Discipline

Discipline.
So far the hardest this for me as a mom, is discipline. I just wish Gunnar wasn't so stinking cute, and that he wouldn't smile so big every time he does something that is naughty.
Last night I was laying in bed crying telling Kyle I wasn't ready for Gunnar to grow up. But, in about 6 months Gunnar won't be the baby of the family anymore (but really will still be a baby). Gunnar is almost 10 months old, and definitely (not always, but usually) knows when he does something bad. He knows what "no" means and instead of saying "no" a hundred times a day we are working on "don't touch" and for diaper changes "lay still." He is such a good boy, but there are a few areas to be improved, like not tearing my glasses off my face, hitting my face, and not laying still for the diaper change.
We have started to have to smack his hand if he does not listen to our command. Usually when we say "no" he turns around and gives us one of his big goofy grins and does whatever he was doing again. Hearing his cry after a hand smack is so sad, and usually it is just a light tap, not hard at all. Apparently he is sensitive.
I don't want an unruely child by any mean and I know discpline is important and the Bible tells parents to discipline their children, I just wish it wasn't so hard on my heart.
Something not so sad...Gunnar has been taking a few steps. He can take up to about 5 or 6 at a time. We had him on skype so my parents could see. He has been taking a few for probably about a week now according to Kyle they practice when I am gone (which is not very often).

Hanging w/ Dad

So Kyle has staff duty (24 hours sitting at a desk) every three to four days. Gunnar and I usually drop his meals off and spend some time with him during dinner as everyone else is off of work. Tonight Gunnar took over....

He actually would rather stand in the chair. He has no fear! He stands up and likes to look over the edge. He also enjoys being spun in the chair.

Kyle got to talk to our friend Jay, who is in Afghanistan, tonight while he was on Staff Duty. He just happened to call to talk with the Rear D Commander and basically Staff Duty is like being a secretary....

Here are a couple of short videos. Please ignore Kyle and I and focus on the baby. Kyle is working on Gunnar's muscles. Has Gunnar hold on to a finger and likes to see how long he can hang. Apparently Gunnar thought I was pretty funny tonight.

Here he is doing what he does best...being a monster. Attacking his poor mom and dad.

Hopefully this makes up for no pictures in what I posted earlier.

Making news of no news

Nothing to exciting has been happening around here. Here is an attempt at making news out of everyday life.
Gunnar has had an ear infection...possibly from swimming in the poopy water, as the other children who went with us also had ear infections. YUCK! Then the antibiotics gave him a yeast infection. Poor little boy. He has been a trooper and for the most part has been his happy self.
I have been fighting a cold and trying to convience baby #2 that food is a good thing and that he or she should allow me to eat. I will be so hungry, but not able to keep things down. I am about 14 weeks along, I am pretty sure I should be done with this. I am hoping that I am not sick the entire time like I was with Gunnar.
Today I found out that the awesome program that was paying for my master's degree by the Department of Defense has abruptly shut down with no reasons or explanations given as to why. I was really hoping to finish my master's this year, but it looks like that may be a little hard. I don't exactly have the cash just laying around and paying on my undergraduate loan doesn't help. Hopefully it is back up and running....they say within a couple of months, I am praying it gets back up by the end of March.
Kyle is working a lot. I love having him home, broken leg and all but it is pretty miserable for him. They have nothing for him to do at work, so he ends up just sitting there. He pulls a lot of 24 hour shifts (like everyone on Rear D). He does them about every 3 to 4 days. He has started volunteering at the Outdoor Recreation facility and he enjoys that, so he at least has something to look forward to most days! I have started making Kyle drive himself to PT in the morning. Us getting up at 5:30 every morning has really messed up Gunnar. He has stopped sleeping through the night and thinks that 5-5:30 is wake up time. NOT OKAY. Hopefully now that his ear feels better and we aren't having to get up so early he can get back on schedule. I am so exhuasted that I need him to sleep so I can sleep. Oh I also bought Kyle a pool membership (which I might have to write about in another post) so he can go swimming now...something good for him and pretty much the only type of cardio he can do with his leg right now.
My house is trashed. Probably the biggest mess it has ever been in my married life. I am totally drained, and simply have not cleaned or done laundry in a long time. Tomorrow Kyle has the day off after working 24 hours today and tonight. I am taking Gunnar to a friend around 1pm and Kyle and I are going to work on getting the house in shape. I can clean when Gunnar is around, but it is hard and we need a good deep cleaning. I hope I get a good rest tonight so it can be done.
I will try and post some pictures soon. With not much happening I haven't taken many pictures. I could take a picture of my messy, embarrassing apartment, but that probably won't be happening! If you come to my door, I won't let you in and I will barely crack it open...it is that bad!

Channel Surfing

This week as been a busy one for the Pettit family.
Kyle had tons of appointments this week. Wednesday I took Gunnar to the doctor because he was running a fever and screaming all night at me. Turned out he had a pretty bad ear infection. Thursday I decided I should go and make sure I didn't have strep throat...thankfully I didn't, my super sore throat is just from these nasty colds we all have had.
Thursday evening I drove Kyle to Frankfurt for his sleep study. He is being tested for sleep apnea and we will get the results in about 5 more days. Driving around Frankfurt was the must frustrating experience ever. I wanted to cry. There were way to many one way streets and the road construction made it really hard for our GPS to keep up. I finally got Kyle to his "hotel" where they hook you up to machines and watch you sleep and then Gunnar and I got to our cute little bed and breakfast where we slept in a little more peace.
Gunnar was very impressed with the shower door and the cool toilet lid at the b&b. 

 

The morning we were getting ready to leave I looked over because I kept hearing the channels on the TV change. Gunnar looked like a little man sitting there holding the remote out channel surfing. By the time the picture took he had started to drop the remote, but I think you get the idea.

Friday morning I picked Kyle up and we headed for Landstuhl. We got there a little early so went to the huge BX Mall there for a bit. It kinda hard for Kyle to get around, but we all managed. We got to his appointment, the doctor looked at his x-rays  and said that yes the leg is still broken but appears to be healing and that Kyle should be ready to redeploy in June. Sad day. :( We don't really care for his doctor and will be working on getting a second opinion, but this is all we know now.

Palm Beach

 Saturday we gathered a group of some great friends and headed 1 1/2 hours South to Nuremberg's Palm Beach. It is a fun indoor (some outdoor) waterpark. With snow coming down it was the perfect day at the beach.
They had an awesome infant/kid area. On Gunnar the water came up to about Gunnar's chest and he had so much fun. He didn't nap the entire day (or on the car ride home)...he was just one big party animal. If he had been fussy a nap may have been forced on him, but he stayed a happy camper (or swimmer).

 

 Emma and Nolan snacking.

Wait, Gunnar took about a 30 minute nap while I got him dressed and we went from the water park to the car.

At the park I went down one punny little slide and ended up with 5 little girls crashing into my back. No lifeguards control when people go down, you are suppose to count 20 seconds. So I decided that water slides probably weren't a great idea for this pregnant lady. Then some of my friends convinced me to go down this "Awesome" water slide. I should have known it was a bad idea when it was the only slide with a stop light to control when people entered. I am usually not a chicken on water slides, but this freaked me out, probably due to having my little friend in my belly. It was way to fast and after that I REALLY was done with water slides.
So I made the mistake of telling Kyle about the water slide. He was convinced he could not spend another second in the infant pool. So he hopped all the way up the massive amounts of stairs and went down all the water slides.  For a broken guy he was getting around quite well. Probably not the best idea for that ankle of his, but he had fun.
He joined up back in the infant pool, and at this point our friend Matt made the announcement that his hand had been placed in some poop. Nice. To our discovery there was actually little pieces of poop floating all around. That was the end of the infant pool for us. I found some lifeguards and told them, they did nothing. So sanitary. I had forgotten my flipflops over near it and went back and saw a mom scooping it out with some blocks...YUCK.

