blog to questions and answers so thank you to all of you who got involved and here we go......

Brie asked how did I get so lucky to have such a pretty baby and hubby?! Haha, what a way to start off the blog post! I giggled when I saw this and all I can say is I must have done something right : )

Rachel asked where I grew up and if I went to college. This is a long long story haha but I was born to Irish parents, spent a few years living in Ireland, the majority of my childhood in England and then my parents moved to live in the South of Spain when I was 16. They took my brothers with them because there is a big age gap and I stayed in boarding school in England to finish out my last few years and then moved to Scotland for college. I did a four year degree, three of which were in Edinburgh and my junior year was spent at the University of Richmond, VA, which is where I met the hubby as he was working in thr ROTC department at the time while waiting to commission!

MsK asked me what 3 things are that I know now that I didn't know a year ago. Hmm this is a tough one! I honestly don't know where to start as this year as been the hardest but most rewarding year of self discovery for me yet. I think if I had to single out three individual things though it would be...
(1) True love is worth fighting for and I would go through a hundred more deployments for Mr Soldier and for the amazingness of reuniting in airports/parade fields (although I hope I don't have to haha!)
(2) You can accomplish anything that you set your mind to
(3) A mother's love for a child can move you to tears at any time of any particular day

Allie asked me what my favourite childhood memory is. Another tough one! I have a lot of great childhood memories so it is hard to find one that sticks out above the others. We took a lot of vacations when I was younger to all different parts of the world so I would have to say that any of those are incredible memories for me : ) Also finding out my mum was having a baby after I had been an only child for ten years. I sat and daydreamed about having a little sister to go horse riding with etc and my mum has since had two boys haha

Ines asked how many languages I speak and as embarassing as this I really only speak English. I took languages all through school starting French when I was 7 and subsequently spending time studying Latin, German and Spanish too and I always did great in all of my exams but I never pursued any of them to the point of fluency. This is sad for me and I would love Baby Girl to be bilingual. I think honestly though German was my strong point and if I got thrown into Germany with no other choice of language I would be able to remember it all again within a few weeks.

JG asked me what Mr Soldier and I are most excited about doing now that he is home and the honest answer to this is just living together! We have never had time to just sit back and appreciate the little things. We always knew we were on a countdown and there was a goodbye approaching so now we have some incredible things coming up with road trips and vacations but I think we are more excited about the normality of Sunday mornings in pyjamas on the nursery floor with Baby Girl.

Anonymous asked who Mimi is and the answer to that is she is only the best most incredible Grandma to Baby Girl and mother-in-law to me in the world! I got lucky there : )

A.L. asked if being Anglo-Irish am I following the reports on William and Kate and the answer to that is kind of! I think it is great news and a long time coming. I think it is a great thing for England and the future of the Royal family but honestly I was so surprised that so many people went crazy about it over here!

A.L. also asked what my favourite memory is from this past year/ proudest moment of something I did when Mr Soldier was away. I LOVE this question!! I think it is so so important to actually think of the good things that manage to happen during deployments as there are definitely smiles along the way. As I sit here typing this I am in my living room of our new rental house that I happened to find on craigslist! Mr Soldier is asleep on the sofa and Baby Girl is napping in her nursery and that is a proud moment. I did this! I found a house, moved twice, furnished it, kept Baby Girl healthy and happy and waited until I could sit and watch my hubby sleeping safe and sound!

And a Daddy is born....

With the whole redeployment process I remember how nervous mr Soldier was about becoming a Dad in person. You all read the letter he wrote to me before coming home and he was as honest as he could be about the worries surrounding how he would cope with it. He wanted to help, he knew he wanted to be a hands on Dad but he didn't want to mess up routines and he struggled with going from being an officer in charge to asking me how to make a bottle. But do you know what? He is incredible! I could never have expected it to go this smoothly. He wants to be involved in everything. Baby Girl worships and adores him and he even gets excited to the point where he asks if he can dress her and she comes out in the most adorable little outfits and matching headbands. I could sit and watch them interact for hours and I love watching them love : )

Disclaimer: There was NOTHING left in the glass!

