Bath Time

Do you want silky smooth, baby soft skin? Will Gunnar can let you in on his secret. Apparently, if you spit up in the bath water at least 3 times during a 10 minute bath, you come out with skin as soft as a baby's bottom.
Gunnar really loves his bath time. Today he was bobbing up and down in his tub laughing. If I had super long arms and could have reached the video camera I would have loved to share. Instead you will just have to take my word for it that he really was having a great time.


So, I was picking up today and went to put Kyle's text book away. It fell open to this page when I dropped it...haha, looks like he was really learning a lot at the school he was at the last two weeks.

Bye-Bye

This morning Kyle left for the field. Luckily he is there for less than a week, but I always hate to see him leave. He did do a very nice thing and call the doggy babysitter for me. I think he wanted to come home to a sane wife. So, I just got done dropping the dogs off, Cary's (aka doggy babysitter) kids are on summer break, so I know they will be very spoiled. They will be in doggy heaven. So it is just the lil' dude and me, we had to say "bye-bye" to daddy and the dogs today.



I do have some exciting news...I bought a plane ticket for Gunnar and I to come and visit in the states. I will be leaving Aug. 22 and staying until the time Kyle gets back from this month long field problem. I am excited to be able to go home and show this cute baby off, but sad that Kyle can't come and that we have to be away from him for so long. Now,I wonder who the lucky one will be that gets to sit by me and my baby...haha, I can't wait to see their faces and know they are thinking "I have to sit by them for 10 hours, are there any other seats open?" If you notice the day I am leaving is approx. 4 days away from the start of school for teachers here...so, that means I will be a stay at home mommy this year. This was a long, drawn-out decision, but I know I made the right one to stay home. I will be plenty busy with Gunnar, my master's, and the mini dog kennel I have happening here at my apartment.
I would also like to say I am excited because this weekend we are going to have some visitors. Our good friend Tim, a soldier Kyle was deployed with out of Ft. Campbell is coming to visit for the weekend with his new wife Sarah. We look forward to seeing Tim and meeting his new wife. Suesse our dog is in love with Tim, so she will be really excited to see him. They are over here traveling all over Germany, Tim grew up here. Their lives have been exciting lately as Tim got out of the Army, they got married, Sarah graduated college and got commissioned as an officer in the Army National Guard, talk about some life changes. The got married on the beach in St. Thomas, it looks so beautiful!

I finally got our pictures back that we took at least a month ago. I am pretty disappointed to say the least. We only bought one picture because I felt silly getting our pictures taken and not even choosing one. The idea was to get Gunnar's photos taken, but the photographer had no idea how to shoot a newborn and kept wanting him to hold his head up and smile...sorry, wasn't happening then, now, yes, then, no. I hate this picture, but it was the best. Gunnar has a floppy arm and my hair is in my face...oh well, we will try again before Kyle leaves for this next deployment (but I think we will try a different photo studio). I hate it so much I won't even scan it, you just get a picture of a picture.

Well, I think I should probably get something accomplished, since my day has been taken up being the dog wrangler. I really want to watch the Bachelorette but for some reason it keeps coming up with an error. I know it is a dumb show, but it is the finale, and what else do I have to do with my time (haha, not homework or anything like that).

So we have been pretty busy around here. I am working on my master's and my class right now is pretty demanding as I get a handle on research (yuck). Gunnar is a puking machine from his medicine, but luckily we are both feeling better. I can't wait for us to be done with the medicine so that his tummy can feel better.
In other news, Kyle thought that I needed a little something extra to do around the house, so he got another puppy. That's correct, you read it right, he got another puppy. So now, I have three dogs to care for. Suesse a naughty 4 year old dog, Oma a 6 month old dog who is almost housed trained (yes, only almost), and now to add to the collection, Opa, who is 10 weeks old, and not house trained. Lucky me! You will have to ask Kyle what he was thinking, because I haven't figured it out yet. Oh yeah I forgot to mention I have a 3 month old baby to care for as well. He wants Oma and Opa to have some babies in the future, but that is a long ways down the road (thank goodness).
Now for the picture parade:
Gunnar taking a sink bath at the hotel

