A Year Old (and some change…)

My baby Quincy is 1.  This past year has flown by ~ it was hard, rewarding, and crazy-busy!!  At 1, here are some of his stats:

Weight: 17 lbs, 15 oz (1 percentile)

Height: (I’ll have to insert this after I double check his paperwork…. what I DO remember is it’s in the 13th percentile.)

He is so little! Little and delicious. He’s been walking since 9 months old. He’s constantly trying to catch up to his brother.

He doesn’t form many words yet, though he is constantly making noise and babbling.  Like….constantly! He’s always been a noisy little bugger.  He is very good at mimicking inflections and the number of syllables in a word. If you say, “thank you VERY much.”  He will say something like, “dee dee DEEDEE do.” I swear one day he will open his mouth and a full sentence will come out like, “mom, can I have a sandwich?” He’s listening and studying everything we do and say ~ he amazes me every day. He will say a couple words: dada, thanks, dog, and he can say mama but he also knows that just going “Ehhhhh!” will be enough to make me reply and tend to him, so for now my name is Ehhh!

He understands a lot. When it’s time to leave the house in the morning and we grab his shoes, he will sit down right away, ready for them to be put on. Then he’ll pull at the front of his shirt as if to say “where’s my coat?”

He LOVES books. He will grab one and beg you to read it (another “EHHH!!!” moment). If you sit on the floor, he will turn around and back himself right into your lap and plop down with a huge smile on his face.

Cuteness.

And you’ll have to read the book no less than 3 times.

Not so cute. At least when you’re trying to cook dinner.

He has a natural mohawk. Everyone always asks if we styled it that way… ummm…no, silly. It’s just naturally awesome, like the rest of him.

He’s copying everything Donovan does. This can be adorable or it can be life-threatening. Donovan gets changed into his pajamas and decides to run around naked, Quincy wants to do the same. Donovan wants to stand on one of his toys that has wheels, I tell him to get down because it’s not safe. As soon as he’s off, up goes Quincy. The kid is a daredevil and up for anything.  Watch, he’ll be the kid that tries to climb out of his crib….

If he gets hurt, he’ll whine or cry. Pick him up to console him? Try to kiss it to make it better? Forget it. He’s over it by then and wants to go back to what he was doing.

For his first birthday, my family came to our house for dinner. 4 kids in the house, my parents, my brother and his family. A touch of mayhem. I made pasta, salad, and bread for dinner. The older 3 kids ate in the living room while watching a movie and the grown ups and birthday boy were in the kitchen.  Quincy got the signature birthday cake: banana with chocolate frosting.

He must’ve been full from dinner because he was only interested in ripping apart the cake and throwing pieces on the floor. Then he wanted to go play with the older kids.

I love my baby, and I sometimes miss that really little baby stage (as rough as it was), but I’m also anxious to see what this next year will be like with him… it was my favorite time with Donovan. They’re so curious and learn so quickly, and they know nothing about back-talk because they’re still learning to talk; they’re sweet and cuddly; everything is new again in my eyes.

 

Birth Story

Contractions started.  It was Sunday night ~ the night I lost my mucus plug.  They were few and far between, but strong enough for me to stop what I was doing and wait till it passed.  Monday, September 30th, I was having them pretty regularly, about every 20 minutes or so. I remember being at the bank getting our checking account set up and also trying to coordinate things for the closing of our house the next day.  I had to stand because sitting during a contraction was killing my hips. I desperately wanted one last pedicure but knew I wouldn’t be able to fit it in (or sit for that long).  Too much “real life” things to cross off the list before this baby showed up.  I was emailing our new landlord coordinating a move in date.  All I really wanted to do was sleep. 

That evening they got closer together and I called my mom, who decided it was best for her to come to town now, at 7:30 pm rather than at 1 am when we would probably be rushing to the hospital.  We had prepped Donovan telling him Poopy was going to be coming out really soon, and if we had to go to the hospital, grandma would be taking him to school and picking him up.  

