A New Life

One day in late January, Jake was driving somewhere when he got a call from his boss asking him if he might be interested in taking a job at another office.  Jake's company is funky and, because he started in a region that includes Kansas, Nebraska, Arkansas, and Georgia (I know, out in left field, that one), we were kind of under the impression that any new position would be in one of those states.  I've always lobbied for Kansas or Nebraska if the opportunity arose (which it never did) just to experience something different than "the south."

But this opportunity was in what his boss described as a small, isolated town in northern California called Bakersfield and they'd tapped Jake because, well frankly, Mtn. Home was in the middle of freaking nowhere and they wanted someone used to that.

Once Jake called me and relayed the information, a quick Google search revealed that his boss was a little off point with his description.  Bakersfield is in southern California and has about 350,000 people living in it.  Many people do consider it isolated because it is 2 hours from Los Angeles and 4 from San Francisco, but as far as I'm concerned you can't be isolated when you are in a town that big.

My second search was on Target's website.  There are 5 in Bakersfield, so as far as I was concerned, this was going to be awesome.

It wasn't a done deal though.  We did Internet research which scared me to death.  Worst air quality in the country.  Most conservative county in California.  One of the cities with the least educated populace (although I debate the merits of that little survey/study).  The people who live here are far from enthusiastic about it.  There's nowhere to eat.  Nothing to do.  The people aren't nice.  Other Californians consider this the armpit of California, the joke of the state.  And on and on.  So we booked a trip out in February to see for ourselves.

The first thing you notice is the air, and you notice it because you can see it.  Bakersfield is huge in the oil and gas and agriculture industries.  Compound that with the fact that they are located in the valley, and you have pollution that can't leave or gets blown in from San Francisco and then can't get out.  But I found all the other claims to be relatively unfounded (except for the conservative stuff, that's true).  We visited all 5 Targets while were were there visiting.

So since we liked it well enough, Jake had to wait to see if he was offered the position and, when he was, negotiate with his new boss.  This is the point that my brain turned to mush and I lost all focus on anything else.  Only a few people knew, so I was secret keeping yet about to explode with anxiety and excitement.  I've never lived anywhere else but Arkansas, so this was a thrilling possibility.  Negotiations looked promising, then they looked dismal, and then, suddenly, it was done and Jake was leaving for California in two weeks.

There were other negotiations going on as well, the one where Jake wanted me to be a stay-at-home mom and homeschool Spencer and the one where I wanted to find a job and go to work.  I agreed to give it a try for a year but then a job opportunity at the county library arose and I didn't feel as if I could simply ignore it, so after some chatting we agreed that I'd go for it and that we'd go through with the stay-at-home mom stuff if I didn't get it.

So that is how I find myself staying at home with my kids and living in California.  I told Jake that I'd be unhappy staying at home and most of the time I find that I judged myself correctly.  I greatly dislike hauling the kids to and fro constantly, not being able to go to the bathroom alone, and playing referee to fights all day.  I'm a lazy homeschooler; we skipped school today and this was the last day in a short week, and our first week to boot.  Because I'm not working, there is little, if any, money for baby-sitters.  I miss working.  I've become some yoga pant wearing, ponytail having woman that I don't recognize and I hate her.  She drinks a lot of Diet Dr. Pepper and plays on the Internet too much and has no motivation to do anything else.

There is a chance that another opening at the library will come up soon and I hope so in the biggest way.  Until then, I'm biding my time waiting for the one year mark to come so I can ship Spencer and Jack (because he'll be kindergarten aged next year) to school.  Maybe I'll come to love this lifestyle at some point, I think it'd be easier on us all if I did.

My Marriage, By the Numbers

9: The number of years we've been married today.
3: The number of crazy boys we've had in that time.
5: The number of places we've lived during our marriage.
160: The number of pounds I've gained since we've been married (hey, there are 3 pregnancies in there!).
175: The number of pounds I've lost since we've been married.
4: The number of computers that we've owned that have since died.
5: The years of college time (graduate and undergraduate) put in since we were married.
1.25: The number of years we spent separated due to deployments.
0: The number of vacations we've taken in Europe. *sad face*
5: The number of vehicles we've owned during our marriage.
9: The number of paying jobs we've held while married.
3: The number of lawn mowers we've been through.
0: The number of nights Jake has slept in our bed all night over the past year.
60+: The number of years I hope we have left to be married.

Old Stuff

Jake is out of town hanging out with his Army buddies for his monthly drill.  All the kids are in bed.  House Hunters International isn't on.  It is nights like this that I like to go back through and look at old pictures.

Like this...

This blurry picture is the first time I held my first child.  He was almost 2 weeks old.  I still remember exactly what I was wearing and how it felt like I wasn't holding anything at all.

This is the day he finally broke the 4 pound mark.  See how big his pants are?  They were preemie sized.  His poor little head was so misshapen; they called him toaster head at the pediatrician's office.

