Arkansas Living

Well folks, we are really, finally here and I'm almost able to say that we are settled in, too. We found literally the only rental available that had more than two bedrooms. It is not glamorous. Far from. But I am doing my best to make it a home for us. I was so disappointed when we moved in and I had a crazy lady break down and told Bear not to worry about unpacking because we were buying a house and moving as soon as possible. I sulked around for the weekend and decided to suck it up and make the best of our situation. And the situation is:  a million year old house with a dank, musty, smell and damp carpets with wood paneled walls in a ghetto neighborhood in the middle of nowhere. But, I'm being a snob because that's the nature of this town. It's old. And that's okay and we are going to learn to love it.

 The landscape, on the other hand, is seriously gorgeous! The trees are about to swallow me anywhere I go and when you get a break the in trees you can see little lakes or old train tracks hidden all over the place. The deer are a dime a dozen but smaller than ones I am used to and the birds are huge! And they are always singing. It is warmer and sunnier and the rainstorms are killer!

These are some adorable pictures of Shark at the hotel "calling" Grandpa and Grandma O

This is our humble abode and my two handsome boys. 

Shark boy helping rake up leaves in the yard.

We are waiting on our tax return to buy a washer and dryer and have had to use the laundromat a couple of times. Thankfully, a woman from the ward has let me come over and use her machines which is a lot easier on us. 

Sharky boy is loving the outdoor time and he tries to break out the front door every chance he gets. AND I'm proud to report that he is successfully walking his little buns all over the place. Thank goodness. He wants to be carried around a lot less and I'm so grateful. Now he just grabs me by the hand and leads me around showing me everything he finds. It's adorable. He's sleeping well, eating well, learning new words. He is obsessed with brushing his teeth and you won't catch the kid without a tooth brush in his hand. He can climb up onto the toilet, open up Dad's cupboard and grab a brush (he doesn't care who it belongs to), then onto the bathroom counter where he brushes in the mirror forever. I have to drag him kicking and screaming out of the bathroom and keep the door shut. He has changed so much in just this last month. I am so blessed to witness this precious time. I'm grateful I get to be home with him all day.

Loving the park in February. That's right, FEBRUARY! Sweet. 

This is the (blurry) face of a boy who's momma won't let him go outside. 

This is the (squishy) face of a boy who reeeealllly wants to go outside. 

This is the face of a boy who compromised going outside for a ride on Trigger the horse. 

I found a doctor here who would take me but it was harder than I thought. I was actually turned down a couple of times and even the doctor who took me took a day to "approve" me. I broke down in tears first, then I just felt angry and thought, "Well which ever of you is on call will be delivering this baby when I show up at the hospital so maybe you'd like to meet me and look through my chart first. Because it's happening no matter what." Then the doc accepted me, PHEW! He isn't an OB but there is only one in the town and he said no. In a town this small the family doctors do everything apparently. There isn't a pediatrician. But it's all good. There are kids here who are alive so I think it will all work out :)

I know this post is getting long but a lot has happened over the last few weeks and I haven't had Internet until now to write about any of it. I have to put in a word about our church. Below is our building. It's tiny.

We attend a branch of about 50 people and it is vastly different from any church service I have attended. But there is something really special about it. Some of the people in the branch have to drive 45 minutes each way to get here. There is a very strong spirit there and I can really tell that each of these members care deeply about their Heavenly Father. They have the strongest testimonies of anyone I have met. They are the ones who really want to be there. The church is not strong here in the south but they try everyday to bring people in. They won't ever give up. People participate and have great input during the lessons, it is awesome! They have welcomed us with open arms and have really made us feel at home. I can't wait to do my part and return the service to them that they have given to us. This will be a great experience, I'm sure of it. Bear has been called as a counselor in the Young Men's, but we joke and call it the Young Man instead because there is only one. I am looking forward to getting a calling of my own and having something worth while to fill up any of my spare time. Did I mention they are even throwing me a baby shower? And we have been fed dinner on multiple occasions already. Offers to take Bear hunting are pouring in and everyone is ready to help out with Shark when the baby comes. We are blessed. We have found some proxy family members while ours are so far away.  

Journey to the South

From Utah we drove our two cars to Loveland, CO to my in-law's home. I knew I would struggle making the 8 hour drive alone with a 1 year old. My good friend Lisa must have known also because she grabbed her little tyke and jumped in the car with us to make the trip. It was fantastic. The kids were as good as we could have hoped for and my cankles liked getting a break from driving every now and then.

