November Can't Come Fast Enough!

We finally have dates on getting back to the states. We should be there November 6th through December 6th! We are all SO excited. We can't wait to see our families again it just has been too long. The girls have been planning all the gifts that they want to bring everyone. Steven and I are planning to mail out a big box to my parents and his about a week before we leave so that we don't have to carry so much on the plane. I felt so bad for poor Steven when we moved here. I had all of the kiddos with me and he had to pretty much drag 5 large suitcases and 2 car seats around until we checked them for our flight. This time we are hoping to only check 1 suitcase and each of us, including Lilly and Sadie, carry a backpack with a set of clothes and things for the plane. Hopefully we get everything figured out soon.
Now that I have a gate pass and we have one for the car, we have been trying to get off base and explore a little of the area. Last weekend we had a power outage on base so we thought we would go to the Sunday market in Incirlik Village. It was mostly produce and some household things. We got some more bananas because Ruby is a banana monster! She seriously at 4 bananas by herself one day. As we were walking around a little Turkish boy started following Steven around. It made us really uncomfortable especially since the girls were with us. We are very protective of them so we figured we would leave since it was that big of a market and we wanted to get the girls away from them. As we were walking more boys joined in. Once we go to the car we put the girls in as fast as we could and Steven got the strollers in. Steven went to go get in the car and they wouldn't let him shut the door. They wanted money and kept saying they helped us, but they really didn't. Steven was getting really upset and the one boy say 1 lira (Lira is Turkish money, $1 is about 1.41TL). Steven asked if I had one so I pulled one out of my wallet and it got fumbled out of the car and into the street. He went for the money and walked away. We shut and locked the door and we aren't going back to that market again.
Steven wanted to explore so he followed a Ford Expedition because they were American and wanted to see where it went. Bad idea. They went a lot faster than us and we ended up on a highway not knowing how were going to get home. All the signs were in Turkish so I was panicking a little bit. We were finally able to turn around and retrace our path and made it home. Sadie and Ruby slept the whole time and I think Lilly was a little nervous too because we kept asking "Can we go home now?"
We made it back to base and ended up buying two more rugs for the house. Which brings our total up to 5 rugs, $430 in one month. Our whole house is tile and Ruby is now crawling, scooting, and pulling up/cruising around furniture. The rugs definitely were a necessity. The poor thing has fallen and hit her head enough. It's been interesting baby  proofing this house. Ruby became completely mobile in less than a week, so we have not had enough time to think ahead. She really is a menace. She loves to play in the girls play area in the living room and especially loves to play with their blocks. Every time she goes back there she pulls the basket of blocks off the shelf even if the girls had just cleaned them up and put them away. Lilly is beyond frustrated with that. Ruby also likes to open the drawers in the kitchen and makes it really hard for me to clean.
Lilly is doing great at school and we are even going on a shopping trip with her teacher this weekend. We live in the city of Adana and she is going to take us into Old Adana to show us where to park and the stores there. We are really intimidated about being off base because of the language barrier. We have been trying to get learn a few words and I have downloaded some applications about the Turkish language. We hope to find some great things for our house and gifts to bring home. I can't even tell you how excited we are to bring things home for everyone. Everything is so colorful here compared to England.
This month seems to be flying by. We have so many things we are doing plus trying to everything squared away to go home. The only downside to the next couple of months flying by is that when we get home Ruby and Sadie will being having birthdays. I don't think I am ready for them to be 3 and 1. I am already having a hard time with Lilly being 4 and in school. Steven loves to point out that when we move Ruby will be the same age Sadie was when we left England. He can't wait for them to get bigger and I am dreading it. But we will be happy to celebrate their birthdays a little early with family. Next month is going to be great!
♥K

What were up to now....

Playground after school.

Lilly has been enjoying school a lot more. She has been excited to go and enjoying her day. Her only issue now is that she doesn't want Sadie to do anything fun while she is at school. She doesn't understand is that she gets to do fun things at school and Sadie has fun things of her own to do like play group, story time, and running errands with me. She never wants to miss anything ever. We are dealing with it day by day. Some days are definitely better than others and most of them are fueled by tiredness. Unfortunately the past few school days have been very busy for us. We have been running around from the time we drop Lilly off to when we pick her up and sometimes even after we pick her up. Hopefully once all the errands stop we will have a day or two a week that we can be at home while Lilly is in school and get some stuff done around the house and the girls can get a good nap in.  We have been able to let Lilly ride her bike to school, we chain it up, and then she rides it home.
After school we have been stopping at playgrounds before we come home. Sadie and I will pick out some snacks and fill up our water bottles and we have a snack with Lilly and Ruby, and then run around the playground. Today we didn't make it to the playground because it was 109 when we picked Lilly up. Sadie turns so red and gets so sweaty being outside and today was a bad one. Her hands were so sweaty she couldn't hold my hand because hers kept sliding out of mine. Some days when we get home I put all 3 of them in the bath tub to cool off. We have a pretty good routine going and they have been really good when it's time to go to bed. Things can get a little rough when Steven is working and I am trying to make dinner, but we manage. I was also able to find dryer erase/magnet chore charts for the girls and one of their "chores" is to behave so they have been really trying to get their stars.