After Spencer came home from the NICU, my sister, who lived with us until Spencer was 3, was a huge help.  Jake was still deployed and I was beat.  She took over for me this morning so I could go pump.  I love this picture of them.

One day, we're going to play a game of "Spencer or Fin."  I'm amazed at how much those two look alike.  These were taken by a high school classmate of mine, Kyle McLaughlin, for Spencer's first birthday.

Fin's version is just a bit more chunky.

One of the most fun things that I've ever done is the road trip I took with Spencer when he was two.  We went to St. Louis, Indianapolis, Washington D.C., Roanoke, and Nashville.  Basically a big circle.  While we were there, Spencer, who was very newly 2, was in the midst of his obsessive stroller pushing phase.

At Grant's Farm in St. Louis

On the hotel balcony in Indianapolis

At the Lincoln Memorial

Going to get it at the Iwo Jima Memorial

Finally consented to ride due to exhaustion.

For Halloween that year, Spencer wanted to be Elmo.  He was so excited.  Then I pulled the costume (which was $60 b/c I forgot to order it and had to overnight it) out of the box and he was terrified.  Once we convinced him to put it on he was fine, but it was sheer terror up to that point.

He was much more pleasant the next year when he was a "big wide mouth frog."

Ugliest costume ever? Perhaps.

37 weeks pregnant with Jack, I loved every minute.

What can I say about Jack?

He's going to be a person all his own, I can tell.

He isn't a risk taker.

He is, however, fiercely opinionated.  When he doesn't get his way and he cries, he is so loud that you want to do whatever you can to MAKE IT STOP.  He rules through terror.

But he is also a lover.  He mainly loves his daddy with me coming in a good second.

39 weeks pregnant with Fin and the reason I'll eventually need a tummy tuck.

Poor Fin.  Spencer has 2 albums with almost 300 pictures.  Jack has one album with roughly 100 pictures.  Fin's album has 7 pictures in it.  I'm going to work on that.

Fin is still figuring out who he is.

He's a lot more laid back than Jack ever thought about being as a baby.

He'll let strangers talk to him, which is really nice.

I'll tell you one thing, though, this kid will be my daredevil.

And now I'm tired.

While I Was Out...

One day in February, Jake and I were sitting at our computer, at our only computer, working on our budget.  As we were hashing things out, and occasionally freaking out, a little 23 month old boy crawled over and pushed the power button.  The computer went dark.

When Jake tried to turn it back on, we got the blue screen of death.  A lot of people think black is the color of death, but I'm here to tell you, the color of death is blue.

Many thanks to Jake's brother, who got our computer running again.

Just as I was about to get into the hang of blogging again, Fin spilled a beer all over our keyboard (that was Jake's story, anyway).  Now the keys stick something fierce, so if I end up typing a whole bunch of letters in a row or something, you know why.  I have beer-keys.

So while I was out, we had a lot going on.

1. Jack turned 2!

Now that I've had all my children, Jack's birth is going to go down as my favorite.  Well, as favorite as something like that can be.  So I was happy to celebrate having him around for another year.

He is really a character.  He doesn't talk much, in fact he talks VERY little, but he understands every word out of your mouth and has developed his own little sign language to get his needs met just fine thankyouverymuch.  He doesn't scream at strangers anymore.  In fact, at the grocery store last week he waved at every single person we passed.  Literally.  And he was wearing cowboy boots and a train hat while he did it.  Cuteness overload.

That means "2."

2. Fin got mobile.

I'm not sure that Fin was doing anything besides sitting around looking cute as of my last post.  My how things change.

It seemed like he went from doing nothing to doing everything at once.  Several weeks after he learned to roll over, he started working on crawling.  When he started crawling, he pulled up for the first time in the same week.  He took his first steps in his 8th month and was walking full time two weeks later.

Both the other boys walked right around the year mark, so for Fin to start walking so much earlier is such a strange thing for me.  I mean, he's a baby still!

My mover and shaker on the beach (which he hated) last month.

3. Spencer finished Kindergarten.

How is that even possible?

How did this:

Turn in to this:

???

That is a first day and last day of school comparison shot there.  In the first he looks so shy and uncertain.  He just looks like a brat who didn't want his picture taken in the second.  I caught him at a relatively good spot between him yelling, "No Mommy, I hate pictures! Don't take my picture!"

But he was promoted to first grade and that's what is important.  Today he asked when he would have to go and I told him in a month and he freaked out.  My biggest hope is that the beginning of first grade won't be what the beginning of Kindy was for him.

4. Jake got a new love in his life.


That would be his new shiny, big, so tall that I have to jump to get in it, company truck.  I don't have any pictures to offer you of that, but I'm sure I could dump his phone and find a few.

I guess he got two new loves as, now that he's got a big truck, he's been going fishing a lot.  Which is fine with me b/c we struck a deal that said once he's gone fishing five times, I get a night alone in a hotel.  Sweet deal.


