Georgia on Our Minds

Hello all! Its such a beautiful time of year here in Arizona, after the non-stop rains of the summer monsoon month we get the crisp cool mornings, by noon you can sun-bathe in the 80 degree sunlight, and then come the cool evenings with magnificent sunsets filled with mountain peaks, purples, blues, reds and yellows. I love autumn! Anjuli and I take the jogger out several times a week in the morning time, usually right after Lou leaves for work we bundle up and head out for a morning jog. Its been a great way for me to get back into shape, in fact I started jogging in August and am still going strong, actually improving! I have a sweet friend to thank for this, I was going out and doing 2-2.5 miles maximum 3 times a week and feeling like I was going to die. Then, I met Lindsay and learned that she ran...only she ran anywhere from 4-6 miles with TWO KIDS in a jogger! Needless to say, I was impressed! She took me out for a couple of days and before I knew it I was jogging almost 4 miles...more than I've ever accomplished in my life! I'm slow, I'm exhausted during the exercise, the fact that we're 5,000 ft. above sea level is never lost on me....but its been wonderful getting into shape, having more energy, and this week I've started fitting into some pre-pregnancy clothing again so I'm just so encouraged!
Its been a busy few weeks here at the Crist house, I started a blog post during my saga with shingles two weeks ago...but was feeling too loopy on the pain meds to finish it. :) Short story, I was diagnosed with shingles the day I was scheduled to host a baby shower for a friend.....so everything had to be moved to another friend's home last minute and she was gracious enough to host/prepare/and pick up all the pieces while I filled prescriptions, medicated and crashed on the sofa amidst lots of "this hurts!" moments. I'm all better now, and very thankful to be so. I had a suspicion it might be shingles but waking up with a rash/nerve pain/oozing blisters from one side of my abdomen to my backbone confirmed it. After a week with lots of kind offers from friends for babysitting, meals, and Lou taking on the majority of the laundry/kitchen/meals, I felt almost 100% better!
Big news here is our upcoming move...our new duty station is Fort Stewart, GA and we're scheduled to leave Arizona at the end of November, with packing taking place the week of Thanksgiving...yes, we are once again moving during a holiday. :) Its our style...or at least the Army's style. I went to the mandatory meetings this week and signed stacks of paperwork so we will be having the moving company take our home goods to GA while we drive the truck with Escape in tow across country. I think we've figured its a good 4 day trip from here to Fort Stewart, especially with Anjuli. She is generally a good traveler for the first 2-3 hours, but then comes the half hour of painful screaming....before she falls asleep. That hour ALWAYS occurs on our drive home from Tucson, and she has great lung capacity! She's getting so big and I fall more in love with her each day. I was telling a friend that its hard to imagine something so tiny taking up so much space in your heart and thoughts....but its true! :) She is a joy and a blessing and we're just so humbled that God has given us this responsibility to be parents! We took her to a little family pumpkin patch nearby last Friday night, just for the experience.

She loves animals and has no fear, none! They had a small petting zoo with farm animals and she was fascinated by them!

The woman in charge said,"You can go out and pick your own pumpkin, just watch out for the black widow spiders, snakes and scorpions." Yeah, since when is that the standard pumpkin patch greeting? LOL

Speaking of Arizona exotic animals, these are a regular at our house!

These lovely javelinas love hanging out in our front yard after midnight and eating whatever they can get their snouts on! Sometimes we have a herd of 12 or more come through, our walls are so un-insulated that you wake up and it sounds like you're in a barnyard with all the snorting, grunting and slobbery noises! We have an odd fruit tree by the front door that they raid every couple of nights-its also directly outside the master bedroom window.

Oh yes, I forgot to mention the house! We have a home (tentatively) awaiting us in Georgia! Lou flew to the area over Columbus Day weekend and went home searching, after lots of photos, videos and floor plans were shared we put an offer on a home in the Hinesville area, about 10-15 minutes from the fort. Its a lovely little place that looks like the perfect "home" for us and Anjuli, especially since we should be in Georgia for our record time in one place since being married- 3 whole years! See it in all its "before wallpaper removal and Crist renovations" loveliness here. ;) We're so excited to be closer to family and only about an hour's drive from Savannah, GA.....which I consider one of the most romantic historical cities in the US. :) Our little home to be is under contract and we are scheduled to close December 6th, so prayers for a smooth sale are greatly appreciated!
So many things have happened this year with our families that we've been unable to physically be there for because of the distance, so I'm excited to be back on the East Coast again. I will miss Arizona though. Not necessarily the house here (which we've been informed is to be demolished along with this entire neighborhood the first week of December...hooray!) or the weather and bugs and wild animals, but the people we have grown to know and love. My friends from church and PWOC are going to be difficult to say goodbye to. I have a wonderful ladies' Bible study that I've been helping to facilitate when the teacher is away and we're working through Paul Tripp's book on communication, War of Words. So much conviction in my own life of sinful patterns of communication, conflict and past failings towards others....so much good practical wisdom for the future from the book and my fellow classmates. Bible study days are Tuesdays and although I'm worn out after the morning is over....I am also always so encouraged and strengthened mentally. I take Anjuli with me, and the ladies are so kind to help keep her occupied/distracted when I need help. I'm going to miss them so!
Well, I should close this with a list of everything that Anjuli is doing and how much she is changing...in the blink of an eye! I have to share this little video just to give you a peek into her personality and how much she loves her daddy!

