Lukeless in San Antonio

Starting on Mother's Day, Luke left me for two weeks. Technically, 13ish days, but still. It was far, far too long. Living by Fort Sam Houston, I have met lots of military families and I know that almost all of them have been split up for months on end with deployments and trainings and are much cooler about it than I was. I have no excuse. I'm a lame-o. Two weeks without Luke and without a job would have meant nonstop Netflix and Harry Potter were it not for Ivy. She is an easygoing little fellow (?) but I don't think I could really just pour some cheerios in her crib and expect to be able to be completely self indulgent in peace.

So I decided that we would spend the first week of our girl time in Dallas where my brother and his family live. What a great choice. Seriously. We dropped Luke off at the airport at around noon and then headed straight out. It's a four hour drive and I'll be honest, I was pretty nervous. It's a straight shot, which is good, but babies make for unpredictable carfellows (??) Happily, Ivy slept for about two hours and then woke up mostly too disoriented to be sad. 

We had such a fun week! We went to the park, to the Perot Museum of Science and Nature (twice!), to the zoo, to Ikea (which I have been sorely missing, since the nearest one to us is outside of Austin), and even hit up some awesome yard sales before we headed back to San Antonio. 

 Julia loved Ivy so much. She would follow her around saying "No, no, no Ibee" in this sweet little voice. 

The Perot Museum had a section just for little kids, and Ivy loved it. Especially drinking the water out of the activity pool.

Look at those cute sweaters from the yard sale! If only it weren't 90 degrees here...

And that happy face is Ivy eating a french fry at Wendy's on our way home. I was so glad we made it. 

But wait! There's more! Returning to San Antone (as we locals call it, maybe) we still had a week to kill. So we made some fun plans with our friends and watched lots of shows. 

Ivy's first splash pad. She loved it. 

Not as much love for her sun hat. Oh well. 

Story time at the library was cancelled, which meant a significantly ritzier story time at Barnes & Noble. 

We swam at our apartment complex and took quite a few walks. Ivy is never without a rock or two during these jaunts. Because you never know. 

We visited the San Antonio Children's Museum, which involved driving and parking downtown, which involved me hyperventilating a little bit. But totally worth it. 

This picture is lame. I just took it to show my mom our new comforter, but I'm pretty happy with the whole ensemble. I got a down comforter and duvet cover and that reddish pillow at Ikea and the wall decor and yellow blanket at Target. I make my bed every day now because I like to see it looking so cheery. 

Luke got home on Friday night late and all was right in the world. I missed him like crazy. All of those things would have been so much more fun if he were there (well, except the yard sales. My brother, Nick, was a much better yard sale companion.) Our awesome friends watched Ivy for us and we saw a movie yesterday and felt all giddy, like we were dating again, but with more making out. Just kidding. Ha. 

ALSO: I am 25 weeks along!  Which means that new baby Bangerter will be here in just 15 weeks or so. Can you even wait to see what our little Ivy 2.0 will look like? We can't either.

For Those Days When Your Newsfeed Just Doesn't Give You Enough Ivy

I probably post about 1/8th (I'm not sure if that "th" was superfluous) as many pictures of Ivy as I want to on Facebook. I'll be honest, I'm glad that I have people who post too many pictures of their babies because I feel like I have a firm grasp on what that is. Which is not to say that I am not sometimes guilty. Like when a holiday happens to occur right before Ivy does something cute and then I'm like "post two days in a row or...what?" This never happened to me pre-baby. I have never created anything nearly as impressive.

And once babies become real people, they move around all the time. I can't capture stuff like I want to and Ivy is always more interested in grabbing my phone or camera than she is in doing whatever cute thing she was doing in the first place.

So last week, I decided to take our camera along on one of our bi-weekly trips to the library. One of my favorite things about our apartment, which I'm sure I already mentioned, is its proximity to the library. I have been consuming books for the last 6 months and I don't plan on that letting up any time soon. If you have any good recommendations, I would love to hear them.

So here's a slew of pictures from a day in the life of me and the Ives:

Even though she doesn't look like me, people have stopped asking me if she's my baby. Which is a relief, because it was weird when they did that. I have decided that it's because we are very companionable. She looks at me and I look at her and we have a pretty good idea of just how much we need each other.

But with everything I have given her - food, clothes, attention, way too many library books per visit - I know that we are a mere 18ish weeks from giving her the best thing in the world. A sister. A companion. A confidante, friend, and ally. Someday when we are not the best of friends, I am comforted by the idea that she might still confide in her sister, who loves her just as much. If we can't live close to each other, maybe they will be roommates.

OR maybe I'm just being a ridiculous sentimental pregnant mess. You be the judge.