Many Firsts!

So "Blogger" changed their format and it took me too many minutes to mention to figure out how to post a new blog!  Ha ha ha.  Oh silly, non-tenchologically advanced, me :)

I decided to spice up my Monday and take my computer and my happy self to my favorite coffee shop, sip my favorite beverage, and just enjoy some MEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE time!  Why aren't I at work you ask?  Well, that leads me to my first "first."  Some how some way there were not any cases scheduled for the OR today.  Wha???  I know, I couldn't believe it either.  Surely there would be an add-on…but nope, nada.  So I did what any good nurse would do who is feeling a little burned out after being on call all weekend (insert chuckle here because while I was on call, I miraculously did not get called in for any cases!) and I asked my boss man if I could just bail and go get some errands done pre-Australia.  I have the best boss (and no, he does not read this blog so that is not a butt smooch).

Let's take this back to the beginning of the past couple of months.  Shortly after Reece's birthday, they began to transition him to pre-tod.  Like any child, he had his ups and downs during transition.  They would only take him over to pre-tod for a couple of hours a day for the first few days to get him adjusted. In the beginning there were some tears, but to help him along the awesome CDC swapped one of his teachers from the infant room and put her in pre-tod while he was over there so he would have familiarity (I absolutely LOVE Reece's school.  They really do adore these kids).  Well, after about 1.5 weeks Reece was successfully transitioned.  He didn't care who was in that room because he quickly realized pre-tod is WAY more fun than the infant room!  The toys!  The outside play!  The water play!  The arts and crafts!  The gross motor room!  It's every kids dream come true! :)  And while in my last post I was commenting on Reece attempting to walk on his own, let's just say after that 1.5 weeks of transition, that kid was just motoring along on his two legs.  It didn't take him long to realize he wanted to keep up with his new friends and he quickly found the ability to do so!  So now we are a walking, talking (Reece speak), run away from Mommy when he's doing something he shouldn't be, kind of kid.  As parents we love the pre-tod room since we see how much fun he is having, but I'm not a fan when I go to pick up my child and instead of coming straight to me with a big ol' grin on his face like the old days, he now grins, but then continues to play.  How dare we disturb him from all this fun!  Sigh.  I knew we would be replaced sooner or later :)  His first successful transition, our first rejection.

Also in March I decided to run my first 10K in oh, I don't know, 2 years?  While running is my thing, in Guam it hasn't been as much as I'd like it to be.  It is just way too H.O.T.  From time to time I'll go out and run a few laps in this area called Asan Beach, but nothing like I used to do back home.  So when the talk of the 10K came up, I figured heck, why not?!  So with my longest run within the past two years being about a 5K distance, I woke up early Saturday, March 17 and said whatever happens, happens!  What happened was I found my mojo once again and ran that sucker in 55 minutes!  Not too shabby all things considered!  I think I just needed to prove to myself that I still had it and I'm quite happy with knowing I do.  There is a run coming up in June called "Sea to Sea" where relay teams run from one tip of the island to the other.  Provided I'm not on call, I will be participating.  Crazy, yes.  Hot, yes, making memories in Guam…fun!

Oh, and I decided I was too boring.  Blue eyed, fair skinned, blond(ish) hair me.  So I had my favorite German hairdresser dye my hair darker brown.  But since I for some reason have some natural auburn strands in my head, my brown turned out more reddish/brown.  Either way, I love it!  Good job German friend!

We also went "Zorbing" for the first time and it was a blast!  Zorb is something that started in New Zealand and it seems is only available in New Zealand and now Guam (rumor has it they are setting one up in Tennessee).  I never imagined it would be so much fun!  It's basically a hamster ball for humans…with a little more cushion!  I have no idea what the material is, but it is an insulated ball so that you don't actually feel the pressure of the ground.  You can either do the water ball or the dry ball.  The dry ball you get strapped in because you actually roll with the ball…and remain dizzy for a minute afterward.  The water ball you can fit up to 3 people in, add a little water, and then just slosh all around the ball as you roll down hill!  Surprisingly you don't hurt the other folks in the ball with you because you are all slipping and sliding everywhere.  It was a blast and this "first" will definitely be a "second" and possibly "third" before we leave Guam!

