2014 in Review (Part 1)

This last year I haven't been in the blogosphere much. But we still had a lot happen. So, to catch you up in case you missed something (i.e. if you don't know us in person and see us and talk to us frequently)...

January

We drove from our temporary residence in North Carolina to Virginia and visited with my brother a bit, eating at Chic-fil-A (where Shannon forgot his coat since the weather was so nice) and going to the Virginia Aquarium.


The girls went to their first movie in the theater (Frozen).


Lane turned four.


We found out we were having our third girl.


February

My mom took Lane to the circus for her birthday (and I took Noel).


The South got a ton of snow.


The girls played with their cousins a lot.


We went to a "farm" where you can pet and feed animals (and I'm talking giraffes and buffalos kind-of-animals, not normal petting zoo animals like goats and pigs).





March

We took the girls to the Greensboro Children's Museum.


We went to the Gulf with Shannon's mom and stepdad (and Lane was sick most of the trip).




Cracker Barrel!


We moved into a new temporary house in Birmingham.


April

The girls went on their first Easter egg hunt.


I had a baby shower for Raye.


We introduced the girls to the Birmingham Zoo.


The girls dyed Easter eggs and fell in love with hunting them in the backyard.


My whole body felt like cankles.


May

We served Raye her eviction notice and she entered the world.


My mom came to visit us in Birmingham.


We went to the zoo. Two or three times, I think.


Memorial Day.


We spent time at a friend's swimming pool about five minutes from where we were staying.


June

We met my dad, stepmom, brother, and sister's family in Gatlinburg.


We visited the aquarium there.


After my family left, Shannon's dad and stepmom and our niece drove up from Birmingham. We went to Dollywood.


I had surgery on my left wrist for tendonitis.


Raye and I went to Texas to visit a good friend of mine.

8 Months Old

Dear Raye,

On my 35th birthday you turned eight months old. It's always hard to believe that you're already as old as you are. It seems like you were born yesterday. And it seems like a lifetime ago, too, if I'm honest. It's been a long year. =)



This month has been a fun one. You have started army crawling and are pretty fast at it. You've gotten up on all fours and gone forward a "step" or two, but you always drop to your belly to go faster and just army crawl wherever you want to go. I don't think it helps you any that we don't have many carpets and you slide on the floors when wearing pants, which you usually do since, hey, it's winter. But you can get wherever you want to go. You've also started climbing a bit, or pulling yourself onto things. You can get all the way on the girls' small trampoline, into Noel's bed, or pull yourself up to sitting on your knees. You can sit for long periods of time and never fall anymore, but can scoot yourself forward from a sitting position until you're on your belly so you can crawl places.



This month you also started to eat more foods. I still don't have tons of time to cook for you, but you usually eat scrambled eggs and yogurt for breakfast, some oatmeal mixed with applesauce and some squash for lunch, and some of a banana and something else for dinner. And thrown in the day will be some other food that I've prepared for the rest of us (carrots, potatoes, rice, etc.) or some other soft fruit that we have on hand. Your diet is limited but you don't seem to care. You've also started to feed yourself some, but honestly most of it ends up on the floor. You prefer to use your left hand right now, too, to feed yourself.



You're still sleeping well, love your sisters, love to be tickled, love being sung to and danced with, and love to chew on things. You're a great baby, and I love you and am so thankful for you.

Love,
Mommy

And Then She Was Three (2nd time around)

The Umizoomi cake I made for her.

Three weeks ago today Noel turned three years old. I took the day off of language class and spent the day making birthday pancakes and a pot of soup, cleaning up a bit, and decorating for her Team Umizoomi "party" (aka: people come over for dinner and cake). We spent the morning slowly opening her birthday gifts and Skyping/Facetiming with some of her grandparents. It was a fun day.

The first present Noel opened was a huge lollipop that Lane bought her with money she earned washing our windows.

She got some plastic dinosaurs and safari animals,

Tinkerbell accessories and a fun skirt (Lane got some wings, too),

And Bristle Blocks, the game Hoot, Owl, Hoot, and The Water Hole by Graeme Base. I'm sure she got other things too that I can't remember right now, too.

I spent her nap time hanging balloons and streamers and shapes on the wall. Lane put Umizoomi stickers on the dessert plates for me. Later that evening some friends came over and we had chicken noodle soup for dinner and tackled the monster-sized cake. (I don't seem to have a very good idea of how much cake to actually make and seem to always make twice as much as we can possibly eat.)

Thoughout the day I asked Noel the birthday questions that we begin when our kids turn three. She refused to answer some of them and others I had to solicit an answer for. So some of these are surely not right, but it was fun to hear her answers anyways!

