First Steps!

Well yesterday was a pretty exciting day! In the afternoon, Micah and I decided to take a walk down to the mailbox, and he walked all the way to the mailbox holding onto only 1 of my hands.  It is even more impressive when you realize that it isn't at the end of our driveway, the mailboxes are on a different street than ours.  It took us about 20 mins of his little steps to make it there.  Then, Brandon came home from work and Micah and I went outside to play on his slide while Brandon got the grill started up for dinner.  Then Brandon sat down on the patio with Micah and Micah took his very first step alone!!!!!!!!!! He did it three times..only 1 step each time and then falling into Brandon's arms.  But it's progress!!! Unfortunately, I didn't catch any video of it :(  But it was very exciting!  Now Micah has 54 more days to get even better at it before we go to Florida.  Brandon was worried that we might go to Florida and Micah still wouldn't be walking and he'd miss the first steps.  He was so excited that he got to witness the first steps, that he was actually home with us.
So only 54 more days until Micah and I leave El Paso forever!  (no desire to ever visit here).  It's hard to go through the house and get rid of things that we don't need anymore when Micah requires to much time and attention now and I am also going to school fulltime online.
I don't really have any pictures for this post, because well Micah is still sleeping today.  He thinks he's a teenager and often sleeps past 9am. But I did find this video on my phone that other day that Micah somehow videotaped all by himself...so here is Micah's point of view in life :)

New Year

I know it's not January 1st, it's not actually the start of a new year.  However. this is Micah's birthday month and we are starting a new year of his life.  The first year was crazy, fun and wonderful.  But my blogging has definitely fallen away and I am going to try working on that now.  I recently went back and read my old blogs, and I love it.  I loved reading what I was thinking and worrying about while pregnant.  So a little bit of recap...as of right now we are still at Fort Bliss, Texas aka Mexican suburbs. The wind storms have been crazy lately and this is what I wake up to a daily basis.

Not only on the window sills but on the ground as well.  However, that will soon be changing!!!!!!!!  We are moving to Fort Bragg, NC!...not my dream post, but at least there's green stuff like trees and grass! And it's closer/easier to travel to family.  We are pretty excited about it.  Micah and I will be going to Florida in April to hang out with my family while Brandon deals with all the fun of movers and packing and actually moving.  We will meet him in Alabama so we can stay at his brothers with the dogs while he goes on to find our house and then move it all in.  It will pretty much mean 2 and half months of Micah and I traveling/living like nomads.  But I'd rather that than to live in a long term hotel with him! That was not fun last time when I was pregnant.

This is my big boy!  He's getting so close to walking! Not much longer at all!

On other news...my friend and I have been going to the gym 3 times a week together.  Micah and I walk the track while she's in Zumba class.  Micah loves it, he waves at all the people as we walk past and normally by the end of the hour, he falls asleep.  I'm hoping to do a 5k when I'm in Florida, kind of scared to 100% commit since last time I did that, I ended up having my gallbladder and appendix out..but here's to hoping! And my brave moment of the day....here's a pic of me in my workout clothes :)

Don't you love our new bedroom set? 

San Antonio Part 2

So continuing on...
We woke up bright and early on Thursday and got ready to go to Sea World!  Micah had to get ready..

Had to put on the war paint! We didn't want to get burned!  And since Micah was convinced sleeping in on vacation is not allowed, we were able to wake up, get ready, go enjoy a nice breakfast at the hotel and drive to Lackland air force base to explore it a little bit and still make it in time for the opening of Sea World!  Cool thing about the opening of Sea World, since I've never been there before when they opened the gates, at exactly 10am when the gates are opening, all the workers pause and the National Anthem plays and they all stand still with their hands on their heart.  I thought that was pretty awesome,  makes me love Sea World even more!  They are so patriotic and so amazing to the soldiers by giving us free tickets! :)  So we decided it was going to be a low key Sea World day, that we were just going to go to the shows.  So the first show we went to was the Belegua whale one, which was AMAZING! It had awesome divers, sycronized swimmers, the whales, dolphins and birds! Micah really liked it, he was so funny, he kept jumping up and down all excited.

Then we grabbed some lunch, the joy of your son waking you up so early, you are hungry before everyone else is at Sea World and you get to enjoy a quiet lunchroom :).  I know most babies wake up at 6am or so, so most parents don't understand...but right now it's 10:30am here and Micah is still sleeping..he thinks he's a teenager and I'm quite spoiled by it! So when he wakes up early like that..I don't know how to deal with it!
Anyway off to the Shamu show, which Micah wasn't impressed with.  It didn't have all the excitement and movement of the other show, and he was just angry that he couldn't swim too.  So off we went to the Elmo Rocks show!

But it had been a busy day so far, so he didn't make it very long...

So we called it a day and went on back to our hotel..the good thing of free tickets to Sea World, you don't feel guilty leaving at only 1:30!
We then went swimming at the pool at the hotel, but it was a small pool and full of kids acting crazy in this tiny pool so that didn't last long for us..and then we went to a restaurant on the RiverWalk, The Republic of Texas Restaurant, and it was really good.  The restaurant was the one that started the riverboat tours.  Then we went back to the Alamo because Brandon and Micah had to leave early last time because of diaper and hunger issues..and then back to our hotel for an early night!  But once we got back to our hotel I went back to the rooftop and took some last pics..

The next morning, we packed up and stopped by one of the many malls and walked around for a little while and then finally made the long trip back home.  We tried to go around and see not just the tourist parts of San Antonio but the other areas too because Brandon and I really loved it there and felt at home.  Everywhere we went the people were so nice, and the town was beautiful even though it was such a big city.  We are really thinking it might become our #1 on our wish list of bases..it's only 1 and half hours from Corpus Christi, 1 hour and half from Austin,  a little over 4 hours from Dallas and 3 hours from Houston. And that was our amazing trip..I miss it already..

