7 years and 4 months

Every month since Xander was born, I think I'm going to blog and then I don't. So rather than a monthly update I'm giving a 4 month Reader's Digest version update.
Also, last Saturday Brian and I celebrated our 7 year anniversary. We went to see the comedian, Gabriel Iglesias. Brian has been trying to see him live for years and it just happened to work out perfectly with our anniversary weekend. We had a great time and it was a good way to celebrate 7 years of marriage. We have crammed a lot of experiences and cars (19 not counting motorcycles) into 7 years. When I look back to 7 years ago when we lived in a little apartment with orange counter tops, I would have never guessed we would end up where we are, but I'm glad we got here.
Xander aka X-Ray, or Little Man is growing and growing. He's in the 35th percentile for height, 69 percentile for weight, and 99.5th percentile for head size. He loves to stand up, his bouncer is his favorite way to spend the day. He sleeps through the night and loves to try to feed himself. We are lucky to be able to have Brian stay home with him during the day. They are best friends. We think he is pretty awesome.

All Clean! -4 months

Trying to feed himself. He does not like to be spoon fed. 

Packered up! Teach him young

Pooping face. -2 months

Ready for church!

Smiles! 

May 12th 2015

*Spoiler Alert*

We had a baby!
Xander Ray
7 lbs 15 ounces


I woke up in labor at 7:30 am and by 10:45 am,  Xander was here. I am glad I said, "No" when the midwife asked if I wanted to try to labor at home for a little longer, otherwise Brian would have delivered a baby and been traumatized. We were home the same day, comfy and cozy in our own bed.  We have adopted the routine of a newborn: Eat, sleep, poop, repeat.  It's tempting to get up and be "productive" but I remind myself  babies don't keep so hold him as much as I can and settle in for another episode of NCIS. He is such a mellow good baby and we think he is pretty awesome, even at 3:00 am. 

He is already a Daddy's boy. 

An update....FINALLY.

Coming in May...

And it's a....

Empty rooms and empty closets. .

As I'm sitting here in my house looking at blank walls, empty closets, and the last few boxes waiting to be sealed, I remember how overwhelming moving can be. Sure there is exhaustion that comes from packing, lifting and cleaning but that's only a small part of it.  A midst the inevitable chaos (even if it's organized chaos) is an underlying emotional roller-coaster that always seems to come with moving. 
Every move has signaled the start of a new much anticipated chapter in my life.  College, marriage, teaching, Army. So there has always been excitement and even a bit of impatience surrounding a move.  Maybe it comes from having Army Brat parents who raised that moving was an adventure. Whatever the reason I've never as an adult dreaded moving.

There is also this sense of finality that always makes me a little sad. It's the same sadness you get when you finish a book, or watch the final episode of a great television series. I look around at my almost empty house and see the life that we have built here. As with every chapter of a life, it hasn't been perfect but any of that seems to become forgotten in a move. (Until you find out Georgia won't fill a prescription written by a PA...then I start to remember...)
But here in Georgia  was the first time we lived in a house not an apartment. It was the first time we celebrated every holiday away from our extended families.  We added a 160 lbs, 4 legged, cover in fur giant lap dog to our household. We went through 4 cars and 2 motorcycles more so by choice than by disaster. We've fed dinner to people and used our couch as a  bed more times than I can count. So I sit here happy to almost be done with moving,  antsy for the future, and sad that this phase of our life is ending. It's been a good phase.

2 years without a panic attack

While playing frisbee golf on Saturday, we were trying to find a disc that had gone into some woods. There were spiders (big spiders) everywhere. I kept thinking thinking how 2 years ago I could have been within 3 feet of a spider that big without panicking. This actually happens to me on a fairly regular basis, where something happens and I react or handle the situation is completely different than what I did 2 years ago. No, I didn't just grow up and stop being afraid of a lot of things. I realized that I had anxiety and decided to start taking medication.
Most people know I have narcolepsy, I'm pretty open about that one, plus it's harder to hide, even medicated I still nap and fall asleep more than most people or just make me laugh then people really wonder what is wrong with me. Anyway, I've always been less open about anxiety.  For years I had some pretty significant phobias (needles,spiders, bees) it was so bad that anything that might have resulted in stitches or an IV made me nervous. But that wasn't an anxiety disorder, especially not one that needed  medication. Honestly, I thought that in order to have an "anxiety disorder" I would have to be completely home bound and constantly feel like I was panicking. That wasn't me, I had friends and a job, I lived on my own, got married. To me my life was normal and anything that was a little off was just who I was, I was a "worrier". One time I told Brian that I worried about worrying too much. Brian telling me that wasn't normal was the first time I thought maybe being a "worrier" wasn't  how I had to be.
So 2 years ago, my husband had been gone for 7 months doing training for the Army, I was living with my parents, I was done working, and I had a lot of free time. My worrying had turned into me doing things like checking our bank account 10 times in 10 minutes. I would log on, check it, log off and repeat. I would constantly ask my husband, who was 1000 miles away, what was wrong or if everything was okay.  There were days would the only thing I wanted to do was curl up and hide in a corner because I felt like something bad was going to happen. I had always done this sort of thing or had these kind of days but finally I was fed up with it. Long story short, I ended up at the Dr.  on medication. Then I started to realize all the ways anxiety had affected my life. With medication I can...
1) Get a shot, have blood taken, be in the same room as a needle
2) Kill and/or walk by a spider
3) Drive at anytime of day, without crying.
4) Walk into a room full of people, even if I am late.
5) Eat in front of people I don't know
6) Go a day without checking the bank accounts. Make one budget and not check the math 100 times for hours.
7) Do parent teacher conferences without crying for days in advance.
8) Call and order pizza, food, or call customer support
9) Ask where something is, or for help on how to make something work
10) Sleep at night without being convinced there are people in my house coming to kill me.