1. Your favorite color is pink.

2. Your favorite toy is Lambie.
3. Your favorite fruit is pear.
4. Your favorite TV show is Mickey Mouse.
5. Your favorite movie is Madagascar.
6. Your favorite thing to wear is a costume.
7. Your favorite animal is "little baby calves."
8. Your favorite song is "B-I-N-G-O."
9. Your favorite book is Brown Bear, Brown Bear.
10. Your best friend is Lane.
11. Your favorite snack is grapes.
12. Your favorite drink is juice.
13. Your favorite breakfast is O's.
14. Your favorite lunch is grilled cheese .
15. Your favorite dinner is chicken noodle soup.
16. Your favorite game is The Sneaky Snacky Squirrel.
17. Your favorite thing to play outside is a bouncy ball.
18. You don't know what your favorite holiday is.
19. At night you sleep with Raffie, Bunny, and Blankie .
20. You don't know what you want to be when you grow up.

And just like that my middle girl is three.

7 Months Old

Dear Raye,

Today you are seven months old. You're getting bigger so quickly, already trying to get into everything, and it reminds me how quickly you'll really be a toddler and into everything. I need to soak up your baby-ness for as long as it lasts!



This month your nighttime sleep has gotten better. Most nights you sleep from 7 when I nurse you until around 6, when I nurse you again and you go back to sleep until 8 or 9, or sometimes you'd sleep even longer but I have to go to class five days a week so I have to wake you. Sometimes you wake in the middle of the night, sometimes you wake around 10:30, but overall you are sleeping all night and I am very grateful. You're taking two naps a day and I think you'd be up for a third catnap, but honestly I just can't make it work, so you just get the two naps. I think that's part of the reason you sleep so late in the mornings.



You are still nursing like a champ, and eating like one, too. You like oats mixed with applesauce, plain yogurt, bananas and pears, sweet potatoes, and pumpkin. You've tried carrots a few times but just off of my plate, and I let you try potatoes once but you did not like them at all. Your poor face was hilarious. I also let you try some scrambled egg yolk the other day but once again, you were not a fan. I'm excited to let you try more foods this month, as you seem to enjoy eating! You don't seem too keen on trying to feed yourself yet, but I'm ok with that. Less mess for me to clean up off the floor for now!



This month you got your two bottom teeth. You got one of them almost a month ago and the other about two weeks later. You were a bit of a grump from teething but really you did pretty well. You're still pulling on your ears some, though, so it makes me wonder if your top teeth are on their way in.

You are sitting up on your own well, although we don't leave you sitting up because you still tend to topple over after awhile. You get yourself up on all fours and rock sometimes but always drop to your belly to creep forward. You're scooting yourself around and remind me of an inchworm. Today you scooted yourself over to the Christmas tree and were feeling the branches. You like to sit up and bash squeaky toys on the floor and listen to them squeak. You, of course, put everything in your mouth, but you do seem to really like fabric and soft toys in particular.



You love to be thrown in the air and caught, and will usually reward whoever is throwing you with a big laugh when they catch you. You love the "ba-zoomba dance "that I've done with you now and your sisters when they were babies, too. You are ticklish on your ribs, and love to get kisses on your neck. You love to watch whoever is in the room with you and are easily distracted by anyone else around. You love peekaboo and grin really big and sometimes squeal when we play it with you. You love to play with my hair and are always trying to grab it when you're nursing.


Always checking out what your sisters are doing.

You love your sisters and love to watch them. Lane loves to make you laugh, to squeal at you and make silly sounds and faces to get you to laugh. Noel always wants to hold you and to "pet" you. They both love you so much, and you love them, too. I can't wait until you can all play together.

I love you, Raye, and am so grateful for you. I'm so grateful for your easy-going personality and your ever-present smile.

Love,
Mommy

Living in a Glass House

The other night we had some people come over for dinner, some locals. More specifically, one of Shannon's employees and his wife and kids. I'm always nervous about having people over for dinner, because the food we eat is not like the food they eat here. If you go to someone's house here they will fill and refill your plate over and over again, whether you want them to or not. They will kill the fattened calf, so to speak, and put out a crazy big feast for you. Which really, if you think about it, is a little embarrassing. And then you're left with the question of how to reciprocate.

So when we lived in Istanbul some friends mentioned that they would always try to have people over to their home first, before they got invited somewhere. Because then they could set the stage for what was normal, for how things were to be reciprocated. They would serve a normal meal with normal food and normal portions, and then a normal dessert and of course tea and coffee afterwards. And I thought, wow, that's a great idea.

So I made a huge pot of chicken and vegetable stew, sliced some bread, and had made an apple pie for dessert. We always tell our guests that we don't (and won't) heap portion after portion after portion of food on their plates because we don't do that in America and aren't comfortable doing it, but that there is obviously plenty of food and if they'd like more to please help themselves. And we offer, but we don't force. Our guests each ate one bowl of stew. They commented on how they didn't think Americans ate things like that (probably because every time they've been guests in a foreigner's home they've been served the "fattened calf.") We served the cake they brought with the pie I made (and the mandatory store-bought candy) and tea and coffee. And they left with a loaf of pumpkin bread and a jar of my homemade jam, leaving us with half of the biggest cake I've ever seen here.