I laid on the couch (Kristin’s couch) and had back labor, hip labor, hurting labor, stabbing knives labor…. this baby hurt me waaaay more than Donovan ever did and I thought I wouldn’t survive.  I wanted to go to the hospital and get DRUGS!  I was like, “this baby ain’t playin’… let’s GO.”  But since my contractions were still 5-7 min apart, the doc said not to go until they were 4.  I packed a couple last minute things into my hospital bag and when I finally had a contraction that was 4 minutes from the last, I was like, we are OUT. My mom had been there for an hour or so already and Kristin was out of town at the time–probably for the best… I’m sure she would’ve been worried about me giving birth at her house or something….

We drove to the hospital, which was thankfully only about 5 minutes away, especially since I told Grant to run every single red light on the way.  It was 11:30 pm on a Monday and there was hardly any traffic.  He almost missed the turn to the freeway and I felt like we were in a movie or something.  I’m telling him to hurry up and get there and TURN!!!!!!! and you better run this light or I’ll seriously hurt you… 

We get to the hospital and he parks in what seems like the furthest lot from the front door.  I’m having contractions, needing to stop walking because I’m in so much pain. UGH!  Meanwhile, Grant is walking ahead into the hospital without me…..

He may have gone to get a wheelchair… I can’t remember.  Let’s say he did. That sounds best.  

Did I pre-register? Um, no. Sorry hospital.  Too busy getting the rest of my life set up.  But apparently that should have been on my list of things to TOTALLY do because then it took the nurse, oh, 30 minutes to get me checked in, repeatedly asking me what my social security number was, my medical history, etc etc etc. Then another nurse comes in and asks the same stuff. I said, “my medical history should all be in my chart that was sent over! Isn’t it in there?!?”  They didn’t seem to care. They wanted to hear it from my lips.  Extra infuriating.  “Can’t I get the epidural while you ask me these things? I need the epidural. GET. ME. THE. EPIDURAL.”

“We’ve paged the anesthesiologist. She is at home so is driving in. She’ll be here shortly.”

Why she wasn’t AT the hospital is beyond me.  So after having these killer contractions for 45 minutes at this hospital where no one but the MIA anesthesiologist could give me drugs, I finally got the shot… except it took her 2 tries. Whatever. I was pain free and loving it.

I had a c-section after 36 hrs of natural labor with Donovan, and I was determined to try a vaginal birth for this baby. The doctor on call knew of my plans and was working with me to try to make that happen.  They placed a heart monitor on my belly to listen to Poopy.  Everything sounded normal except during my contractions.  His heart rate plummeted to a scary slowness.  It almost sounded like the heart was stopping, it was so slow. Then it was “hmm, let me get the doctor in here to take a listen…” I knew that wasn’t good. So they hooked up an internal heart monitor to get a listen, maybe the monitor was falling off during the contractions or something.  Nope. The doctor said the cord was probably wrapped around his neck so they would have to go in and get him out.  So much for my vaginal birth plan. BUT, I was happy to have another c-section because hearing those heart beats so slow scared me so much.  I just thought: Do what you have to do. So they did.

My dad ended up coming to the hospital and was there as they wheeled me in for surgery.  I was at the hospital at 11:30 pm to check in and Quincy Everett Wilson was born at 3:04 am.  The cord was around his neck and so they whisked him away into that other room to get him cleaned up and hearing his first cries after what seemed like forever was the biggest relief. There’s my baby, I thought. They brought him to me and he looked nothing like me, unlike Donovan who was my twin from the get-go.  Quincy rested on my chest and was rooting immediately.  We introduced him to my dad, who was there with camera in hand, as always.  

He was a teeny 5 lbs, 12 oz.  I almost didn’t know what to think… such a teeny little super guy.  I was in love. They sent my placenta to the lab to see why he was so teeny, especially since he was born only 5 days early.  Tests came back negative. Everything was normal.  I blame the stress of the move, but only God knows why he is so small.

