Reese is 3!

A belated post, as usual.  Reese turned 3 on January 10th!  We had pizza and ice cream at home on that Tuesday night.  She opened her presents from us - a new baby carriage, baby & a remote control car.  She loved it all!   That Saturday we had friends and family over for a bigger celebration and she received more and more presents.  Love having both of our kids' birthdays so close to the holidays...;-)  It's time for a major toy purge now that the new stuff has taken over.

Reese is still a delight...most of the time.  Her independence is fierce, though, which can make for some frustrating moments.  But, it's not long before she's making us laugh again with all of her goofy antics.  I'm happy to report that she is just about finally potty trained, I would say 90%.  We hit it pretty hard the week between Christmas & New Years and that seemed to do the trick for the most part.  She still has the occasional accident so I'm not confident enough yet to take her out in public without a pullup on.  Hopefully all the stars align pretty soon!

Lately she has developed more of an interest in "girl" toys - she's a lot more into babies now than she used to be.  She and Ava like to play "daycare" with all of their babies.  Reese insists on putting her babies to sleep on their tummies...I have finally given up on telling her that babies should sleep on their backs.  But it's a little unnerving to see her babies lying all over the floor face down with blankets on them. We'll make sure and revisit that again when she's older.

Reese still loves listening to stories and she has started to remember the words to books and read them to me.

A few months ago we also took the side of her crib off (after the climbing got out of control) so now she's sleeping in what amounts to a daybed.

Sidebar:  the cats LOVE this new bed that's in the house!  One or both of them can be found in it at all hours and we usually have to shoo one or both of them out of it when it's time for Reese's turn.  The bed hogs:

Of course, the new sleeping arrangement doesn't come without its own issues.  She's apparently a big mover & shaker in her sleep...moving herself right off the bed and onto the floor.  For now we've put some blankets on the floor to catch her fall.  It seems like it's happening less often as time goes on, so hopefully that trend continues.  Under normal circumstances we would head out and buy her a twin bed, but now that we're moving, we don't want to buy things that are just going to end up in storage.  So, she'll have to cope for a few more months.  Or like tonight, I let her fall asleep in Ava's bed.  This is the second time now that they've fallen asleep together...it doesn't get much cuter than that! 

Happy Birthday to my special girl, Reese Noelle! 

Croatia here we come

Because I'm lazy...here is an email Scot sent out to most of the people in his address book.  I made the official post on Facebook yesterday.  For everyone else, here's the scoop...

I wanted to send out a quick message to all that I accepted a new job this past Friday.

I will be serving as a Bilateral Affairs Officer (BAO) in Croatia on a two-year active duty (AGR) tour starting sometime this fall. It is an "accompanied" position, meaning that Heidi and the girls will be with me for the duration. We will be living and working in Zagreb, the country's capital. Not sure what we're doing yet with the house or the littany of other logistics, but we wanted to interview first and play it by ear after that. I am told there is a lot of support both at home and abroad in making this transition.

For a brief explanation on a few key terms:

Bilateral Affairs Officer (good article, not specific to Croatia)
http://www.ng.mil/news/archives/2010/10/100410-Bilateral.aspx

State Partnership Program (National Guard relationship with foreign country)
http://www.minnesotanationalguard.org/currentops/croatia/

It will be difficult to leave our family and friends , but we are comforted by the fact that it is only a couple years. I think we'll get to come back as a family at least once, and I will likely be in the States as part of the job on occasion. I imagine we'll have a guest room, so keep us in mind! I haven't been there yet, but I've seen some incredible pictures.

There you go!  We're very excited about this opportunity for our family to live overseas for two years!

Little Fishy

Ava just finished up her 2nd session of swimming lessons before Christmas, so she's been going now since June. She is absolutely loving it! She has always loved the water, so we figured it was time for her to learn to do things on her own. She literally is smiling throughout each lesson, she likes it so much. We have enrolled her in lessons at Foss, which is a private swim school...a little spendy compared to some other offerings, but so far we have been thrilled with her progress and enthusiasm. They keep the pools heated to 90 degrees and have a ratio of no more than 3 kids per teacher. So far she has loved both of the teachers she's had so far - both have been in their early 20s and super great with kids. She was supposed to start up again this past Wednesday, but she was diagnosed with an ear infection that day so I thought she better sit out. She cried about having to miss swimming, poor kid.

Home for the Holidays, Part II

Home for this entry equals Woodbury, Minnesota.

We had the Wilcox family Christmas (all 6 of us) as we usually do at our house on Christmas Eve. We prepared all of our edible favorites and watched as Ava and Reese opened 187 presents. Ended the evening with Santa prep - the girls were so excited for what might show up the next morning! Gave detailed instructions to Ava - "Stay in your room until 7:00. Come straight to Mom & Dad's room. Don't wake up your sister. Don't go downstairs." Repeated. And repeated again.

Ava's first visit to our room was at 12:01 am.

After ushering her back into bed, she did actually stay there until 7:00 am. And was in our room 3 seconds later. Reese heard the commotion and came in too. Scot and I weren't yet quite at the same level of hysteria, so I suggested some cartoons while we gave ourselves some transition time. The girls seemed to forget about Santa pretty quickly once a Dora Christmas show came on. About 20 minutes later I was ready to get up and start making monkey bread. I asked if they were ready to go downstairs. Nope, they just wanted to keep watching cartoons. Seriously...

Eventually we were all around the tree surveying the goods that came overnight.

A few weeks prior, Santa actually came to New Horizon!

At that exchange, Ava asked for an ipod. Reese asked for underwear.

Check, check. Well, Santa actually got Ava a non-Apple mp3 player but she doesn't know Santa sometimes considers price and practicality over ambitious wishes. (This would be kind of like the Target "American Girl" dolls she has). Reese did in fact get 6 pairs of underwear, which she was delighted to see. In an earlier letter to Santa, Ava also asked for Charm School Barbie (aka "Barbie that balloons out") and Reese asked for a Dora toy. These things also miraculously appeared under the tree. Stocking stuffers & a few games rounded out the loot. Santa delivered!

The rest of the morning and day was actually pretty low key as Ava and Reese checked out all of their new stuff - they stayed really busy. And after bedtime, we got to see a fun Packers win. What a wonderful day!