Touring with the Crists: 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!