That morning, after we had been up all night, Grant had to go to the bank at 9 am to wire the money for the closing of our house.  New beginnings were abundant!

And Donovan came to see his new little brother.  Dad and big brother were both in their Superman t-shirts… very fitting, I think.

 

To say he was excited and happy to finally meet him was an understatement.  He loved visiting us in the hospital every day, always wanting to eat the hospital food in our room and going to get juice boxes from the fridge down the hall. My mom was a champ taking care of him that week; taking him to and from school, bringing him to the hospital, feeding him dinner every night, turning in his form for school pictures… all the big AND little things. Those days were crucial during this transition time in our lives and having her help was priceless.  After 4 days in the hospital, it was time to go home. And I believe we stayed one more night at Kristin’s then my family and friends met us at our storage unit and helped us schlep all of our stuff to our new rental house.

Seriously.  I don’t know what we would’ve done without every single person’s help.  I guess that’s what family and friends are for.  

Now, exactly 11 months later, we are settled.  Still in the rental house, but looking at areas we might want to buy a house in. I’m working full time at the University now too–a job came open right when I started looking that was exactly what I used to do at UVM.  I nailed the interview and started getting that much needed paycheck.  Quincy is still tiny (he’s 11 months old and can still fit into a 3 month sized onsie….) but he has personality galore.  

I love these little stinkers!

 

 

 

 

To Oregon from Vermont…The Journey Continues….

The Move: Part II

 

We left Vermont and the whole family was together again in Eugene. Staying with my friend, searching for a new daycare for Donovan and the baby, getting our bank account set up, looking for a place to live, waiting for our belongings to come, waiting for our cars. In my free time (tuh!) I was also trying to apply for unemployment from the state of Vermont. Turns out I couldn’t collect any because I voluntarily left my job ~ regardless of the circumstances. Vermont is one of, like, 3 states, that never changed it’s law that you could collect unemployment for situations where your spouse gets a job in another state. They said, “well, you didn’t HAVE to quit your job…”  Grrrrr….

While waiting for our movers to get out to Oregon, I kept in touch with the young man via text. He said our stuff was fine and on the move, but they broke down in Montana or some place and he was still worried about the validity of the company. Also the company that was supposed to move our cars had yet to do so. It had been weeks since we expected them to be delivered and we kept getting the run-around. They would say, “well, we have to find a driver willing to go up to Vermont (from Florida) to get your cars so we are waiting for that.” Apparently, his original confirmation of the cars getting picked up by someone in the area the day after we left was untrue. The whole thing was a disaster. On top of all that, Grant was working 24/7.  Donovan and I hardly ever saw him. Every September, the track/cross country team goes to Sunriver for a training camp.  It’s a good 3-3.5 hr drive from where we were.  I was stressed, lonely, trying to entertain Donovan AND quickly find him a new daycare so I didn’t have to entertain him all day, all while figuring out the other logistics and necessities of our lives.

I couldn’t stand it any more and packed up for the weekend and we went to Sunriver to see Grant. In between working, he would be with us and some semi-normalcy came back to our lives. Plus, I was getting huge.

 

 

A couple contractions here and there, but nothing to worry about.  Good.  I wanted to find a place to live before this baby showed up.  I was due Oct 6th, but Donovan came early so I suspected this one would too.

Ok ~ some good things happened while all the craziness was going down.  Fall = football season! We got to go to a game.  We sat with my mom and met up with my brother Colin and his wife Peggy.

It was Donovan’s first football game and he was excited. It took him a while to warm up to the whole loud atmosphere, but we had a good time.

 

Even Poopy had a good time 😉  I had my “It’s not a baby, it’s a Duck” shirt on. Haha!

 

Also enjoyed during these days? Lots of Tillamook Strawberry Ice Cream. The best ice cream on the planet. Poopy kept saying, “more mommy! MORE!”

