Let Them Eat Cake!

We are throwing Price's 1st birthday / our going away party this weekend. Due to all that has been going on in our life recently (garage sale, visits from the in-laws, trip to PA, all of us being sick, moving to Guam), I have been compartmentalizing. I am dealing with each thing completely and moving on to the next item on my list once the previous item has been completed. Thus, I am kind of far behind in preparing for the party.

I am slowly catching up. The invitations were sent out a few weeks ago, RSVPs are returning (we're currently expecting about 40 folks), the decorations are purchased (shout out to Big Lots!, for once again having exactly what I was looking for at exactly the right price). The menu is starting to fall into place (in my mind). But I need to make a decision about a cake...

I feel torn about what to do! Should I buy this cake....

Or make a cake similar to this one...

Don't let the size of the pictures fool you! I know the professional one is cuter and would be easier on my life, but I also really like the idea of making Price's cake. My besties would probably laugh and tell me to go with the professional cake. They, like me, would hate for the cake to end up on Cake Wrecks. But I really think I could do it. If I bake the cakes Wednesday, freeze them, ice /decorate on Saturday- then we'd be good to go. What do you think? So far, I'm undecided and I have 1 vote for professional (the vote of a logical husband who knows me all too well).

I'll keep you posted!

In Sickness and In Health...

We are very blessed that most of our marriage has been spent in health. However, on the rare occasion when a cold moves in, I have to remind myself that I took a vow to love my husband and stand by him through sickness. I am having to repeat this vow over and over right now so I don't lose patience with Don, who is sick with a cold...

My stubborn stoic husband refused to acknowledge he was sick upon our return from Pennsylvania. Participating in the "mind over matter" school of thought, he tried to convince himself that his headaches, sniffles, exhaustion and all around feeling like ass were a result of allergies. I know allergies, and that isn't what he was suffering from. He finally admitted to himself and me that he is actually sick after coming home from work the other day and sleeping for about 12 hours straight.

Of course, since he wasn't "sick" he didn't take any precautions to keep Price from getting sick too. So, what I thought was a teething issue of not sleeping, seems to actually be a pre-sickness sleep boycott.

So, now I have 2 sick babies, one just happens to be 34 years old. I hope they both start feeling better soon!

Nap

Price,

I love you so much. I love spending time with you. But I really need you to take a nap!

I realize that as you get older, and with your birthday being 2 weeks away, you are growing more interested in exploring the world around you and less interested in observing the world from the confines of your crib. But, baby, you need to sleep!

On days like today, when you resist napping you turn from a wonderfully happy little guy to a rather sensitive, definitely cantankerous mini man. I turn into a crazed woman... You just want to test your boundaries, you want to crawl into the kitchen and play with Isabelle's food, you want to climb up the stairs. You have discovered at such a young age that the game of chase is fun. You love when I chase you across the living room to the kitchen or to the stairs and pull you back to the relative safety (in your opinion boringness) of the living room.

I have attempted to have you take a nap twice today. Each nap actually resulted in you standing in your crib crying and screaming for extremely long stretches of time. You seemed to have cried yourself to sleep both times, only to wake up less than thirty minutes later. As usual, I am amazed how quickly things change in your life. Just this weekend you napped great- twice a day in a strange place, with lots going on around you. But now we are home, it's just you and me and you're boycotting your naps.

I must end this post now as you are awake AGAIN! I love you awake or asleep, I just wish you were getting more sleep today.

-Momma

Picture Perfect

We just returned home from a wonderful trip to Pennsylvania. We left Wednesday evening and headed to Pittsbugh spent the night there and then headed to Hershey to join up with Don's folks and visit with Nana. Friday, we headed to the Mountains for the Price family reunion. It was great getting to meet so many of Don's cousins and spend time in such a lovely part of the country.

It was a little Special Dark (that is Hershey for "bittersweet") since this was probably our last opportunity to visit Pennsylvania and to spend time Don's family before we move. In fact, I cried when Don's parents left because I don't know how long it will be until we see them in person again. Hopefully, they will visit us in Guam in the next year and I know we will become quite the Skypers once we get settled in Guam.

One of the great things about our trip was that it encouraged us to take lots of pictures! Several months ago, we bought Don a fancy new SLR camera. We got a Nikon D60. We LOVE this camera! It takes awesome pictures and is great for both novice and intermediate photographers. There are automatic settings that allow you to pretty much point and shoot (I mostly use these settings) or the manual settings that allow you to change shutter speed and aperture to take advantage of lighting and movement (Don uses these more than I do).

Don got bitten by the photography bug and wanted the camera, now I've been bitten too. He likes to take pictures of scenery and architecture, I like to photgraph people and flowers. We both have lots to learn on getting good shots, but here are some of our best ones from our trip to Pennsylvania:

Price helping Bea Bea do dishes

View from the Price family home in the PA mountains
Don and Price on the porch

I am a fan of flowers

Best shot of the weekend! One of our beautiful nieces, captured being silly and lovely.

