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!

Summer Dinners

Well I can't say that summer weather is fully here yet, but at least summer dinners are going strong at the Holcomb household. I absolutely love to cook. I love to try new recipes and reinvent old ones. My only gripe with cooking is that many of the things I want to try I am not willing to spend the calories on (at least on a regular basis anyway). However, I do have fun taking recipes that might originally be high cal, and making them healthy and still Delicious! This week I decided to try a new grain Quinoa (pronounced Keen-wa, who would've thought). This grain is very high in protein and fiber, very healthy. I had purchased the Quinoa several weeks ago and haven't been sure how to cook it. On Tuesday I decided last minute that I wanted to use it alongside the cod I was making but wasn't quite sure what to do with it. I found several promising recipes online that I plan to try another time, however I did not have the ingredients for many. At that point I decided I was on my own. I have been really into a particular salad recipe that I made up not long ago and decided the Quinoa might be good mixed into the salad. It was delicious! Here is what I did:

1/2 cup (unprepared) Quinoa

1 red pepper

1/4 cup chopped red onion

10 grape tomatoes sliced in half

1 avocado sliced

spring mix lettuce

arugula lettuce

Low fat champagne vinaigrette dressing

crumbled feta cheese

First I prepared the Quinoa according to the directions and put it in the fridge to chill. Then I sauteed the tomatoes, red onion, and peppers in a little olive oil and then put in the fridge to chill also. Once my cod was finished cooking, I tossed the cool Quinoa and cold vegetables in with the arugula and spring mix. I topped the salad off with the croutons, feta, dressing and avocado. It was delicious. A perfect summer side dish. It went fabulously with something light like cod. I look forward to using this recipe again and in trying new recipes with Quinoa!

This is not my salad, but looked a bit similar!

Another tried and true summer meal at the Holcomb house is tzatziki steak wraps. I was first introduced to these at Buckley's (a restaurant by my work). They were delicious and I assumed they would be easy to make. I substitute pita bread, for flat out wraps in order to bring down the calories, but they are delicious either way! I love this alongside a greek salad. Here is what I do:

grilled flank steak

tzatziki sauce (you can make your own or buy it, I have found it at costco and Trader Joe's)

humus

feta cheese

flat out wraps (or pita bread)

caramelized onions
tomato

Basically you just put everything in the wrap or pita and enjoy. It is a very quick and easy meal and very delicious. I have also had it with all the above ingredients and pesto and mixed greens in additions. It is great that way too! I hope you enjoyed my a couple of my summer meals, I'll post others soon!

Happy 3 month birthday Reese!

Wow, does time fly or what? I can't believe that 3 months ago today at this time I was debating with Chris whether or not my back ache was really contractions or not. That would begin the world wind day that would wind up with our daughter being born 5 1/2 hours later! How can your life change so much in such a short amount of time? Not only have we transformed from a couple into a family in these 3 short months, but we have also experienced so many parenthood changes as well. We made it through the newborn phase! Reese is so much of a person now it is unbelievable. She no longer sleeps all day oblivious to the world around her. Now she is very much engaged with everything. She smiles, she coos, she rolls, she grasps, she squeals; all of which any mother would admit are heart melting! The other day she even reached out for me when someone else was holding her. Talk about melting your heart! This is not to say that the very beginning of parenthood is not exciting because it is! So many new things to experience, but it really does just keep getting better. It is so exciting to watch my girl morph into a little person. Yes, she still has a LONG way to go, but it is amazing how fast they change and develop. It teaches you to cherish every single minute with your child. Every time Reese does something new I jump and cheer for her and encourage her to do it again, but at the same time I have to admit I am also a bit sad. I never thought I, of all people would feel like that. Those who know me well are all to familiar with my knack of being very emotionally grounded. In fact, I was told on several occasions that I was the "most unemotional pregnant person ever". I can't help it, I just don't let things get under my skin that easily. I never thought I would be the parent that is going to cry at my kids pre-school graduation, but now I realize I will, and am totally ok with that. When you become a parent life becomes a bit more beautiful.

I know, I know, enough of my blubbering. On I lighter note I thought I would give my "mom opinion" on the top 10 items that have gotten me through these past 3 months. Here they are in no particular order:

1. The Bob- This is the only stroller I own! It is amazing! It adapts with many carseats so you can just snap in and go. It is great to run with, but the wheel also pivots so it is easy to use crowded spaces. It is a lifesaver!

2. Bebe Au Lait Nursing Cover (Also known as Hooter Hider)- A nursing cover is also a must have if you are breastfeeding. This way you can feed the baby anywhere and stay covered up while looking stylish at the same time. This

particular cover is great for the wire at the top so you can see the baby at all times.

3. The Ergo Baby- This is my favorite baby carrier. It holds kids up to 35lbs (not that I would be packing a kid that big!). It can be a front carrier, side carrier or backpack. It has a great ergonomic design so you don't strain your back. For me the fit and comfort is superior to the popular bjorn

4. Swaddle By Designs Blanket- If you do your own swaddle this is the best blanket. Reese can break out of most things, but this blanket is the best. It holds tight and is a large size so it will grow with your baby. Not to mention it comes in super cute patterns too!

