Please pardon the hiatus... I had a baby!

So after about 3 months, I finally have a minute to blog. Here's a quick update on our little family in pictures:

23 March: Daniel graduates from UCT as distinguished graduate and earns the Outstanding Contributor and Sadler awards. This "trifecta" of honors had never been achieved before and he did it!

25 March: Daniel Jr. joins our little family after 28.5 hours of labor and a successful VBAC! The doctor and nurses were wonderful at the hospital on base. It was such a different experience compared to the C-section I had with Anna. The recovery was so much quicker and I'm already back to my pre-pregnancy weight!

28 March: Mom and Dad come to visit! We had a great time showing them around and it was so nice having help with our 2 beautiful babies. Anna loved going to the park behind our house with her Pap Pap in her pajamas first thing in the morning! We took them to Tatonuts donut shop and introduced them to our friends.

8 April: Happy Easter! We celebrated Easter at our house with some of our Air Force family- the Powells and the Ten Hakens. It was so nice even though I was exhausted at the end of it... it may have been a little much to host something like that just 2 weeks after having a baby, but I wouldn't have had it any other way. Daniel was a huge help in getting everything ready and we had some delicious food with some help from our friends! Thanks to Meghan & Jason we had enough chairs for everyone and Bri let us use their oven so everything would be ready at the same time!

Our colorful Easter eggs!

22 April: Anna's 2nd birthday party- it's Minnie's Bowtique! 

We had a great time celebrating with our friends and Anna loved her cupcakes (pictured below)

These cupcakes were delicious and pretty easy to make- I used a chocolate cake mix & canned frosting that I dyed with food coloring. I added white chocolate chips to make polka dots, mini fudge stripe cookies for the ears and a small amount of fondant to make the bows.

Digging in after she blew out the candle!

29 April: Welcome to the Catholic Church, Daniel! We had Daniel Jr. baptized at Our Lady of Fatima at the 8:30am Mass (which we normally attend). Godparents, Kelly Mackey and Chris Wrinn traveled great distances to bear witness and take on their responsibilities as godmother and godfather. Kelly flew in from Seattle, WA and Chris drove (with his wife and 2 little boys) from Ft Worth, TX! 

Nana flew in for the occasion, too! She got to meet Daniel and spend some time with us after not being together since Thanksgiving! It was so nice and Anna loved getting her own Nana time.

15 May: Two weeks into Daniel's TDY in Florida, I take a trip to Pittsburgh with the kids. It's Daniel Jr's first plane ride! I was called "brave" so many times, I lost count, but it actually wasn't that bad!

Anna loved having her own seat and was very well behaved on both flights to Pittsburgh (Gulfport to Houston, Houston to Pittsburgh). She loved looking out the window!

Aunt Gracie with Anna and Daniel. This is the first time my siblings got to see our newest family member!

19 May: Cousin Billy and his beautiful bride, Alex, tie the knot in Philadelphia! It was quite a road trip, but we managed it! It was a great celebration and so nice to see our family!

Daniel hanging out with Uncle Bobby.

23 May: Saying goodbye to Aunt Katie and heading home to Mississippi.

24-28 May: We took a mini-vacay to Florida to spend some time with Daniel. He had to work for the majority of our stay, but we spent every night together and got him all to ourselves Sunday and Monday. We went swimming in the Gulf and Anna loved it. Daniel Jr spent most of the time asleep in the carrier!

Me and my sweetie. We all missed him while we were in Pittsburgh!

11-15 June: Sharon visits! She is one of my best friends & Anna's godmother. We hadn't seen each other since we visited her in August 2010! We went to the Biloxi lighthouse (pictured here), Tatonuts, Lovelace Drugstore, the beach & Beauvoir. It was a great trip & she was a huge help since Daniel was still TDY.

My babies & I at the beach.

That brings us up to date! Daniel has training this week & next and then he's home for good! Once he gets home, we'll be packing up for our next move. Expect posts about potential houses soon!

