The one with the Quad

For our play group this week we went to the Quadrangle, or the Quad, on base. It's a big grassy/landscaped area surrounded by a block wall that has deer, peacocks, geese, chickens, a rooster and pigeons that you can feed. Its really cool, the animals come right up to you once you bring out the food. The deer are of course a little skittish, but they still eat the food right out of your hand. It probably doesn't help that there was a whole bunch of toddlers running around. Here's so pics. Jon was pretty sad he missed out, so we'll be going back one of these days when he can join us. Plus it was free and you all know those are my favorite kinds of activities :)

The pictures are a little out of order and kind of repetitive, but its getting late and I don't want to fix it.

Ellie didn't care much for the animals. This airplane was so much cooler.

 Taegen and his friend Henry standing by a deer. 

 A male peacock

 Heres a male and female peacock. Just in case any of you don't know, the males are the colorful pretty ones, not the females. The males use their colors to impress the females. 

 Taegen had dropped some carrots right next to the stoller and the peacock came right up to us to get them. 

 Ellie could care less. She just chilled in her seat the whole time. 

 side view of peacock with it's feathers out. 

 I tried to get a picture of Taegs standing next to the peacock with it's feathers out, but he would not cooperate. He was afraid if he turned his back on it, it's peck him. He probably thought this because some of the kids had been pecked by the chickens/rooster. The peacocks however were calm and didn't hurt anyone. 

 back view of peacock feathers

 front view

Taegs and the chickens/rooster. 

 The peacocks and deer in the backround. 

 Heres the kids, Valeria, and the beautiful scenery. It really was a very beautiful place, minus all the poop on the ground.

 Look a white peacock!

 Heres where I was trying really hard to get him to let me take a picture of him and the peacock. This is as close as he would get to it.

 He didn't seem to have a problem getting close to them to feed them or touch them if their feathers weren't out. 

 Taegs and Kai

 Feeding the deer

 running after the animals.

 The deer had just taken the carrot out of his hand and he jumped back and got really excited. He is saying "whoa" 

 He actually got to pet one while it was distracted. 

The one with the SA Zoo

My workout buddy, Larina and I and our kids decided to go to the zoo. Since her husband is in the wounded warrior program, she's alone and always willing to do something. A lot like me :) So this was a perfect outing for us. Plus the kids loved it. Ellie and her daughter were a little young still, but Taegs LOVED it. 

Monkeys!

Taegs and Ellie next to the monkeys. As you can see, Ellie was not as into it all as Taegs was. 

 

Taegs cheesin it up as usual. 

 They only had 1 elephant. Well at least only 1 was out. This zoo was fairly small in the amount of each animal that they had. Plus they didn't have giraffes! What kind of zoo doesn't have giraffes?! 

 Larina showing Taegen where the Tiger was laying. 

 This tiger had a huge pen all to itself, super green and beautiful and this is where it decides to sleep. In the corner on a metal plate. Weird.

 This is a HUGE snapping turtle. They're probably all that big and I just didn't know that. But when we first saw it, it was standing right up next to the glass and I thought it was fake. It was in a really small tank. You know the ones you see that are just filled with small fish. Probably no wider and taller than 3 or 4 ft. He was completely still. Didn't move for quite a while. I was convinced it was fake, until he blinked an eye. Kinda freaked me out. Then he slowly opened his mouth super wide. Creepy but cool at the same time.

 Here we are sitting on a Komodo dragon statue. 

 If you look closely you can see the hippos in the backround. There were TONS of tiny fish in with the hippos that were feeding off/keeping them clean.

 This is an animal I had never seen before. It an Okapi, it is half zebra half giraffe. Totally crazy. It's hind legs are striped with a longer neck. Taegen really liked this one. He was waving to him and laughing. There was another kid looking at it at the same time and they got in a fight about what it was. Taegen was saying it was a zebra and the other one was saying it was a giraffe. :)

 So excited to see the Okapi.

 Here is Ellie and Ava. Ava is 1 month younger than Ellie but she's so chubby she makes Ellie look skinny, which she is most definitely not :) Gotta love chubby babies

 Taegs on the Komodo Dragon statue.

 And one more of the turtle that I was so fascinated with. haha. I was looking at the pictures on my computer once we got home and I asked Taegs what this was and his response was "a HUGE tortoise"  :)

We had a great day at the zoo. I didn't get a pic of all the animals that we saw just the ones Taegs really liked. He said his favorite was the elephant. He did also like the crocodiles, but those creep me out so I didn't get a pic of those.

The one with the helicopter

There is a helicopter on base by headquarters and Taegen begs me to go see it every time we pass. He finally asked on a nice day out and we weren't in a hurry to get anywhere so I said yes. We got out and he just got so excited. It is pretty awesome looking, I will admit. 

 He obviously loved it. Plus he's just a cheeser

 Man my kids are cute :)

 The other day Taegen was bending down to pick up something off the bathroom floor and he hit his face and nose on the toilet. Poor kid got a black eye. This is only a day 1. It got a lot worse.