Gunnar and Opa


Gunnar being a big boy

Silly Baby

So, we are to slow with the video camera, but we tried. Tonight Gunnar was sitting on my lap sleeping. Kyle and I were talking and starting laughing. You will never guess who joined in? With the biggest smile on his face, eyes closed, and apparently still sleeping, Gunnar started laughing with us. Not just once, but at least 3 times. It was hilarious. We grabbed the video camera and tried to get him to continue laughing, but he was to sleepy, so we just caught the smiles, not the giggles.
Gunnar also got his first swim in a pool the other day. Our friend was in a hotel with an indoor pool and invited us over. Gunnar loves the water and it was pretty warm, so we gave it a try. He was so clam and relaxed in it, I hope he always loves the water, because we both do. Unfortunately I had put the camera in the stroller earlier in the day so it wasn't in the diaper bag anymore. But even without the pictures to prove it, we all had a great time.

Purple People Eater

Gunnar is the little Purple People Eater! We just got back from the doctor...Gunnar still has thrush and now I have round 2 of mastitis. The doctor was great I loved her, and she was so caring and understanding. She said that Gunnar and I have probably just been passing the infection back in forth and I should have been treated when Gunnar first got thrush. So to help kick this all in the butt, on top of the nystatin, the nurses also painted Gunnar's mouth with Gentian Violet and we have to repeat that in about 72 hours. Oh yes, I can hardly believe it, he is growing so well, he now weighs, 11 lbs, 9 oz, in 11 weeks he has more than doubled his birth weight.
All I can say is Gunnar is the cutest Purple People Eater I have ever seen.

Who knew that eating purple people was so funny!

I am so thankful for a happy and smiling baby. Gunnar does his fair share of screaming and being mad at the world, but nothing makes me feel better than when he looks up at me and gives me the biggest smile! I love this kid!

Besides going to the doctor, my job today has been the poop cleaner. Oma decided to take a nice big poop behind my back on the bed while I was feeding Gunnar, she is now in puppy prison. I am sad, because it has been over 3 weeks since she has pooped in the house. Then as I was cleaning up Oma's poop, Gunnar had a massive explosion in his pants and it got out of the diaper, all over his clothes and the bed. I think some fresh sheets are in order for today!

Fun Times

Well, Gunnar and I are just having a blast. Not really, we both don't feel good, and don't make a great pair. I am going to try and get into the doctor tomorrow, his thrush has gotten worse, not better, and I am almost positive I have mastitis again. To say the least we don't do much during the day. Today we dropped Kyle off at his class, went back to the hotel and slept until 12:30 in the afternoon.
Here we are, doing what we do, laying on the bed. Notice Gunnar is flashing the peace sign. Ha

This is when Kyle was home from work. Everyone was very intently listening to him explain things about being a Warrant Officer. Oma (doggy #2 in in the picture too, she is just really hard to see in the bottom left corner.)

The dogs got so excited they jumped up on the bed, and Gunnar wasn't happy. I love the look on Kyle's face. The look on Gunnar's pretty much sums up how Gunnar and I both feel right now. Luckily for Kyle I try not to scream and cry, I think one of us doing that is enough...poor baby, my heart breaks that he feels so awful.

Gunnar and Kyle are sleeping, so I think I should probably do a little homework before I also go to bed.

Snoring Boys

This is what I found when I turned around from doing my homework. Kyle and Gunnar were playing with the dogs last I checked. But as I was doing my very exciting reading, I heard snoring, turned around and they both were knocked out! Please know that Gunnar is snoring louder than his daddy, he is a loud sleeper!

Day Trip- Regensburg

Gunnar ready for the adventures...

