Playing catch up

I was happy to see that it hadn't been that long since I'd last blogged when I logged in, but it's probably been longer than some of our family would like to see. I'm going to try to do better, I swear. If I have a reason (blogging), I'll probably also be better about taking pictures of Michaela. We've managed to catch all the highlights with her, but I thought I'd be much better about catching everyday moments, too. I think working full time and trying to be the best mom I can is a little harder than I ever thought it would be! I'm still trying to find the right balance without neglecting any specific area. I'll probably get it all figured out just in time to change it all up again.

That change will come this summer when my employment status changes. Right after going back to work from maternity leave, I submitted my request for a temporary separation from the Coast Guard. The approval of that request showed up in my email inbox on Christmas Eve, so, as of 01Sep (or sometime around then), I'll transition to the civilian world for at least two years. I'll have those two years to decide if I want to come back in or not. It's a great program the CG offers to allow career-minded members the chance to take care of whatever personal issues they might have... in my case it's being home with the baby for a little while, but it could also be to explore other employment, go to school, whatever. I'm VERY much looking forward to the time away from work, but it's also very odd to think of myself as something other than a CG officer. Luckily, Jason will keep me close to it, so I won't have to say goodbye completely!

Anyway, obviously, the other big doings around here have been the holidays. Somehow we managed to actually get everything done that we wanted to do before Christmas. The tree went up, the cookies were baked, gifts were bought, wrapped and shipped as necessary, and we even managed to breathe a little bit. Sadly, even with all that being done in plenty of time, we weren't able to enjoy our Christmas very much.... because we got sick, both of us (luckily, the baby didn't get it). We're still not sure exactly what it was, but it's probably safe to say it was just some kind of 24-hour bug. For Jason it lasted a little more than 24 hours... for me, it was more like 3 days. With nursing the baby, I think I just had a hard time getting rehydrated so it kept me down longer. So, the only real pictures we have of Christmas were some I took on Christmas Eve, before we were hit. Here are Michaela and Jason checking out the tree....

I took one picture of Jason and one picture of Michaela on Christmas morning, but neither one of them is worth showing. It's just a good thing Michaela didn't understand Christmas this year! We would've had one very sad girl on our hands!

Kodiak has proven fruitful in the picture taking world again these days. I think it was a couple weeks before Christmas that we woke up one morning to a white wonderland... minus the snow. Everything was coated and sparkly with hoar frost. I grabbed the camera with my macro lens and tried to get a few pictures. It was really cool! This is our front evergreen bush.

Then, just the other day, while finally out on a walk (we had a rough 10-ish days of rain, so walks have been few and far between), we saw what had to have been the biggest eagle we've ever seen. Of course, I didn't have my camera that day, so I brought it the next day, hoping to see the eagle again. Unfortunatley, that one wasn't around, but a juvenile watched us from the top of a tree until it decided to move on. I was super excited to catch him in flight!

More exciting is the fact that the sky is actually blue-ish behind him. We haven't seen much blue sky or sun lately, so we took full advantage of them the couple days they poked out this past week and got Fred out for walks. He's definitely been moping around the house a little bit, which might have something to do with the weather, or with the fact that Michaela has discovered him and decided she likes him. So, anytime he walks by her, she smiles, giggles and reaches for handful of hair. I hope he eventually likes her as much as she likes him!

And, finally, in Michaela news... it's been a big couple of weeks. First, she had her first non-routine visit to the doctor a couple weeks ago. She ran a low-grade fever for a few days, was tugging at her ear, and was pretty stuffy. My untrained diagnosis was teething, but we were worried that it was lingering, so off to the doctor we went. Lo and behold, it was just teething. The fever went away the next day and she was back to herself for a couple weeks. Then, in the past week or so, the drooling started again in earnest, along with an increased level of crankiness and more ear pulling. We figured it was a matter of time until the tooth poked through, but we were very surprised to look at her bottom gum on Thursday (New Year's Eve) and see TWO teeth had made their way through. Since then, we're still experiencing really bad sleep and some crankiness, but we're hoping that'll taper a little now that the teeth have come through. Then we'll just get to gear up for the next round! Mom asked me for pictures of the teeth, but that's going to have to wait until they're a little more visible so that, when we wrestle her down to try to get the picture, it's easier to see them!

In other Michaela news, we had planned to wait until she was 6 months old to start any solid foods, but we caved a little early this week. She literally dove at my pizza the other night, so we thought she might be more ready for food than we thought. She was showing all the rest of the necessary developmental signs as well, so we went for it. We tried rice cereal a couple times, which she ate, but didn't seem to enjoy. I can't blame her on that - it smells and looks terrible! So, since the cereal isn't really necessary, we decided to move onto sweet potatoes. We just tried those tonight, and they were definitely a hit. We had the same mess as the cereal, but the sweet potatoes definitely made more of an impact! She reached for the spoon from the first bite and then proceeded to dive toward it with every bite. That could explain the mess on her face...

We're still not in too big a hurry to pump her full of solid foods, but she's definitely a fan of eating, so we'll be putting the high chair together this week and we might start eating at the table a little more often.

I took a great video tonight of her jumping in her jumperoo, but I've already spent way too long on this post, so I'll save it for tomorrow. Needless to say, she had us cracking up with her crazy jumping! She's also been trying out all kinds of new sounds, the latest of which is something that sounds like she's choking. I could live without that one. But, we'll give it a couple days and she'll move onto something else anyway. Never a dull moment....

So that's it from here. Like I said, I'm going to try really hard to get to this more often, hopefully keeping the posts shorter so it won't take me as long. It's definitely hard finding any "spare" time, though, so I don't make any promises!