Hail and Farewell

Last night we went to a hail and farewell in a local bar/restaurant for mr Soldier's batallion. Of course they didn't tell us about it until two days ago so I couldn't get a babysitter organised at this time of year with that little notice. However, they all understood this and there were others in the same situation so we took Baby Girl and just prayed she would be good through it and thankfully she was! Of course I spent the whole day straightening my hair and sitting on my closet floor declaring that I had nothing to wear which is a total lie as you all well know as you have seen the photo evidence of the amount of clothes I have! I guess I was just nervous because I know mr Soldier talks about Baby Girl and I a lot at work so I had to live up to whatever he had said haha. It was a really nice evening though and I got to meet a lot of people who I had heard about during the deployment and Baby Girl even slept through the second half of it : ) There was absolutely nothing to be nervous about but I don't think I will ever get used to his work functions and will always declare a state of clothing emergency before them!

Reintegration Reality....

This is one of the hardest posts I have ever written but to be honest it is the one I have wanted to write the most because I think it is such an important issue. You dream about homecoming every second of every day of the deployment. You say "I cant wait for..." so much that you never want to hear those words again. You anticipate. You go crazy. You tell everyone even if they don't want to hear it that your husband is coming home. You stare at the clock and you wait for your married lives to resume again. But what happens when the adrenaline wears off? What happens when the novelty is gone?

Well to be honest, I don't know because we are only 10 days in to the process and we are still in the honeymoon phase of redeployment. Does that mean we havent fought? Hell no! We have in fact driven each other crazy but as mr Soldier likes to quote from my favourite film The Notebook, thats what we do. We fight, we make up. Nothing has changed. What has changed though is our roles. What has changed is the "norm" and we both realise there is a long road ahead to establish a new routine. I didn't realise how much I had gotten used to living alone. The simplest things like keeping a conversation going until 10pm now exhausts me. Whilst I complained about the lonliness, I now sit and cherish the moments of silence by myself. On the other hand, mr Soldier doesnt sit haha. He is on the go go go all the time. He has worked every second of 358 days and he is finding it hard to switch that off. I have had to microwave meals three and four times over because they will be ready and he won't sit down to eat until he has finished hanging the shelves or putting up a picture.

We have tried to please each other so much we then fight over who gets to choose what to do. Then we get upset because we realise how lucky we are to be together and healthy and happy and how silly it is to be arguing. Then we realise that arguing is natural in this situation and so putting pressure on ourselves to keep a smile on our face the whole time is even more exhausting......and the cycle goes on.....

I could write on and on but no one needs to hear my ramblings! What I do know is we have only spent 7 weeks together in our first year of marriage so technically this has become our first year. We have never been parents together and we both put a lot of pressure on ourselves to the point where we have banned using the word "perfect" in our house. We love each other ridiculously. We will be together always and forever. We have both sacrificed for our country (I think I deserve to call it mine now that I am a military wife!) We both intend to wake up every day and love each other and spoil our little princess who melts our hearts. But reintegration? Yea that process sucks at times.....!

Wordless Wednesday

A Year Ago Today.....

......I drove away from a parking lot with my husband in the rearview mirror. I was crying so hard I don't know how I got home. I thought my life was going to end. I was pregnant, alone and a long way from home. I had no idea if I would see my husband again. I was walking into an empty house with my furniture all packed up ready to move. It was horrible. A year later and we did it. Albeit with ups and down, two moves, a lot of smiles and tears and a baby born in the duration haha but we did it. And for all of you still going through deployments. Keep going. Keep your head up. Keep a smile on your face. Ask for help when you need it (I sucked at this!) and know that the end will come no matter how far away it seems!

Christmas Cards.....check

I did it! Our first christmas cards are written, stamped and posted woop woop! I would say that is a pretty good achievement considering the craziness of this household recently! Like I said we didnt have time to do a picture card but we totally did a christmas letter with a homecoming picture inside....self indulgent maybe but hey we wana show off our Baby Daddy coming home safely!!