The Zorb ball

Carlos didn't want to get wet so he did the dry ball

My friend Pam loading me into the wet ball.  Most folks did a run and jump through the hole.  My graceful self wasn't capable of accomplishing such feats

Pam and I inside the water ball

No, Reece did not Zorb, but he did look cute looking through the ball!

Carlos caught one big, bad, mamma-jamma of a fish while taking a few of his buddies out fishing.  His first ever sail fish.  I'm only going to post the pic, but the video is great!  This sucker was over 8ft long and will be providing us dinner for a very long time.  I'm just glad my husband isn't the type (yet) who wants to mount his trophies on the wall!  One of our friends suggested it and I'm glad it didn't happen.  Could you imagine having to move an 8ft fish every time we PCS'd??!!  You should've seen how excited he was when he came home showing off this bad boy.  The world could've ended that day and he would've went out a very happy man.  Fortunately, the world doesn't end until December so hopefully he will catch a few more big'uns before then!

Oh the carnage!  

While there is joy, there is also stress as Carlos prepares for his ortho boards, part 2.  The oral boards.  He has to defend 11 cases and has now immersed himself into full oral board preparation.  The boards are in July, but there are so many moving parts that need to be done prior to taking the boards.  We all know he will do great and pass with flying colors and officially be board certified ( he took part one last year), but right now hubby is only focusing on not having his "first" part 2, become a second.  He'll do great.  To make it even better, he gets to travel to Chicago and have some DELICIOUS pizza to help fuel his brain.  And do it all sans wife and child.  I'm just jealous because I would LOVE some good pizza right about now :)

Although Reece already had his first haircut, it was time he had his first buzz cut.  I love all the hair my child has, but I like it on his head.  Reece didn't have the same love.  He found this fun activity of twisting his hair around his finger and then pulling it out, creating quite the bald spot on his head.  We tried everything from distraction to redirection to just plain pinning his arms down when he would do it.  Nothing worked.  So why not get rid of the culprit and shave off the hair!  My theory was if there isn't anything there for him to grab, he will forget about this crazy habit once it starts growing back.  So far it has worked, but I see a series of buzz cuts in the future just to make sure.  Besides, he looks good with short hair, however (sniffle, sniffle) it makes him look so much older!  I swear my baby is only going on 14 months, but he looks like a 2+ year old in this pic!

Stop growing up!!!

Reece had his first trip to the ED (nobody says ER anymore.  It's so much fancier to be termed a "department" instead of "room" :) ) a couple of weeks ago.  Poor baby had about 20 bowel movements in 36 hours.  However, he was eating/drinking just fine and only had a slightly elevated temp.  So thankfully they didn't draw any blood and just did a check up with a stool culture and prescribed some "Happy Hiney" cream for his red little bum.  We hydrated him the best we could at home and by Sunday he had returned to normal.  Guess it was just a GI bug, but this mama didn't know what to think at first.  Who knew someone so little could poop so much?!

The whole family right now is dealing with Reece's first molar.  It has become a family event since this tooth is causing Reece so much agony (therefore, agony for mommy and daddy).  His other eight teeth didn't cause him much discomfort.  One day you could see a hint of white breaking through and the next day he would have teeth (ok, so maybe it didn't happen that quickly, but I do know he wasn't having much discomfort).  But this molar…OH THIS MOLAR!  We are on a daily diet of motrin (so that our next problem can be a gastric ulcer), and soft foods.  He hates having to chew a lot right now, so soft foods it is.  Whatever gets him to eat, right?  I've tried the baby Orajel, but I compare putting Orajel on Reece's gums like feeding a shark.  You might lose a finger attempting to put Orajel on his gums.  He hates the Orajel and doesn't hesitate to chomp down on your finger to tell you so.  So instead the gastric ulcer motrin it is!