My very own, real life Suzy Talks A Lot

Our Anna is one chatty Cathy. She is always parroting us and trying out new words. Some 'stick' better than others and get quickly incorporated into her vocabulary. Others tend to get tucked away and she'll bring them out at the most surprising times.

Here are some of her more entertaining and extremely adorable phrases:

• "Key not work, Daddy" - when she tried to unlock the bathroom door with a car key
• "Daddy, I worked it!"- when she opens a door successfully
• "Bri. Rebel. Best friends."- Bri & Rebel are friends of ours who are married. We have a book about Gossie & Gertie (little ducks) who are best friends. She's decided whoever you spend the most time with/are seen together with is your best friend. Although, it doesn't apply to her, she says Uncle Ben is her best friend and she hasn't seen him in person since November!
• "Mommy, no talking!"- She has finally figured out that just like I can tell her no, she can tell me no. The only difference is that she can't put me in time-out!
• "Anna want puppy"- We were at a friend's house and she has 2 dogs. Anna asked to see Shelby (another dog she knows) and I told her that Shelby doesn't live here because she is Bri's puppy. After thinking about this, she told me she wanted one, too! (Not a chance! She's getting a younger sibling in 3 weeks and there is no puppy in our future!)
• "Ar-besque, sottay, shepay" (translation: arabesque, sautee, echepee)- 3 of her ballet moves she's picked up from Little Einsteins. She'll say them as she does each one. I'll be posting a video soon so you can see our beautiful ballerina.
• "Bestest movie ever!"- we're still not sure where she picked this up, but she says it every time one of her shows comes on.

Anna in one of her many 'princess dresses.'

It is so much fun to watch her develop her vocabulary. She's recently started waking up and calling us in to her room, then tells us that she had a dream. It always contains a princess, who is usually running to a castle. :-)

Laissez les bons temps rouler!

So living in the South has taken on a new meaning the last couple weeks. Apparently, it's Mardi Gras season... that's right, these people take Fat Tuesday to a whole level and turn it into a season! This includes parades, parties, balls and all sorts of things. There are actual Mardi Gras stores filled with beads, masks (some costing $100+), costumes, decorations, and everything that you could need to get into the Mardi Gras spirit.
I visited one of these stores because Daniel's class will have their drop night (where they find out their job and where they're going after graduation) just a few days before the actual Fat Tuesday and the theme for the drop night will be Mardi Gras. So Stacy (one of my fellow spouses) and I went shopping to see what we could find. We got a ton of beads and some plastic medallions so that the guys will have a memento of the night. On the front, the medallion will be decorated with their name and on the back, the instructors will write the assignment. Only 4 more days until drop night! I'm so excited!!!

We also found plenty of fun things to put on Lucas & Anna. These were the first ones we found but they both chose different ones that we ended up buying.
Just last Sunday, Lucas, Stacy, and Justin invited us to come to our first Mardi Gras parade. It was a beautiful day and since we didn't have much planned, we went and it was a lot of fun. It was in a small town next to Biloxi called Ocean Springs so it wasn't super crowded and we were right up front so the kids were able to see everything.

It was a very different parade experience for me. For me, parades have connotations of marching bands, dance teams and other groups actually walking the parade route as well as being cold with lots of crowds because the most frequently attended parade for me is the Pittsburgh St. Patty's Day parade. However, at this parade, it was so hot poor Lucas got heat rash from his long sleeved shirt and Dan & I both got a bit sunburned!

Anna with her Mardi Gras feather headband and new baton someone threw to her from a float.

A the Mardi Gras parade, there were mostly floats decorated according to a certain theme, "Medieval Times." Each float is put together by a "krewe" and our favorite one was the Alice in Wonderland float- complete with all the characters, including the Queen of Hearts who turned out to be a man in drag!

After the parade, Lucas and Anna easily had about 200 beads!