 

400th Post

I did it, I made it to 400 posts woop woop!!! I dont know how often I will be able to keep up the "blogging every day" thing but scheduling posts seems to work for me right now. As I hit 400 posts I want to say thank you to the followers who read my daily ramblings and I want to open up my blog to you for a questions and answers session. So go ahead, ask anything you want and I will answer the questions a week from today!

Its the Weekend

I used to hate them.......now I absolutely love them!!! I hope you all have a great weekend. We are going on a date night and these two are keeping a smile on my face!

Life Is Precious

Today my best childhood friend Hannah would have been 24. She died when we were ten. I think about her a lot, about where she would be these days, would she be in my bridal party etc. I have learnt a lot this year and though I may have grown up somewhat in a bubble I know that life is precious and that in this household we continue to live as if mr Soldier just got home the day before. We know that sitting down for dinner together is a gift and not a normality for some. We keep praying for everyone around us and we keep appreciating the life we have been given......

Perspective

I was just looking through my facebook pictures to make sure that I had them all saved to this laptop before I delete my account. Wellll I came across one of my fav pictures of the hubby and I at his Ranger school graduation and the caption under it is "reunited after 73 days apart!" 73 days used to be a freaking big deal! However we just did 358 days and totally survived and came out stronger for it. Ask to take him away for a day now though and I might just become mother hen and lock my front door to keep him home with me haha!

Happy Birthday Daddy!

We love you, we miss you, we totally wish we lived closer to you and we hope you like your birthday present! I am and always will be a Daddy's girl xoxox

Homecoming Pics!

Waiting in the cold....she did great with all of the noise and chaos : )

The soldiers got off the bus and appeared from behind the trees...... cue the tears!

Standing in formation during the ceremony.....I just wanted to find him and run towards him at this point!

But we waited kind of patiently haha......

Then all of a sudden it was time for our first kiss!

 Then Baby Girl got kisses......

Then Baby Girl got handed over......

.....And they fell in love! I haven't been able to separate them since and I still pinch myself that it is all real!

Gratitude

Thank you all for being there every step of the way, for letting me share our journey, for listening when I whined and for supporting when I needed it. I hope I can be there for you in return. This blog is staying alive, I just won't be counting the days anymore : ) Oh and p.s. my world totally feels complete again!

Day # 358: I forgot the most important pictures.......

You can't really see but there are little flags in the ground and there are balloons on the mailbox : )

Flags going up to the front door : )

The tape looks so rubbish because the stupid thing kept falling down and I lost patience with it haha!

Oh yesssss, its that time!

This is totally a scheduled post, I got the love of my life back in the early hours of this morning! WOOP WOOP, 358 days later, we did it ladies, we truely did it.......
THE DEPLOYMENT IS OVER, MR SOLDIER IS HOME!!!!
(Homecoming pics to follow!)

Day # 357: House Pictures!

Ok so I am totally late with these pictures considering I moved in almost three months ago but finally, here we are for anyone who is interested!! Be warned, there are a lot of pics, congrats to anyone who gets to the end of this post!

Inside of my front door because I don't want to put the outside of it on the internet!

The view of our living room from the front door, going into the dining/kitchen area

The living room from a different angle- we need a new TV, our nice one broke just before we moved : ( 

Kitchen/Dining area

Laundry Room

That sign says "Laundry Room Drop Your ACU's Here"

Cute decal from Etsy

Area outside the master bedroom

master bedroom.....excuse the mess on our bed!

Cute bedside table sign!

master bathroom!

Closets!



Our girlie guest room!

We need to buy a desktop for here!

Our guest bathroom/ Baby Girl's!

One corner of the nursery......notice the tylenol bottle.....teething has set in!

Other corner of the nursery....thats the furniture I painted last month!

Cute window area!

Her crib : )

And last but not least, Baby Girl's closet! Wowwwww that was a picture heavy post!