Overall everyone had a great day. Now Gunnar and I have been fighting colds and neglecting poor Kyle. I have no energy for anything. I was thankful Kyle had the day off to help me with Gunnar and all I really had the energy for today was sleep. I just dropped him off at a farewell ceremony for some more people who are getting deployed with his unit and now I must find the energy to do a little homework tonight. I am hoping tomorrow everyone wakes up feeling 100%.

These are from last week...
I was watching our friends kid Nolan. I noticed he had been missing for a while...

Apparently I am a awesome kid watcher. Oops.

Here is Gunnar and Nolan and about as close to playing with each other as it got all morning. However, they did both climb in the crib and play when it was suppose to be Gunnar's nap time.

 

Gunnar tied to the chair...

Gummi Bear

The doctor said mommy has a Gummi Bear in her belly.

Mommy and Daddy were really suprised, but this means that....

9 weeks

12 weeks

My little brother or sister is due August 27, 2010.

Yum, Yum

This boy loves to eat. This morning he had a banana and cereal for breakfast. He loves feeding himself, so I let him this morning. Very messy, but he thought it was very exciting.

At dinner tonight, I had gotten up from the table and ask Kyle to finish feeding Gunnar. He called me back in because he said he came up with a new not so "effective" way to feed Gunnar. This was after Kyle's first attempt of feeding Gunnar with a spoon tonight resulted in pear all over the wall and the spoon in the flower pot. Gunnar also enjoyed some of our pasta and chicken that Kyle and I had.

All this messy eating resulted in a bath....which he loved. Bath time to him is just the greatest time ever.

 

Here is one more picture of Gunnar. We have this little shelf that I usually have his books sitting on. He cleared the books off and was attempting to crawl through it.

9 months

Gunnar is 9 months old!
He had his Well Baby Check-up today and here are his stats:
Weight: 17lbs. 4 oz. (below 5%)
Height: 26.8 inches (8%)
Head: 45cm (50%)
So he is still a little guy, but apparently is big headed compared to the rest of his body. I think it just means he is super smart. Either that or his head is swollen from all his bumps and bruises.
I had a long talk with the doctor about Gunnar's spitting up. I ended up being told I just had a happy spitter-upper. Not really what I was looking for. Gunnar even did a fine display of spitting up in the office all over the floor and the doc. He said that since Gunnar is not falling off the growth chart, and is a VERY happy kid that he doubts it is acid reflux. I am hoping that he is right, but I still feel very bad for Gunnar.
Gunnar was finally sleeping AWESOME. From about 8:30pm to 8:00am (even 9:00 some days).  It was amazing. But since we are now getting up at 5:30 to take Kyle to work, the poor kid is all messed up. He has been waking up a few times at night, then wakes up when I put him in the car seat in the early morning. Then he does not nap until about 10 or 11am, I am thinking maybe I should try putting him to bed a little earlier. We will see what happens.

We recently started working with Gunnar on simple sign language. We have these movies called Baby Signing Time and he LOVES them. He would seriously watch them for hours if we let him. The songs are very catchy and Kyle and I constantly have them stuck in our heads...but we (Kyle & I) have learned about 20 signs in 2 video sessions, so it gets the job done. Here is Gunnar watching the videos one morning...very serious.

Yesterday after church we had some friends Matt and Holly come over. They have 4 kids aged 4th grade-3 years old. We had a lot of fun. The oldest two enjoyed playing outside in the all the snow and then we all enjoyed some homemade soup, grilled cheese, and Wii.
Nolan the youngest and Gunnar wern't to sure what to think of each other. Nolan wasn't really into sharing and Gunnar didn't want to stop going into Nolan's space and grabbing his toys. I think it was good for both of them. Nolan did enjoy helping Gunnar bounce in the bouncer. He pulled Gunnar's chair up and was a great assistant.:)