And last, but not least, our first trip to Australia is right around the corner!  For the safety of us and our home while we are away, I'm not going to advertise the dates we will be gone.  While I'm sure all those high-tech cyber hackers are just waiting to know when our house will be left alone, then fly all the way to Guam to steal all of our priceless possessions, I just prefer to keep mum and then tell you all about it when we get back!  We will be spending a few days in Cairns (Queensland) and then a few days in Sydney.  It's not a long trip (one week), but will be plenty of time to see/do a lot of non-Guam things!  I'm more excited for the Sydney portion and to actually be in a city again.  I may shed a tear seeing stores with clothing in it that I can actually wear, sky scrapers, people hustling about with a sense of importance and urgency (no hustling anywhere on Guam), good food/restaurants and of course, Starbucks (which I've already been informed is right around the corner from our hotel).  Oh it will feel good to get away from this rock for a little bit of time!  And who knows…maybe I'll just bring home our very first pet kangaroo… :)

Anyone still out there?

Well HELLO there!  Anyone there?!

Why yes, the Kennedys do still exist and are in fact still on Guam.  The island has not tipped, sunk to the bottom of the ocean, drifted to another part of the world where there isn't a internet connection.  Nope.  Still here in the exact same spot.  So what's my excuse?  Um, give me another 2 months and I'll come up with a good one!

So what's the latest and greatest with the Kennedys you may ask?  Well, I gotta tell you…not much!  See?!  This is why I don't blog.  We are B-O-R-I-N-G.  Yeah, we have a baby and he does entertaining things, but quite frankly if I blogged about every little thing, I would get nothing accomplished in my house and my time on Pinterest would suffer greatly :)  So a healthy balance is what its all about, right?

So did you all hear?  Our little Reece turned the big O-N-E  on March 7.  It absolutely blew my mind that he was already a year old.  How did it happen so quickly?  How am I aging without even realizing it?!  Funny to think back on a year ago and remember how I was only sleeping for a couple of hours at a time here and there, had middle of the night diaper explosions because Reece still had skinny chicken legs that wouldn't fill out his diaper leg holes, a baby who would cry anytime I tried to sit down, and eating a meal seemed like a very difficult task.  And now?  One year later, while he still doesn't like when I sit down while holding him, it's different because now its because he wants me to get on the floor and play with him.  As for the sleep and diaper explosions?  Just a distant memory.  I have a 12 hour/night sleeper (sometimes we get 13 hours out of him on the weekend!!.  When it happens it's like striking gold…so I imagine since I've never actually mined for gold).  Diaper explosions?  Nah.  Not with his solid thighs.  I can't even say chunky thighs because they aren't really chunky…just muscular solid.  He is a strong baby…and doesn't hesitate to remind me.  He tried to "rock climb" himself up the back of a lounge chair at the Hyatt pool on Sunday, but that's a whole other story.

Remember when he looked like this?!  And no, he is not defying gravity.  Carlos scanned the pic upside down.

Then he was this!  (March 7, 2011)  See, look at those bird legs.  Oh the leaky poop nights!

And now he is this!

He is driving already!  Sigh. :)

He is a very independent eater.  Loves to feed himself and tries to just keep piling the food in for one long chewing process so we have to give him his food in moderation throughout a meal.  He successfully transitioned to whole milk and LOVES it.  I think if I could somehow just attach the top of his sippy cup to the milk jug, he would be one happy child.  And our biggest change over the year is how he went from a boring baby (lets be honest, newborns are rather boring.  Cute to look at and snuggle with, but boring nonetheless) to a walking, smiling, playful little boy.  His walking is still coming along.  He gets a little wobbly, but mostly when he gets very excited.  The most steps at one time he has done on his own has been 11 now, but he'll walk forever beside you if you give him a finger to hang on to.  He is even getting ready to transition out of the infant room at school and into the pre-toddler room where he will be a little grown-up!  I think I am the one having separation anxiety from his teachers in the infant room, but I have come to know his pre-tod teachers over the past year as well and they will do a great job with Reece.  But still…I'll need to take time to adjust as well!