We went to Colorado because my father-in-law and sweet mother-in-law volunteered (sort of) to make the drive to Arkansas with Bear while me and the babe waited for them to get there then flew out from Denver. They took the scenic route and stopped in Albuquerque, NM for a couple of days for Bear to spend some brother time before leaving forever :'(or so it seems). That left Lisa and I just under a week to say our goodbyes and get depressed about leaving each other. We both flew out from Denver at the same time, each going our separate ways. It was sad. She was a tremendous help in getting me to the airport and through security, even with her own baby to take care of. She's Super Woman. She really is. Not to mention how much better I felt having her with me that week with my in-laws house all to myself. I am super paranoid and scared of everything if I have to be home alone so if it weren't for her company I'm pretty sure I would have gone an entire week without shutting my eyes. And my heart probably would have exploded from constantly beating so hard. Needless to say, I love her. To death. Forever and ever. She's even letting me fly her out when the baby is born to watch me make a fool of myself trying to raise two babies at once. And I'm sure I won't be able to stop her from cooking and cleaning relentlessly while she is here. She's a good egg. Okay moving on.

He missed Oklahoma but I think that's the only one. It was a LOT of driving for him. I'm impressed, and very proud of him. He made it safely and spent a day showing his parents around his new stomping grounds before I arrived. Once I got there we stayed in Little Rock for 2 nights. It was our anniversary/Valentine's day and this was "The big city" compared to where we would be living. After Little Rock we made the drive to our new hometown, Camden. It was about a 2 hour drive. Once there, we spent the rest of the week in a junky smelly hotel while we looked for a place to rent. Shark was such a trooper, bless him.

Saying Goodbye to Utah

Shark and I decided to go with Daddy to Arkansas (you probably know that now). It was a hard decision and a tearful goodbye to my family. Tearful might not describe it well enough. I tried not to let Bear see me struggling because I wanted him to know I supported him and that I WANTED to go with him wherever life took us. But he noticed. Duh. I hope it wasn't too discouraging for him. We drove to Utah where we gathered our belongings out of storage and spent a couple of days saying goodbye to family and friends.

We're going to miss our little buddy, Cooper. And he'll probably miss using Sharky as a punching bag.

Bear, me, and my friend Lisa took the boys on the Front Runner (train) from Provo to Salt Lake. It was awesome. I'm sad to leave before I get any good use out of it. 

Shark insisted on jumping off the ledge onto the tracks. He was pretty upset when he found out that wasn't allowed. 

This is not our train, but I thought the mountains looked gorgeous all covered in snow and I wanted to remember them.

These two were heavily flirting with the grandma sitting behind us

Baby buns in jeans...need I say more?

We went to City Creek Center for lunch and spent a little while in the play area of the food court. I've never seen Shark play in a public place with other children and he it made me so happy to see him having so much fun. 

Bear enjoyed it just as much. 

He likes showing people his tongue. And it's pretty long. 

Drum Roll Please

Not one minute after I clicked publish on the stressful post about being jobless and homeless Bear got an offer from IBM in Minnesota. Sweet, we had something. I was ready to quit waiting around for other jobs and just jump in and take it right then. BUT I'm glad we waited because a few days later he got an even better offer from Lockheed Martin in Arkansas! He'll be a controller in the High Altitude Missile department with security clearance level "Secret" which is just below "Top Secret" and kind of a big deal, I guess. So there we have it, a job. I've always considered myself pretty adventurous and I thought I would love to pick up and move to another state, just me and my man, and it would be awesome! And it probably will be awesome but now that it's actually happening I'm terrified. I come from a very sheltered place. I don't know what the rest of the world is like and it intimidates me. Which brings me to my current reason for anxiety..

I'm having a baby in 9 weeks, which is still a while but also is coming very fast. Bear will start work on or around February 18 at which point I will have only 6 weeks to go. I know that I am still allowed to travel at that point (right?) but this is a 26 + hour drive and I don't think my sausage toes and cankles could take it. They would swell to (even more) outrageous proportions and maybe never recover...Not to mention poor Sharky-pants stuck in a car for 3 days. And when we get there we'll have to search for a place to live.

Before Bear got this job offer I decided to stay in Idaho until the baby is born. I have found a doctor here, I'm registered at the hospital, my paper work from my Utah doc has all been transferred here. I stay here and relax, spend time with my family that I am about to leave, have a baby (Bear will be in attendance, hopefully) and meet Bear in Arkansas where he already has a home for us and has fallen into the groove of his new job (he's nervous, loads of new info and grown up shtuff to deal with). That sounds like a solid plan right?

BUT now my hubs, love of my life, is leaving me in 2 weeks and I am back to panic/anxiety mode. I was feeling good and prepared here in mom and pop's basement but I don't want to be without him for the next 2-3 months. So should I stay or should I go?! My fam is definitely pushing for me to stay, they want to get their hands on this precious baby girl bundle before we up and disappear into our new, foreign world. I'm not sure if they are even giving me the option of going. But being the adult that I have now blossomed into, I am free to do as I please. And half of me pleases to go with my husband and set up my house as fast as I can and get ready for baby, other half of me thinks it's way too much work. Not to mention where we are moving to is a pretty small po-dunk (is that a word) town and I don't know how close a hospital is that I would even want to have a baby at.

So I'm asking, what would YOU do? I've got to decide fast. And if you tell me to stay then you better be visiting me here in Idaho and showering me with goodies and well wishes and company to stave off my loneliness. Also, I don't want to hear any red neck comments from my fellow Idahoans, come on, we're from Idaho! If that's not the kettle calling the pot black, what is?

There we are, way down in the south of Arkansas. Weather is nice! I assume. I can only tell you what I have learned through my Google search of the state. Home of Bill and Hilary Clinton and Walmart, largest producers of rice, cotton, and diamonds in the US.




P.S. I am really happy that we got a great job and it's a huge load off the shoulders. I am excited about going to a new place and being a great friend and missionary to my new neighbors. I know Heavenly Father is sending us there for a reason and I am so grateful for the opportunity. I promise.

Call Me Crazy

Being a mom turns your crazy. It's inevitable and it's true. I see crazy three different ways. The first kind of crazy is awesome. You sing silly songs, dance like a maniac, talk in creepy voices, end all your words in ie and so forth. It's fun. Your kid laughs and you smile. Your husband laughs too but for different reasons. You're really just a nut.
The less glamorous kind of crazy makes you do things like pick a turd up off the floor with your bare hands, pick boogers and wipe them on your jeans, find yourself walking around the house everyday without a bra on etc. etc. It makes you like the smell of your kids breath and change poopy diapers in the pew during sacrament meeting.
But the really ugly kind of crazy makes you cranky. You're frazzled and exhausted and just plain mean! That part of crazy has been really hard for me to swallow. Let me tell you why.

When I was in high school I did a lot of shtuff. I played every sport, joined clubs, and sang in our awesome high school a Capella choir. I was okay at a lot of shtuff, but I was never the "star", you know? I did pretty well and I had a lot of fun. But I was kind of the behind the scenes gal. Necessary, but not the exciting part. So at a very young age that I won't admit I started thinking about having children. I wanted to find my thing, The thing I really excelled at and impressed people with. So I decided then and there that I was going to be a stellar mom and people would gawk and applaud and award me for it. I don't know what made me think I would be a pro mom. I don't cook anything well, I'm not all that organized and I'm certainly not very creative when it comes to thinking up fun activities for us to do. But I can love. I knew then and I know now I can love a child so hard that they have no choice but to love me back :)  That qualifies as a super mom right?

It's partly competitiveness and mostly pride but I hate getting unsolicited mommy advice because I think I can do it already. I prefer to google things and any hard lessons to be learned I like to learn on my own. Mostly because I tend to think that a lot of the hard stuff about raising kids isn't that hard. But it is. And I hate to admit defeat but being a new parent is tiring and messy and sometimes it's down right ugly. I want so badly for Oliver to start walking and give me a break from all the toting and every mom that hears me say that insists that it's way worse when they are walking. That's another one of those lessons I'll have to learn on my own folks, because these pregnant hips can't take it anymore. Plus, this kid is such a dynamite climber already I don't see how it can get worse. Why do I do this? Why can't I learn from other mothers and not try to fight everything I'm told? It's because for some reason I think I'm a different kind of mom. A mom that can take the tantrums and disasters and let them roll off my back and say with a shrug, "he's just doing what kids do". And I think I have some special super human baby that behaves better and reaches milestones earlier than normal babies and we skip the hard parts. But I'm a regular mom who gets to the point of wanting to shake a baby almost daily and he's a regular kid who screams when he doesn't get what he wants. I hope I don't offend anyone and I hope I'm not the only crazy out there. I absolutely love my baby and my life right now is so amazing. It has more meaning now than ever before. But I have to stand before you all today and make my confession about being just like everyone else. It's hard.

I apologize for a heavy, personal post but I needed to confess and I don't have many readers anyway that will actually see it. But the ones I have I know and trust and love and they won't mind hearing about my momma struggles. They've got em (or will have them) too.

I can have mental break downs and still achieve Rock Star Mom status, right?

P.S. I'm still going to pretend that having and raising kids comes easy to me and that our life is candy canes and rainbows. Because it mostly is. Just not always. And I've never admitte that before.

Homeless

I didn't want to write this post until I had some direction in my life but that is taking longer than I had hoped. Austin graduated in December which was awesome and exciting but after graduation come the job hunt. And it's a very important hunt with a wife and two kids depending on you. He is still able to work for himself as he did to get himself through school, but it's a very slow part of the season and he spends a lot of time job searching and interviewing and doesn't get to spend a lot of time on work. Not working=no money. In case that wasn't connecting for you.