San Antonio Trip!

So blogging with a baby is quite difficult.  My days go by so fast and I realize it's been months since I've blogged about what is happening in our lives.
This week we finally got to take a much needed vacation, and we went to San Antonio.  I really knew nothing about San Antonio other then the fact that the Alamo is there and I wanted to see that while we were still living way out here.  So we woke up bright and early and got on the road..

Micah said not to worry, he'd do the hard driving :)  Only problem was those short legs, so Daddy had to help him out!  This was at one of our many stops along the way, my stomach was feeling really sick so we tried to always get him out when we were stopped for me, so it wouldn't be as hard of a trip on him.  No worries, he always traveled safely buckled up and happy as could be in his seat.

We finally got to our hotel, which was beautiful!! We stayed at the Hyatt Regency right on the Riverwalk.  And I mean literally right on the RiverWalk!

That is part of the river that runs right through our hotel!  We unloaded and then went walking on the riverwalk to Hard Rock Cafe, which was right around the corner from our hotel.  We sat outside so we could enjoy the water!

The next morning, we got up really early because Micah did not like his hotel crib, and we explored our hotel a little bit, the views were amazing on the SkyPool Deck!

Pretty awesome to be able to see the Alamo on one side of the deck and the RiverWalk and Hard Rock Cafe on the other..we picked the best place.  Then we had our amazing free breakfast at the Hyatt, and we walked to the Alamo, which took a grand total of a minute :).  We got to the Alamo about a hour before it opened so we just walked around the outside of it and explored our surroundings.  In downtown San Antonio, there are 2 levels, the street level and below that is the RiverWalk level, so we explored the street level for a little bit.  Then Alamo time!

Micah wasn't to impressed, he fell asleep, but I really enjoyed it!  Then we went down to the Riverwalk  for a boat tour, which was so cool! The tour guide gave us so much amazing history of the city.

That was while we were waiting for the tour to start.  San Antonio's Riverwalk is so beautiful.  The architect who designed it in the 1920s wanted it to be like Venice, Italy, so it had all these beautiful bridges throughout.

It was so nice to see real trees, and ducks again!

This last picture of a tree is the Ben Milam Cypress tree, he was the leader of the Texan forces in San Antonio and awhile before the Alamo battle happened, he was killed in the town.  Supposedly, he was shot by a sniper and this was the tree that the sniper was hiding in.

This is the Aztec Theater where they use to show silent black and white movies, and it's still a movie theater today.

Micah really enjoyed the boat ride, but by the end he was hot and tired, so we had a little naptime and explored some more after that.

This was outside the front of our hotel on the riverwalk level.

That night, we ate at the RainForest Cafe.  It was an experience, not the best food, certainly not for those prices!! But we would do it again when Micah is older and can enjoy it.

And then it was an early bedtime for us because we had SeaWorld the next day!  But I will write about that later..this is long enough!

Baby Bubble Hour!

Today, we decided to try out Baby Bubble Hour at the on post pool, and it was amazing!  There was a lady teaching, and he did so good!  She had them float on their backs for awhile, and other babies freaked out but he was completely relaxed.  And she even had us put him under the water!  He never cried, he loved it!  So proud of him!  We've decided its going to be an every Saturday morning event for us, because we want him to be a little fish.  If his genetic testing comes back positive for Ehlers-Danlos, then swimming will be one of the best things for him.

I can't wait for next weekend!  And yes, I did go swimming too, I did the first half of the class with them, and then Brandon told me to take pics.
On another note, yesterday I had just a regular doctor appointment and it was with a new primary care doctor.  As he was going over my records and examining me, he started asking some questions, and most of my answers were yes.  He is pretty sure I have Reynauds Disease on top of everything else..oh yay!  It pretty much just means that my body can't process temperature changes correctly and we can't live anywhere really cold because if something happend and I got stranded outside, it could be very dangerous.  He's putting me on some medicines to see if it helps with my discolored feet and how frigid they are all the time.  If it does, then he is going to say I definately have it and I'll stay on that meds.  Brandon always said my feet are like ice blocks in the bed, had no idea it was an actual issue!
I think swimmng time wore Micah out..he's been napping for 3 hours..time to wake up my little swimmer!

Wow its been forever...

Sorry its been....like forever and a day since I posted!! We went on vacation to Alabama, and while I was there I started feeling awful and found out I had gallstones and needed my gallbladder out.  So I flew down to Florida so I could have surgery there and my family could take care of Micah, and we spent 7 weeks there.  I also had the joy of getting my appendix taken out at the same time too!  While we were there, Shannon took Micah's baby pics..here are some of my favorites

I pretty much love them all!
Yesterday was Micah's doctors appointment with the geneticist..it went ok I guess.  The doctor wants to do genetic testing on Micah and it will take like 3 months to get the results!  The main issue was I wasn't impressed with the doctor.  He seemed like he was in his own world the whole time, he wouldn't even listen to me when I tried to tell him about my diagnosis or what is wrong with me.  He only cared about talking about the geneticist I've seen in the past and how good friends he is with them.  Unfortunately this is the ONLY one around here, and he's not even from around here!  He's from Galveston, and travels here to see patients one day a month.  Next Thursday, we have the appointment with Early Childhood Intervention occupational and speech therapists to see if they think he needs to have therapy.  We will see!
So far, no news on when we will be able to move out of the desert.  I'm hoping soon, because I have been incredibly unimpressed by all the doctors here except my ob/gyn.  But we're trying to remain patient!
OH Micah's new absolute favorite thing...is roaring!  He does it all the time and just thinks he's sooo funny and laughs after he roars.  He also loves watching the dogs rough house, he'll just giggle as they play. 
One last adorable picture...