Her face was the color of her shirt when we got home.

The charts have been great. They really try to earn their stars. If they get 28 stars they can get a book, for 56 stars it's a movie(buy one or go to the movies), and 112 they can get a toy. In a couple of weeks after they get used to the chores I will most likely change the number of stars and rewards.
At school today they had a dentist come in to check all the kids teeth. We already saw the dentist a few weeks ago and he said Lilly has a cavity in one of her molars. The dentist today said he/she(don't know who came to the school)saw nothing and that Lilly has "great oral hygiene". Now I am mad, I don't know who is right, they didn't take x-rays so we'll have to wait. Her Turkish appointment is on Friday so I guess we'll see then. I'll let you know when I know. I just know I am going to be really pissed off if she doesn't have a cavity. Not that I want her to have one, but I don't want her to go all the way to another dentist just to find out the base dentist was wrong.

She woke up wondering where we were.

Ruby is doing good. We are still waiting for her new reflux medicine. She takes Zantac twice a day but she still screams in pain and her face turns bright red. The pediatrician said that her throat was pretty red and that is a sure sign that her medicine is not cutting it anymore. Hopefully the medicine gets her this week and she starts to feel better. If better news, she now has 4 teeth and 1 more that should cut soon. She is still not crawling but she can move herself around pretty well. She rolls, scoots, or does what Steven calls a "gorilla walk". She says bunch of words now, but doesn't like to say them on queue. She has been sleeping in her room for a few weeks now and has been sleeping through the night pretty much every night. I usually have to wake her in the morning. And she has inherited sleep talking from her daddy. She has successfully woken me up in the mornings because I can hear saying actual words. I go in there and she is still sleeping. Lucky me!

She found a dog and played with it instead of running around.

WE NOW HAVE ALL OF OUR PASSPORTS!!!!! Steven is going down this week to start the whole process. We don't have dates or whether we will fly on the rotator or commercially. We are hoping to be in US for the whole month of November. The first 2 weeks in Pennsylvania and the last 2 in Texas. We are all dying to just get on a plane and go already. Sadie nearly asks every day. We'll be there soon though!!!! You'll know when we know because we'll be shouting it from the roof tops! It's going to be a long time coming though!
-K

Lilly's First Day of Pre-K

Lilly started her first day of pre-K yesterday. She had a pretty rough day. She was so excited to go. In true Lilly fashion she didn't she couldn't go to sleep the night before because she was afraid that she was going to miss something. We let Sadie stay up a little later because she had taken a nap and we wanted to let Lilly fall asleep without Sadie bothering her. She has also been waking up a lot in the middle of the night and tries to get into bed with me; sometimes I will wake up when she does and I'll hug her and tell her to get back into her bed, other times I sleep straight through it and she manages to go back to sleep in our bed. That is exactly what she managed to do the night before so when my alarm went off in the morning she sat straight up and asked, "Is it time to go to school?" She jumped out of bed, ran to her room and turned on the light. All of which woke Sadie up and she can be such a monster when you wake her up.  And Lilly has a very sensitive gag reflux. Steven brushed her teeth and accidentally made her throw up. He barely touched the tooth brush to her teeth and she threw up again. I finally managed to get her teeth brushed. On her way out the door I told her to remember to "Be nice" and Ruby repeated it perfectly. She yelled "Be nice" and giggled.

Daddy walked her to school by himself, because I had  yet another monster migraine. I was a little sad but I got to pick her up from school and and it wasn't her first time going to school. After school we met Daddy at the BX and had ice cream cones while she told us about her day. She wasn't her normal happy self when I got her from school so we tried to find out what was wrong. She told us she never wanted to go to school again. She kept saying she wanted to bring the class hamster home and she didn't. I also think that they don't do things like we do at home. All of the girls are pretty specific in how things need to be done or where things go. They even tried to help Steven when he switched to day shift how they get ready for bed. She kept telling me they made her do this and that and I am assuming that things didn't flow the way she is used to or how it is comfortable for her. All in all we think she had a good day. She had both good and bad things to say, she  just needs to get used to the new environment.