I guess those are all the really big things.

Hopefully I can get back in the swing of things and keep blogging on my radar.  We'll see.

Terrorists

I'm not a fan of terrorists.  (Please note that government agent who is reading this: I don't like them!)

I don't like the terrorists that blow up buildings and I don't like the kind that make my life difficult through acts of terrorism.

Lately, there has been a terrorist in my life, controlling me through excessive tantruming and screaming.  I have a picture of him.  Hold on and I'll show you...

Although, at this point, his face is clean and his hair has been cut.

I'm sure that it sucks to be a pre-verbal toddler.  I assume that you have all these pent up thoughts and wants and words inside you and you just can't make your mouth move the right way to tell someone about it.  I'm almost positive that it is frustration that leads to some of the tantruming.

I'm here to tell you, it sucks to be the parent of a pre-verbal toddler as well.  It is constant vigilance and, occasionally, surrender to the tantruming party.

But some of his tantrums are simply caused by the fact that he emerged from my body knowing exactly what he wanted, when he wanted and from a very early age, he has worked to get it.

I'm a big believer that I, as his mother, am responsible for teaching him how to deal with big emotions.  Punishing him for having them probably wouldn't do anything but teach him to bottle them up and not share them with me, which I would think could have far reaching implications when he's older.  So we talk.  And talk. And talk.  And I try to help him label his big emotions and  process his anger or sadness or disappointment so that, when he becomes verbal, he can look at me and say, "Mommy, I'm angry!"

Or, you know, "Mommy, I hate you!"  Whatever.

Walters' Family Terminology

We use a lot of code around here.  Today I was talking to a co-worker and I used one of our phrases and she looked at me strangely.  It took me a minute to figure out that I had thrown a term in there and she had no clue what I was talking about.  So it got me thinking about all the things we say that are our "code."

One: This is what we sometimes call Spencer.

Two: Jack

Three: Fin

The bigs: Spencer and Jack

The littles: Jack and Fin (my poor Jack, always stuck in the middle)

Winka: Spencer

Tuna Roona: Jack

Finna: Fin

Skank-muffin: What Jake sometimes calls me when he sees me come out wearing some article of his clothing.  I like to think this means, "Oh dear wife! You look so adorable when you wear my things!"  Jake said that's not an accurate description.  Judging by the way he tends to be shooting daggers at me when he says it, he may be telling the truth.

Kentucky Fried Chicken: Rice Krispy Treats.  On Tuesday, during our snow day, I made rice krispy treats.  By the time dinner rolled around, they were gone.  Jake, with a look of indignation on his face, said, "I can't believe you guys ate all the Kentucky Fried Chicken already!  I barely even got some!"  I was SO confused.  I can't remember the last time we had KFC in the house.  It didn't even register to Jake that he had said Kentucky Fried Chicken until he saw the perplexed look on my face.  Then he corrected himself, "I meant rice krispy treats." And from that day forward, rice krispy treats became known as Kentucky Fried Chicken.

This: As in, "Take this baby from me before I go insane."

Eatin' spaghetti: What you say when someone asks you what you are doing when it is really obvious what you are doing.

To the gypsies!: Where I tell the bigs I'm going to send them when they're being naughty.

THE LIST: The compilation of people, both male and female, that we'd allow the other party to stray for.  THE LIST is primarily made up of celebrities.

Mommy/Daddy Fun Time: The time between when the kids go to bed and when the adults go to bed.

Sunshine: Any horse.  My grandmother has a horse named Sunshine and as soon as Jack learned to say it (which sounds something like Rye-Rye), all horses were bequeathed with that name.

The stinkers: Poop.

Bee Boo: Belly button.

Beards: Beer.  We have Spencer's slight speech impediment to thank for that one.

There is your Walters' lexicon.  No more perplexed looks allowed.

Easily Forgotten, Easily Remembered

I have reached the point in my journey as Spencer's mother that I don't think about his early arrival every day anymore.  His NICU scars, and there are plenty, are just another part of him and although I can remember, acutely, if I want to, why they are there, I typically don't.  His early arrival will always be with me, but in the last few years that I've been in the trenches raising two full term and healthy boys, things have gotten pushed back into the recesses of my mind.  They just don't surface too often these days.


Someone posted a link to this, however, and it is amazing to me how something like this can cause a flood of memories.



I cried.  Because, even though the song is cute and upbeat, the sights and sounds and smells hit me in the face like they'd been waiting to do it the last two years.

I worked very hard to be stoic during Spencer's NICU stay.  Jake always says that we Howard girls (referring to me and my two sisters) are stones under pressure but will weep copiously over little things, and he's right.  It feels a lot safer to me to process some of the things relating to his birth now that not only am I a safe distance from it, but I've also had two big babies naturally at home.

I think I'll always be processing.  Maybe that is the nature of the thing.