 

 Just in case you should think everything is roses....our big challenges are her constant issues with constipation. Who would have thought I would spend so much time focused on elimination....but in a baby its a big deal! I drink more than ample amounts of water each day, continuing my habit from pregnancy days...but it still persists. I wonder if it has anything to do with Arizona's incredibly dry climate. I also read that babies with a sensitivity to wheat can be constipated even when breast feeding, so I stopped eating wheat for several days but didn't notice a difference. I was giving her small amounts of finger food style avocados, softened apples and pears, but went back to exclusively nursing just to see if it will help her for the time being. She LOVES food, she grabs at everything and wants to put it in her mouth.....but I think it might be best for now to back off on the more solid food. Another challenge is that she will not drink from a bottle. She won't drink water or juice when I've tried that route for the constipation. The only bottle she snatches and tries to drink from is my water bottle...and she dumps 80% of it down her front, with a big grin! Love that baby girl! Her list of little accomplishments? Sitting up,

grabbing objects with the 2-finger pincer approach,

saying "da" when Lou came home one day ;),

laughing hysterically at us, sleeping for a 7 hour stretch at night,

getting up on all fours, rocking back and forth,

standing up while holding on to your fingers......you know, the normal things a baby does that makes you say,"Isn't she amazing, honey?" And we do, all the time. :) 

Ten Seconds in Front of the Lens

This is going to be a photos-only blog post...just couldn't resist showing you our spunky girl in action. Constant movement and Anjuli are synonymous!

 Gotta love those feet!

 And the expressions are just terrific, no matter the occasion!

 

Not sure about all these crazy toys around her....

 Fighting Mr. Frog tooth and nail.....never a dull moment with baby girl

 Spit....yes, that's my secret weapon!

 What? I'm being filmed? Why didn't you say so?

 Just chilling on the couch with Daddy....cause that's what we do on Saturdays these days!

Little By Little

This weekend, at a friend's baby shower-she is digging that pear slice.

The mouth is an excellent place for all fingers and objects within her reach. ;)

Mom and Dad bought us a Patch the Pirate tape when we were kids and one of the songs was "Little by Little" The lyrics pop into my head all the time now,"Trust in the Lord and start out to climb...reach for the goal one step at a time...little by little, inch by inch, by the yard its hard, by the inch, what a cinch..." Simple enough, but life as a new mom seems to be a series of "inches climbed". I'm always grateful to look back and see progress, but the impatient me wants it to be profound and stunning. It ain't. ;)

I can't get enough of her cute little face :)

Anjuli is now 4 months old! Seeing the dimples pop up in her elbows and knees convinced me that she is truly getting enough nutrition and the development of a double chin has confirmed it.

Little hands I love

There are so many things I've learned in the past several months, but what stands out most is how little I do know...haha! Truly, it seems as though you can read and read to try and prepare yourself for something like this but just as in nursing school, "its all theory" until your first real job starts! Then you learn that most of what is in the books isn't practiced by anyone and definitely not to the letter. Which is comforting, because like many things I aspire to...I never manage to continue them without some degree of failure or forgetting or just plain laziness that day. Like my squat challenge for July, I completed the first 24 days of it and was psyched to be able to look at my neatly crossed off chart on the fridge and say,"Yep, I'm sore but I haven't missed a day!" Then, there was the day I forgot...and because of that failure, I thought,"What's the point, my challenge is ruined!" and missed 4 more days in a row. I was reading devotions the other morning and realized how silly that attitude is, missing a day doesn't mean that we give up entirely....instead it should have given me that much more insight into the human condition-we will never achieve anything perfectly. Not in this life. :)

Sunday morning matchies

So, how are we? We're doing very well. All the cliched remarks about new babies ARE true! OK, not all of them, but the ones about your life changing forever definitely are. :) Changing for the better though. So many new routines we are starting that were never even thought of in our past 5 years of marriage. :) There's the "hold Anjuli while I make supper" routine, the "I think its a good time to mess all over my unsuspecting Daddy" routine, the "nurse the baby before you eat a single bite of food"...etc etc etc.

