This is the
beginning of our monthly family journal instead of just all about Alethea every
month. We have had a lot of fun, busy
times through the end of February and March.
We celebrated Alethea’s birthday with a bunch of family at the end of
February and had fun celebrating St. Patrick’s Day as a family in March.
Let’s start with Ben. Ben has been a very busy man this month. He has been teaching as usual at the naval
base, but he has also had many extra responsibilities over this past month at
work. It was his job to put on a command
career fair which involved many hours of phone calls and extra jobs at
work. On top of that he is one of the
command fitness leaders so he has been doing a ton of preparations for April’s
big fitness test that is coming up.
Needless to say, we haven’t seen a ton of him and his co-workers are
ready for the fitness test to be over so that every phone call isn’t always for
him. J Exciting news is that Ben found out he is
promoted as a division director and will take over leading the enlisted math
department in June. He is excited about
handing off responsibilities and taking on this new leadership role. On top of all of his responsibilities at
work, his graduate school has been kicking it into high gear. His semester ends at the beginning of April
so March was a month of winding down projects and preparing for finals. He is thankful for the opportunity to get his
masters for free, but he will definitively be ready for it to be over next
spring.
As for me, I have been spending
a lot of time with just Alethea and me, but I am enjoying every minute of
it. We have been blessed with some good
friends here that we are able to hang out with and I have recently taken on a
volunteer position at church helping to plan our summer local missions. This has been a great outlet for me and I am
really enjoying getting to use my planning and organization skills to serve the
Lord. I have also been reading a lot of
good books and researching recipes in efforts to provide healthy food for the
three of us. It has been very
enlightening and we are enjoying lots of yummy new food.
Now for the Alethea (this will
be the longer part J). She is growing up more and more each
day. In March, she reached the 13 month mark and we commemorated it with
her first beach trip of the year (more on that to come). She is now 32inches tall and 23lbs. Finally her weight is starting to catch up
with her height, a little bit. She also
got her 6th tooth this month on March 11th. So she now has 4 on top and 2 on bottom. It makes her look a bit like a bunny in some
pictures, but we think it is absolutely adorable! She has also
begun the process of weaning. I am
letting her lead the way for the most part and she is down to only two nursing
sessions a day (one 1st thing in the morning and one right before
bed at night). I am really hoping she
holds onto these two for a few more months since she wants nothing to do with cow’s
milk, but I am sure she will be just fine either way. J
Speaking of bunnies, I know it's sideways, but this is my little bunny face :-)
And we made her a spring sensory bucket that she absolutely loves
As Ben likes to say, she is
looking (and acting) more like a toddler each day. She is like a little sponge and is absorbing
so much knowledge by exploring the world around her. It is amazing how much she seems to
understand. We love watching this,
though sometimes it has us a bit on edge because she is so quick to get into
everything. She has a smile that just
melts our hearts though and we can’t help but smile, even when she is getting
herself into trouble.
She figured out how to climb in the dryer
This month she has developed a
love for building with blocks. She is
even able to stack them on her own quite well (even the giant mega blocks that
she has to line up correctly). Ben is
very amazed by this development! She
loves to run around inside or out. She
runs up and down our front hallway screaming and cracking up at herself because
she thinks she is so funny (maybe because it echoes?). She also loves to push anything that she can
around the house and outside. Her ball
popper has become a favorite; she wanders the house and up and down the
sidewalk pushing it along and squealing with delight. Dancing has become a new favorite as
well. Whenever we turn music on she gets
really excited and bounces to the beat or spins in circles. She has so much fun with the circles
especially. She loves any and every type
of ball and it is not uncommon for her to walk around with at least one in her
hand at all times (that or a toy spoon).
She has also developed quite the love for the puppies. Instead of always trying to pull their tails,
she is actually trying to hug them and pet them more lately. I have a feeling they are going to be
buddies.
Balls!
Her favorite ball!
ball popper action
I could keep going on about the
things she loves, but the last one I would like to mention is her love for
phones (play or real). She walks around
putting everything up to her ear and jabbering like it is a phone. Plus if I am ever on the phone she wants to
talk too. Thankfully, most of the time I
am able to put it on speaker for and she just babbles away to whoever is on the
phone. However, this can be a problem
when I am trying to make an appointment or talk to someone when it can’t be on
speaker. I think we might have high
phone bills in our future. ;-)
Over the past month she has
really taken to actually playing with her daddy in a very interactive way. He loves this! (And I love watching it!) They
play hide and seek with each other (she is always the seeker) and she giggles
and chases him around the house. So
cute! She also gets very excited whenever
he gets home from work. All I have to
say is ‘I think Daddy is home’ and she runs to the front door to look out the
window. She gets really super excited
and points to the door shouting “DaDa”.
Then she bounces around and goes from window to window until he finally
gets his stuff together and comes inside.
So much fun to watch!
"Daddy can you stop working on grad school and come play?!"
Starting her training early
Walk in the park with Daddy
One fun adventure Alethea and I
went on was to the beach for the first time this year. We went with our friends Anna and Molly to
Isle of Palms and had a blast. The girls
loved playing in the sand and in the surf and the mommies enjoyed lots of good
conversation while watching our sweet little girls have so much fun playing
together. We are so blessed to have good
friends to hang out with. This was also
the first time Alethea has been to the beach since she could walk and I think
that Beach trips will never be the same (in a great way).
buddies
Happy 13 Months to my little beach bum!
Another fun adventure for all of
us was having Alethea’s buddy Molly stay with us while her little sister Laura
was being born. Ben and I got a bit of a
taste for what it would be like to have two rugrats running around. We had so much fun watching the two of them
play together and they were thrilled to get to spend so much time together. And we are so happy that we were able to have
her with us so that her mommy and daddy could focus on getting baby Laura into
this world safely.
As a family we celebrated St.
Patty’s day by getting all three of us dressed up in green to celebrate Alethea
and Ben’s Irish heritage. We had Irish
soda baked oatmeal for breakfast (the closest to Irish food we got), and then headed
to our favorite pizza place, Mellow Mushroom, for dinner. Yum!
We also watched a lot of March madness basketball this past month. I was really excited to see Kentucky and
Louisville both make it to the final four, but then I had to choose between the
two and of course I was cheering for Louisville. And we dressed Alethea up to support the
teams too. J
strike a pose
cheese it!
Mellow Mushroom!
Sporting her KY blue
and Louisville Red!
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