Testing my blogging app on my iPhone

We don't have Internet right now except on our phones, so I wanted to see if I could update my blog from my phone. I hope this works well.



- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

New House

We found a house after a long search.  Shaun came to the area at the end of August hoping to find a house, but he only found one and he wasn't in love with it.  We put a bid in anyway, but the guy didn't accept it.  We decided to wait to get here to figure out what we wanted to do then.  After we arrived, we went to look at the same house.  I really liked it.  It was a great house, but I wasn't in love with the neighborhood.  It was  a huge development of neighborhoods and all the houses on the street looked the same.  The yard was kind of small, too.  We did like the house though, so we re-bid on it.  Then when we were doing the paperwork, our realtor asked us if we had a Plan B.  We realized we didn't, so we kept looking.  The next day we were looking around a neighborhood and found a couple houses that we hadn't looked at before.  We called the realtor and asked to take a look later that day.

We are so glad we did! We found a perfect house!  We originally didn't look at the house because it had a pool in the backyard and we don't really want to maintain that.  After seeing it and the house and the yard, we loved it though and now we are excited about the pool.  We put a bid in and the seller's accepted right away.  We are supposed to close on November 18th!  We can't wait!  We are living in a little apartment on base right now.  It is way too small for the four of us!  Here are some pics of the house.  Enjoy!

Nicole's Room

Shaun's "Man Cave"

Our room

I'll post more pics soon.

Here is a video of the yard:

Long overdue update

We moved out of our house at the end of September and moved into a hotel on base.  We flew out on the 7th of October.  It was a hectic morning.  We had so many things to do and Nicole wasn't sleeping very well, Shaun was sick, our washer and dryer in our room decided to go crazy beeping all night (until we unplugged them and left our clothes wet..ugh).  We made it on the plane though and Nicole did pretty well.

She took a little nap in the airport before we took off.

Then we settled her into her seat and fed her.  The problem with traveling with a little one this age, especially Nicole, is that she does not want to sit still.  She wants to be rolling around on the floor, crawling, walking (with our help), or doing anything aside from sitting in her carseat.  This made the flight exhausting for me.  I spent most of the flight trying to entertain her or keep her happy or getting her to take a nap.  It was a quick almost 9hr flight though.  Luckily, we decided not to get a connecting flight down to Virginia.  Instead we decided to stay in Baltimore for the night and then rent a car and drive down the next day.  It worked out perfectly.  Nicole and Roxy did really well.  We rented a minivan and packed it up with all our suitcases, Roxy's crate, the stroller and us.

We love the area so far.  It is really pretty and it has all the things we could want or need really close by.  We even have friends in the area already.  Hope you enjoy the pics from the trip.

My Two Front Teeth

Nicole is teething.  We've been able to see her two bottom teeth for months and we've thought she was maybe teething many times.  This last week they just all of sudden popped out.  Until today, they didn't really seem to bother her much either.  She looks so cute with her little gummy smile and I'll be sort of sad to see it go, but I'm also excited to see her grow as well.

Nicole Marie 6 Months Old

Nicole turned 6 months yesterday. It is amazing to think of how fast the time has gone by and how much things have changed. She is now sleeping in her crib at night and this week she only woke up once or twice a night almost every night. That is an improvement over the last month or so.

My What to Expect Book tells me that by six months, Nicole should be able to:

- keep head level with body when pulled to sitting - check

- say "ah-goo" or similar vowel consonant combinations - check

It says she will probably be able to:

- bear some weight on legs when held upright - check

- sit without support - for a few seconds

- turn in the direction of a voice - check

- razz - she loves to do this

She may possibly be able to:

- stand when holding on to someone or something - check

- object if you try to take a toy away - she doesn't seem to mind too much yet

- work to get a toy that is out of reach - check

- look for a dropped object - check

- babble - check

She is starting to scoot, too.

My Little Helper

Nicole just keeps growing up more and more everyday. I love her little personality. She is very inquisitive and checks out everything she can. These days, she will put anything she can reach in her mouth. Friday morning, I was getting her bottles ready for daycare, so I had to put her on the counter with me. We have a container full of our cooking utensils next to where she was sitting. She startedreaching for the utensils one at a time. She would put them in her mouth and then when she decided they didn't taste very good, she would throw them on the floor. It was cracking me up. She was very into it. Her face looked so determined, like she was looking for one that tasted good. She dirtied almost my whole container and I couldn't help but laugh at her. I had to grab some pictures.

Some people call me Baby-Phelps, I prefer Aqua-girl

Since the day that Nicole was born I've marveled at her huge feet and thought, she'd make a great swimmer! (I know what you're thinking, but it's one of the reasons Michael Phelps is so fast...seriously). This Saturday we put Nicole in the swimsuit that fit her best and set out to put those feet to work.

When we got to the pool, we found out they were having a two-year anniversary party, free swimming and Otis Spunkmeyer cookies for all...yeaahhh! The downside, a ton of kids hopped up on chocolate chip cookies, frolicking around in an aquatic playground with every squeal of delight reverberating off every wall in the glassed-in room. The whole experience was overwhelming for Nicole initially.

She eventually got used to being semi-buoyant and did her best Neil Armstrong impression around the wading pool...with a little help. She liked to look at the other kids and splash around, until she started being splashed in the face, she's still working on cause and effect. The water features were also very interesting, 87 kids under 5 agreed!

You're probably thinking, "Rooney, what gives? You talk about this junk about Nicole being the next Phelps, what's her 100M time already?" Well, I didn't clock an official time but let's just say baby dolphins would be impressed. Once she gets her flip turns down, watch out!

After a tough swim workout it was time for some "I got your nose...in my mouth." It was pretty fun and a great way to end the day. We hit the showers and enjoyed our cookies on the drive home; we're going to have to get a good night's sleep if we're going to go to Bernkastle winefest tomorrow.