 

In the mornings, Donovan and I would cuddle.  He would come into the room Grant and I were staying in (minus Grant those first few weeks) and sleep a little longer with me.  I loved those mornings.

 

 

I also found him the perfect daycare and enrolled him IMMEDIATELY. He quickly made friends, as expected, and settled in there nicely. The only problem: they don’t take babies. The youngest is 2 yrs old. So the search for a different daycare would be underway, but since I didn’t have a job to rush to, only paying for one daycare was the way we were going until January, which is when I would start the job search.

When we got word our STUFF WOULD SOON BE THERE we got a storage unit and I met the movers there who squeezed unloaded everything in. Me? Still pregnant. I spent the day ordering them around, mostly that mean Russian guy, who forced me to sign his paperwork, and then made several sexist comments about how bad women are at driving to his new helper. That’s right. New guy. My connection guy had been fired.  I felt awful for him. I hope he ended up with his paychecks! The new guy seemed nice and helped translate to the Russian.  Like when I said put the stuff for the kitchen and any baby items towards the front for easier access, he would tell him. 

All of this was taking place and we got a call for an offer on our house in Vermont! Hallelujah! The buyer wanted to pay cash, no inspection, close date October 1st (which meant no mortgage payment for us). The only problem was he wanted to pay $15k LESS than the asking price. Grrr. But cash? No inspection? Sell as is? Couldn’t pass it up.  We told our realtor to get on it! SOLD!

Then finally it happened. I found a great, but small, rental house. Fenced backyard, 3 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, kitchen with a covered patio. The whole house had just been gutted and redone. Brand new. And the landlord was sweet, and real, and understanding of our insane move and current need for a place PRONTO.  

Grant got back from his last road trip. It was a Saturday evening. Sunday we agreed to go look at the rental house one more time before signing a lease and to just hang out as a family for the day. We both agreed the place was good, big enough for us to live in until we found a place to buy, which would be in a year or two. Lease signed. That afternoon I was reading my “What to Expect When You’re Expecting” book to revamp my memory on signs of labor, delivery, etc.  A couple hours later, I lost my mucus plug. I texted my mom (naturally) and she said when that happened, she went into labor and had my brother 2 days later.

Poopy would soon be on his way……

 

 

Parting is Such Sweet Sorrow

The Move: Part I

Yes, it’s going to take more than one post to describe everything that happened in our move.  Let’s recap, shall we?

The beginning of August, Grant accepts the job offer at University of Oregon.  We are happy ~ I’m actually thrilled to be moving back to be close to my family and friends.  I always said if we ever moved back to the west coast, I’d love to live in Eugene.  I fell in love with the city while going to school there and the area has only improved in the years we were away. It’s a sports town, for sure, with college football as a crazy, insane, wonderful time of year and it being dubbed Track Town, USA. The Olympic trials have been held here and will continue to be until the year 2022 or something like that.  Nike was born here. The people are nice, the weather is perfect, and I love it.  But I was also devastated to be leaving our home of the last 7 years. I never thought we’d be in Vermont that long, but we really laid some roots in that place.  We had great jobs, wonderful friends, a house, had our first kid there, survived the freezing cold long winters and blistering hot and humid summers.  I cried.  I cried a lot. A part of us will always be in Vermont.  I was 8 months pregnant and we were getting ready to move across the country. In August. With a 3 yr old. 

I cried.

I was overwhelmed, pregnant, sad to be leaving, happy to be leaving, pregnant, overwhelmed, and pregnant. We quickly put our house on the market.  It was the beginning of August and Grant needed to be at work at U of O on August 25th.

I cried.

I called my mom.

I put my notice in at work, which was heartbreaking.  My coworkers, my boss, were all like family to me.  I kept telling them “I’ll never find a better place to work than here.”  And I’m serious.  When I was pregnant, even with my first son, if I looked like hell, my boss would say “you look tired, you should take a nap.” Shoooooot. You ain’t got to tell me twice. I’d turn the lights off and close my office door and lay my head down for 15 minutes. He let me take an extra 30 minutes at lunch every day so I could drive to Donovan’s daycare and nurse him before his afternoon nap. Seriously. Best. Boss. Eva.

My mom ended up booking a plane ticket to come out the week Grant left so she could help with last minute packing, and be with me and Donovan as we flew back to the Northwest.  We had the moving company all set up and I was working with another company to ship our cars.

Notice from the moving company: The truck broke down and instead of picking up our stuff on Tuesday, it will be Thursday or Friday.

Panic.

Our flight outta there was Saturday evening.  In one way it was a blessing because the house wasn’t NEARLY as packed as we planned. With all the updates we were doing to the house and yard to get it on the market and ready to sell, we only had evenings after work to pack up.  Turns out that takes longer when you have a 3 bedroom house than when you have a 2 bedroom apartment.  Lesson learned.  My mom was a packing Queen. Queen, I tell ya! At one point I went to finish packing up my closet and she came in to find me asleep on the bed.  It was hot, humid, Grant was already in Oregon, I was exhausted, so pregnant and swollen. I was actually quite useless at this point.  I also had to find an OB/GYN to deliver my baby in Eugene, a pediatrician for the baby, make sure Donovan saw his dr in Vermont one last time for his annual check up, find him a doctor in Eugene…. no one would be as good as Dr Land, the best of the best.

 

Donovan loved him, we loved him. I found an OB/GYN while still in Vermont and figured I’d get the rest of the stuff figured out when we actually got to Oregon. I also found a company to transport our cars to Eugene, and we got an update that the moving company would be there Saturday to load up our house. Things were feeling crazed (cutting it a little short, eh moving company?!) but like they were under control. 

Then the moving truck shows up. The truck had blacked out writing on the side and had 2 movers.  One was Russian and about 60 yrs old, the other guy was young (late 20s maybe), spoke perfect English. Everything about it looked as janky as it sounds. I’m like, “no one else is here to help you guys load all this stuff?”  Nope. The young man after looking at the garage full of boxes said, “this is it?” 

Um, no. Each room inside has boxes and there are some couches, etc. They went through and counted the boxes and then the Russian told me there were more boxes than originally expected so he had to add the cost to our total bill. He wanted me to sign this paper saying we would pay that extra cost and I refused, saying that’s not what we were told. He said he couldn’t load anything until we signed. So I call Grant in Oregon, cry on the phone, hoping not to set myself into labor, worrying that we are getting royally screwed.  Grant said to sign it and we would figure it all out later.  Fine.  The young man was very nice and apologetic and said he was hired via Craigslist for this company and he hadn’t even gotten a paycheck yet for his work and he’d been with them for over a month. We sort of bonded over our short time together and exchanged phone numbers because I told him I was so worried our stuff wouldn’t ever make it to us. He assured me it would and that he would text me along the way to let me know where they were. 

Awesome.

Since they were late getting to our house, my mom, Donovan, and I had to high-tail it to the airport so we didn’t miss our flight. We dropped our cars over to Rashad and Trish’s house so the car movers could come get them there, hustled back to our house where Rashad was there to be with the movers to make sure they put everything on that truck they were supposed to. Rashad later said they were moving stuff until like 11:00pm and woke up early the next morning to finish the job. Sheesh. We said good-bye to our friends and got on our flight to Oregon.

The next morning I woke up at my mom’s house, feeling so bizarre. Did that really just happen? Is this really happening? My mom drove us to Eugene, where we were going to be living with my friend Kristin until we found an apartment or house to rent. What we thought would be a week or two, turned out to be a month. Since our cars weren’t in Oregon yet, we were borrowing my uncle’s truck for a couple weeks, then using rental cars, then my dad’s car (do you see where this is going??) until our cars got delivered.  Day 2 of being in Eugene Donovan and I dropped Grant off at work…

 

Everything felt so strange. I still couldn’t believe this was happening and none of it felt real….

To be continued….

