myJaxonIf we don’t go crazy once in a while, we’ll all go crazy. - Hawkeye

The new year started us out in yet another new town with a new apartment. Jesse took a job with Entertainment Publications, which had us moving to the east side of the state. After some unreturned phone calls, I finally found another OBGYN that I loved. I actually had one doctor not call me back because of how far along I was.

I celebrated my 27th birthday and the delivery of our first child in February. One bad winter night, Ian decided to be impatient and arrived early. Eight hours after entering the hospital, Ian Hawthorn was born on the 26th at 5:02 am. He weighed in at 7 pounds and 15 ounces and was 20.5 inches long.

March was a little nerve wracking when Ian developed RSV at 11 days old. After 24 hours in the hospital, two weeks of sleeping on the couch with Ian, and a lot of help from the new grandparents, Jesse and I finally began to get our sanity back. Our sleep was still off, but at least Ian was feeling better and was showing it. He began to interact more by following objects with his eyes and he started smiling.

April had us at the mall so Ian could experience his first visit with the Easter bunny. He was so tiny in the bunny’s arms that you really have to look to see him. Jesse wasn’t crazy about me taking our 4 week son to sit in a guys lap, but it was his first Easter. I doubt we’ll do it again next year. Although, amazingly enough, Ian slept through the entire experience, so I have no idea what he thought of the Easter Bunny.

Ian started sleeping a lot better in May, which meant we started getting more sleep. We were still getting up with him a couple times a night, but there were longer intervals between each time. Plus, my best friend PJ (I’m sorry, Trish) had her first son, which also happens to be my godson. Christopher David was born on May 23rd. We’ve definitely gotten the boys together and they’ll keep both of us on our toys, I’m sure. Memorial day weekend also gave Jesse and I a chance to catch up on our sleep. Ian spent the weekend with Nana. Eight hours of continuous sleep….yeah, not really. I was still getting up thinking Ian was there. I think the last night he was gone I actually made it 5 hours before realizing he hadn’t woken me up. I also managed to only call my mother once a day while he was gone. I would like to mention this took a lot of will power.

We had Ian in the pool in June. He didn’t like it at first, but once we took him out of the floater that we bought for him, he really took to it. He doesn’t like to be splashed, but he loved swimming with Jesse or I and watching the water. Ian also became more vocal and it was amusing watching him make sounds at nothing in particular. June also started the beginning of the “year of weddings”. Joslyn was the first to get married and then she ended up moving to Colorado. I was sad, but I was already on the other side of the state, so we weren’t getting together as often as we used to.

It began to get easier to entertain Ian in July when he realized he could sit up and play with toys on his own. He loves to sit next to his toy chest and pull the toys out. He didn’t know how to put them away yet, but he would let us do that for him just so he could pull them all out again. You could definitely see Ian’s personality start to take shape. If he wanted something, he would let you know it.

Ian started to roll around on the floor in August. Jesse and I realized that life was going to get interesting when we noticed Ian wasn’t where we put him, but a few feet away. He figured out that he could get places by rolling or spinning his body. This just led him to figure out the commando crawl, which he had mastered by the end of the month. Our second wedding also occurred this month and Jesse stood up as a groomsman at Jordan and Beth’s wedding.

While this was a happy time, there was a moment of sadness when we realized that we would have to give Chaos away. She never really adapted well to Ian’s presence and she became more aggressive. Although she never attempted anything with Ian, we felt that it would be best for everyone if she wasn’t around. We couldn’t find another home for her, so we had to take her to the Humane Society. While we didn’t want to do it, we were left with no choice. All year long, we had tossed the idea back and forth and since we finally made the decision, I didn’t want us backing out.

Labor Day weekend had a surprise for us…Ian’s front bottom teeth popped up. Finally, after 2 months of teething, it was over…for a little bit. Jesse and I made another trip to Orchard Beach State Park with Jordan and Beth, but this time Tim and Kathleen came with us instead of Brad and Erin. We had a lot of fun and it was a little strange pumping while camping. Ian spent the weekend with Nana again, so he wasn’t there to help relieve any pressure. I also started the insane project of scanning all of the family photos. I’m still working on them. My sister also decided to get married in a hot air balloon instead of going with a more traditional wedding. She was only engaged for about a month (no she isn’t pregnant), but she wasn’t looking forward to planning a wedding or looking for a dress so they decided to do it quick and easy. Ian and I went down to Ohio for the wedding and he got to see his first hot air balloons. He even got to help chase them down and had fun at the landing site with all the bubbles in the air. Funny thing was, my sister ended up landing in a church’s parking lot, so she still ended up getting married at a church.

Heaven did not help us when Ian mastered crawling in October. Once he figured that out, he didn’t sit still for any length of time. We also didn’t count on how quick he could be and he had us running a couple of times. Jesse and I also celebrated our 4th anniversary together. Although in reality, we had been together 8 years and it really doesn’t seem like it. We also had two more weddings this month. Matt & Carrie tied the know the weekend before our anniversary and Brad & Erin tied the know the weekend after. We must have picked a great time to get married, two other couples picked the same time! These were weddings #4 and #5 of the year. There was still one more wedding (William and Charleen) in November, but with it taking place in Virginia, these were the last ones we were going to. Halloween was also a fun time. Ian dressed up as Pippin from Lord of the Rings (as a Citadel guard from the third movie) and went trick or treating at Jesse’s work. He was definitely an adorable little hobbit.In November, Jesse took part in National Novel Writing month. He had to write 50,000 words by the end of the month, which gave him a start on a novel. His book, Sinblade, is still in the editing process, but once he’s done with it, it’ll be available to buy online at Lulu.com. Ian started eating table foods this month which allowed him to enjoy his first Thanksgiving. He sat at the table with all of us and ate off of my plate. He really enjoyed the sweet potatoes.

Christmas was a little strange this year. For one, I received a new shiny laptop a couple of weeks early and since it was from most of the family, I really didn’t have anything under the tree. However, I had fun helping Ian unwrap all of his toys. I’m still waiting for Jesse to tell me what he wants. He keeps saying nothing since he got me the laptop, but I’m not going to let him get away with that. He’ll get something, but he may have to wait a month or two for it. Ian ended up with a walker that is allowed him to get the idea a lot quicker than I’m ready for. Jesse and I saw his first 4 steps this afternoon and we just know he’ll have it mastered by the time he turns 11 months. We also figured out that we’re going to start looking at buying a house when our lease is up in June. We know we want to stay in this area, but we’re definitely going to need help since this will be our first place. I’m excited for it. I’m tired of moving and I can’t wait to finally be able to decorate my own place. Although, I’ll be even more excited if we get to buy new furniture and get rid of all the second hand/college grade stuff that we currently have.

The year is almost over and I’m still aging. Haven’t they found a cure for that yet? I’m no longer closer to 20, but closer to the big 3-0 and I’m not entirely sure how I feel about that. Ask me how I feel in a couple of months when I have a birthday. Although, I’ll probably be concentrating on Ian’s first birthday than enjoying mine. We’ll see what Jesse does for it.

Happy New Year Everyone!

In January, Grandpa and Grandma Smith celebrated their 50th anniversary with an Open House. The only thing they had to do with the party was that they had wanted a family picture done. It’s been awhile since we’ve had one and we’ve gotten a lot bigger since then. Oddly enough, we’re not finished growing either. There are still three more grandchildren who need to find husbands (although one has found one, she just needs to get him to propose) and that isn’t including the great-kids that will be popping up soon. My grandparents are thrilled with the way the family keeps growing. For their anniversary, the family gave them a vacation to the Outer Banks in North Carolina, but they are not going alone. They get to have the entire family with them on this trip. That’s right, all of us in the picture will be spending a week in one house. That is going to be one interesting week. Especially since a lot of us are planning on relaxing that week and I know Grandma is going to be planning out the entire week with events. Hopefully, we’ll all live through it.

February was relatively quiet and things didn’t start heating up until March. Jesse was contacted for a job back home in Grand Rapids (yes, we consider this home). After a few phone interviews and some serious debate on our end, Jesse accepted the position and we started planning our move back to Michigan. However, before we could move back, we had a few things to take care of first…namely, the parents.

Mom and Jerry came out for an extended weekend at the end of March and Jesse’s parents came out the following weekend. Since it was his parents first trip out to see us, we wanted to stick around so they could see where we had been for the past 18 months. With this being the last two weeks of our living in DC, I wanted to make sure that mom and Jerry saw what they wanted to see as well as see something I haven’t had a chance to see yet. Since mom and Jerry had been out, there wasn’t a lot that they haven’t seen. We did find one thing though - the National Zoo. I never got a chance to go out there, so we did it. Once they left, Jesse and I had about 36 hours to ourselves before his parents came out. This was their first visit to the Capitol in a long time, and they wanted to get to some of the monuments. They knew that Jesse and I had seen a lot of them multiple times, so we tried something new. An after dark DC tour. While the concept was brilliant, the implementation needed a lot of work. Either way, they came, they saw, and then they left with my husband. That’s right, Jesse went with them back to Michigan. With him, he took the cats plus a van and car load of our stuff. His parents left on the 12th and Jesse wanted to have a bed up there with him. He didn’t want to have to wait another three weeks. The movers came on the 13th and we had our new apartment filled with our worldly possessions on the 14th. With the new apartment, we were able to do something for the very first time - we painted the walls. While it’s still an apartment, it feels more like home after the paint job we did on the walls.

We’ve been back in Michigan for about 2.5 months now and while we’re glad to be back and near family and friends again, there have been times that we started thinking this wasn’t a good idea; but we’ll see what happens.

July had me heading to the Outer Banks in North Carolina with the family. For the grandparent?s 50th anniversary, the entire family decided to give them a vacation and we were all tagging along. For 7 days and 6 nights, all 14 of us were living under the same roof. It was definitely interesting and a lot less drama than I thought there would be.

The end of the month brought Jesse and I some good news. Doctor confirmed and everything, I was 8 weeks pregnant with our first child. We had been trying for a couple of months, but it was still a shock to the system.

August brought us some bad news. Jesse was laid off from the job that brought us back to Michigan. That was definitely a shock to the financial system, but we?re dealing with it. However, this wasn’t all that bad as Jesse was dealing with a lot of stress and anxiety and he?s been a lot better since leaving the job. Either way, we?re planning on staying in the area unless a really good opportunity arises.

In September, Jesse and I went camping with four of our friends. This was the first time the two of us went camping together and we both had a lot of fun. We pitched a tent at Orchard Beach State Park in Manistee, Michigan and while the weather was a little cooler than expected and after the initial shock of the tents not holding up to the rain, the weekend went smoothly and we?re already talking about doing it again next year.

In October, Jesse and I celebrated three years of marriage (and seven years of just being together). There are times when it doesn?t seem that long and yet it seems like forever. On our anniversary, we found out that we were having a boy in March. It took us awhile to come up with a name, but we settled on Ian Hawthorn and even set up his own website. We still have a girls name (Zoe Illyria), but we won?t have to use it this time around.

November came and went, while December brought us some good and bad news. Jesse was offered a position with Entertainment Publications, however, that meant we were moving again, but this time to Rochester Hills, Michigan. While we tried to stay in the Grand Rapids area, we came to the conclusion that it just wasn’t feasible any longer. Either way, the year ended on a positive note and we?re hurrying around to get everything ready for when Ian will join our family.

2005 was an interesting year and not always in a good way…

While working at GHR, I was put on a rather huge case around Thanksgiving 2004 and the senior paralegal in charge decided to leave in January 2005. Thank god that I wasn’t expected to take more of a senior role with this trial. It would have been bad. The firm hired a new paralegal to take on the case and I learned so much from her. It was awesome. We worked our butts off to get the case ready for trial in March and than prayed thanks to the gods when they postponed it to August. Between February and early October, I was putting in 40-70 hours a week, plus living in New Jersey from August to October. These months didn’t leave me with much time to do anything, but Jesse and I dealt with it. The paychecks were nice and between the two of us we were able to do things we normally would have saved up for. While doing this case, I couldn’t wait for it to slow down; however, when everything came to a halt in October, I was praying to the paralegal manager to give me more work. I really missed being busy. It was good.

Anyway, there was other things that happened during this year, that was just the most time consuming. In March, Chris and Josh came out from Michigan to see us and we did the tourist thing. I had to work for a couple of the days, but it gave them time to see the sights. In April, my grandparents paid a visit and we took them to the FDR Memorial. That is my favorite memorial. It isn’t just a statue or a building like most of the others, but it has more of a Japanese tea garden feel to it. It is someplace you can go and enjoy lunch and watch the tourists or wander and read the inscriptions. Lori and Billy visited in July and we did more monuments as well as Embassy Row. Of course, both of my parents came out a couple of times throughout the year, but I won’t go into each of those.

Something of a sad nature happened in October. My paternal grandfather past away on October 27th and was buried on November 1st. He was the first grandparent I’ve lost, and the sad part is, I am not surprised he was the first. My grandfather enjoyed his life. He smoked, drank, and generally did whatever the hell he wanted to do. In my opinion, that’s the way to live life.

Jesse and I were able to go back to Michigan for Thanksgiving and ended up having Christmas as well. While it was awesome going home for the holidays, it wasn’t much of a vacation either. A vacation is something you do to relax, well, we didn’t relax much on this trip. We basically left Friday night, spent Saturday in Grand Rapids with the guys; had thanksgiving with dad on Sunday; thanksgiving with mom on Monday; Thursday was spent with the Morgans in Midland; Friday we had thanksgiving at grandmas; and then we left on Saturday. I think there was only one day where something wasn’t planned. Like I said, not very relaxing, so it wasn’t much of a vacation, but it did cement one thing. Jesse and I wanted to go back home. So Jesse started looking for jobs.

Something amusing that happened, it rained one night. While that doesn’t seem like it would be amusing, wait until you hear the story. In the master bedroom, we have a really nice size window seat and when it rains hard, the ceiling tends to leak. We had this really hard rain one night. Not only did we have water problems on the window seat, but we had water dripping through our vents and into the kitchen downstairs. Thankfully, we were awake enough to put towels and bowls under all the drips. The next day we had maintenance come and fix everything and they even painted where the water was. We saw them paint the window sill in the kitchen, but we didn’t think to check upstairs. Needless to say, Chaos found out and decided to tell us. It’s amusing to hear your husband say “the cat sat in paint”. We both thought she was up on the sill in the kitchen. It wasn’t until we saw the paw prints on our dresser that we realized that they had painted the window sill as well.

Christmas gave Jesse and I some new toys. Jesse received a new sword that he named “gutter” and I finally have a new monitor. I only had mine for about 7 years at this point and since every other component in my computer has been upgraded at least twice, it was finally time to do my monitor. Well, 2005 is almost done, so let’s get on with the next year.

2004 was a good year, if any year can be a good year. Everyone was still gathering at monk’s house for burning parties and to play cards. I finally received a job offer that wasn’t at a retail store. Jesse left his job due to a change of job responsibilities and then found a new one in Arlington, Virginia. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Why don’t I start at the beginning.

The New Year began with having a bunch of people over on New Years Eve. For those of you who don’t know, this is kind of unusual. December 31st is Jesse’s birthday and he does not exactly want to spend it with other people. He spent his early years going to New Years parties and since he’s been with me, I’ve tried not to do that to him. This year was kind of different. I wanted to do something, he didn’t, so we compromised and I had people come over in the afternoon and we played cards and whatnot. At midnight, everyone was still around. So that’s how we brought in the new year. It was all good.

In early June, we had an unexpected, yet not surprising, addition to our family. When we moved into our apartment last fall, we were able to bring my cat from home with us. Toby came to live with us and after a couple of months of being on her own (she used to live with 1-2 other cats all her life), Jesse and I got the impression that she was lonely. So Jesse talked to his mom to see if she had heard of any kittens that were being given away. The thing about where Jesse is from, there’s a lot of cats. It seems that when people’s cats in Jackson, Michigan have litters and then the people don’t want the kittens, they take them out to Munith and dump them. It’s sad that they do this, but you really can’t stop them. As such, Munith has a pretty large wild cat population. My brother-in-law, Brian, was doing his daily run one night and came across a really young kitten and remembered that Jesse and I were looking for a cat. Needless to say, he brought her home and the next weekend we picked her up. Chaos was a little black furrball that received a bath as soon as we could get her one. We also came to find out that she had a couple of extra toes on her paws. While it’s vastly amusing to watch her use her extra toes as opposable thumbs, Jesse was not crazy about her using her claws to crawl up his leg. Chaos ended up getting her front claws taken out about November.

In August, an event occurred that did change our lives. Jesse was offered a position in Arlington, Virgina. The money was good, there was benefits and the unemployment rate in Michigan was high. With all these considered, moving to Virginia was our best option. We found a place in Alexandria, which thankfully had a free shuttle to the nearest Metro station. Jesse drove out with the cats in late September and I followed the first of October after having dealt with the movers. Jesse and I were apart for about 2 weeks and we still had to wait another week for our furniture to arrive. Needless to say, the movers showed up on Oct. 11th. By that time Jesse had developed permanent back problems from sleeping in a popped air mattress for a month. The plants survived the move and the only thing we forgot was our wedding cake. Of course, that was my fault as it was sitting in my father’s freezer. So we didn’t get a chance to eat our cake for our first anniversary. However, we did get to sleep in our own bed and that was far better.

After a few weeks in Virginia, I started temping with Gilbert Heintz &s Randolph in Washington, D.C. and was offered a full-time position a couple weeks later. What started out as trying something new ended up being a great opportunity. My first day on the job as an employee found me in Philadelphia, PA at trial. From then on, I was assigned to cases with trial dates in the near future.

Dad came out to visit in December and we celebrated Christmas a little early. Mom came out for Christmas (well, the week in between Christmas and New Years) and we had Christmas yet again. For the first time, Jesse and I celebrated New Years in a new state with no one but ourselves. With our new jobs, we were able to start saving some money and do things without haven’t to worry about where the money was coming from. This was actually nice.