Almost Settled

We are almost all settled into our apartment in Utah! It's been quite a busy week for us! We left San Diego on Tuesday. We got out of there a little later than expected but it all worked out fine. My dad flew in on Tuesday morning so he could drive the Budget truck that we rented with most of our belongings in it. We left some stuff behind in a storage that I wouldn't be using while I was here. Oh, and we left my car there since I don't need two cars!

We drove for a few hours and ending up meeting my dad in Mesquite, Nevada around 1:30 a.m. and we decided to get a hotel room for the night. Then Wednesday morning we were on the road again and made it to West Jordan a little after 3:00 p.m. if I am remembering right. My dad was a few hours behind us. He stayed in Mesquite a little longer than us and gambled a bit. It worked out good that he was a few hours behind because we couldn't come in to sign our lease until after 4:00 anyway.

Sometime after 6:00 the truck was here and we started unloading it. It only took about 45 minutes to get everything off of it and then we started unpacking! It took us about a day and a half to get almost everything unpacked. We still have 2 boxes in the office that need to be unpacked and one in our bedroom. Those boxes aren't important so I keep putting them off. I definitely need to unpack them tomorrow though because we leave for Denver on Tuesday and I'd like to come home to a clean, unpacked house. :-)

We've had a lot of fun spending time with my family. Two of my sisters and one of my nieces have slept over at our place a couple of times already. We've had my parents and brother and sister over for dinner. We've also went out to dinner and ice cream with my parents, my grandma and my aunt who is visiting from Texas. And today we went swimming and had a bbq at my parents house!

We've been so busy! Oh yeah, and we have been shopping for couches for a couple of days! We finally bought a set today but they only had the sofa in stock...we wont get the love seat until August 6th! I'm happy to at least have one couch though! We sold our old couches about a week before we left San Diego so we have been sitting on the floor (or in folding chairs) for a long time!

We are getting excited to see Dave's side of the family in a few days! I also have some family that lives in Denver so it will be nice to see them too. Like I said, we leave on Tuesday. My sisters, Becca and Arika are also coming with us. Dave and my sisters are driving, they are leaving early Tuesday morning. Dawson and I will be flying and we leave Tuesday afternoon. We had a free round-trip flight that was going to expire in August so we figured we might as well use it now. Even though Dawson was so good on our road trip out here, it will be nice to fly and get there quicker! :-)

I think we're all caught up now. :-) I'm sure we'll get behind again since we are going out of town but I will make sure to take a lot of pictures while we are in Denver.

In the mean time, here are some pictures from the pool today. :-)

Here is Dawson playing in the little fountain area that they have for kids:


Here is me and Dawson in the pool:

He hardly splashed his hands this time, he kept putting his duck in his mouth so that was keeping his hands busy. He was kicking his legs a lot though, Dave stood a few feet away from him and Dawson was able to turn his floatie towards Dave and kick his way over to him. It was neat. :-)

After the pool it was time to take a bath! Here is Dawson with his cousins, Andrea (23 months old) and Hailee (5 years old).


That's all for now!

8 Months Old!

Dawson turned 8 months old yesterday! I can't believe how fast our baby boy is growing up!

Here he is playing with his musical table:


As you can see we put the legs back on it so he could practice standing up. (Please excuse the mess, we had my parents over for dinner tonight and we don't have couches yet so we are using folding chairs...AND we have an 8 month old that loves to scatter his toys all over! ;-)

I will update more later, I just wanted to post a couple of pictures and acknowledge that Dawson is now 8 months old! Yay!

Play Ball!

It's been a while since I posted any videos!

Here is me and Dawson throwing a ball to each other today. I think it's cute how he throws the ball. :-D He's going to be our little athlete.

This is probably going to be our last post for a while. We leave San Diego tomorrow evening and should be in Salt Lake early Wednesday morning. :-D It'll probably be a few days before we are unpacked, settled in and have our internet turned on. I'm sure once we are settled I will have a lot to post about! Our first road trip with Dawson and we have a trip to Denver planned in about a week. We're looking forward to spending time with both sides of our family. :-)

Stage 3 Foods

Dawson got his first taste of stage 3 baby food today. I figured he was probably ready for it since we have went through every flavor of stage 2 (and there were a lot!) and because he has been eating Gerber Puffs and Yogurt Melts for a few weeks now and besides being toothless, he chews rather well. :-D

For breakfast he had Banana Strawberry baby food. He did great with that, in fact, he finished the entire 6 oz jar! There wasn't any chucks in that.

For lunch we tried Broccoli with Cheese and Carrots. That had little pieces of carrots in it. The first couple of bites he was making faces like he didn't like it at all. I was surprised because so far he has liked everything that he's tried! Even though he was making faces like he didn't like it, he was still eating it so I continued feeding him. Until he started gagging! Then I figured he REALLY didn't like it so I wasn't going to force him to eat it. Lunch was over after about 6 bites. (No need to worry, he still gets about 32 oz of formula everyday.)

Then for dinner I decided to let him try Spaghetti in Tomato Sauce with Beef. Again, this had little chunks in it. First bite didn't go so well...he was already making the yucky face again. Second bite, he was gagging. We tried one more bite and then I decided dinner was over.

So, I have come to the conclusion that it wasn't that he didn't like the broccoli, he's just not ready for stage 3 foods, at least not the ones with chunks in it. We'll try again in about a week and keep trying once a week or so until he gets the hang of it.

I was trying to capture his "yucky face" but this is what I got...


I took the picture about 1 second too soon! Although I didn't capture his yucky face, I think the picture turned out cute. :-)

Happy Father's Day!

We had to celebrate Father's Day early because Dave has duty tomorrow. :-( Hopefully me and Dawson will be able to go to the ship and at least visit with him a little bit tomorrow.

We've had a pretty busy day with packing and getting ready for our move so I guess we didn't really "celebrate" father's day but we did give Dave his gift.


We made him a shirt that says "Best Dad in the World, Hands Down!" And I put Dawson's hand prints on it. :-) (Thank you for the idea Christina!) It turned out so good and Dave absolutely loves it!

We also got him a photo album to take on the ship with him. I put some pictures of me and Dawson in it and left some pages empty so I can send him new pictures to add to it while he is gone.

I'm going to be so happy when we are finished moving so we can spend some quality family time together before Dave has to leave. :-( I don't even want to think about him leaving right now...

Lets move on to fun stuff! Dawson got a fun ride down the banister today...


I'm definitely going to have my hands full with these two! :-P

Anyway, Happy Father's Day, Dave. You really are the best dada in the world and Dawson adores you already. We are both so lucky to have you! We love you!!!

Beach and Bath Time Fun

It has been a busy week for us! I think my last post ended with our boat tour around San Diego Bay. After that we still had a few days before my family flew back to Utah. They were here to help us with our yard sale on Saturday and then on Sunday we went to two beaches.

We went to Mission Beach first. That's the beach me, Dave and Dawson went to a couple weeks ago. Dawson got to ride the carousel two more times. And me, Dave, my dad and Carrie rode the roller coaster. It was a lot of fun.

Then we let Dawson put his feet in the waves and sit in the sand. He didn't last very long in the sand because he kept trying to eat it! He was getting tired too, so we laid on the some blankets while Dawson took a nap in his stroller. Laying on the beach is one of my favorite things to do.

Here are some pictures from Mission Beach...

Ashley, my dad, Dawson, Carrie and Becca on the carousel:

Papa and Dawson playing in the waves:


Then we went to Children's Pool Beach to see the seals. It's really neat to see. The seals just lay around on the sand and play around in the water.

Here are some pictures from that beach:


We had a lot of fun while they were here. And Dawson loved having company and all the extra attention. I can't remember if I posted this already or not but Dawson started saying 'hi' a couple of weeks ago. While my family was here, every time we would walk into a room and he would see somebody he would yell "HI!" and start waving. It's super cute. He does it at the grocery store...or pretty much whenever we are out. He is such a social baby. *lol*

We have been busy packing up and moving stuff that I wont need in Utah into storage. I think we've pretty much got everything into storage that we are putting there...we might have to make one more trip and then we are done with that.

We've got a few boxes packed that are going to Utah...we need to hurry up and get everything packed! We've got about 4 days until we leave! It was so much easier moving to San Diego since the military was moving us. Dave and I sat in the living room and played the Wii while movers packed and moved all of our stuff. It was nice. :-P

Anyway, before I go I wanted to share some pictures that we took of Dawson during his bath tonight. He LOVES to splash around in the bath tub! :-)

He's using one hand to put a toy in his mouth and using the other hand to splash...


Bath time is so fun!
This is after his bath, he was trying to get away from Dave...I guess he didn't want to get dressed. :-P

Vistors in San Diego

It's been a fun couple of days and we have a lot of fun stuffed planned still but I thought I would take a couple minutes to update our blog before I get too far behind on it. I've got a lot of pictures that I want to share.

On Wednesday we picked up some of my family from the airport. They are staying with us until Monday. :-) Dawson has been loving all the extra attention! He has been smiling and waving so much! Pretty much any time he sees somebody, it's really cute.

My dad keeps telling me how amazed he is that Dawson can get around so well even though he still doesn't crawl. He has seen the videos that I post in the blog but it's different to see in person I guess.

Anyway, after we picked them up from the airport we went to Fort Rosecrans National Cemetery to visit my dad's brother's grave.


It's amazing how big this cemetery is. You would think that it would be hard to find the headstone that you are looking for but they've actually got a really neat set up that makes it's really easy. You just have to go into the office and there is kiosk where you type the last name of the person you are looking for and that narrows it down, then you click on the person you are looking for and it prints out a map for you.

We didn't take this picture, I found it on wikipedia but I wanted to share it so you could see how impressive this cemetery is. It overlooks the ocean and it looks really neat.

After the cemetery we went to Hodad's for some lunch. Dave and I have been wanting to try this place for a couple weeks now after we heard about it on Diners, Drive-in's and Dives on the Food Network channel with Guy Fieri. Everybody was really impressed with it, I'm really glad that we went. Their burgers are so good!


There was a long line to get into Hodad's when we got there. (The picture actually shows the line there was when we left, it was still as long as it was when we first got there.)


It was definitely worth the wait! Dave and I are going to have to go there again before we move!


After lunch we headed over to the base to buy tickets from the MWR office. While we were at the Exchange we found a "5 Little Monkeys" book for Dawson! :-) I was super excited, I sing that to him all the time and he loves it. Then we headed over to the Commissary for some groceries and then we headed home.

Then yesterday we went on a 2 hour Harbor Excursion tour of the bay. It was so neat! Dawson had a lot of fun, he loved being on the boat and looking out into the water.

One of the first things that we saw on the tour was Dave's ship! The USS Nimitz. I see the ship all the time but I still get excited every time I see it. It's so big!


Just some fun facts about the Nimitz while I am showing a picture of it...

The ship has a crew of nearly 3,000 men and women and when deployed the air wing brings an additional 2,000 personnel.

Overall length - 1,115 feet (that's longer than 3 football fields put together!)
Overall width - 252 feet

Nimitz reaches more than 23 stories high from the keel to the top of the mast.

You can find a lot more information about the Nimitz on this site:
http://www.nimitz.navy.mil/PDF/welcome.pdf

Ok, on to more of the tour...

We saw a whole bunch of sea lions! :-)


There was also a dolphin that was seen jumping out of the water but I missed that.

This is probably my favorite picture of my dad and Dawson. Them looking at each other and smiling is just so sweet.


It was kind of cold when our tour first started so we had Dawson all bundled up. There was a little room on the boat with glass windows and that's where we spent most of the first half of the trip. We still had great views of everything and Dawson stayed warm so it was perfect.

The second half of the trip was a lot warmer. I was able to take off his jacket and wasn't worried about him being outside.


My sister, Becca with Dawson when it was still cold. Look at him all bundled up. :-P


Here is Carrie and Ashley:


Me and Dave...yes, my husband is a goofball.


Here is Dawson waving hi! His "Lil Sailor" shirt was perfect for our day out on the ship.


He loved looking at his shadow. We were trying to get him to look at the camera but he wanted to get his shadow.


Dawson found a girlfriend on the boat, too. It was really cute, he noticed the other baby from across the boat so my dad decided he should go over and meet her. She was such a cutie! She's 4 months old...look at all that hair! Dawson and his first girlfriend:


They both have their tongues sticking out in this picture, I thought it was cute.


We couldn't skip lunch!


He was such a good boy the whole time. :-) I think he had a lot of fun looking at everything and just being outside. He loves getting out of the house.


He fell asleep as soon as we got to the car, he was a tired baby!


And lastly, before we headed home, Dave and I reenacted the statue in front of the midway. :-P

Word of the Day

The word of the day is...mama! Dawson was saying mama all day. :-) He is definitely starting to say it more often but his favorite word is still dada. He also says nana...he usually only says it when I am making his bottle or getting his food ready. When it's time to eat I always ask, "Are you hungry? Do you want your baba?" or if it's time for him to eat his baby food, I say, "Are you hungry? Do you want your num-nums?". So I think when he says "nana" he is trying to "num-num".

It's really cute when I ask him if he's hungry and if he wants his bottle...he totally knows what he is going to get when I say that. He always gets a big smile and gets all excited because he knows his food is just a couple minutes away. He's such a smart boy.

Here is some video that I got of him saying mama. Of course as soon as I started recorded he wasn't saying it as clearly. He had the hiccups and I think that was messing him up a little, too.

I also wanted to show off one of the outfits that we bought the other day, I think it's my new favorite, so he'll probably be wearing it a lot. :-P I couldn't get him to put his teething ring down but his shirt says "Lil Sailor"...it's so cute!

I'm sure there are going to be a lot more pictures to share in the next week or so. Tomorrow we are going to pick up my dad, my sister Becca, my dad's wife Carrie and Carrie's daughter Ashley from the airport. :-) They are going to be here for 5 days and we have a lot of exciting stuff planned!

Also, I wanted to add that I posted all my blogs from my pregnancy into this blog. I originally had them posted in my myspace blog but decided to transfer them over here so in a few years when we look back through the blog we can see everything from the beginning. :-) A list of all my posts, now dating back to February '08, can be found to the right of this entry.

He's Home!

Dave is finally home! :-) He's been home since yesterday afternoon and it's been WONDERFUL having him back. Dawson was happy to see him too, which made me even happier! I was worried that after 4 weeks he might not remember Dave very much, but it seems like looking at pictures and letting him talk to Dave when he called really paid off. :-)

Today we went to the base to get some information on any storage units they might have. We're planning on storing anything that I am not going to use in Utah, here, that way we don't have to move it back and forth for no reason. The only storage that they have is going to be too small for what we want to store, so we're going to have to figure something else out. We've seen a lot of storage facilities around here...we are going to have to check them out and see where we would feel safest leaving our stuff. It makes me nervous since Dave will be deployed and I'll be out of state so neither of us will able to check on our stuff. Hopefully we can find a place that has an alarm on each unit, that would make me happy. :-)

We stopped at the Exchange while we were on base and bought Dawson a few shirts/outfits. :-D I think it's impossible for us to go into the Exchange and come out without anything for Dawson! They have the cutest stuff at a great price, it's basically irresistible!

Here is Dawson in a onesie that we got him today:


Dawson got so much attention from stangers in the store today. It's not unusal for people to tell us that he's cute or whatever but so many people stopped to play or talk with him today! Seriously, at least 5 different people! Women AND men...usually it's just women. I almost felt like we were with a celebrity. *lol* It must of been the mohawk that Dave gave him after I slathered a bunch of sunscreen all over his head. And that fact that he is just so darn cute!

Mohawk pic:



We also upgraded my phone while we were there. I've had the same phone for 2 years and it was starting to fall apart. I got a Samsung Behold but after playing with it all day, I think I might exchange it for something else. I mostly bought it because of the camera (5 megapixel which is almost 5 times better than the camera on my old phone). So the quality of the pictures is pretty good but it takes like 3 seconds for it to snap the picture after I press the button! 3 seconds is an eternity when you are trying to take a picture of a monkey...er, I mean our baby boy! I've tried taking pictures of him a few times today with it and I can't get a picture of him looking at me! When it finally takes the picture he's looking away! So, it's definitely a deal breaker for me.

Oh, I almost forgot! We installed Dawson's convertible car seat today! He loves it! When he was in his infant seat he couldn't see out the window but now he can! And he looks super comfortable in it. He could have stayed in his infant seat quite a bit longer...the weight limit for it was 30 pounds and he still had a few inches to go before he outgrew it height wise but we were ready to move on.


We moved the headrest down a little bit more after I took this picture but this is basically what he looks like in his new seat:

Doctor Appointment Update

Dawson had a doctor appointment on Tuesday and it went great! I was concerned about a lump that I could feel in his right thigh, I figured it was from the shots that he got a month ago but I didn't expect to be able to feel it for so long. His pediatrician said it's perfectly normal. Sometimes the lump goes away right away and sometimes it takes a few months before it goes away.

He weighs 22lbs 5oz now. At his 6 month appointment on April 28th, he weighed in at 20.8, so his growing hasn't really slowed down much.

Dr. Butler was impressed at how well he was sitting up which made me extremely happy since Dawson hasn't really wanted to sit up until recently. He sits perfectly now! Today we sat on the floor facing each other and played with a ball together for about 20 minutes before he wanted to do something else. Hopefully he can perfect getting on to his belly from the sitting position soon. He can do it, but it's a little rough and he face plants into the floor sometimes.

Also, I am very happy to report that he has started saying mama again! Yay! He started saying it again yesterday. He was in his swing and I was sitting on the floor next to him and he said "mama dada" and my heart absolutely melted! It was so neat to hear him say mama again and really, really neat to hear him say mama and dada together. :-) He has said mama about 10 or so times since then but he definitely still prefers to say dada. Da-da-da-da-da-da is mostly what I hear all day long. :-P Hopefully I can get him to say mama on video soon!