And that night, as Shannon and I were washing dishes we discussed how in America we loved having people over. I loved playing hostess and cooking and baking. But here, it's just uncomfortable and awkward. We never feel like people actually have a good time. I never know if they really like the food or if they're just being polite. We never know if we're doing the right thing by not heaping loads of food onto their plates or if we're really offending them. Should we send home leftover cake when there's no way we'll eat it all, even when they refuse it? How long do we wait after we serve dinner before we serve the tea and coffee, because no matter how many times we explain that it doesn't mean we want them to leave, it just means that our kids expect dessert immediately following dinner, they still leave 30 minutes later.

What do they think of our huge (for here) apartment? Our girls' 80 million hair bows? What does it say to them when we live in a nice apartment but I serve them chicken stew when they come for dinner instead of the spread they were probably expecting? Does it speak well of us because now they're off the hook for giving us a huge spread, or are they angry because they think we don't value them enough to prepare the feast? How does this impact things with Shannon being his boss?

I've was a nanny before for a well-off family when I was in graduate school. I noticed when they bought "extras." I saw receipts around the house sometimes for hundreds of dollars on makeup or thousands of dollars on a bookshelf. I saw the food in their pantry, the out-of-season produce in their refrigerator. The products they bought, the clothes in their kids' closets, how frequently they washed clothes and ran the dishwasher.

We have a nanny come into our home five mornings a week so I can go to language class. And I wonder what she thinks about the food in my refrigerator. The clothes in my girls' drawers. How frequently I do laundry, change the sheets, vacuum my floors, clean the toilets. What she thinks of the toilet paper I buy, the laundry soap, the dish soap, the individually-packaged tea bags. The flour in bulk but the always-expensive avocados (for Raye). Does she think I'm wasteful? Extravagent? A good manager of my home? What does she think of my children and how they behave? How they eat? What they eat?

And I feel like I live in a glass house for all to see. And it makes me uncomfortable.

Because as much as I know that we are not extravagant (at least not for Americans), that I clean as regularly as I can manage, that our intentions are pure in not serving the fattened calf, and so on, it doesn't much matter if they don't see it, too.

6 Months Old

Dear Raye,

Three days ago you turned six months old, the big half-a-year. Time sure does fly. Every time I start to get frustrated that you're not on more of a schedule yet I remind myself that another six months from now you'll probably be sleeping longer at night, you'll only be taking two naps a day, and so on. I'm much less stressed out about your loosey-goosey schedule than I would have been with Lane or Noel. Which is nice.

Snoozin' on the bus ride to Georgia.

Raye, you are such a sweetheart. You're still quite the happy and content baby, but within the last week you've started to get your two bottom front teeth, so they're giving you some trouble. You've been a little cranky about that, but overall you're still happy. You're still sleeping alright at night...I'm ready for you to sleep past 4 or 5 in the morning, but I feel bad for you because I know that your teeth are bothering you, so I usually cave and feed you and then you go back to sleep. You do usually at least sleep straight through until that early morning feeding, though, so I'm grateful for that. You're nursing about six times a day, still, but you're content so I'm not worrying about it even though I'd love to work you down to four or five. 

This month we started feeding you more solids and you are a fan. You do not like the texture (at least I'm assuming it's the texture) of the rice cereal here. You pretty much don't like anything pureed. So instead I'm cooking things in small chunks and you're chowing down. You love zucchini, bananas, and avocado. You'll eat plain yogurt and homemade oat cereal but your face is so funny because it's obvious you're not really a fan. You're still pretty slow at eating so I feel like you spend most of your day either sleeping or eating, because you still want to eat, it just takes you forever to gum things since you don't like them pureed.

Chillin' in Tbilisi.

This month you got another stamp in your passport as we traveled to Georgia. We took a bus and you did great. You were a trooper the whole trip, taking naps while I carried you in the Ergo and missing out on most of Tbilisi, but you didn't seem to care too much. Your infected hangnail is much better now and while we're still waiting on the fingernail to grow out, you're not sucking on your fingers/thumb much anymore (you prefer the paci, yay!) so you're not having to wear a sock on your hand 24/7.

You also have started to sit up a bit on your own but are not too good at it yet. You are usually trying to look at something so end up toppling over. But you can sit up well in your highchair and do well if someone is sitting behind you. You are also pushing yourself up into a "girl" pushup position but you're not trying to push yourself around much yet. I think it has to do mostly with the fact that we have wood floors and you're wearing pants because it's cold, so you just end up sliding around. You push yourself up much more when you're in the living room on our only rug. You roll all over the place, but you prefer to be on your tummy and to play on your tummy. You like to look at the world, chew on your toys, and sometimes yell at them.

You are such a sweetie-pie, Raye. We all love you so much and we all love to see you smile and interact with us. I'm so excited to see your personality develop even more and to see your relationship with your sisters deepen. You will surely all be thick as thieves.

I love you, Raye, and am so grateful for you.

Love,

Mommy