So I've decided that the age of one is just the best age.  I enjoyed going through all the other ages/phases because I think as a parent you appreciate the new phase more knowing what you came from, but in turn appreciate certain things about the older phase.  The best example I can give is we love that Reece is walking/crawling and exploring EVERYTHING.  BUT, there are times we say to each other: "remember how nice it was when we could put him down and he would just lay there and not destroy our house?"  One of our co-workers (a father of two) warned me and said "you spend the first two years of their life trying to get them to walk and talk, but then you spend the next 16 trying to get them to sit down and shut up." :)  I think I will remember those words for a very long time because if Reece has shown us one thing this first year its that he is just warming up to life and he will be making sure he seizes the day!

So of course we couldn't let his big day go by without a celebration.  I of course started planning his party right after Christmas had passed (and this seems like a good time to use the party planning as my excuse for not blogging.  Yep, lots of planning.  I was busy busy busy!).  I knew it was going to be a Dr. Seuss themed party (and no, I didn't realize when I planned it that Dr. Seuss' birthday was the same day as Reece's party.  Just one of those fun coincidences) so I immediately went to work on finding fun ideas (PINTEREST!!!)  And in the spirit of Guam (and a neighbor connection), we had Lucy the carabao on hand for carabao rides!  I love that Reece's first birthday party had something OOG style (Only On Guam…very common saying around here).

 A lot of people, a lot of food, one little person to celebrate and it was a blast.  We know he won't have any memory of the event, but we wanted to do this for him and as a means to celebrate with people that have really helped us out over the past year and have come to know Reece just like he is a member of their family.  Will we do it again?  Only when the child is old enough to know what a birthday party is :)

before I forget...

The videos!  Wow…two posts in one night…don't get used to this :)  These are two videos of Reece on Christmas morning.

I bet you all thought we tipped over!

Whew!  Where on earth did the time go?  I promise you our little island of Guam is still upright and our (my) lack of blogging has nothing to do with what the crazy man from Georgia thought could happen to us.

So here we are…2012.  How did we get here so quickly??!!  Because I really don't have anything wild and exciting to share (shocking, I know), I'm just going to give some updates on what us crazy Kennedys have been up to.

Let's see…we'll start with China.  Hehehe…JUST KIDDING!  I know it only took me two months to finish that post, but rest assured, I am long done with it :)  Let's begin with Christmas!

We I put up our tree the first weekend of December.  I was quite excited this year to get the tree up since last year we canceled Christmas in our house.  Ok, I know Christmas has a deeper meaning than just a gift-giving holiday and you can't just "cancel" it, but while we recognize the day for what it is, we chose to treat it just like any other day, except we didn't have to go into work.  Folks, I had just arrived to Guam, was all messed up with the time change and hormones, didn't have time or care to shop, and we just had a quiet day at home with the Griswalds (my favorite Christmas movie).  So now you can understand why this year, I was PUMPED!  It was time to bring back all that spirit and then some.  Out came the ornaments and the tree, and to work I went.  I'm going to take this opportunity to explain to you that I did do all of this myself only because my husband was suffering relentlessly from massive pain in the butt. Literally.  He had a hemorrhoid.  It's ok to laugh…I did.  You would have thought he was gnawing his own arm off the way he behaved.  I just made sure he changed positions on the couch every now and then so he wouldn't end up with a skin decubitus as well.  I gave him all the love and support a wife can give a hemorrhoid husband, but by about day 3, I was ready to lance that thing off myself just to keep from hearing about it and get him UP!  So anyway, I decorated while he watched (I'm sure he was thankful for the hemorrhoid at this moment though).