Today we went on a day trip. We didn't get away from our hotel until after 1pm, but that was fine, we enjoyed our morning together as a family.
Our first stop was the Whallah. After that we went into Regensburg got some ice cream, walked about 200 meters then got some famous Regensburger sausages...they were amazing, served on brotchen with sour kraut!
We didn't realize it was so cold it was under 60 degrees today and I dressed Gunnar for hot summer weather. He spit-up all over his warm blanket so I only had the receiving blanket. He seemed fine, I just felt bad, so we checked out the big cathedral then headed home...after stopping for some more ice cream and sausages.
After getting back to our hotel, the owner cooked us steaks and all sorts of other goodies. We are treated like royalty here! They were hosting a huge birthday party and wedding reception at the hotel tonight, but they still took time to care for us.
We did meet quite a few drunken wedding guests, our favorite was a gentleman telling us his name was Bambi. He loved Gunnar, and would not stop touching him, and he was trying to get Gunnar to take his binkie. I guess since Gunnar didn't want it he thought he would use it himself. I could not believe he put it in his mouth. He tried to give it back to Gunnar but I quickly grabbed it from him before he got it in. We had a good laugh and freaked him out when we informed him Gunnar has thrush! Ha, serves him right! Overall it was a fun day...I wonder what adventures tomorrow has in store for us??? Hopefully some homework time for me, I was up till 2 am doing homework, then I decided why not blog. Ha!

Whallah


Kyle, Oma, and the yummy sausages

St. Dom Cathedral

Beth and Gunnar trying to stay warm

Lightening Storms

Due to severe lightening storms our internet was out in this area all day yesterday. I was able to use Kyle's iphone to do my postings for my online master's class, talk about time consuming, it was such a slow connection, but it got the job done. I feel a little behind and it's only the first week because I was not being able to access the internet and Gunnar has been needing major attention due to not feeling well. Hopefully I get a chance here to get myself in a place where I feel caught up.
Pictures are so much more fun to take of Gunnar know that I can get big smiles out of him. I just love how happy this little boy is, I think he is such a ham.
Kyle has the weekend off of classes, so I am not sure what we will be doing. We are staying in a hotel in the middle of no where, but hopefully we find somethings close by to visit.



Here is a quick story. Yesterday we were eating dinner and we were socializing with another soldier who is in the same hotel. This cute little boy kept coming over and asking me questions about Gunnar in German. I understood most of them, my his grandma helped with the ones I did not. It was so cute, he was a doll. After he left Gunnar starting getting fussy because it was nap time. I got up and was walking him around and this older couple signaled me to come over and talk with them. They told me that they rent an apartment out to Americans and they ask what we were doing there...Really we think they were scooping us out to see if we would like to rent it! But we explained that we were just visiting. They then invited us over to hang out with them for a while. Evi wanted to see Gunnar more and Hans wanted to play with the dogs. We went over and had a nice time. The dogs loved it, they had a huge fenced yard that they were able to run free in. Evi feels bad that I am stuck in a hotel by myself, so she told me I am welcome to come visit her any day for afternoon tea and coffee. It was a little strange to us at first, because this sort of thing would be most unusual in America, strangers inviting you over to there house, but they really were genuinely nice people has far as I could tell. Now, if I go over for tea and they eat Gunnar and me for dessert, then we will know I learned my lesson of talking and hanging out with strangers.

Slacking

So I have been a slacker...I took pictures each day, but never got around to posting them, I know excuses, excuses! Anyways, here they are...

Monday
He pretty much slept all day because he wasn't feeling well.



Tuesday
Where's Gunnar?

Happy to see his Daddy!

Wednesday
He is sleeping, the reason I am blogging~notice the lovely swaddling job...let's just say he was wrestling with me and the blanket and he clearly won.

When did they become friends?