I'll leave it at 10 because I like even numbers. This is just a few of the things. There are so many more. It's not that unmediated I never  did of these things (I'd called to order pizza). It's that now I can do them without crying, shaking, getting sick to my stomach, curling up into a ball, digging my fingers into my arms, or trying everything I can to avoid it.  I never realized how much better I could feel and  all the little ways anxiety ruled my life until I started to get medication. At first I was worried that with medication I wouldn't care about anything. This has not been the case. I still don't love needles and I still hate walking into a meeting late but with medication I am able to stop myself from overthinking or overreacting. I can tell myself that it's my anxiety talking and choose to ignore it. I still have good days and bad. When I'm sleep deprived and stressed it is harder. Yesterday, was one of those days when suddenly I just felt nervous and worried. But rather than shut down or obsess over everything that could possibly be wrong, I got up and got busy. Within 30 minutes, I didn't feel this impending sense of doom and had a productive day. I could go on for hours with all the examples of what I used to do or how I used to feel but this post is already getting too long. I mostly wanted to share because I think anything mental health related gets a bad reputation and that a lot of people think like I used to: that their anxiety or depression or whatever isn't that bad and that they have learned to cope. Now that I know how much better I feel and how much better my life can be I'm glad that I finally admitted and realized that I had chronic anxiety, that it was affecting every aspect of my life, and that I wasn't really coping with it I was letting it control me.

Dreaduary

I haven't written in a really long time. Several times I have thought about posting. I sort of skipped the holidays. I think there might be the annual Christmas draft on here somewhere, but for the most part life has been in a holding pattern for months. Brian is still in Georgia, I am still in Utah. It's not that nothing ever happens, there are times and thoughts that probably could be shared but mostly it's "that time of the year". Not the most wonderful time of year. No, if the the most wonderful time of year had an arch nemesis, February would be it. February is bleak, and frustrating, and exhausting. Just saying February sounds dreadful. Hallelujah this month has only 28 days. March will be better, it has to be better.I cross my fingers that ball is in motion again for Brian to get everything taken care of in Georgia so he can get out here finally!  Life will start to unthaw from the freeze that was February. SPRING IS COMING!

What Just Happened?!?!?

I'm pretty sure I tell this story a least once a day but for those of you who don't know here is how our life has completely gone crazy in the matter of  2 weeks:

Monday 10/14: My mom mentions that a 5th grade teacher at her school retired and they have an opening. I don't think much of it.

Tuesday 10/15: Brian doesn't pass his weigh and tape for the 3rd time in a year. This is grounds for a "Chapter 18 Discharge". It's an honorable discharge that basically means for medical reasons you don't meet the Army's height, weight, or body fat standards. This is frustrating because we have spent the last year trying to figure out what is making it so difficult to maintain a steady weight. He can gain and lose 10 lbs in a week. Realizing that there is a good chance that in 3-6 months, Brian could be out of the Army, we start talking about what to do. There are bills that need to be paid and Brian needs to get school done. With the government shut down and other things, our plan for him to use the Army Tuition Assistance to finish school hasn't been going very well. AND Brian's knee that he injured is not really getting better. It hurts constantly and the more he runs and puts stress on it the more likely he is to completely blow it out. I apply for the 5th grade job at my Mom's school.

Wednesday 10/16: I do an over the phone interview for the 5th grade position.

Friday 10/18: I get offered the job, and am told I need to start Monday. Brian finds out that he can take the discharge and be done.

Sunday 10/20: I fly to Utah

Monday 10/21: I start teaching 5th grade again.

So now here I am at my parents' house. Brian and the dogs are in Georgia *sigh*. Hopefully, by January he will be here and going to school full time. He has about a year left, then who knows what is next.
It's amazing how quickly our life can change. It seems to be a pattern for us though. The Lord definitely had a hand in making all of the pieces fall into place. I've sort of been in a jet lagged/exhausted from frantically trying to put together a classroom haze for the last 2 weeks, that it hasn't sunk in how much everything is changing.