 

A Few Other Things Happened Before We Moved

Ok, so I got ahead of myself when I finished my post yesterday.  In the evening I was thinking about all the moving stuff I was going to talk about today, but then went, “Wait a minute, so many other things happened that summer before we actually picked up and left.”  

Is it a ploy to keep you coming back for more? Maybe. But I figure you’ll be doing that anyway…. at least I sincerely hope you do! I know when I read back over these posts I’ll want to remember all of this. So here I go….

First, I can’t believe I forgot to mention Bruno.  

 

*Swoon!*

After seeing him host and sing on SNL October of 2012, I made it a goal – Next time he tours, I wana go. His album came out (Unorthodox Jukebox) and I loved it. Then tickets went on sale; he wasn’t coming to Vermont, so I called my girlfriend Trish and asked if she would want to go with me to Boston to see him. Mini road trip! As the date came closer, turns out Grant would be out of town so Trish’s lovely husband Rashad agreed to watch Donovan while the two of us went down to the concert, stayed overnight, and drove back the next afternoon. Extra bonus? Trish’s job at the time required travel and she had a client outside of Boston. Our amenities got taken care of because the next day while I sat in a bookstore and read, she visited the client. Win win. And the concert? Uh-Mazing.  Wish I could’ve sprung for front row seats, but it was fun regardless!

Moonshine Jungle Tour! Woot! We were up dancing the entire time.  Oh ya, and I was 6 months pregnant.

And Trish was in the first few weeks of her pregnancy too! 2 pregnant mamas out on the loose in Boston! Good times.  

I have since seen Bruno again (this summer when he came to Eugene) and had 7th row seats. If you’re ever looking for a great concert to see, his is one of them.  And get as close as you can. He won’t disappoint!

Lots of family time together, enjoying our last few months as a family of 3 ~ a Vermont Lakemonsters baseball game (we had to high-tail it outta there as soon as dusk set in because the mosquitoes would eat us alive).

 

Grant and Donovan had their first experience picking strawberries. They had fun but I was miserable because it was so humid that day. I just wanted to sit my butt in front of the a.c. But mmmmmm fresh strawberries!

Cuddle time immediately following.

Visiting Grant while he worked youth soccer camp.

4th of July with Trish, Rashad, and Simone.  Naturally.

 

 

Burgers, pasta salad, corn on the cob. The essentials of summer time.

Those two… 

And soon Grant would have 2 boys on his lap.  The image of that sight-to-come made me feel blessed that we were having another boy. Especially getting pregnant so quickly after the miscarriage.  I was learning to truly count my blessings.

That summer, right after Memorial Day weekend, I got the itch to get outta town.  It seemed everyone had gone somewhere for the holiday weekend and we did nothing. I always wanted to see the Atlantic ocean and a co-worker told me there was a little town 3.5 hrs away from us ~ York, Maine.

Since it wasn’t the height of the summer tourist season we got a great deal on a hotel room right on the beach for 2 nights. The weather was hot, the water was warm (compared to the frigid Pacific waters of Oregon), and we played on the beach all day.

Donovan loved running from the waves. And I loved that in the “backyard” of our hotel, we had these lounge chairs and Donovan took like a 3 hour nap. The waves of the ocean, the salty warm air… a slice of heaven.

 

And when you go to Maine, you have to have the lobster, right?

It was the perfect weekend. Only downside? You can’t make a fire on the beach to roast hot dogs or marshmellows! So our plan of making hot dogs for lunch one day resulted in us getting sandwiches at a deli instead. Not allowed to make a fire on the beach? Nonsense. And another reason I missed the west coast. Ha!

Oh! And my boss got married that summer! It was blazing hot and the wedding was outside at their house with a view of the mountains. It was gorgeous, but everyone was a sweaty mess (except the bride, of course, she looked flawless). Me and Donovan danced our butts off and celebrated those two crazy kids finally tying the knot.

One weekend Donovan played in “this is what I wana wear despite it being over 80* outside…”

He also sang in the choir at church. This mama was especially proud! He couldn’t have been cuter!

 

We had a great summer.  The last one where it was just the three of us.  Donovan was super excited to be a big brother. He wished for a baby brother and told us so even before we knew the sex of the baby.  Also, when we asked what we should call the baby, he said, “Poopy.”

WUT……….??

Alright!  So that’s what we did.  Every time we talked about the baby, it was “Poopy is kicking; wana feel?” or “When Poopy is born, you are going to be the best big brother.” We also made sure to include the conversation of, “When Poopy is born, he is going to get a new name.  Just like when you were in mommy’s belly, we called you Jebediah, but once you came out, we called you Donovan.  So Poopy will be called something else when he comes out.”  HAD to make sure we had that conversation! 

Ok, the great move blog post is tomorrow.  See you then!

 

Coming Back… For Real, This Time.

Ok, so forever has passed, and the last time I was here I said I was going to be blogging again. Then…. life happened. The other day I visited my blog and realized (again) how great it is to have this as a place to jot down my thoughts, what’s going on in my life, what my kids are up to, etc.  So for the next few days, weeks, however long it takes, I’m going to update you lovely readers as to what my insane life has been full of. 

Starting today.

The 2 most important things: 1) Our second son, Quincy, was born.  2) We moved from Vermont back to Oregon. In the fall of 2012, I became pregnant.  Just before Halloween, I had my first doctor’s appointment. No heartbeat. My heart sank. The embryo didn’t grow past the 5 week mark, which the doctor said could have been because the chromosomes didn’t match up correctly, and instead of producing a baby with birth defects, it just ceased to continue growing. A blessing in disguise? Maybe. But I was heartbroken.  My body “never realized” it stopped growing so I had to have a DNC, which I chose rather than to wait for my body to discard the empty sac.  Because, honestly, who knew how long that would be?  DNC = worst experience in my life ever.  Even the Valium they prescribed to calm me didn’t make the experience any more tolerable.  After a couple months of mourning and trying to get back into the swing of life, I was ready to try again.

Boom. Pregnant.

First appointment we got to hear that glorious “wocka wocka wocka” sound of the heartbeat on the ultrasound. Then 4 weeks later our little jelly bean looking baby LOOKED like a real baby! Arms, legs, fingers, toes. Amazing. And to add to our happiness, my parents were both in town to celebrate Donovan’s and my birthday. I remember picking my mom up at the airport and she took one look at me and said, “are you pregnant?” Guess my baggy hoodie sweatshirt didn’t cover up much. My stomach had already popped.

12 weeks!

I love being pregnant, can I just say?  Things rounded out at 16 weeks:

Then we got to find out the sex of the baby. A must, in my opinion. Having Donovan, who is completely full of energy all the time ~ such a boy.  And plus, we were hoping for a girl. Teehee! The day came to find out:

Boy. ALL BOY. No mistaking it. Yup. Penis (in that ultrasound pic, the word “boy!” is written to the left of the umbilical cord ~ Quincy in this picture is basically sitting spread eagle). Grant’s first words out of his mouth were, “you have to be f***ing kidding me…” I just laughed because… of course it’s another boy.  Of course!  The next few months we were trying to wrap our brains around having another Donovan around and what our lives would be like.  Phew.  It made us exhausted. And yes, honestly, I was totally bummed it wasn’t a girl.  I focused on the good points of having another boy around: We’ve done boy before… we know about boys. With as much energy as Donovan had, boys really are pretty simple and easy; also, we have only boy clothes, so the kid was set. Now we had to come up with a name.  We had it down to Quincy and Maxwell. The good thing about Quincy was that it wasn’t as common, and Maxwell we were afraid people would call him Max.  Grant also liked the name Everett, so we toyed with all 3 names: Quincy Maxwell Wilson, Maxwell Everett Wilson, Everette Maxwell Wilson… but Quincy was the one that stood out the most for us.