Screaming Machine

Today hasn't been a fun one here in the Pettit household. Gunnar has been screaming at me pretty much all day. Kyle took off this morning for school for the next two weeks. We are hoping that Gunnar and I will be able to join him within the next couple of days. He is in this huge hotel room and there is plenty of room and internet so I can do my master's class that starts on Tuesday! But first I have to get Gunnar to the doctor tomorrow. He will scream for 30 minutes to an hour after he eats, then be happy for about 30 minutes, then scream some more, and finally sleep for about 30 minutes to an hour just to start the cycle all over again. I think that he must be really uncomfortable from the thrush. I feel so helpless, I am trying hard to comfort him for nothing seems to help.
Here are some pictures from a "happy time" today. Ha, he was enjoying laying on our bed with the sunlight from the window coming down from him and playing with Sophie the giraffe. The last picture is a more accurate representation of what he did today...plus I was trying to show the inside of his cheek...it was very difficult to get a picture of, this will have to do.
Alright well he is sleeping, it is 8:30pm and pretty much the only food I have managed to get down was some lucky charms and then some cookies...very healthy. I think it is time I found some real food.

Mommy's little helper

Who knew that cleaning could be such a challenge?
I never imagined it would be so hard to get the simple everyday things done with the little one. Today I attempted to clean and get the laundry done. It used to take me three hours to sweep, mop, and dust the entire place. Today it took me 7 hours to get the kitchen, dining, living room, and bathroom...I didn't even get close to cleaning the bedrooms and didn't even think about doing laundry. Gunnar did do his best to help me out...

We had an interesting morning. Gunnar was awake and I wasn't ready to get out of bed yet, so I set him in bed with us and he got diarrhea all over our bed...then just about the time I got it all cleaned up and climbed back in bed, I heard Oma (the puppy) in her kennel next to Kyle vomiting. Luckily Kyle took care of Oma.
I am not sure Gunnar is feeling well. He is super fussy and will hardly eat. When he does you can hear his poor little tummy just rumbling. He has had a couple cases of diarrhea today, but no fever or vomiting. Hmmm..I think he might have thrush, he has white spots in the side of his mouth (he has for a while, but I always would notice them after eating and we always just assumed it was spit-up...I know we are stupid new parents). But does thrush cause diarrhea, fussiness, and not wanting to eat??? Poor baby, if only he could talk and just tell me what is wrong?

Chirp Chirp

This morning as Gunnar and I were hanging out I kept hearing this chirping as though it was right outside my door. Well, sure enough we had a little visitor. I thought about how to get rid of our little friend and decided to scoot him out with a broom. However, as soon as I opened my door he flew into the window and got stuck in this little barrier between the window and the stairs. There was no way for me to get to him...Kyle was going to take it apart when he got home, but we checked and the little birdie was not moving or making any more noises...I am not sure if he magically got out or died. I really hope I am not a bird killer, but we will find out in a couple weeks if it starts stinking in our stairwell.

Here is Gunnar...wonder what he is staring at????





The ever exciting warning label on his swing. He never looks at the mobile, but the sticker...so exciting!

Our little Vacation

Day 1 - July 3
We got a later start than we had anticipated, but none-the-less had a good time. We got to Dresden in the evening and saw the main sites. It is a beautiful town that has been rebuilt after being destroyed in WWII. That night we stayed in my first Hostel. It was probably the nicest Hostel out there and was nicer than some hotels we have stayed in. Oh yes, I can't forget we took Gunnar to his first concert while we were there, the one and only Elton John. Ha, the Germans really seemed to love him, we actaully just happened to be in the neighborhood of the concert and could hear and see him on the big screens.

Day 2 - July 4
On Saturday we headed to Potsdam a city outside of Berlin. It was just beautiful. In 1744 King Frederick the Great ordered the construction of a residence here, where he could live sans souci ("without worries"). The park has a botanical garden and many magnificent buildings. Unfortunately I didn't get a good nights sleep so I wasn't a very happy camper and we cut our time there short and headed to our hotel in Berlin so I could go nap (which never happened). Gunnar wore his Forth of July outfit from Grandpa Pettit and Nana to celebrate the fourth.