She did like her lunch. The school provides the lunch and snacks. They eat lunch in their classroom and it is self serve. They get to put the food on their own plates and they have to at least try a little bit of everything. Lilly has no problem with at least trying things and 9 times out of 10, she usually likes it. They had turkey, stuffing, carrots, tangerines, potatoes, rolls, and milk. She said it was all really good. Hopefully she gets used to her new schedule sooner rather than later because she was so excited to start school again. I am sure she will like it more and more as the days go on.

Kids say the darnedest things....

-So Sadie was lounging on the new couch we got for the girls. We got a couch and an easy chair, both made with wood and upholstered in purple. We were on our way up the stairs so Ruby could play in the playroom and we could watch a movie. I said "C'mon Sadie we need to go upstairs." She responded with "Okay, okay. I'm  coming. I was just chillin'."

They were so excited to get these!

Ruby likes them too :)

-We were at the table eating dinner and waiting for Daddy to get home. Once he did and sat down with us the girls started in on their 10,000 questions and everything they did that day. Sadie starts off with "Hi Papa Bear." Lilly then goes into explaining that she has decided to call Daddy "Papa Bear while he is at work and Daddy when he is at home." Then she proceeds to ask, "Daddy do you tootie (fart) at work?" If we weren't at the dinner table we would have died laughing.

She loves sitting with Daddy.

-Steven put together the walker that Sadie had when she was a baby for Ruby. She is really getting mad and frustrated that she is not mobile yet so it was perfect. She picked up how to use it the first time she was in it. The next day I was making dinner and Steven went to the Turkish commissary to get water. We put her in the walker because lately if she is in her high chair she better be eating. She has decided the high chair is only for eating and not playing. Well she got really quiet so I turned around and she had followed Sadie into the bathroom. She comes back to the kitchen and starts opening drawers. The first one she opened bonked her in the head so she opened a lower one. It just happened to be the one that we keep ziploc bags in. She started ripping them out so I just let her play with them. Next thing I know she is trying to pull trash out of the trash can. I clean her up and move her away from it. Next thing you know, she knock over the entire trash can. She just laughed....

-Sadie walks into our room tonight and walks up to our bed. In hushed tones she tells us the aliens are coming and they are coming in a fire truck.

Lilly loves sitting in her rocking chair and reading books.

-In other news, Lilly surprised us by spelling her name! She was playing with a magna doodle and she started squealing "Look I wrote my name!!" Sure enough she spelled Lillian.

-I washed a long crocheted blanket that my mom had made. Steven brought the clean laundry up and Sadie spied it in the basket. She just kept oohing and ahing at the basket and saying "Oh wow!" She pulled it and said "It's a BIG Yiayia blanky." She calls her blanky her Yiayia blanky. She put the blanket over her head like a cape and ran out of the room.

-Ruby has a favorite song. It's called "Trashin' the Camp" from the Disney movie Tarzan. Everytime she hears the song, whether we are playing it on an iPod, watching the movie, or someone is singing it, she starts dancing. She is so cute, she'll wiggle all over the place or if you help her stand she has this crazy leg thing she does.

-We have some Disney World vacation planning DVDs. They also come with a pamphlet about the park as well as a map of the park. Sadie sat down and was looking at one of the maps. She had an epiphany. Both Lilly and Sadie have been asking to go to any Disney Park. While she was looking at the map she said "That's how you get to Disney, I have to tell Daddy!"

They can be so sweet to each other, when they want.

This how they were watching TV for a while.

-As much as they fight they love to play together or just be together. They will start fighting and we'll separate them so they are no longer playing and they will yell at us for doing it. We will be eating dinner and they sit next to each other and they will scoot their teachers together so the chairs are touching. One will start bothering the other so we will push the chairs back to where they were. Before we are can even move the chairs they start yelling for us to stop. They want to sit with their "sissy".

They were amazed at how big they are and loved eating them!

She thoroughly enjoyed her marshmallow.

- Yiayia found some enormous marshmallows at grocery store near her. Knowing the that all 3 of the girls and Steven love marshmallows, she sent us some. She filled the box with lots of different goodies, including some baby snacks for Ruby. One treat was Gerber cereal  bars. I took one out for Ruby and broke it into small pieces.She smooshed them back together to make one big piece then took the other half that was unbroken and ate it all. She will just take the whole cereal bar now and eat it like any other "big"person would.  They all loved the marshmallow. Ruby took a whole one and just held it in her hands and took small bites of it. Now if  she sees some one else eating one without her, she'll yell, scream, and squawk until she gets some. 

Tearing apart their "Yiayia box". They love mail :)

-I asked Lilly to go downstairs and get the bag of things we had just bought at the BX. When she came back up she only had the screws that were in the bag. I told her to go back down to get the back and she asked why. I told because their were things in there I would like to get out, like the books they just got. She goes back down again adn come back up with just the books. I asked her to go downstairs aagain ans get the back. She sighed and asked why this time. I said I had asked her twice for the bag downstairs and twice she came back up without it. She says 'aw man!' and heads dowstairs again. She has been doing this a lot lately. Ask her to get something and she comes back with something else. She is a  crazy girl.
The girls are keeping us busy,but they are so much fun :)

♥K

Ruby eating...

Ruby loves to eat! She doesn't eat a lot but she truly enjoys when it is time to eat. In this video I fed her some squash and Steven wanted her to try some mashed potatoes. She wasn't a big fan of the potatoes so when we weren't looking she was licking squash off her bib, but she kept stopping when she saw us looking. The password is ruby.

Untitled from kristen todd on Vimeo.

-K

Gymnastics Videos

The password is gymnastics.


Untitled from kristen todd on Vimeo.

Untitled from kristen todd on Vimeo.

Untitled from kristen todd on Vimeo.

Untitled from kristen todd on Vimeo.

Untitled from kristen todd on Vimeo.
Untitled from kristen todd on Vimeo.
-K

The past week or so...

Story Time at the library.

Last weekend the girls started gymnastics. They were so excited, especially Sadie since she wasn't old enough in England. They did pretty well. Lilly loved showing her teacher all the things she already knew. Sadie was pretty good too. Steven and I often forget how young she actually is because she keeps up with Lilly so well and they are about the same size. She had her moments when she would run off and want to do something else in the gym, but she was probably the most attentive of the 2/3 year olds in her class. Oh and both Lilly and Sadie were the smallest kids in their classes. I even think there were some kids in Sadie's class that were bigger than Lilly. We move to Turkey and all the sudden their are big kids. I mean there are some 3 year olds that look 5 or older big. It's crazy, but the girls seem to have enjoyed their classes.

Playing in the play room.

Playing on the futon with their own toys.

We still don't know if Lilly has been accepted into the pre-K program here. There isn't a preschool but the elementary school offers the pre-K. I am starting to get a little annoyed because here it is August 13 and school starts August 30. Um...that's like in 2 weeks. We were pretty sure they require dental exam/physical to start so we were luckily able to get in with the dentist here. Unfortunately, Lilly has cavity. I was shocked. She has always been pretty good at letting brush her teeth. We are waiting for our dental insurance to start and then she will go to a Turkish dentist to have it filled. Steven will have to take her because they will not give me a gate pass, so being stuck on base will continue. There isn't a pediatric dentist on base so they are sending her to someone who has been working with the base dentist for the past 13 years. Sadie's appointment went really well. She use to have horrible stranger anxiety so I was nervous that she wouldn't cooperate. I even thought that since Lilly had a cavity Sadie would have one too because she doesn't always cooperate with me when I brush hers. Thank God she did well and doesn't have any cavities.
I showed the girls how to make their beds last week and since then they have been making their own beds while I make mine. They do a pretty good job, Lilly especially. She took the time to figure out how to fold her fleece Transformers blanket all by herself. It's crazy how big she is getting and how smart all three of them are. 

The many faces of Ruby Elaina!

Ruby is doing great. Her eczema sores are just about gone and she hasn't been scratching much anymore. And because it is getting better she has been able to take more baths. She loves the bath tub. She'll sit there and just splash and splash. She is eating well and growing. She loves table foods but also loves baby food too. We usually feed her some baby food at every meal (she doesn't always eat it but we offer) and at dinner we will give her some of the food we are eating. She's also getting mad because she can't move around yet. I can't believe she is 8 months old already.

Steven is on dayshift now and we LOVE it. He is getting a little more sleep and a better quality sleep. And it is great that we have his days off together. Before he would be sleeping for half the day and be exhausted when he was with us. Still the girls wake up in the morning looking for him even though they know hes at work. And at least once a day Lilly asks if he can come home or if he can stay home because she misses him. We were even able to make it to church last weekend and it was nice. Lilly and Sadie have been asking when we were going to go back to church. Taking them by myself usually turns into a nightmare so it's good that Steven was able to come.
My passport finally came in and is now turned in for my new residency permit. Once that come back we start the process of our COT (continuous overseas tour) leave paper work. We really would like to be in Texas for Thanksgiving and in Pennsylvania in the beginning of December. We are so excited. All of us are anxious just to go back. Hopefully soon! I'll post videos in a separate post because there is like 6 of them!
-K