About two weeks before Christmas I thought, "hey let's save that money we are going to spend on rent in January and go to my parents house a little early." I thought for sure he would have a job in the beginning of January which would mean moving, and we were headed to Idaho for Christmas anyway so we would just pack up our apartment and say goodbye. I know it's only the middle of January now but boy has this month been so slow! Austin has been interviewing like a mad man since the beginning of the semester and it has only picked up since graduation but everyone takes so long to get back to you afterwards! He has had interviews for jobs in Phoenix, Arkansas, Minnesota, California, Texas, Boise, and all over Utah. And now we just wait.

It's stressful for me because I'd rather not have my baby in my parents basement. I still haven't pushed my pride out of the way enough to say that we are living with them, but rather, staying for a little while (with no place else to go). I know something good will come our way soon, I would just love to find out  if we were moving to Arkansas or Minnesota TODAY instead of in two more weeks. I'm starting to make doctor appointments for myself here in Idaho Falls but I haven't decided whether or not to stay and have the baby here. We are getting down to the wire. If Austin gets a job out of state and doesn't move until the end of February or start of March, I will probably be stuck here having the baby. Alone. But I really can't do it without him. I remember when Oliver was born it was months before I could go to the bathroom or shower and get dressed without Austin home to help me. I STILL can't get ready without Austin here to distract Oliver for me. I couldn't clean, I couldn't cook. I was useless. How can I do that all over again plus a toddler without Austin? I can't. My parents will be here to help and support but they both have full time jobs and aren't home all day.

I need advice. My parents are thinking, if Austin finds a job and moves away, it will be a very stressful time and he could go alone and get settled in to a new place and get comfortable with a new job without crying babies and a crying mom to add stress. They think I should definitely stay here, have the babe and meet him "out there" in a little while. They have offered me their master bedroom with rooms close enough for Oliver and baby to have their own space but still be near me. They are very accommodating and want to make the transition smooth and easy on us.

BUT I don't spend a lot of time away from Austin and when I do, I miss him terribly! I was recently away from him for about 4 days and I didn't think I was going to make it. Add on some crazy post baby hormones and this could get messy. I also can't decide if it would be easier to move when I am 32+ weeks pregnant or with a 5 week newborn. I just want so badly to be "home" and decorating a nursery and deep cleaning the house in prep for the new baby. It's extremely hard to nest when you are homeless. I feel pressure to decide right now if I am going to stay put and have the baby or if I am going to have her elsewhere. I want to have some things set in stone, like the hospital we will deliver at and the doctor that we'll see. Not to mention that no job means no health insurance for Austin and the babies. I have insurance through my mom which is a huge financial blessing but Oliver cost us a pretty penny to be brought into this world and I imagine new baby will too. So I'd like a job before the end of March, is that too much to ask? A home and a job and some insurance and a housekeeper and ......... the list could go on forever.

We will make it work and it will be awesome no matter what happens. But encouraging words and advice will help it be awesome sooner. This post really was supposed to be about Austin's new job and an exciting announcement of where we would be moving to. Bummer. Maybe next week? Or the next? It's coming. Soon. I can feel it.

1 Year

When Oliver was born he weighed 9 lbs 7 oz (82.27 percentile). He clocked in lengthwise at 22.5 inches (99.25 percentile). After a year of minimal bumps and bruising, no sickness, and learning 1,000,000 new tricks he weighs in at nearly 26 lbs (95.59 percentile) and almost 33 inches long (99.81 percentile). Can you imagine growing over 12 inches in just a year? That takes a lot of work. And a lot of new baby clothes. No wonder babies sleep so much (not always when you want them to, however). Let's put the giant-ness of my "little" boy into perspective here, out of 10,000 1 year old babies, only 19 would be taller than him. When we got home from the his doctor appointment Austin asked me, "would they know by now if he had Marfan Syndrome?" He's a dork.

Oliver is a huge source of joy and blessings in our home. His smiles and laughter are contagious. His mood really controls the rest of us. He loves to make you laugh. He acts like such a goof ball to get a chuckle out of you, which doesn't take much. He is climbing all over everything and consequently falling right back off. He is SO close to walking and my pregnant hips are counting down the days until they get a little time off. Not a lot of time, unfortunately. I have to write this post right now because he's actually been a little monster every night this week from about 3:45am to 5:45am, so I have to write about how great he is so I let go of my grudge.

He's a fantastic boy and he's going to be a fantastic big brother...eventually. He tends to maul little babies right now. They do look kind of like toys. Baby girl will probably spend a lot of her early life in a swing up on a table out of reach from our little hellion. I say that with love. I love watching him discover new things he can reach and new furniture he can climb on. I try to stay only a few steps behind so I can catch him if he slips from too high. I'm not always successful but he usually pops right back up after only a few tears. I love him.

Might I add that if new baby comes as early as Oliver did, 12 days, which the doctor told me was very likely, she will be here in only 69 days! 2 and a half months. And we are homeless...update soon on our crazy, unorganized living situation and unpredictable future.