Anna and Lucas had a great time dancing to the music and putting on so many beads they could barely walk! After most of the floats had been seen, we headed home with more beads than we knew what to do with! We're going to steer clear of New Orleans even though we do have a 4 day weekend  preceding Mardi Gras. Too many people, specifically too many drunk people, for our taste but we'll get our fill of authentic New Orleans King Cake at drop night, so I think it'll be a great Mardi Gras. :-)

Our Little Story Teller

Anna loves princesses and she loves stories so naturally her stories are all about princesses. Below are the first two (many more to come, I'm sure) that she has told me. The words in bold are the ones that she actually said, the rest are just added to put it into sentence form based on questions I asked her to continue the story.

"The Princess Goes to the Beach"
On[c]e upon a time, there was a blue princess who lived in a blue castle. One day the princess decided to go for a run. She ran all the way to the water. At the water, she found blue carrots. She ate them. Then she decided to go to the beach. She went swimming at the beach and was very happy. The End.

"The Princess and Her Puppy"
On[c]e upon a time, there was a blue princess. She had a puppy. Her puppy wore a pink bow. One day, the princess and the puppy went for a run to the blue castle. They found green carrots and ate them. They were yummy. The End.

I think she's taking after her daddy. He's a very good story teller and in the process of writing a book himself (which he has read to me and I'm confident that it will be published one day and be very successful!).

Potty Training 101

***Disclaimer: I'm not a potty training expert! This is just what is working for Anna and for us as her parents. I just wanted to share some of the resources we are using and how we've adjusted them to work best for us.***

It's hard to believe that our sweet baby girl is ready to bid farewell to diapers, but we're now in the middle of potty training (today is day 3) and so far, so good! I'm hoping that she will be completely diaper free by the time Baby P arrives in mid-March. At the rate she's going, it's looking pretty promising!

Anna is just shy of 21 months so we started a little earlier than most but rather than go by age, we went by other 'cues' that she was ready:

• Telling us when she needed changed
• Being able to tell us when she had to go ("Mommy! Potty!!")
• Showing interest in the 'princess potty' we got her from Amazon.com before we even started



We love this potty seat because it fits over the regular toilet and is easy to move between the different bathrooms in our house.

We decided to wait until after the holidays to begin the actual potty training because of all the travelling we did. Also, Anna is a little older and there are fewer distractions and trips to take at home.

We picked out her "big girl pants" at Target on Thursday. They're pretty adorable, plus they're "training pants" so they are thicker than regular underwear but don't feel like diapers. Pull-ups and training pants with the outer plastic lining still feel like diapers so toddlers will continue to treat them as such so using the training pants really drives home the point of "This is NOT a diaper!" The brand we found is Gerber and they come in a variety of colors and sizes. Unfortunately, the only in-stock size was 3T- way too big for our petite baby but with a few stitches on the waistband, they stay up pretty well. Dan picked up some 2T ones today from the Base Exchange and they fit much better!

We went with the training pants instead of the naked bottom approach (which many moms swear by) but we're only putting the training pants on her rather than putting pants over top of it. This is mostly for speed when it comes to getting her on the potty. Even though it's January, we're in Mississippi so it's still pretty warm and we're wearing lots of dresses out and sticking with t-shirts when we're inside.

We are using mostly tips from this helpful article on Instructables.com as well as some from BabyCenter.com. Here are the most important things we've implemented this weekend:

1. Dedicate a whole weekend to start potty training. This weekend worked well for us because it's a long weekend for Dan so 2 adults with their focus on one potty-training toddler.
2. Stick to uncarpeted areas for the first day. This is mostly for ease of cleaning up accidents! We blocked off access to our living room and brought several of Anna's toys into the kitchen/eating area. I made sure to have a few surprises for her to keep her interest- I bought markers for her new easel and we spent A LOT of time drawing together as a family. We also had many tea parties, built with blocks and Anna enjoyed running around our island.
3. Encourage dry/salty snacks to increase thirst a little. This helps the toddler become more aware of a full bladder and connect that with using the potty. Anna has always loved juice, milk and water so we didn't need to increase her thirst too much but the Cheez-Its and Goldfish definitely helped!
4. Set a potty timer. This took a little trial and error because we always seemed to miss Anna's potty time by a couple minutes resulting in several wet pairs of panties. However, once we fine-tuned it a bit, it was helpful.
5. Make trips to the potty exciting but not distracting. Anna is pretty patient but after several trips to the potty, she started getting bored and not wanting to sit there for several minutes. We've found that simple games (Itsy-Bitsy Spider, Pat-a-Cake, Simon Says) work well for the couple minutes before she actually goes. Bringing in toys (we tried her little toy piano) didn't work very well because she ended up just sitting there and playing- not going to the potty!
6. Praise is the best reward. While we did reward Anna with chocolate the first day for all successful trips to the potty, we're backing away from that already. She doesn't seem to mind and is delighted when we cheer for her after she goes. Time will tell how well it works but she is very proud of her big girl pants and I think that's enough reward for her.

Both articles that we are taking our tips from say not to take the toddler out of the house for very long in the first couple days which makes a lot of sense, but we like to go to church as a family so we took a leap of faith (along with several blankets, an extra set of panties and another dress in our bag) on Sunday morning. During church (a 1 hour service), Anna used the potty twice without incident. I was worried she wouldn't go without her potty seat but she did just fine while I held her up on the big potty. We also let her nap in her big girl pants and she woke up dry both times.

Every day has been an improvement and I'm hopeful that Anna will continue to grow in confidence as she gets to wear her big girl pants all the time. The Instructables article says to continue to use diapers at bedtime until they are accident free for 2 weeks. We're going to play it by ear. Anna wakes up dry pretty consistently but I think we'll see how the next few days go.

Monday=Funday!

Today started out well and has continued to be a really nice time with my sweet Anna. Daniel has been MIA all day but since he's in a course right now that is taught in a SCIF (Secure Compartmented Information Facility), I'm not surprised by the fact he didn't come home for lunch.


We started our morning with a trip to the Dunkin Donuts (a recent addition to Pass Rd that caused quite a buzz among the Keesler spouses) with a new friend, Kelley, and her 2 boys. After Anna enjoyed her 'spinkoll' donut, the two of us split a bottle of milk and delicious cinnamon raisin bagel while talking with Kelley. Her boys (4yo and 7 months) were very well behaved and thankfully, so was Anna. Kelley and I both have sewing projects we're working on, so we hit up Hancock Fabrics for a little shopping which was a miss for Kelley (no boy owl patterns in cotton- only fleece!) and was a so-so trip for me. I found a few fat quarters with which to start Anna's big girl bed quilt to coordinate with the nursery colors. (More posts on that to come!)


Once the inevitable pre-naptime crankiness hit, we knew it was time to leave. Anna and I swung by Winn-Dixie for a few things we couldn't find at the commissary yesterday and came home shortly afterwards.


After a quiet lunchtime with Anna napping and Daniel not home, I was able to get some laundry started before my little girl woke up. And that's when the fun in the kitchen started!


After seeing a facebook post from a friend about food-based, homemade fingerpaints, I was curious. Thanks to this Pinterest post, I found all the needed ingredients in my pantry and got to work. Anna helped by pouring in ingredients into the pot. It didn't take long at all to make, but it did need to cool before little fingers got to painting.


While it was cooling, I decided to make some homemade taco seasoning by following this recipe (another Pinterest find). I'm making Daniel tacos tomorrow, so we'll see how it turns out!


Once the paint was cooled, I put it into 4 containers and added food coloring (red, blue, green, and yellow). I stripped Anna down to her diaper and we went to town fingerpainting out on our back porch. Here's a look at my budding artist!

Once Anna got a bath after this fun (but messy) craft, we headed out to the park to swing.

It's been quite an enjoyable day with my sweet girl. I'm soaking up these Anna & Mommy moments before our little girl is a big sister. I know that the fun and the love will only multiply with our new baby who will arrive in a few months, but I want to make sure we do lots of fun things together in the meantime!