Random Things, Vol. 3

1. I am SOOOO incredibly thankful that I live so close to my parents and that they are so willing to help me. A couple of days ago, I wasn't feeling too great. I wasn't sick, but my stomach just felt "weird". Later that night, around 10, it went from weird to full blown sick. Lemme tell ya, trying to take care of a baby while being sick is no picnic. I tried to tough it out but around 1 am, I gave in and packed Jackson up and we headed to my parents for help. They took over for the rest of the night so I could get some rest. (For the record, whatever stomach bug I had is now, thankfully, gone.)

2. I'm glad I don't live up in the Northern part of the country. Right now, my brother is stuck in Wyoming with roads closed due to snow. I can imagine just how bored and frustrated he is wanting to get home. (He works for a hot shot service hauling stuff in case you are wondering why he is in Wyoming.)

3. My nephew just turned six months old and got his first tooth. I like the fact that he and Jackson are so close in age, cause it kinda gives me a timeframe reference for when Jackson will be hitting milestones.

4. While I much prefer the warmer spring weather over the cold winter weather, I'm also dreading spring/summer weather as well. For one reason alone. Lawn-mowing. Anyone who has read this blog for a while knows just how much I don't like mowing the lawn. Before I would suck it up and do it. But now, with Jackson I am not sure what I am going to do about it. I hate to pay someone to do it, but I may break down and have to. So much for trying to save money.

5. I dislike standing in line at the post office. But, I have a box to send to Daniel so I guess I'd better wrap up this post and go do it.

WANTED: One Fairy Godmother

Now accepting applications for a Fairy Godmother. Must provide own wand. Job requirements include the ability to provide a clean house instantly, laundry cleaned and put away at a moment's notice, instant delivery of groceries and household items, and providing a full night's sleep.

Seriously, while all that would be nice, I don't have my head so far in the clouds to actually think a sweet little old lady is going to appear in front of my eyes faster than I can say "bippity boppity boo." But wouldn't it be nice if it would happen? Jackson was extra gassy - and therefore extra fussy - Monday and he wanted nothing more than to be held and cuddled since he didn't feel well. I absolutely love and adore holding and cuddling him. But I try not to do it ALL the time because (a) I don't want him to think he needs to ALWAYS be held and cuddled, and (b) if I did, I would NEVER get anything done around my house. Monday, however, was an exception since I could tell he wasn't feeling well. After a while though I decided I needed help, so we packed up and went to my parent's house so that Nana could help comfort him too. (and I could go to the bathroom in peace without hearing him scream in protest to being put down. ) We ended up staying there a couple of nights. So, add together the time I spent Monday holding him rather than taking care of stuff around the house, plus Monday evening through Thursday late afternoon not being home, and the things I try to do when Jackson sleeps piled up. I have laundry in both the washer and dryer right now. Thankfully, I wasn't home to make a mess in the kitchen and I did get the trash out to the curb for pickup before I left. I usually try to take care of the deeper cleaning things (mopping, laundry, bathroom clean-up, etc) while Jackson naps. So now I get to play catchup. So, if you know of a Fairy Godmother looking for work, send her my way.

Extreme Makeover: Blog Edition

OK, say it with me now - "Bus driver, move that bus!" Oh, wait a second....if you are reading this you're already seeing the new look to the blog. And if you aren't seeing it, then that means you have tunnel vision and just zoomed straight in to the words. So, take a minute and look around....I redecorated. I added a new look to Jackson's blog, too. Yes, I was bored. No, I'm not talented/web savvy enough that I did either of them all on my own. Thank goodness for premade layouts and background codes.

Other than the new look here, not a lot new is going on. Jackson is one month old now, which amazes me. I can't believe it's been a month already. I agree with something my mom said the other day. In some ways, I want him to grow up already, but in others I want him to stay this little for a long time. I really can't wait to see how he develops, his personality and characteristics, but at the same time, I love how sweet and cuddly he is right now. He is really a good baby, and hardly ever cranky and fussy. Otherwise, I'm sure I would be begging and praying for him to grow up in a hurry. I do miss getting to sleep 6-8 hours in a row, rather than sleep 2-3 hours and then get up for about an hour to do diaper change/feeding. Just one of the many reasons I miss Daniel. If he were home, I know I could get at least one night here and there of full sleep while he took over. I don't really feel sleep deprived, but I can tell that it does make a difference in the straight through vs interrupted sleep.

We went and saw extended family on Easter. It was nice to see everyone, and fun introducing Jackson to his great aunts and uncles and cousins. Everyone said he was adorable, which made me feel proud. Pictures of him in his Easter outfit and his Easter basket were uploaded to his blog, if you haven't already seen them.

Now that I hear quiet coming from the crib, I'm going to take advantage of it and get some things done while Jackson naps. So, that's it for this update. See you soon!

