potty training

Jax is potty trained! It is amazing watching him and his super colon live on his all fruit and fiber diet and know that for once I will not bear the brunt of it's violence.
We introduced him to the potty 11 months ago, just on the off chance that we didn't realize it, but he was ready for potty training and just wanted us to push him in the right direction. We quickly realized that this was not the case, and so after many unsuccessful attempts and countless celebrations of "movements" and a bottomless pit of potty bribes we have finally achieved a victory on the porcelain front. Enough of the potty talk, lets move on...
Ivy has expanded her vocabulary to dada, boof (Jax), mmmmmmmmm, babababa, and gagagagagggggg, anytime I try to get her to say, "mama" she just smiles and laughs in my face. At that moment, I have psychic visions of her teenage years and I am not excited. I think that when the time comes, I will let Jax potty train her.
She has finally started eating solids and she isn't really that thrilled about it. I thought she would love a little variety in her diet and yet whenever we feed her she gazes wistfully off in the distance thinking of simpler times when she didn't have to try and chew before she swallowed. However, once we introduce a newer 'new' food, if we revert back to an old 'new' food it is like she is experiencing a meal at a 5 star restaurant. Other than finding a sensitivity to squash it has mostly been your run-of-the-mill introducing solids to a baby stage.
We went on a little family adventure about 2 weeks ago. Ivan had a doctor's appointment down in sunny Florida, so we as a family packed up and joined him for a 3 day trip down to the sunshine state. He had a day off between appointments, so we woke up early and drove down to Orlando and spent the day at Sea World. All was going well until around 4:00 when the sky decided to open up and give us a whole year's worth of rain in a very concentrated hour and then continue to storm until we left at 9 that night. The boys were dressed in their bathing suits in preparedness for sitting in the infamous "splash zones" during the shows, Ivy and I were not so well equipped and I still found myself soaking wet after a 3 hour car ride back to the hotel (we changed Ivy into some dry clothes when we got back into the car).Even with the storm , we still had a great time there and I am excited we went. Jax got to see his beloved alligators and Ivy was entranced by the jumping orcas.

16 months later!

Wow! what a difference a year and some change can make! after the last post we had a few small and BIG changes. we got a new car, a sweet minivan, ivan and i are officially soccer moms. we moved, not anything big, just around the corner from our old house into a newly renovated larger one because... we had a baby! our new baby is already 7 months old! little ivy pepper was welcomed into the world on november 4th 2010 weighing in at a whooping 8lbs 4 oz and 20 inches long. she is growing like a weed and was a healthy 17lbs 5 oz at her 6 month dr. appointment, not too bad for a kid who had only had breastmilk at that point! we also experienced our first deployment, it wasn't as near as difficult as future tours will be. the sub ivan works on needed to go into drydock, so it was taken 7 hours away into another state that had facilities to handle the repairs. we (jax and i) were able to take aforementioned sweet minivan to drive back and forth to see him every few weeks.Jax and i also took our first cross-country trip about 13 months ago to go meet his newest cousin. We got there just in time, baby Ruby was born less than 24 hours after our plane landed! It was a great experience to be able to be there for my sister and brother in law as they were in the hospital, Jax got to spend some serious one on one time with his cousin gus and it gave us both a break from missing ivan. This past year has also been the year of hospital visits, Jax had an episode of severe croup and needed to be hospitalized overnight until swelling in his throat went down and his oxygen levels went up. We had to make an er visit with ivan because he became very ill, and ended up being diagnosed with pneumonia, sinusitis and a urinary tract infection all at once, then little ivy was born and it was my turn to be in the hospital for a few days, she was quite the stubborn kid and had a labor twice as long as her brother's, and then most recently the kids and i spent a Saturday night in the er waiting to be seen so that Jax could have a dried cranberry removed from his right nostril. i tried to be a good mom and make him some healthy trail mix to snack on, and he returned the favor by sticking it up, and having it get stuck in his nose. hopefully we can go without any more visits to the hospital for some time, otherwise i think they need to give us a frequent visitor punch card and give us a free shirt.
I think that's the majority of the big changes we've had. It is time to get ready for the next round of life's surprises!