7 months... in a nut shell

Quite a lot has happened since Christmas, which was our last post. As you can guess, life at the Gibson house has been pretty busy so, I'll try to sum up the last seven months in a few words. After graduating in February from the Marine Corps' elite woodwind school, we packed up the family again and made the ever so exciting trip back across the country to California. I secured a coveted position as assistant lead oboe player at Disneyland and will be performing on behalf of the Marine Corps at the nightly Disney Parades. Come down and visit. On that note, we have surprisingly had a 200% increase in visitors since arriving back in California. Although we live a hundred miles from where we used to live, people seem to be able to find our new house a whole lot easier. The ocean must keep them from getting lost. Anyhow, Charlotte turned 2 and Kate turned 4 in the last few months. And they're both on their way to becoming teenage trouble. "I'm bored of you, Dad" is a frequent expression of Kate's. Charlotte's been in this phase where she's naked more often than not and really likes to sleep in the buff. Not sure where she picked that one up. Maybe it was the Roundy reunion the girls all went to. Thanks, Kristi. Amy ran a Ragnar race during that time and did a great job even as she was screaming at her shoes (vomiting) from the stomach bug that plagued the reunion. She's back to running the girls up and down these hills and carting them off to swim lessons this summer. Oscar the wonder dog turned 6 this year and we celebrated with old friends and a dog party. The girls had a lot of fun making his cake and party hats. All in all, we're doing good. Our little family is happy and well. We'll try to do a better job keeping up to date on this thing.

Christmas with the Gibsons

For Christmas, Shelly and Clint were gracious enough to open their house to our small menagerie so, we took the 6 hour drive to visit them in DC. My parents and other older sister Angie and her family were there to celebrate too. Christmas eve was spent with the traditional Thai food spread that has garnished our family table for the past 25+ years. Shelly's OCD paid off big with her meticulously detailed and stunning Christmas Tree. With only one broken glass ball, I would say the girls behaved themselves pretty well. Christmas day was a magical day of princesses, leggos, dinosaurs and dollies for the kids. Bryce and Gus, the cousins, were so sweet and humored Kate with her constant pretending and prancing. I think Kate's favorite part of the whole trip was seeing the dinosaur fossils at the Natural History Museum. The girls had so much fun with the whole family there; it was sad to leave.

Thanksgiving Visits

This year we hosted Amy’s family at our house. It was great to have Mom and Dad, Bub and Emily with their new baby Reese. Room was scarce but food and laughs were plentiful. I don't know why we ever moved out of the Roundy's basement to tell you the truth; It would be like an "Evening at the Improv" every night. Frank took care of the Thanksgiving feast- he even hunted, killed and cleaned the turkey by himself. Later in the week we visited the beach to feed the birds- at the request of Preston 'The Bird Whisperer' Roundy- which was a cool albeit creepy experience for all. We also toured the battleship USS North Carolina in Wilmington. All in all, if it weren't for a flying pachycephalosaurus nearly taking baby Reese's head clean off, it would have been a perfect visit.

Kate's Dinosaurs

Ever since we discovered the show "Dinosaur Train," Kate has found a new love. She still loves princesses, but Dinosaurs are a close second. We're loving the shift in focus from all things princess, so have encouraged this new found hobby with gusto. Here's a video of Kate saying some of the dinosaurs she knows best. I love hearing her little voice full of speech impediments tackling these long and difficult words!

 

Kate loves to organize things.  In this picture, she put all of the dinosaurs on different squares and told me that they were all in different states.  So smart! I was a proud mama.

The dinosaurs occupy the doll house along with the princesses.  Sometimes the princesses ride the dinosaurs to the ball.

Grandma Pak Pao has definitely helped fuel the fire too.  She sent a great book and a bunch of toy dinosaurs that Kate loves to play with.

Charlotte the Comedian

Charlotte is really starting to show us her personality lately. She's already a little comedian, in spite of only having about 10 words in her vocabulary (Mama, Papa, ball, bubbles, yeah, no, down, go (which actually means "color" as in "color a picture"...ok, so only 8 words).  She loves to get us laughing.  She even has good poise when we're busting a gut; she won't  start laughing with us, but just keeps the joke going as long as she's got an audience.  Here are some of her silly faces, and one  sweet face at the end.

Sweet and Scary Faces

 Charlotte is usually naked.  It just makes for less laundry and stained clothes at meal and snacktime.  Sometimes I get her dressed in between meals, but sometimes I don't.  Kate got herself and Charlotte dressed in a tutu on this day because she wanted to play ballerinas. 

My mom made an adorable book for Kate of silly and sweet faces. which Charlotte loves to read.   Kate was practicing her scary face the other day and Charlotte decided to try hers out too.   The scariest part of this picture is that I KNOW where those fingers have been. AAAAAHHHH!    

Our New Home

Well, we don't exactly live right on the beach, but we're only 15 minutes away.  We moved out to NC just a couple of months ago and are loving it.  Living in the same state as Bubba and Emily (that's Emily in the photo with the girls) has been so fun!  Bubba doesn't mind playing the role of Prince Eric and Emily can build a mean sand castle. 

The Price of a Free Moment

 What amount of mess is worth a few minutes of alone time? 

My girls loved the bus at Chuck E Cheese!  They were too small for most of the games and rides.  Side note: Kate's default characters when we're pretending are : Kate-generic princess and Me- generic stepmother.   

Kate's story

I love this video for two reasons.  First, she ends the story with "amen." Second, she got away with picking her nose but knew she wouldn't get away with eating it, thus the "I'm in trouble" look followed by the "nothing to notice here, Mom!" mosey out of the room. 

Missing the 90's

I was at my parent's house a couple of weeks ago and uploaded some of Mom's pics onto my hard drive.  I just had to share some of them.    They were in a folder of pics for Bubba's wedding video.  Looking good, Bub!  

Charlotte's walking!

A little family update

I just had a little parenting thought and wanted to write it down so that maybe I can actually try to do it. Kate's "terrible 2's" are exhausting so I'm working on finding a new perspective. Here it is:

I need to have realistic expectations for Kate's behavior. She is, after all, a 2-yr-old little girl who is definitely still under the age of accountability. She is just child trying to learn about life and I am her most influential teacher. The things I teach here are not as important as how I teach her. If she feels my love and sees my patience with her, she'll have the confidence to be herself and to live a deliberate life. She'll also have courage to work hard on hard things and to pick herself up when she falls down.

So that's my little nugget of wisdom. Love and patience. I'll return and report once I've mastered it (so in the next life?).

A little summary of life at the Gibson household. Charlotte started taking steps about a month ago and is now walking a lot. She's learned to climb up and down the stairs also, so nowhere is safe. This has added stress to Kate's life since now she just can't get away from Charlotte if she wants to play alone with her things. She still has a few havens (Charlotte can't reach the bed, the couch, or the kitchen table) but she's pretty grumpy about Charlotte's mobility. Charlotte seems a little grumpy about it too. Now that she's had a taste of two-legged transportation she doesn't want to go back, but those stumpy legs and clumsy feet just can't keep up. And I think she sees Kate bustling around and wants to join in the fun.

Charlotte's still toothless but her hair is halfway down her back. I figure that her head's too busy growing hair to worry about teeth yet. She still loves peek-a-boo and being outdoors. Pulling all the wipes out of the wipe container, unraveling the toilet paper, tearing tissue into tiny pieces; these are some of her favorite pasttimes. She loves her big sis and her pooch, and her dad too. She's very guarded with strangers as long as I'm around, but if she can't see me anymore she usually loosens up and makes herself at home. She's sleeping pretty well now at night but her daytime naps are not that regular. I'm thinking of consolidating to one nap instead of two sometime soon.

Kate has mastered the English language and is now working on adding to it. She makes up words all day long. If she doesn't know what something's called, she'll give it a name. That goes for kids she meets at the playground too. On a few occasions she's been playing with a random girl and I've heard the girl go up to her mom and say "Mom, she's calling me Sissy." Even after they introduce themselves she won't let go of "Sissy". She also loves to pretend all day. Today I was trying to wrangle her after she ran down near a neighbor's house. She was looking longingly into the distance when she said the reason she couldn't come was because she was "dreaming about Prince Eric." Snow White eating the poisoned apple and Rapunzal's inner struggle about whether or not to leave her tower are often part of our pretend playtime. I usually play the prince so that she has someone to dance with and someone to kiss her to wake her up.

She is already excited about getting married and about driving. Her main motivation to grow big is to be able to drive. I love her innocence and excitement about life. The other day we walked into a Payless and as she looked around in wonder she said "this is amazing!" and really meant it.

Her prayers are so sweet too. She always blesses everyone in the family and usually includes her blanket too. And she loves to sing and play singing songs (name that tune, and fill-in-the-blank). Sometimes she'll hum a song or make up nonsense words to a familiar tune and it's so adorable. She can sing in tune most of the time too.

Catching Up

The girls are growing up so fast, it's hard to keep up with their every change or accomplishment. Charlotte's crawling now and can pull herself up on just about anything. Kate just gets smarter and more sassy every day. She's about 85% potty trained. More than most people in the Marine Corps, so I'm pretty happy with that. Here's a few pictures of how they're doing.

Halloween

This year was the first that Kate could actually choose what she wanted to be, vice what we thought she should be. So, of course she went as a princess. More specifically "uhpunzl" or Rappunzell. And although Charlotte has the hair for a perfect Kim Jung Il get-up, we decided it'd be cuter to have her go as Snow White. Kate had a blast going from door to door, asking for candy. At one point after receiving her share, she said "I need some for my sister, too." Funny.

Amy's Birthday

Amy celebrated her 31st birthday this year- although most people would still argue she looks 17. Kate helped blow out the candles on her cake. For presents she received a door mat, floor rug and picture frame. Who could ask for more, right? 31's starting off to be a great year for her!

Lean!

Hooray for infant milestones!

Kate the Diva

Kate loves to sing. Here are two of her latest hit singles.

Just Hangin' Out

Base housing

I've been a little consumed lately with my base housing.  Base housing is given according to rank and family size.  We're given a housing allowance (according to rank) that is automatically deducted from Danny's paycheck since we live in base housing.  If we lived out in town, we'd get the housing allowance and use it for rent.  No matter how big or nice our base house is, we still have to pay the same amount in rent once a month.

When we added Charlotte to the family, we rated a third bedroom and could have moved to a new house.  We were even slated to move into a bigger place but at the last minute I decided against it.  It had a smaller back porch (which is all the back yard we have.) and older bathrooms and kitchen.  I cancelled our move at the last minute.  The housing lady let me do it, but made me promise that I'd never ask for a housing upgrade again.  I'm pretty sure that's not a written rule anywhere and that she was just trying to get some control over me after giving in to my request.  It was pretty dumb, though. 

At the time we weren't sure if we'd be here much longer, but now it's looking like we will be here for awhile.  I'm getting the itch to move again.  Also, housing just built some super nice houses and I want one!!!  I think they're for higher ranking individuals, but am not sure. 

I think I'm going to forget about my promise to never move again (I think her words were "you have to promise to never ever move again ever.") and will try to get back on the housing list.  It's worth a try, right?