An update

Easter is this weekend. I'm both excited about it and sad. Excited because it's Jackson's first holiday. Sad because it's his first holiday, and his Daddy isn't here to celebrate it with us. We're going to go to my uncle's house. It's a joint family celebration for both Easter and for my aunt's retirement. It'll be the first time that most of my aunts and uncles meet Jackson and my nephew Landon. It will also be the first time I meet the new spouses of a couple of cousins, so it should be a fun time. I got Jackson an Easter basket. It's blue camo. The way it's made, it's actually a blue camo hat that will come apart from the actual basket. I'll post pictures of it later, along with pictures of Jackson in his Easter outfit. Daniel picked out the outfit while he was home. It's really cute, khakis, a polo shirt and vest. He looks adorable in it.

Jackson and I are doing fine. He's had a little bit of a stuffy nose, but no fever or anything. He's really a good baby. He usually only cries when he's hungry or needs to be changed. I'm hoping he stays that way and doesn't turn into a cranky baby. We're still working on sleep patterns. Last night, he slept well from 9pm to 1 am. But, from 1 am to almost 3 it was time to be awake, according to him. He almost always wakes up anywhere from 10:30 to 12pm. Some nights he goes right back to sleep after being changed and fed, but others, like last night, he decides he should be a night owl. I should be going to bed early when he goes to sleep for the first time at night, but I've tried it, and I just lay there awake until 11-12pm. But I can usually catch a nap late mornings or early afternoons when he sleeps. While I'd like more of a long stretch of sleep, I'm not feeling too tired. Most days, anyway.

Bureaucracy at its finest

Soooo, in Saturday's mail I got Jackson social security card, and in a seperate mailing, I got the commemorative birth record from the hospital with his footprints, and with it was the form to get the official birth certificate from the state vital records department. I had heard lately that going to get a birth certificate in person was a process that takes several hours. But requesting it by mail says to allow up to four weeks. Daniel needs a copy to get Jackson listed as a dependant for military stuff, so I decided I was going to do it in person. When I mentioned to my mom my plans, she told me that she would go with me to watch Jackson while I took care of things. She was able to leave work a little early today, so we headed up there. When we walked in and I saw the line, I was glad she had come with me. It would have been a complete pain to have Jackson actually in that line with me. So, she took him and found a place to sit and wait, while I got in line. After waiting in said line for one hour and five minutes, it was finally my turn. I handed the girl the request form, which listed a place for Jackson's date of birth. She looked it over and told me she needed to check something. She starts looking on her computer, and after a few minutes she tells me he's not in the system yet. I asked what that means and she says "he's only three weeks old, you have to allow at least a month for us to have his information processed." So I asked why I had received the request form to get it if it wasn't actually available. She told me that was an issue I would need to ask the hospital since they sent it to me. I asked if I would have to wait in that hour plus long line again once it was ready, and she said yes. She made a comment about how I shouldn't have even tried since it hadn't been a month. I asked her where on the form or their website does it indicate that for a newborn a minimum of one month is the required wait time, because I sure hadn't seen it anywhere. Her answer to that? "Ma'am, that's just knowledge." Just knowledge? Whose knowledge? Certainly not mine as a first time mom. I have never before requested a birth certificate for a new baby, just how was I supposed to have this "knowledge"? Then she told me if I wanted to, I could go ahead and pay the fee today and have that be out of the way for when it is ready. Why? So when it is ready there's no record of my having paid? Ummmm, no, thank you. When I got home, I looked online and nowhere could I find anything that indicated it takes up to a month for newborn birth certificates. Nowhere. If that was something that was mentioned to me in the hospital, I sure as heck don't remember it, and I'm pretty sure it would have stood out to me, knowing Daniel needs it. Ugh...that office is crazy. It's a perfect example of how not to run things. There were 3 desks, but only two people working. And, for every 3-4 people one clerk helped, the other only helped one, because just about every person, she would have to stop and go ask a question of the other clerk. Their system is set up so that you wait in the line, and once you see a clerk, they scan a copy of your ID, and the request form. You are then given a number to go wait again. Once your number is called, you get the information, and then you proceed to another line to pay for your copies. When we got there, they were calling number 7. Once the girl told me Jackson wasn't in their system yet, and we were leaving, they were calling number 42. Had Jackson been in the system, I would have been given number 83. I can imagine how long it would have taken for them to get to 83. Since I left there,this one thought has gone through my head a couple of times...."This is an example of our tax dollars at work??!??!?" Ugh.

What Daniel has been up to the last 5 months

While Daniel was home on leave, I looked at all the pictures he's taken. I saved some of them to share here. He has hundreds, so I mostly picked ones that he is actually in - which are few and far between.