Fast forward to May 2013. Grant gets a job interview at Linfield College, which is located in McMinnville, Oregon. It seemed like the perfect position for him and we were excited at the possibility.  And since his boss’ boss was also my boss, (Jon), he would be losing 2 staff members and I like to think most notably, me, being his assistant. But Grant didn’t get the job. So we continued on until 8 weeks later, a job at the University of Oregon was open.  Grant jumped on it.  There were still staff there from almost 10 yrs ago when he was a grad student, and of course, my girlfriends were still in Eugene and Salem, as well as my family.  Having 2 kids, the support of family and friends is so huge, especially with a husband who travels all the time for work. Grant interviewed and got the job.  Only problem: We had a house to put on the market and I was 8 months pregnant.  Perfect time to move across the country, eh?  I put my notice in at work; cried (I was sad to leave my awesome job and friends, and first house); packed at night; spent as much time with our friends as possible; felt guilty for separating these two:

Friends since the beginning.  They are like brother and sister. And Trish and Rashad became our life savers as our moving escapades grew….

That story to come tomorrow.  Stay tuned. 

 

Quick friends

Donovan is always so quick to make friends wherever he goes.

“Hey guys. What are you doing? What’s your name? I’m Donovan!” And those boys were equally nice to let him play with them.

Love my little man.

 

I’m coming back!

Wow. I haven’t blogged since August and I’m realizing how much I miss it, and how much has happened since then.

I’m going to be coming back to do a little catch up with you fine folks, but today is just going to be a few pictures— gotta ease back into it, you know what I mean?

 

It starts early

This morning, Grant went to wake up Donovan.  He turned on the hall light, opened his door and gently rubbed his back.  Donovan woke up and said, “Turn the light off.”  So Grant did.  Then he said, “Close the door.”  Grant closed the door.

Already, the kid is revolting against getting up in the morning.

Grant went back in after letting him lay there another 2 minutes and told him it was time to get up.  After brushing his teeth, he said, “I don’t wana go to school today.”

Dude, you’re 2.  Just wait till you have homework! Then, you can complain about not wanting to go to school.

Instead of telling him this, I just said, “You need to go to school today and tomorrow, then on Friday you get to go to work with daddy.”  (luckily school is closed on Friday anyway).  And the prospect of going to work with daddy??  He was pumped for the day.

Not wanting to get out of bed or go to school?  What is he? 14?

 

Crossroads

I think I’ve been avoiding my blog.  Not because I have nothing to say, but because I’m not sure what to say.  I could write about our trip in May to Arkansas (Grant’s sister, Phylicia, graduated college), the fun things we did on the weekend (bbq’s, hanging with friends), how I mastered making risotto (YUM), or how I made some awesome homemade bubbles. What a great time I had while my mom was out visiting (again!! yay!)  But I haven’t felt like doing that, and I think I’ve realized why.

There are lots of things I want to be doing.  Things I’ve been craving:

*Music. Singing. More importantly, being *gasp!* PAID to sing. Recording.

*Having another baby.

*Spending solo time with Grant.

*Spending solo time with friends.

*Being more of a morning person so I can get my butt out of bed earlier to workout longer.

*Wanting to workout.

These are the things that come to my mind immediately.  I’m sure there are more; there are things I’d like to do, but I’m not obsessing over it (being part of a book club again, traveling to visit friends/family, re-paint almost every room in our house).

The problem with my list of cravings is I see it as near impossible to do it all, especially simultaneously.  With a 2 yr old, husband, and house to take care of.  I want it all.  Is that too much to ask for?  Is it impossible or am I delusional in thinking that it is?

I need to at least try, right?  ‘Cause I don’t wana say that I never did.

So, in a nutshell, that’s where I am.  Figuring stuff out.  And I think that’s why you haven’t heard from me. When I feel like I have something to report on, I will.  Otherwise, it’ll be business as usual with us.  And our cute little man, Donovan  🙂