5. Space Saver High Chair- I love this high chair because it fits right onto your own chairs so that you don't have to store a big high chair. It reclines too which is great, Reese has been able to sit at the table with us since she was a newborn.

6. Co-Sleeper- I love this! It attaches right onto your bed so you can just lift up and slide your baby over in the night to feed them. It doubles as a play yard too so you can still use it when your baby is no longer in your room.

7. Bravado Nursing Tank- I was a little skeptical about paying the $40 bucks for this tank but it was so worth it. Not only really cute, it is great quality. It is literally the support of a bra. I also have many of the cheaper target tanks and they don't hold a candle to this one! It have it in white and black. It is fabulous! You feel totally comfortable wearing this out on its own.

8. Belly Bandit- I wore this for 6 weeks postpartum. I was back into non maternity cloths the week Reese was born and I believe it was due to this. "Trains" your tummy to stay in again. It won't tone your belly, but gives you a jump start on getting your shape back.

9. "Lose Your Mummy Tummy" book- This book is the best. It shows you core exercises pre and post pregnancy to get your pre-pregnancy stomach back. It helps fix diastasis, which most women get during pregnancy (separation of the abdominal muscles). I don't notice much (still a little way to go) of a difference between my stomach now and before I got pregnant and I owe it to this book!

10. Maclaren Bouncer- Or any bouncer really. This thing is a lifesaver. Reese loves to sit and vibrate in this while I shower and get ready. I just keep it in my bathroom!

Well those are my top for now. I am sure I will come across more as Reese uses more things!

Happy Father's Day

Today is father's day. This is a particularly big day for my family since today we celebrate Chris' first father's day. For the past 8 years he has been the world to me, he is the love of my life and is the most amazing father to our baby girl. He provides for me in more ways than I could ever imagine. When I am sad he makes me happy, when I am weak he gives me strength, when I need someone to talk to he listens and makes everything OK. However, my favorite thing about Chris is the way he makes me laugh. Chris can make me laugh about anything. I love that after eight years I still think that he is hysterical, well most the time anyways. When Chris walks into a room he lights it up. He has this gift of relating to anyone. He can find common ground with a perfect stranger. Reese is so fortunate to have such a great daddy. I already see so much of Chris in her. Particularly when she smiles. Lately Reese has been just a bundle of smiles. As I am trying to put her down at night now she will smile at me, what a manipulator! How can you put your baby to bed when she is giving you the worlds biggest grin. She definitely learned that skill from her daddy. It's like how Chris will make me laugh when I am trying my hardest to stay mad at him! I hope that Reese will be just as fun loving, caring, generous and amazing as her daddy. Happy father's day Chris, you mean the world to your family and we are so lucky to have you in our lives each day!

I am also so lucky to have such a fabulous father of my own. My Baba (daddy in Arabic) is the

first man of my life. He is the most honest and generous man you will ever meet. He is always trying to take care of me, even to this day when I am pretty capable of taking care of myself. He has always put his children first in everything. He has worked extremely hard his whole life in order to provide for his family and give us the world. My Baba has set such an example to me to put others first and have a servants heart. I love you Baba, happy Father's Day! (by the way that is me and my dad, not Reese!)

Happy father's day too to all the dads out there! You are such a blessing to your families!

Vitamin D

This weekend I laced up my running shoes, belted the dogs' leashes around my waist, got Reese in the BOB and headed out on a run (it is quite a process). I have to say that running is not my favorite thing to do on the weekends. I usually like to reserve my workouts for the week, but it was so beautiful out I could not resist. With each strike on the pavement I reveled in the sun, Kenny Chesney's smooth country/island tones serenading me in the background. As I settled into my first mile I realized how much sweeter life is when the sun is shining. Everything seems to fall into place and have a brighter outlook (well quite literally actually). Suddenly everything in your life seems clear, simple and easy. I passed 2 lemonade stands and reminisced about my days as a little girl selling lemonade on the corner. Granted I didn't make much money since the neighborhood I lived in was pretty spread out, but regardless it made for good memories. My feet felt lite as I moved into my second mile. Why do I live in Seattle, I wondered? Why not Arizona where I could feel like this all the time. Then I remembered, aside from not wanting to leave my family and friends, that part of the reason that this small dose of vitamin D is so energizing is because as Seattleites we have learned to value the Vitamin D we receive. If we got it all the time, Seattle summers would not be the way they are. Where else can it be in the 60s and sunny and have over half the town outside and in the best mood ever? As I glided into mile 3 I remembered that despite how good I now felt from my short sun exposure, I was still sporting my pale Seattle skin. Maybe I will have to do a little self tanner later and at least pretend that I am still young and carefree, frequently basking in the warmth without worrying about how the sun exposure will age my skin. Ah how times change. Now I won't even venture outside on a winter day without SPF 25 on my face. I am still working on remembering to lather up the rest of my body on a regular basis, hopefully that will come. As I huff and puff into my home stretch mile 4, I wonder why I am running in the sun instead of reading a book in the backyard or doing something else a little more leisurely. Then I recall that along for my need for vitamin D, I also crave endorphins like crazy. So now that I have both checked off my list, I move onto the rest of my day, in a little better mood and with a little bit more of a positive outlook on life. Gotta love those warm Seattle days, let's hope they are not few and far between this year!