Daniel with country star Aaron Tippen. His unit did security detail when Aaron was there to perform with the USO. Daniel said he is super nice and took lots of time for pictures and autographs. When Daniel told him thanks for coming over, he told him "no man, thank you for what you do." I've always liked his music but knowing he was so nice and thankful to the soldiers raised him up a couple more notches to me.

Daniel (front row on the left) with other US and Kuwait soldiers. He's dressed in cold weather gear because he had been in the gunners spot (or as I call it, the hole in the top) of the vehicle.



The above four pictures were all taken at a Kuwait fire house. (The same fire house where Daniel rode a horse for the first time, ever.) The first and second pictures are his squadron with the Kuwait firemen. The third is Daniel wearing an official Kuwait firefighter cap, and the fourth is Daniel with his Squadron leader, hanging out at the fire house.

This one is Daniel at the border to Saudi Arabia. (I think it's Saudi Arabia. It was kinda late and I was sleep deprived when we looked at the pics and I saved them. If I'm wrong, he'll tell me and I'll correct it.)



I have always said Daniel could sleep anywhere!! This one is inside their vehicle.


The Kuwait locals love American soldiers. These two pictures were taken at a Kuwait market. The men asked Daniel to take pictures with them.

After encountering many camels, Daniel had this to say: "Camels are more stupid than cows. At least cows know to get out of the way. Camels just stand there and look at you." I'm guessing that means they've had their path blocked more than once by a camel in the road.

Daniel with some British soldiers. Daniel's group is allowed to wear civies a lot of the time. I told him he looks out of place in this picture. hahaha.

A new admiration

After Daniel left Sunday to head back to Kuwait, I wasn't quite ready to face going home alone. Well, alone with a newborn and no other adult for company. So Jackson and I stayed at my parent's all week. When they weren't at work or asleep they helped me, by fixing bottles, entertaining Jackson while I fixed bottles, listening for him while he slept and I ran a couple of errands, etc. There was even once when I felt helpless with middle of the night cries that I called in for backup...my Mommy! lol. (Turns out Jackson was extra gassy that night. From now on when he's cranky like that, gas will be the first thing I think of. Hopefully that won't happen again...gas drops have since been a lifesaver.) During the days and most nights though, I was on my own. (Other than that one night, I avoided bothering my parents as much as possible. Didn't want to come to rely on them too much. After all, we had to come home sometime, and there's no "crutch" here.) After the past week, even with all the help from my parents, I have come to have a new admiration for single parents. I always thought being a single parent was hard work, but I had just no clue how much work it was. So if you are a single parent, I applaud you. And if you know a single parent and have the time/resources, take a minute to ask them if there is anything they need help with. I'm sure they will appreciate it more than you will know.

Family pictures

We had family pictures done before Daniel left to go back to Kuwait. I have most of them framed, now I just need to decide where to hang them in the house. I'm thinking I need more wall space! haha. We thought they turned out really nice, so I thought I would share them here. Hope you like them, they were taken when Jackson was 10 days old. (And for all you OU fans who may be reading this, just remember, Daniel was born in Texas and lived there for a while when he was a kid. Our house will never be crimson & cream!)

Time Flies

It feels like it was just yesterday that I was in my hospital room after having Jackson and Daniel came walking in to meet his son for the first time. But, it was two weeks ago. So, yesterday Daniel had to leave to go back to Kuwait. I'm not sure which of us it was harder on, me or him. Me for the fact that every day he's over there I worry and pray for his safety, and the fact that he was amazing in helping take care of Jackson and the house in those two weeks he was home and I'm now facing doing it alone. Or him for the fact that is completely and totally in love with our new son and he'll have to spend the next several months watching him grow by pictures and videos rather than in person. I'd say it's a toss up. Neither of us likes the idea of facing the coming months apart. Today is my birthday, and instead of celebrating, I spent hours waiting for the phone call to let me know that my husband had landed safely in a whole other part of the world. Not very happy, if you ask me. (He did call around noon and had made it just fine, by the way.) But I love him, and since this is what he has to do, I deal with it.

Jackson is doing great. There were a few sleepless nights when he kept us up pretty much all night. But we learned that the trick is to swaddle him up tight to sleep. Daniel calls is a Jackson Burrito. I think he's adorable all bundled up. As long as we do that, he sleeps 3-4 hours at a time. So I'm able to get some sleep myself. For the next couple of days I'm staying at my parents. I'm not quite ready to face going home to our house alone, and this way my mom can help if I get too tired or Jackson gets too cranky. I miss my husband tremendously, but taking care of Jackson helps take my mind off of the lonliness, at least temporarily. I just hope these next few months go by as fast as the last two weeks seemed to have gone.

And Baby Makes Three!!

