Month Ten: Where Have You Been?

So many great things have been happening this past month. Bridget is playing on her own and beginning to interact intentionally with the world around her. She loves to wave to people, including complete strangers, and is working on blowing kisses- she'll make a fist and kiss it repeatedly while making mwah, mwah sounds. It's pretty adorable even if you can't tell what she's supposed to be doing. Her stranger-danger is waning a little bit (thank heavens!) but she continues to hate her car seat with a passion... well sorry kid, you'll have to deal with it.

Kisses for Mommy's knee.

While buying something downtown, I wanted someway to keep Biddy happy while traveling home so I gave her a Tea Time (Grenada's fake Oreos). Needless to say, she was definitely happy the entire way home. 

Her hair is growing too! We love the pigtails when she lets us put them in.

Bridget likes to get to places super fast!

Bridget is getting her sounds down! We practice saying different words and she can mimic initial sounds like mamama or dadadada. She'll say Bear whenever she thinks of her fuzzy friend... as soon as she wakes up, whenever we enter the living room, when she's eating food and wants him to share with her.... you'd think Bear is the true caretaker. Alas, I can't complain. They have an adorable relationship and Bridget cuddles up on him whenever he's laying down beside her. Bear has become even more patient too- she now used him to stand up. Sometimes she'll use his tail, other times his head, but most of the time she just uses the scruff of his neck.

Here's a video of Tony "beating up" Bear. Bridget could not stop laughing. This had already been going on for a previous 5 minutes.

She's a chicken when it comes to standing on her own and walking. She's been a pro hold-on-to-someone's-hands walker and will often run while she's holding on, but as soon as there are no more hands to hold she'll squat down slowly and then crawl super fast to wherever she wants to go.

OOOooooh! Biddy is beginning to use sign language! When we're getting close to being done with a meal, we'll ask her if she's still hungry or if she's all done. If she's still eating, she'll just look up at us and continue playing with her food or shake her head, but other times she'll put her hands up and wave them saying all done. Yayy! She'll also sign water, but her dexterity isn't quite there yet, so she'll bring her whole fist up to her mouth and tap it a few times. Works for me though!

This past month I have felt more stressed and busy than I have the entire time I've lived down here. With the help of so many others in the small branch that we have, we've been able to find and aide with the arrival of ten different families to Grenada. Now that nearly everyone is back or have finally arrived, I have much more calmness in my mind. My mind isn't racing at midnight wondering if I have forgotten remind someone that they signed up for a dinner, or if we really know where someone is living. It's all taken care of now though. I cannot express how grateful I am for the friends that seriously become family down here. And I can already tell many of the new girls, LDS and non-members alike, are going to be dear friends and I pray that their experiences down here will be at least five times better than what they were for us when we arrived. I just remember feeling so alone and closed off by people since all the upper-termers had their lives figured out. I hope the new-comers can somehow figure out a way to call this place home as I have.

Mommy spent WAY too much time on this thing for a while.

Can I just give a shout out to all of the girls in the upper terms? Seriously I have never seen us dragging and looking so worn out. But at the same time it's wonderful. I've never seen every single girl fully devoted to helping others make this transition and making the most out of their callings in the church. After being forced into the eye of the storm, I can honestly say my faith has grown and I am constantly seeing His tender mercies. I've seen miracles happen. I've seen lives changed and it's all because these girls and sometimes their families can get lost in "the work." I'm inspired every day by the dedication I see.

Bridget loves any and all pictures of babies. When it comes to videos of babies, she will not rest until you let her see the video up close. Our friends here who have a baby the same age posted a video of Mila playing peek-a-boo. Bridget watched the video at least 20 times and would get mad when I took the phone away or if the video went away (because of her own fingers).

Anyway, on another note, I absolutely LOVED third term. Best six weeks of med school, ever. Tony wasn't stressing about school, he got to explore the island with us, and we had LOTS of family and friend time... ahh that was so nice. Here are some of the places we explored:

We attended the Tuesday Jab Parade where men and women, mostly women dress up in sparkly and provocative costumes and "dance" and perform in the parade downtown. There were some pretty neat costumes. The dancing was the simple butt-shake thing... There were a few choreographed dances, but no dances that were particularly difficult.

Each group had a single dancer that wore an elaborate costume. They were all very large and colorful.

Bridget was getting hot and tired after about two hours of dancers. She did pretty well though and didn't mind us covering her ears with our hands due to the unnecessarily loud music.

We took a water break.

During said water break, a man offered a balloon for 1 ec. We said sure and he told us he'd make something special for her. I'm still not sure what this hat is supposed to be. A halo maybe??

Steel drums, the only live entertainment, from the parade. All of the other music consisted of blasting music from large speakers in the back of trucks.

We also spent a day exploring the east side of the island with these awesome friends. First stop was hiking  Mt. Caramel.

You can slide down these small waterfalls. It's super bumpy though and the whole time down I was worries that it would rip my swimsuit. Priorities I guess haha.

We also visited the plane graveyard. This used to be the old airport before the new one by the school was made. It had two airplanes that have been gutted and left for dead available for people to climb in and see. It was neat but kind of creepy too.

At the end of the old runway was a black sand beach. It was nice to go see, but kind of stinky because of the old seaweed washed up on the shores.

Finally, we visited Belmont Estates, where chocolate is produced. We went on a little tour and saw how the cocoa beans were gathered, gutted, left to ferment (OMG, eww!!) and then dried.

The original method for drying the seeds meant laying them on long wooden beds and then sliding your feet through them every hour or so to make sure every seed dried. Bridget was great about shuffling her feet through them.
Now though, they have the drying beds under a roof and they use a rake to shift them. Much more hygienic in my opinion.

We had quite a few beach days with Daddy. We haven't been very good about bringing the camera to the beaches, but we did that day. This is Magazine Beach.

Bridget has been super cute about wearing sunglasses, hats and necklaces if you tell her that she's "pretty, pretty!" when she puts them on. 

Bridget had a super sad accident at the beginning of third term. She was on a bed playing and being good, when she did a weird dive off the side and landed on a piece of coral. When she landed, the sound of her head hitting the coral made a sickening sound. It was so sad and I was so worried. I was sure it would leave scars but we got antibiotic on it pretty quick and she only has a little scar above her eyebrow. She's healed up nicely and I'm so grateful for modern, over-the-counter medicine that helps protect and fix little injuries.

This past term, Tony learned about the effects of parenting and how even babies can express how they are treated. It's kind of like that Bobo doll experiment where if a baby sees a parents hitting a doll, it'll go up and hit the doll even if they've never played with it before. Well we recreated one of the experiments that Tony learned about. It's to see how Bridget would interact with a baby. So one day, I handed Bridget a little, pink stuffed baby doll. She picked it up by the arms and kissed it right on the face! It was the sweetest thing ever! After maybe three kisses, she then looked at the baby and began picking at its eyes with her fingernails... a little creepy, but hey the initial reaction was wonderful. I'm so happy to know that she knows that we love her and we shower babies with kisses.

Bridget is becoming a pro catcher and thrower. Seriously! She's not very good at the throwing yet, but she catches and kicks Dad's soccer ball really well.

Bridget is still a little mermaid. She gets so excited to get in the water. Cooler water temperatures don't even faze her anymore. She just jumps right in and splashes away.

Every night we practice being a mermaid in the bath tub. This consists of her practicing and becoming comfortable with a back float.

Oh, I might want to add how good she is about kicking in the water. If you say kick, she kicks! Biddy is getting pretty good about turning and propelling herself in her little cabana.

She was caught kissing Daddy.

Tony is now in the dreaded fourth term and after even this first week, I know this is going to be the biggest strain on our family that we've ever had to deal with. There's a hashtag that s.o.'s use on facebook called med-school-widow and I've never really felt like I've "lost" my husband until this week. He is seriously gone all day, from 8 am till 5, sometimes 8 pm. I seriously shouldn't complain though because Tony will still block out two to three hours here or there for me to go to a church meeting, or attend a girl's night, or host an activity... I guess it's just overwhelming sometimes being with someone 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. I just feel like I need a break sometimes where I don't have to watch her. Ugh I get so frustrated with myself for saying I want/need breaks when I should really just be grateful to have this little bundle of energy. I will never earn perfect-mom-of-the-year award, but I may be a contender for most-patience-learned-in-a-5-month-time-period. We'll have to see how I am in November. Ha.