My Life

Over the past several days, Rebecca has vacillated back and forth between two naps per day and one nap a day, as if unsure which works better for her. It doesn’t seem related to how long or well she sleeps at night. But her night sleeping has improved.

A few times, she’s only awakened once in the middle of the night. I might have mentioned this previously, but my wife has moved out of Rebecca’s bedroom and back into ours. So Rebecca walks to our room to get Mommy in the middle of the night. She seems fine with this arrangement — she’s comfortable in the dark and knows the layout of the house (and there are plenty of night lights). This means my wife is getting more/better sleep, and it also means Rebecca sometimes puts herself back to sleep when she sees that Mommy isn’t there.

So it looks like we’re on the cusp of getting her to sleep through the night, though the going is still rocky.

Weather-wise, it warmed up nicely over the last few days. I’ve weeded the entire yard to get it ready for spring — somehow all the weeds in this climate grow well in cold or hot weather, wet or dry weather, direct sun or complete shade, or whatever, while the Bermuda grass doesn’t thrive until it’s warm and the days are longer.

I mowed yesterday, as temps climbed to 83°F.

We gave a few more things to the nearby Goodwill store — a juicer and a food chopper. The juicer was an ill-advised purchase a few years ago when my wife thought she’d start making her own juice. The chopper served us well, but is now obsolete since we have the KitchenAid Food Processor (and also some other tiny appliance that does the same thing).

We also walked around in the Goodwill store for the first time, just to check it out. But we had to leave in a few minutes. It’s located next to a car wash. Apparently car washes are gathering spots for people with loud car stereo systems, where they thump so loud that any nearby business constantly resonates from it. (And I’m pretty sure Killeen has one of the highest ratios of loud car stereos per capita in the United States.)

Back to Rebecca:

She hasn’t learned to say anything I’d call a “new word”, but she’s growing more and more vocal. She’s understanding more and more of what we say; it’s just difficult to quantify like some other milestones.

Since both my wife and I come from families where babies talk relatively early, and because we both talk so much (you knew this about us, right?), it’s sometimes frustrating that our daughter seems to be stuck on this plateau of almost talking.

However, I can also see it from Rebecca’s point of view: there’s very little that she needs to communicate to us. We check her diaper regularly. We offer food at regular times. All her toys are stored in locations where she can get to them. One of us is always just a quick trot away.

Back to Killeen:

We need another supermarket in this town. After living in Seminole so long, we really love the choices that Killeen offers for shopping; we like being able to go to a different store each time without driving crazy distances like we used to in Oklahoma. (How many times did we drive to Midwest City — 1.5-hour round trip — just for a computer accessory or a book?)

But Killeen is short on supermarkets. On the far north side of town, there’s a small HEB and an IGA — both really small, dirty, and crappy. On our (south) side of town, there’s a really nice HEB Plus and Super Wal-Mart. But that’s all, aside from the O-Mart (Asian supermarket) on the west side. For our normal grocery trips, that means only HEB or Wal-Mart, which are about two minutes from each other.

The town has continued to grow since all these stores were built. So those stores are now cram-packed with people all the time. Soldiers have returned from overseas to the point that the town is bursting at the seams. Yet there aren’t any new stores going up.

If anyone’s listening, we could really use a Kroger or Albertson’s (or whatever large chain wants to make money here).

***

In 2007, Coldwell Banker ranked Killeen, Texas as the most affordable housing market in the United States. The population has nearly doubled in the past 12 years (now nearly 130,000 people), making it one of the top 10 fastest-growing cities in the U.S. (source 1, source 2). The median age of Killeen is among the lowest in the U.S., at 27, which means they’ll be around for years to come.