No Fear (Part II)

Here we are at a park in Woodbury--our music class meets nearby. The one thing I wanted to point out is the blue ladder to the right of the slide. Ava climbed up that ladder all by herself!


Baby Keira (4 months) chills out:

Best Buddies! (Ava calls her "baby" over and over and over again)

No Fear

I'm pretty sure that's Ava's mantra and she takes after Daddy in that regard. No slide is too high, no sidewalk too hard...

Here's a look at her little nose with a big scrape after a faceplant with the sidewalk last week:



Here she is at the park at Beaver Lake (about a 10 minute walk from our house). She loves this swing, but doesn't like to hold on to the chains. Doesn't always make for a great combination.

Navigating the tunnel:

She loves this entire playground. She can get to the tube slide on the left all by herself by scaling a ramp that you can't really see in the picture, going through the tunnel, walking across a "bridge", etc, etc. All of this does not equal relaxation for Mom ;-)

Enjoying a rock snack after playing hard. And no, I don't "let" her eat them, but I can't always prevent them from getting in her mouth.

Ava is 17 1/2 months.

She likes:

• Giving kisses
• Putting on shoes (hers, mine, anyone's)
• Playing outside
• Milk
• Music class
• Looking at pictures of Daddy
• Pointing to her body parts when asked

She dislikes:

• Going out to eat (B-O-R-I-N-G!)
• Veggies (still)
• Coming IN from outside
• Leaving playgrounds
• Being in shopping carts

Some new words:

• Cookie
• Kicki (Vicki)
• Socks
• Down
• Whee! (does that count as a word?)
• Coat
• Clothes
• Please
• Arm
• Toes
• Diaper
• Bath

Pictures from Afghanistan

C130s from MSP and Peoria, IL

Old Soviet equipment
The outside of his RLB (relocatable building).

His room

RLB courtyard

View from the RLBs

Pat Tillman USO

Scot's crew (he's 3rd from the right)

Scot and Andy (navigator) in Bagram
Scot and Jeff (flight engineer) in Kabul
A view of the cockpit through NVGs (night vision goggles)
A view of the mountains through NVGs

I've heard it all.

Just got this message from Scot:
Had a pretty nice day today. It's our halfway point already today, so we did a crew "spa day." All of us went to the day spa on base and got manicures, pedicures, facials, and massages. I don't know about the first three, but the massage hit the spot. The whole package was $40. Very nice.

So, he's in the middle of a war zone and had a spa day. I'm in the middle of my own war zone (Operation Enduring Ava) and am still waiting for my spa day! Seriously...

Lucky for me, Di offered to stay home with Ava during her morning nap on Saturday so that I could go do something similar. Yay! And despite my jealousy, I really am happy for Scot--he and his crew definitely deserve some pampering.

Here's the rest of his message:
I also took a bike ride around the base perimeter. There are some old Russian tanks, guns, and aircraft laying in a remote spot on base. Pretty cool. You can see the "villages" surrounding the base as well. Everything is made from baked clay, and kind of blends in with the environment. I wasn't sure people actually lived in them, but there were some sheperds with their flocks walking around out there. We have it pretty good.

3 weeks down, 4 to go...

Well, it will be 3 weeks on Monday anyway...

I talked to Scot twice this week--once on Easter Sunday and once on Thursday. On Easter he sounded really tired as he had just come off 3 straight days of flying. They're definitely keeping him busy. When they fly, they go out for about 10-12 hours straight, either transporting supplies or troops throughout the country. When I talked to him on Thursday, he sounded a little bit more rested, as he had the day off. On Wednesday he got to do his first real air drop so he was pretty excited--that is when they open up the back of the plane while they're in the air and drop the supplies out with parachutes attached. They practice it all the time at home, so it was fun for him to do it for a real purpose. They have new GPS systems in the planes that match the target drop better now, which means they don't have to fly as low to do it. That's a good thing--the higher he's up in the air, the better! From what I've been told, the Taliban aren't all that sophisticated--the most they can do basically is fire guns from the ground. He got his first pieces of mail, so we estimate it takes about a week for a letter to get there and about 10 days for a package.

Here is his address again in case you're interested in sending him anything:
Scot Wilcox (no rank)
774 EAS/OPS
APO AE 09354

Here is Ava getting a card ready for the package we sent last week:

Scot's Crew

From left to right: Andy Torzewski (navigator), Keith Ilenda (loadmaster), Nate Kazek (pilot), Jeff Rosenthal (flight engineer), Scot (copilot), and Aran Stromberg (loadmaster)

More from Scot

I flew my first mission today! Got out to see the Afghani countryside. It's really a beautiful place with all the mountains. Wouldn't want to be down on the ground, I don't think, but it's pretty from the air. Pretty uneventful, really. Other than working, we've been scampering around getting laundry done, hitting up the BX's for good stuff, and getting some patches made. Colonel Cayton made a speech about how we're all "in the fishbowl," so we are thinking about making a patch to poke fun at that. I drew up a rough draft last night. We'll see.I still haven't been able to get my computer set up in my room with internet, but that will hopefully happen in the next couple days.

Pooped Out

Ava pooped 4 times today, but that's really not the reason for the title of this post. I'm simply pooped out.

Boy, it's been a busy weekend. I woke up with a pretty bad cold yesterday...but I got my butt in gear and Ava and I went to her first music class at 9. It was so fun! We had gone to a trial class a few weeks ago to check it out and liked it, so we signed up for a 10 week session. There were about 10 families there, with kids ranging from maybe 10 months to 3 years. The class basically involves a lot of singing and dancing around (basically acting like an idiot for 45 minutes), they get to "play" instruments, and hang out with other kids. Good times. We sat in a circle for most of it, and while most of the other kids sat nicely with their parents to begin with, Ava ran right out into the middle of the circle and didn't want anything to do with me. And that continued for most of the class period. So while most of the parents could at least hide behind their kids in the embarrassment of singing and dancing in front of strangers, I largely did that by myself with Ava rarely in the same 6 foot radius. Oh well...

We both took two naps in the afternoon and then the Listons came over so I could watch Keira while Jess and Jared went out for the evening. Thankfully, Diane and Gardy came over as well to bring dinner and lend a hand. I think I could handle another baby just fine, as long as there were 2 other adults helping me at all times! :-) Actually, it was fine. Keira is a good baby and Ava went to sleep just fine (well, the second time I put her down she fell asleep fine--in all the commotion, I forgot to feed her the rest of her dinner so she went to bed a little hungry the first time!) Oops...

Today was Jared's turn to try babysitting both girls--lucky guy! Jess and I went to a card making class this afternoon with another friend, which was a lot of fun and a nice break for both of us. And Jared survived, even though Ava took a much shorter nap than I promised him. Scot actually called while I was gone, but he did get to talk to Jared :-) He's just getting settled in and now and will start flying in the next couple of days. Hopefully I'll get to talk to him again soon. I still don't have his address, but his email is scot_wilcox@hotmail.com and he should be able to access that fairly regularly.

Hopefully this cold goes away soon...Diane is going to start babysitting again this week for the first time since her fall. Mom is coming this weekend for 4 days too, so I'm looking forward to having some extra hands!

Here's a picture of my little sweetie taken today: