thanksgiving

We had a lovely Thanksgiving holiday in Nashville with friends from Matt's mission. 

Matt worked Wednesday night until 10 so we drove over Thursday morning.  Willa had a great time playing with toys galore and meeting some new friends.  Matt and I had a great time eating, eating some more, and visiting.

On Friday, the Lindemanns took us around downtown Nashville.  It was very pretty and chilly.  We went to a couple parks and a car show.

We came home Saturday so Matt could do some Thanksgiving hunting.  Unfortunately he didn't get anything.  Matt and I caught colds in Nashville though.  Amazingly Willa didn't.  So I spent the rest of the weekend resting and unpacking. 

Willa likes to get into everything these days. 

Good thing she's cute.

2 things I love...

                about Matt's job

(1) his schedule
Who has ever heard of a residency with the hours of 8 to 5 or 7 to 4 (depending on the rotation) Monday through Friday?  Those are his hours FOR REAL. No weekends.  No overnighters.  No crazy weeks where he has to work 100 hours.  We are lucky ducks.  I LOVE IT!!  He has the option to take call a few times a month from 5 to 10 pm.  But he gets paid extra for those shifts so he sort of seeks them out.  (It's not a cake walk though.  He tells me that radiology is more mentally demanding than internal medicine was for him because there's no time to zone out or wait around to round or anything like that so he still comes home tired.  Just a different kind of tired.  We'll take it.)

(2)  free food
He gets all the free food he wants in the physicians' lounge and he gets $100 worth of meal tickets every month for the main dining room.  He struggles to use up the $100 so he brings home dinner or little treats almost every night. Yum! Thanks hubbs!

And here's a little pic of Willa modeling her new Gator outfit from Auntie Moe.  ha-ha.  Thanks Moe!

rock climbing

It's nearing the end of the year and we have a surplus in our Young Women's budget at church.  How?  We're not exactly sure.  So we've been doing some fun things lately to spend the money.

This week we went rock climbing. Matt usually stays home with Willa, but he was a little jealous of our activity...

and at the last minute a couple girls couldn't make it

so Willa and Matt joined us.

None of us knew what we were doing, but it was fun.

I love Thursdays!

We meet friends at the park in the morning to walk a couple miles.

Then we walk up the little hill to the

library to meet some other friends for story time.

Afterwards, we all go back down to the
park to play on the playground.

Then we head home for lunch and naps, hang out with Matt in the early evening, and put Willa to bed.  Plus there's often an evening activity for me ... like enrichment or Wives Club (the wives of the residents that work with Matt meet once a month to go out to dinner). 

I love Thursdays!

yum

Feeding Willa is always an adventure. She is developing fabulously in every area EXCEPT eating. She's really curious and interested in food. She wants to lick everything and taste everything and hold everything and take bites of everything, but that's it. She doesn't want to actually eat a real meal.

It takes her 5 days to finish a container of baby food. She does better with adult food, but that isn't always safe since she doesn't have molars. I read all of these articles on what a 9 month old should be consuming and Willa doesn't even come close. It stresses me out. I can't believe in less than 3 months she's supposed to be getting most of her nutrition from food and not from nursing. We have a long way to go.

Tonight at dinner she swatted the spoon of sweet potatoes for the umpteenth time and somehow sweet potatoes ended up on the bridge of her nose and nowhere else. I had to laugh and take some pictures.

She didn't think it was very funny.

We see tears at some point during most meals. So sorry sweet girl. We'll figure this out together.

On a happier note, she loves drinking water from her sippy cup, and she's starting to figure out how to take sips all by herself. She used to just hold it and chew on the spout

but now she has figured out how to get some water all on her own. She arches her back and bends way back. It cracks me up. I love watching her learn new things.

social butterfly

Willa's turning into a social butterfly...

- She points at things all day long.

- She plays patty cake & gives high fives.
- She gives kisses and asks for kisses.
- She clip-clops her tongue and then looks around trying to make us clip-clop our tongues also.
- She waves goodbye.
- She loves rolling the ball back and forth (she's not very good at it but really enjoys it)

It is so fun to see Willa grow up.

we're on safari

Willa is a bit too young to enjoy trick-or-treating and candy, but we still dressed her up and participated in some of the festivities. Friday night we went to a costume party thrown by a fellow first year resident.

There are 7 first year residents, 6 of them are married, and 3 (after this week) have kids.

Matt's missing from the group photo because we took it before he arrived. He had to work until 10 pm.

Then on Saturday afternoon, we went to our friends' neighborhood carnival. Free hay rides, free hot dogs & soda, free candy, free professional pictures, free games ... all on a gorgeous sunny day ... what more could you ask for?

Willa and I spend a lot of time with Brittany and Adam. (Adam's surfer boy costume was still wet from swimming lessons that morning)

We spent Saturday night at home passing out candy to ONE trick-or-treater and laughing at Willa in her costume. That's quite a change from Toledo where we would run out of candy. Willa's bottom two teeth came in a couple weeks ago. You can see them in some of the previous pictures.