 This awesome bob the builder truck is in the mall, and of course Taegs wanted to spend all his time on just this one toy. 

Captain America and Iron Man. 

Taegs was so excited when he saw this Captain America shirt and almost insisted that we get it for Jon (since there wasn't one that would fit him). We did end up finding an Iron Man one his size though. 

 It took me a couple times to get a good shot since my flash wasn't on. This is the face Jon told me when I told him I needed to take one more. Ha this man hates pictures. 

 Heres a pic of the Nursing cover I made. It isn't the greatest picture, but I'm def getting better the more projects I do. 

 Taegen had team pictures for his soccer team. Here is just one I took with my phone. We'll be getting the real ones here shortly and I'll post those ones.

 The other day Taegen fell asleep on the couch like this. :) Hiding under the blanket, curled up, face smashed in the couch. Super comfy I'm sure. 

The one with all the "swimming"

I say "swimming" because we didn't do much of actual swimming. The water in our pool is still pretty cold. We've gone down and stuck our feet in a couple times but we decided to go down and actually get in the water. Well I should say I let Taegen get in the water. I sat on the side and stuck my feet in while letting E get her feet and legs wet too. 

Normally Taegs is a fish, this time around he wasn't as much. Probably only because the water was rather cold. It wasn't bad once you got use to it but that took a good 10 minutes. And even then it was still fairly cold. Cold enough that I didn't get in. But we've officially had our first swim of the year. 

Just look at all these cute pictures I took of little E. I had to post them all cause her face is just adorable. 

Taegen was going to jump in so I told him to wait while I got the camera out.. Once I got it out though  he changed his mind. I did end up holding his hand and helping him jump in but then he immediately wanted out. (I tried to load a video of this but there was an error :( ).

So instead of swimming this is what he did, pretty much the whole time. I had to bribe him to even go down onto the 3rd step.

The one with the glow sticks

I put some glow sticks in the bath with the kids the other day and they loved it. Ellie just sat there and stared at them in her hands. Taegen thought it was the coolest thing ever. He now asks for them every time he gets in the bath.

The one where Ellie is 7 months old

This crazy girl is 7 months old now. She's so stinkin cute! I just can't get enough of her.

This is the face I get when I go in to get her after her naps. :) Love it (sorry my phone pics always seem to turn out blurry. Boy do I hate iPhones).

-She's in the paper loving stage (don't know if I've mentioned this before or not) I put her in the high chair and ripped out a page of a magazine and gave it to her. She loved playing with it, but not only that I gave her the rest of the magazine and she went crazy. I held one end and she would grab a page and rip it out. She would have a couple pages in her hands or on the tray and when one would fall on the floor she would freak out. haha. I then had to show her there was a whole bunch more she could rip out and play with and she calmed down. Silly girl.
-She's been teething like crazy and her first tooth finally broke through on April 23rd.
-Up until now she has had to fall asleep being swaddled. She would wiggle her arms out while she was sleeping (like in the picture above) but she couldn't fall asleep that way. I tried to break her of the swaddling habit and she was not having it. The transition with Taegen was so easy. So easy in fact that I don't even remember what I did. I looked back on this blog and I only mentioned it before and after I had done it. It obviously wasn't that hard of a thing to break him of. But little E is not liking it. So to help the process along I bought a zippety-zip. She's seemed to like it. And its helped a lot.

Her reaction the first time I put her in her sleep sack.

-I still have to rock her and even as of lately nurse her to sleep. Ever since we got to SA her sleeping habits have been terrible. It takes me 1-2 hours to get her to fall all the way asleep every night. Now that I have the sleep sack I'm going to re-teach her to soothe herself to sleep.
-I had to stop feeding her solids for a while. She was so constipated and her body wouldn't regulate. I'm guessing her body just wasn't ready. She was showing signs and still hungry every time after she ate so I thought she was, but her body was telling a different story. Once I stopped her body regulated again and after a couple weeks I started them again. But this time I'm mainly feeding her prunes. I've given her a some peas too, but I think I need to keep the prunes in her to help her regular. She seems to be doing ok with it. I'm going to start adding some solids for breakfast too. Hopefully She'll do ok with it all.
- She takes a little nap in the mornings (usually no more than an hour, but thats partly because we go to the gym right around the time she gets tired) and then a longer nap in the early afternoon. Usually 2-3 hours. If I'm lucky she'll take another nap in the evening but that doesn't happen very often. It also depends on how early she goes down for her 2nd nap. If she goes down at 1 and wakes up at 3 I might be able to get her down again around 5. But if she sleeps past 4-5 she won't, which is fine since she "goes to bed" at 7:30. And I say "goes to bed" like that because like mentioned above it takes until 8:30 or 9 (if not later) to get her to stay asleep.
- She's 18 lbs. Her thighs and cheeks are still so chubby and oh so cute.
-She's a MAJOR mommas girl. Sometimes I think it hurts Jon that he can't get her to calm down but I just try to remind him that Taegen was the same way at this age. Since she's nursing she gets most of her comfort from me, so I'm hoping that when I stop she'll cling to Jon a little bit. But its also probably because Jon is gone and busy a lot. He does try to spend time with the kids when he can, but school is pretty time consuming.
-She loves her older brother. Taegen tries so hard to get her to laugh and its too cute.