Sadness

I have been sad all day today. I really don't know why. I don't know if I have the Tuesday blues, the I'm moving to Guam in a few weeks and am stressed blues, the my house is a mess and my precious baby is too busy crawling and climbing for me to unload the dishwasher blues, or the Michael Jackson memorial service was on and I made the mistake of watching it blues. Who knows what the cause, but it happened. All day, I felt on the verge of tears and a few times tears actually spilled out. I HATE days like this. I hate feeling sad.

Then this evening, I read a blog post and it really made me sad. Every time I think about it,my heart literally hurts. It was written by a mother whose young son died suddenly and unexpectedly. I am in the midst of planning Price's upcoming birthday party and all I can think about is the huge loss the family is going through. I wept for them and I don't know them. All I know is the love between a mother and a child and I cannot imagine the pain the mother is going through. How does one get over the loss of a child?

Of course, because I am the way I am (a little bit of a worrier) I am afraid that this will haunt me and I will be more than a little concerned when Price runs a fever and I am sure I will check on him throughout the night.

No one knows why children die and some would argue that our God cannot be a kind god for allowing children to die. I just pray to God that He helps the family through this time and that He helps me not get hung up on this. I pray every night that Price lives a long, happy, healthy life. I pray, I pray, I pray...

It's Not About the TiVo

Last night as I was drifting off to sleep, Don said to me, "I guess you should call TiVo and find out what to do with it since it's not coming to Guam." I started crying...

I love to watch TV and I really love my TiVo. I like TiVo more than any other DVR in the world. Ever since having Price, I've substantially cut back on the amount of shows I watch and on the amount of time I spend watching tv. But TV is one of the ways I relax. (As I write this I sound ridiculous, even though I am writing about myself). TiVo allows me to record all of the shows I want to watch, even though I may not get around to watching them. It even suggests TV shows to watch, even though I NEVER get around to watching them. I have episodes of Ugly Betty that I want to watch saved as far back as April. TiVo is intuitive and fast and it has a huge memory. Our stupid HD DVR that is downstairs is cumbersome, slow and may have a big memory but only holds a few shows because the HD takes up a lot of room. TiVo was with me when Don was in San Antonio for 3 months right after we moved to Dayton, keeping my shows on hold for me so when I was lonely and couldn't sleep late at night, I had something to watch and fall asleep to. TiVo was with me when Don deployed and I was up late waiting for Price to wake up and eat. (God, typing that makes it sound like I have a truly unhealthy relationship with my TiVo, and that it has served as a surrogate Don. Not true!).

But it's honestly not about the TiVo. I cried for 2 reasons. The first was I HATE being told things that I have to do, when I am the one affected, it's my stuff and it comes out of the blue with no input from me (there will be input from me, and this discussion is not over).

The bigger reason is that TiVo symbolized all that is being sacrificed by our moving to Guam. I try to put up a brave front, but I am scared. Our lives are about to change in a major way and while I think about those changes, I am compartmentalizing them because it's too big to think about in one lump sum. We are about to move half way across the world for 3 years and only have 2 months to prepare for it. TiVo was the tangible symbol for all of my friends, family, comfort zones, touch stones that I am going to miss when we move to Guam.

So there it is, it's really not about TiVo. It's about everything that really does matter to me and just a reminder that this move is coming really soon and I'm not ready to let go of everything we have here.

Guam Update:
Experienced first Guam related meltdown last night- see post above.
Received orders today- so it's officially official
Scheduled appointment with TMO for Monday morning, move is being set in motion

11 Months

Price,

You are 11 months old today. You amaze me more and more every day! I cannot believe how quickly you are growing up and how you seem to change. Two weeks ago we received a 12 month developmental checklist to track your developmental progress. I was disheartened while reading it because I couldn't really check much off the list. However, in the past week, I have started checking things off on a daily basis.

You are so much fun to be around. You recently started laughing at everything. Every time your dad or I look at you, you smile. When you crawl across the floor in your funny hybrid army/traditional crawl and look back to make sure someone is watching you, you smile. When we feed you with a spoon you bite the spoon and wait for us to shake your head back and forth and smile because you know you are being funny.

You are clumsy (like me) and bump your head A LOT! You've had 3 bruises on your head in the past two weeks. You are very resiliant, you bump, dust yourself off and get right back up. I hope you continue to be this way.

You finally seem to understand the word "No." You don't like hearing it (and I hate saying it to you, but it's in your best interest when I do) and have started crying because you know on some level you are being denied something that you want.

Your daddy and I love you so much. You are usually the last thing we think about or talk about each night. One of usually brings up some thing new, funny, cute, or sweet (typically a combination of all the aforementioned)and we drift off to sleep with smiles on our faces thinking of you.

I love you baby boy!