Anjuli is now sitting up in the Bumbo and Exersaucer, grabbing at food and taking handfuls of hair...she takes the statement,"Hold on" to mean "hold tight to mommy's hair while hollering" instead of "be patient, dear". She's a determined individual!

She's babbling and in general is incredibly active all day long, between her naps. She loves eating, and I sometimes feel that I spend most of the day nursing her, in between cleaning and making meals and listing Ebay clothing! But, all that to say that its such a special time...it really is. There are those nights when I'm so ready for bed and I want her to stop stop stop instead of performing her "hourlong-before-bedtime-nursing" stunt, but those don't happen often and they're usually when I've had a long day and she's been fussy. Did I mention that she's drooling? She can soak herself, Lou and I with her amazing salivary glands in a matter of five minutes!

The first two months after she was born were very roller coaster emotionally for me. I've always been someone who did not do well physically or mentally on less than 8 hours of sleep a night and we weren't getting that, of course. Anjuli started out eating every 2-3 hours and that lasted through most of the first 3 months. All the soreness of new motherhood was felt-wow! At one point I was getting up every time she fussed and Lou wisely suggested that we put her swing right outside the bedroom door at night so she wouldn't wake at every creak and turn. She slept very well in the swing but was incredibly fussy in our bed or her crib. However, all that has changed in the last two weeks! Lou started his Counter-Intelligence course mid July and going to sleep at 9pm while Anjuli was wide awake and jabbering wasn't working....so one night I tried her crib...and it was like a switch had been flipped-she slept 6 hours' straight. Hallelujah! Since then I've started putting her down for naps and bedtime in the crib and playing a lullaby cd on repeat....she does well most nights with a wakeup at midnight and four-five am for feedings. The only nights she wakes every two hours are the ones where we have something planned for the next day....heh heh. I think she knows! So I'm getting more sleep, feeling more awake during the daytime and in general life is good! If I have a rough night, Lou will take her in the morning for 30 minutes or so before work and let me catch a few winks....that makes all the difference. :) His schedule is now the "up at 445am, finish PT and home for breakfast, back at 745 to class and home anywhere from 5-630 at night" ....lather, rinse and repeat M-F. ;)

Anjuli helping Daddy make coffee after a rough night-I woke up and heard them in the kitchen so I had to sneak this photo :)

I do a lot of singing and reading to Anjuli, during morning feeding after Lou leaves for work we read a Psalm and some Old Testament book, right now we're working our way through Ezra and the rebuilding of the temple. Anjuli usually does really well, but there are those mornings where we don't do anything BUT nurse because otherwise the book would be missing a few pages by the end of our devotion time. Its great, its helped me to become much more consistent in my own devotions because I'm not rushing to "start the day"...we get in prayers for the guys and girls deployed, friends with needs, family, etc and just sets the tone for the morning.

No "once a month" photos since birth but I just managed to snap these last month. :)

After "breakfast" I've been trying to get in exercise. That squat challenge was good but obviously not all-encompassing. I was able to snag a used jogging stroller on Ebay inexpensively, since it was "local pickup only" in Tucson and we made arrangements to get it last Sat. after the auction. I love it! I don't have the severe back ache/pain after jogging that I did and I downloaded an app to use that tracks my progress with GPS while I jog, "RunKeeper". Its a little by little thing, but since I started last Tuesday with the jogger I noticed I've cut 10-15 seconds off my miles/minute routine each time I exercise. Those are the small victories that give me incentive...plus being able to button my pants/shorts again without straining or having "dunlaps" disease. :)

Graduation from Military Intelligence Captains Course on May 31st-Anjuli just over 1 1/2 months old

Lou's counter intelligence course should be ending sometime in late November and we will be moving to our next duty station at that point. Where, you ask? Why...we have no idea! Ha, I don't think that will ever change. :) We should see a list of possible new places sometime in September, make our top "ten" choices and then be told in October if we got any of the above...or a completely different place. But, we're excited to see where the Lord sends us next and are soaking up the Arizona sun and monsoon weather and mountains and sunsets while we're here. :) And now....more pictures of our little sunshine baby!

First swimming pool experience...she had her floppy hat on most of the time and hated it! Its five pm here in AZ and still 90 degrees!

Not too sure about this....

After she did a "rollover" and got a mouthful of water!

Yeah, I like Mommy's lap better. It feels safer.

Anjuli's Newborn Photos-Ten Days Old

This blog post is going to be pure pictures....really. We just returned from a 2 week vacation to the East Coast and I plan to update it with "trip news" eventually but I wanted to share Anjuli's newborn photos first. :) Our friend Cailin took these as well as our maternity photos and we just loved them!
They were shot here in our home and Anjuli was being a real stinker that morning but you'd never guess it from how they turned out! Granted, life here has been hectic enough to keep them off the blog for the last 2 months....but better 2 months late than never! Enjoy. :)