Speaking of Taegen, here's a little about him lately:
-He can't seem to figure out Hide and Seek. He LOVES to play it, but every time we ask him to go hide he'll either tell us where he's going to hide, or come running out and say "here I am" when we're done counting. When he hides he also can't stop laughing, so he easily gives away his position. If he counts he makes sure to tell us where we are allowed to hide and if we hide some where other than that spot he starts to cry when he can't find us.
-He also thinks that hiding underneath a blanket in the middle of a room or under the kitchen table is a great hiding spot. He then yells "you can't find me!" After we find him he'll then immediately put the blanket over him again and say "You can't find me again!" Like he's found an even better spot this time around, except he didn't move an inch. haha.
- He loves to go under the kitchen table and just hang out as well. He'll take the iPad under there and just chill.

-This boy is almost always naked. Well I make him keep his underwear on at least. But keeping him dressed has been a major task lately. I don't know why he doesn't like to keep clothes on. Maybe it's hereditary? I hated clothes when I was little too.

-He hates any loud noises

-After he shares something with someone he'll say "And thats called sharing" :)

-He scored a goal in his last soccer game! It was more of an accident than anything, but hey I'll take whatever I can get. He's still wanting to run around and play with some of the boys more than he is actually wanting to play soccer. He doesn't pout near as much as he use to. But he still doesn't run into the action to try to get the ball. He wants everyone to stop and give him a turn to kick the ball, which they obviously do not do. So he gets a little frustrated sometimes. Mostly he just runs after the kids that are running after the ball. That is if we can get him to get involved in the game at all.

Funny things he says:

-"We don't hit people, Taegen is a person" Like he needs to remind us that hitting is not ok, when its actually the other way around, WE have to remind him that. But he mainly says that after he gets a spank, which isn't very often mind you. But when he does things like trying to drown E in the bath tub, you better believe he gets in A LOT of trouble. (In his defense, he didn't realize the seriousness of what was going on and he kind of thought they were playing a game together, but because it was such a big deal we felt he needed to get in trouble for it so he knows they weren't playing around.

- While he's pooping "I smell something mom. I smell poop. I don't smell Oreos" 

- "Thats not my favorite" He says this whenever I brush his teeth with any toothpaste other than the kids fluoride free berry flavored one. If I use regular tooth paste that is his response and he immediately asks to spit it out. 

The one where it's working

My diet that is. I've been dieting for 1 month and going to the gym for 3 weeks now. I only go to the gym 3 days a week. They have a mommy and me stroller time where I can go on the track with my stroller. But they only offer that MWF 9-11. So I drag my kids along and meet up with a friend of mine and we "enjoy" some exercise with our kids. I say "enjoy" because I HATE running. I don't mind other exercise, but running...UGH! I hate it. I can't comprehend how there are people out there who actually enjoy it. Of course we don't run the whole time, being newbies to the whole running thing and all. They have little stations where you stop and do push ups, jump rope, planks, lunges, etc. So we do those too. And guess what?... It's all paying off! Slowly but surely! After 1 month I've lost...drum roll please.

10 lbs and 7 1/2 inches total!

I've technically lost 8 1/2 inches, but 1 of those inches was in my boobs and I don't think thats from weight loss. I think it was more due to the fact that I'd just fed Ellie so I didn't have any milk. So I'm not counting that extra inch. If it stays off next month then I'll add it in. I lost 1 inch in my waist, 3 inches in my tummy, 1/2 an inch in my hips and 1 1/2 in my thighs. And thats 1 1/2 inches in each of my thighs, not 1 1/2 inches total :) There were so many times throughout the month that I wanted to measure myself but I'm so glad I didn't. Seeing the results this morning was such a self esteem builder. Since I don't see much of a change in my body or the way my clothes fit, seeing the numbers on paper really helped. 

I couldn't be happier about this! It makes me feel so good to know that my sacrificing is paying off. I really do love weight watchers. I can eat whatever I want and I don't have to feel guilty. If I eat healthy I can pretty much eat whatever I want (with portion control of course, unless it's fruits and veggies). If I want to splurge and eat out or each candy, I can do that. It just means I have to eat less the rest of the day. Compromise.

I haven't had any real problems with my milk supply either, YAY! I've had days where it dipped, but I just had to drink more water or the mothers milk tea and I was back up to normal. Ellie seems to be doing just fine with my weight loss too. As in it doesn't seem to be affecting her. I have had issues with her eating solids, but I'll talk about that on her 7 month post. 

I've also noticed a big difference in my attitude. I've been feeling a lot better about myself and my relationship with Jon and my kids. Feeling good about yourself really does make a big difference. I still have a ways to go before I'm where I want to be weight/health wise. But I'm getting there. :)