We are so happy and blessed to announce the arrival of Jackson James-Robert Martin. He was born March 14, 2009 at 5:29 am. He weighed 7 lbs, 11 oz, and was 17 inches long.



I had been scheduled to go in for a c section on March 20. That was after my last ultrasound showed he was already around 7 lbs and was in a breech position. On Wednesday the 11, I had an appointment and my blood pressure was up. They put me on monitors and everything was great with the baby. But my blood pressure wouldn't stay consistent, and it kept getting high. After a few hours, they let me go home, but told me to come back on Friday to be checked again. On Friday, my BP was still high. They did another sonogram and this time it showed that the baby was no longer breech. My doctor sent me over to the labor & delivery at the hospital to be induced. They got an IV started just before 11 am to start my contractions. Daniel has been really good throughout the pregnancy about keeping track of my appointments and calling that same day to see how things are going. When the c section was scheduled, it would have been about a week earlier than his leave started, but we had talked about it and decided we could deal with that. When Daniel called, he was getting ready to go out on patrol. He and I both had hoped it would just be a regular appointment, everything would be fine and that would be all. When I told him I was being induced and would have the baby sometime in the next day, he was in shock. He and I were both upset knowing that meant it would be an almost two week delay from the baby being born to him getting home. He told me to go ahead and contact the Red Cross to see if they could get him home any earlier since the situation had now changed. My mom had been with me since I got to labor & delivery. I had given her a copy of the Red Cross contact information a few weeks ago. At that point I was pretty much just waiting for the medicines to get going well, so I sent her home to make the calls to get that process started. Red Cross had to call me to confirm the message was ok to send to Daniel, and they had to confirm the situation with either my doctor or one of the nurses. When they called me, they explained that they needed to get the medical verification and would be calling the hospital. At the time, the nurse was right there so I just gave her my phone and she verified everything. Not too long after, Daniel called to tell me that he had to wait a few hours for a certain office to open for him to sign some paperwork and that after that he would know when he was flying out. He called periodically to check in and see how I was doing all during the day. Around 9 Friday night, I was feeling quite a bit of pain, so they came in and gave me an epidural. For the first several minutes after it took effect, I was feeling wonderful. But, not too long afterwards, I started feeling pain on my right side. It wasn't as bad as it had been though, so I just went on. As time went by though, I started having more and more pain on the right. They tweaked the dosage of the epidural, and while it helped, in just about 10 minutes I was back to feeling pain on the right. A few hours later, my nurse had them come back in because I was feeling LOTS of pain, and she said with the epidural and the tweaking they did I shouldn't really be feeling anything near what I was. So, they made an adjustment to the spinal catheter. Thought it was better. But again, after about 20-30 minutes I was feeling lots of pain. By this time, my entire left leg was nothing but dead weight due to the fact that the left side was taking effect each time even though the right wasn't. (Later they said they think the spinal catheter was put in just left of center of the spine and that's what caused the issue.) Anyway....thanks to my mom who was there to help coach me through labor, I pushed past the fact that the contractions felt like they were ripping my right side open. Around 5 am Saturday morning, I was to a point where they were ready for me to push. I was anxious, to say the least. I mean, at one point there was a c section scheduled partly due to the fact of the baby's size. I wondered if I was going to be able to do it. Daniel had been checking in about once an hour, but the last time he had called he had said he was going to going to that office to wait for the paperwork, and he had said he didnt know when he could be able to call again, because he wasn't familiar with that area enough to know where phones were. So, after about 30 minutes of pushing, Jackson was born. Just as my doctor was cutting the umbilical cord, my phone rang. I knew it was Daniel. My mom answered it, and Daniel was on the phone with her to hear Jackson's first cries through the phone. How he knew just the right time to call is certainly a blessing. It had been hours since we had last talked and then I hold told him there really was no "time frame" to know when things would happen. I am so thankful that he called when he did. While he wasn't actually there, he at least got to hear Jackson's first cries. I don't think it could have been timed better had we tried. I got to talk to him for a few seconds and he told me he would be landing Sunday afternoon at 2:30. After a flight delay, he walked into my hospital room around 5 pm Sunday afternoon. We have two weeks to spend together as a family of three before he has to go back on March 29. Jackson and I are both doing great. My blood pressure stayed a little high at times, but my doctor is pleased overall at how it has gone down since I gave birth. I'm sore and tired, of course. But being out of the hospital last night helped tremendously. It was so nice to not have someone wake me up every hour for a BP check. Jackson has a little bit of jaundice, but it's a very common thing for babies, and his isn't even enough to have to go under any of the bili lights. Daniel and I are learning how to do all the parent things. I'll add more pics to this post, and I know we will take tons more in the next few weeks, but I'm not sure how often I'll be here to update. We'll be spending lots of family time together. As much as we can until the 29th.