Happy Anniversary

Today Chris and I celebrate our 5 year anniversary! It is absolutely amazing how quickly time flies! It seems like just yesterday that we stood at the alter in the sweltering church and said "I do". It was one of the 2 best days of my life (of course having Reese is the other). Over the past 5 years we have done so much. We have traveled to Hawaii twice, The Bahamas, Antigua, Mexico, Napa, Boston, Whistler, LA, and Italy. We have rented, purchased a home, adopted dogs and had a child. Over these past 5 years we have just fallen more and more in love. I can't imagine my life without this man and I know that feeling is reciprocated.

This year celebrating our anniversary is a little bit different. Normally we would go away, or go out for our anniversary but since I have returned to work I didn't want to be away from Reese literally all day. So, we decided to go out last weekend to celebrate. We had a great dinner at Palisades restaurant. Tonight I plan to either cook a nice dinner or go out with our small family. It is hard to imagine that last year on this day I found out I was pregnant. The next day we were off to Napa (which unfortunately I could not enjoy since I was knocked up!). Now one year later we have a beautiful little girl and are onto the next adventure. I can't imagine where the next few years will take us. Here are a few of our goals for the next 5 years:

1. Have another Child (or 2, that is still tbd)

2. Go to Bora Bora/Morena, and the Greek Islands/Egypt

3. Buy a boat

4. Upgrade the house

5. Continue to have fun and enjoy each other and our families

6. Raise happy children that are secure in themselves

Wherever we go in the next five years I know we are going to fall more and more in love along the way. I think these next five years together will be the best yet! Here is a look back at some of the fun we have had!

Our Wedding July 30, 2005

Our Honeymoon in the Bahamas 2005 Picking out Maiya March 2006Maui July 2006Getting Cody October 2006Mexico May 2007Sandals Antigua June 2008F5 Circle of Excellence Trip in Whistler- January 2009 Italy April 2009Napa July 2009 (don't worry, just posing with wine, not drinking)Kauai October 2009 "babymoon"Pregnant with Reese July 2009-March 2010Reese Marie Holcomb- March 24, 2010 Our Anniversary dinner last weekend

Parental Dilemmas

Its amazing how many behavioral cycles a baby goes through, and so quickly at that. Reese is almost 4 months old and she is constantly changing. She has gone from waking up every 2-3 hours at night, to sleeping through the night, to waking up once to eat, back to waking up every 2-3 hours and then back to waking up once to eat. It keeps a new mom on her toes! She is finally getting to the age where a schedule is developing and it is tough! I used to be able to take her anywhere any time, no problem. I knew that she would sleep wherever we were and definitely did not need to worry to put her down to nap because she was constantly sleeping anyway. Oh how things change quickly. I knew this day was coming so luckily I started putting her down for at least a morning nap several weeks ago to get her used to it. Now she has 3 distinct naps everyday and if I don't put her down, who knows if she will actually sleep or not. I have now found myself planning my day around her sleeping schedule. I knew that day would come, but I didn't realize how quickly one baby stage morphs into the other. Along with this new nap routine has come my biggest dilemma as a parent so far, putting her to sleep at night. For the most part she goes down for naps like a dream child. I read her one book, sing her a couple songs while I rock her and put her down in her crib. She wakes up laughing and full of smiles about 45 min later. Now going down at night...a totally different story. As I mentioned, babies go through many different sleep cycles. When they are new, they are totally fine going to bed really late, say 10 or 11pm, when you would go to bed. This makes things really easy because you can just feed them and put them to bed. Since Reese still shares a room with us she would have no problem going to sleep since we were right there. As babies get older, they are awake more during the day and begin to need an earlier bed time. We drastically saw this change in Reese. She becomes obviously tired and ready for bed around 8:00pm now. Over the last couple weeks I have incorporated her same nap time routine into a bedtime routine in order to get her down earlier. This has proven to be a major challenge. Most the time she falls into a light sleep during our routine and will even go down without a peep...for about 10-15 min, maybe 30 if I am lucky. Then the wailing begins! So here is my dilemma...what is a mom to do? There are so many theories on this topic it is overwhelming! You have one extreme group saying that you should "sleep train" your child and let them scream in hysterics until they fall asleep, then you have the other extreme group saying that you should "wear" your child as much as possible and letting them even make a peep is risking that they won't trust you anymore. I don't really think my parenting strategy falls into either of these groups. I want to cuddle and love my baby but do believe in some sort of schedule; but at the same time I don't have the hear to let her scream her brains out for a long period of time. So which is it? What road to take. For now I have decided on the "graduated extinction" approach. This is where you let your baby cry, but go to them at timed intervals (first time 5 min, next time 10, 15, etc). This way you can still show your baby you are there, make sure they are not in pain (or thrown up on themselves in Reese's case), and leave them to go back to sleep. Let me tell you this is not easy. I have heard good things about this approach, but know it does take a time commitment. Supposedly it should take 3-9 days because the baby begins to catch on and learn to sleep. I am just hoping I have the strength to stick to this and find out if it works for us. It is little things like these that make parenting so difficult. Babies are not all the same, and something that works for one baby might not work for the other. So you just have to dive in and see what works for you and your baby and hope you won't mess them up too much! Parenting truly is the hardest job ever, after 4 months I am just starting to see this and I know it is just the beginning. I have a feeling it will just get harder and harder the older she gets. However, at the same time, as I see my baby laugh and smile and become her own person, I realize that it keeps getting better and better too! So here is to taking on a new challenge this next week, let's hope we come out better on the other side!

Lake Chelan

This weekend was our first mini vacation with Reese. Let me tell you, that car top carrier that we recently purchased was a MUST! We dropped Maiya and Cody off at "camp" (what we call their boarding place), and headed out of town with a very full car. I didn't even feel like I packed that much, but when you factor in my stuff, Reese's stuff, Chris' stuff and all the boating toys, it packs even an SUV to the brink! The drive over went pretty well. We stopped once in Leavenworth to eat lunch and feed Reese and other than that she pretty much slept the whole time. She did have one short meltdown after we put her back in her car seat after the stop. However, she figured it out about five minutes later and fell asleep for the rest of the ride. The weather in Chelan was gorgeous. It was in the high 90s to low 100s the whole weekend. We stayed in a beautiful condo with my parents, sisters, brother in law and nephew. The only downside to the vacation is that my sister came down with Mastitis the day we left. Unfortunately she spent the majority of the trip in bed. However, aside from that we had a great time boating, wine tasting and hanging out at the pool. Reese had her second trip on a boat and did fabulous. She just slept the whole time. She also loved the pool! When I first got in I thought it was just slightly cold, but Reese didn't even flinch. She just splashed around and enjoyed the cool water. I think we definitely have a water baby on our hands! Chris can't wait to get her out on the wake board one day! It was so nice to get out of town and spend some time in the hot sun. Traveling with a baby is definitely different though. You can't just do what you want to do when you want to do it! Normally I would spend all day in the sun, but with a baby who is not even old enough to have sunscreen on the, you really have to limit your time. Luckily I had a lot of babysitters this weekend so I was able to get a few moments to myself. I was really bummed when we had to leave on Sunday. Next time we are defiantly going to spend more time there! This trip also made me really excited to go to Hawaii which we will be doing next spring. I can't wait to watch Reese splash around on the beach! She is going to love it! Here are a couple pics from our trip!