Day 3 - July 5
On Sunday we slept in late which was wonderful and walked around Berlin on our own before catching a tour at 3pm. This tour was wonderful and showed us all the main sites in the town. During the day Kyle told me he really wanted to see some military flak towers. So in our hotel room after dinner I started researching and found some. They were in a park which I thought was a 10 minute walk from our hotel according to my map reading skills. Let's just say we shouldn't let Beth do the mapping. It took more like an 1 1/2 to get to the park and then it wasn't even the right one, why do two parks in the same city have the same name? It was a nice park but it did not have any flak towers. We wandered around for quite sometime before throwing in the towel and heading back to our hotel. We got back after midnight...whoops!

Day 4 - July 6
We headed to Wolfsburg to visit Katrin and Mara. Julia and Charlene are in Norway with scouts so we didn't get to see them but we had a nice visit. Katrin showed us around their little village, we talked with girl who is going to be an exchange student in Hot Springs, Montana, and had cake with the grandparents, and a BBQ with the rest of the family that lives near by. It was a nice day however, Gunnar didn't think so. He probably cried more on this day than he has any other day of his life...or so I thought.
(Apparently I didn't take any pictures this day...what was I thinking?)
Day 5 - July 7
This was actaully the day (or I should say morning) that Gunnar cried more than ever. However, we managed to go to the castle in Wolfsburg where Katrin works and then visited the park. Kyle loved the visit and we both learned a lot. Katrin did a great job of showing us around and giving us a history lesson. At about 2:30 we took off for a drive to the Rhine Valley. Luckily once we got in the car on the way to the Rhine Valley he got calmed down, took a good nap and was back to his happy little self again.
Once in the Rhine Valley we got checked into our hotel. The manager only had about 5 guests that night and he said that since we had the baby he would upgrade our room for no charge. Score! So we had a beautiful room overlooking the Rhine river with a castle on the other side. There was a good rainstorm and then a rainbow came out, it was just heavenly.

Day 6 - July 7
In St. Goar where our hotel was we visited the Rheinfels Castle. This was by far the greatest castle we have been to and quickly became our favorite. We did the self-guided tour designed by Rick Steves and had a great time. We even went in the underground tunnel system. You are never above a crouch in there. Luckily Kyle took Gunnar and I was in charge of the candle. Note: Crawling through tunnels in a dress is not recommended. Luckily it was just Kyle and I braving the dark tunnels. If you have young boys this would be an awesome place to take them for a day, I could just picture Gunnar running through there playing like he was king of the castle.
After visiting Rheinfels Castle we went to Rick Steves favorite castle in all of Europe the Burg Eltz....we would just like to say "very disappointing Mr. Steves!" Really, it was in a beautiful setting and a beautiful castle but it was not nearly as cool as the Rheinfels castle (maybe this is just a matter of opinion).
After visiting Burg Eltz it was time to head home. What was suppose to be a 3 hour drive took around 5 hour. Oh how we love this time of year...major road construction, YUCK!

Somehow the entire trip we managed to stay dry. It has been raining majorly here in Germany (what's new?). We just had good timing about when we would eat and be under cover I guess.
There has been so much rain that Schweinfurt was having some flooding while we were gone. We were so thankful upon arriving home that everything was okay with our place. Apparently there was a major storm and many people were having flooding. We had no idea what we would be coming home to, but everything in our building was okay.
Also, today we got our car! I can't believe it is here, I have been waiting for this car since March! We love it, and it is perfect for our family, YEA for our brand new 2009 Ford Escape!

Also I got word today that I am getting $6000 to put towards my master's program. It is free money that the government (MyCAA) is giving spouses of service members who are pursuing what they call "portable careers." It is just a matter of filling out the very simple paperwork. I am so happy and thankful as this will pay for over half of my master's program, which is great considering I am still paying loans from my undergraduate. Also I am thankful for the benefits I get as a military spouse. Because I am working on my master's overseas I get a special rate, instead of just paying $1085 for my next class I paid $600....it is so helpful and I really appreciate them helping us out!

Alright, well that is all that is happening here. Kyle is back to work tomorrow, and I have some major cleaning and post-trip laundry to do.

--Also I realize I have not posted a picture a day of Gunnar, but that was due to vacation. I will start back up tomorrow!