No chimneys in Guam, so the stockings were hung on the wall by the tree…doesn't quite have the same ring to it, does it?!  As soon as the tree went up, it seems the gifts for Reece immediately started making an appearance.  Oh my word.  The presents this child received.  Unbelievable.  I was nervous putting wrapped packages under the tree out of concern Reece would try to open them.  I was adamant he wait until Christmas, since you know, 9 month olds totally understand days of the week and holidays and such.  But anyway, we didn't have to worry because at first, the child had zero interest in anything tree or present related.  He would look at the tree and touch it, but quickly lost interest.  Whew!

The week before Christmas, the marina on the Navy base hosted a 'Holiday Boat Parade.'  They asked those who owned boats to participate and to decorate their boats for Christmas to go on display during a boat parade.  The boat lover Carlos is, he was out there for almost 2 full days getting busy before the parade.  He did a great job with the decorations and was by far the best looking boat.  The pic in the daylight doesn't do it justice, but my photos at night (when the parade took place) were not that good.  We took friends with us, a bottle of wine, some beer, and a boat parade we had!

Back at home, it wasn't until gifts from my brother showed up that Reece became a force to be reckoned with when it came to trying to keep him from opening gifts early.  I don't know what it was about that candy cane paper, but the child was bound and determined to try and eat it. Now the simple solution would be to put the gifts in another room so he wouldn't be so curious, but see, that would've been too easy and I was being a good mother by trying to teach my 9 month old how to be patient with gift opening :)

Fast forward to Christmas morning, otherwise known as the day our living room blew up.  We rejoiced in the fact that we still had a baby…translation:  too young to know Christmas/Santa and therefore does not wake up at 4am to open gifts.  So we slept until Reece's norm (6:30), got up and did our normal routine with him and even put him down for his morning nap.  It wasn't until after his nap did we start opening gifts.  And by we, I mean me.  We took TONS of video footage of Reece NOT opening his gifts.  No interest whatsoever.  So I would open his presents for him, he would glance at whatever new toy came out of the box, then grab the remote control for the tv and begin his usual playing with the remote.  His first Christmas went exactly as how Carlos and I predicted it would be, which is why we only bought him a couple gifts (so many gifts came in for him that we weren't even going to get him anything, but because one day he might ask us what we bought him for his first Christmas…because I'm sure he'll ask (sarcasm), we had to get him something!)  By the time all the gift opening was done, I was the one who needed the nap!

Reece loves his Leap Frog table…no unwrapping required.  We had it set up and ready to go

Enjoying the pile of presents

Greeting his new Pooh Bear!

The poor child's pj pants were a bit big, so he had a baby gangsta' sag going on

I have a couple of videos to post as well, but I'm going to attach those in a separate blog.

So after present opening, Reece ate lunch and went down for another nap while we cleaned up before heading out the door to Christmas dinner at our friends house.  Unfortunately, this is also where my camera decided to go crazy and I was only able to get one pic of Reece with me on Christmas.  None of the pics with Carlos turned out and none were taken of the 3 of us together with our tree (sad face).  Side note, I have since bought a new camera and it is awesome!

 

The following week we rang in the New Year very low key.  Carlos had gone out fishing during the day and caught many, many mahi mahi fish so by the time he got home, we ordered take out (Reece was already asleep), watched a movie and went to bed.  There isn't much to stay awake until midnight for here in Guam!  I rang in New Years day with a stomach bug that pretty much put me down from the afternoon through the next day.  It was awful, but always wanting to look on the bright side of things, it was the fastest holiday cookie weight loss ever! :)

Now that all the holiday hoopla has died down and things are back to normal at work, we have set our sights on what 2012 will bring.  Reece will be turning 1 in March (seriously…2 months away…my word) so I've been working out some party planning details.  We are in the early stages of planning a trip to Australia in April.  Carlos will be taking Part 2 of his ortho boards in July so this means a trip back to the states for him.  We are hoping to end 2012 with a trip to New Zealand in early December.  Other than our travels, we'll see what else our last full year in Guam has in store for us!