Precious Moments Installment 1

It hasn't been easy in the last week since Kevin went back home, but we are making do. However, don't ask me about the change in Jameson's sleep habits since his dad left. Especially during the more trying of times, I like to take a few minutes and think of the precious moments of the day. So here are some of my precious moments over the past few days.

Precious moment #1 Thursday evening we came home from our playgroup, ate dinner and I was putting him to bed, cuddling with him in my bed to help him fall asleep. He was nearly asleep when he got the hiccups. At first we ignored it, but after 5 minutes of HUGE hiccups I heard him giggle, which made me giggle, and that led to us both giggling after every hiccup. It took a while to settle down, but it was worth it, because even in that moment I thought to myself, "this is a moment I want to remember: getting the giggles with my 12-month-old."


Precious Moment #2 Jameson is very into putting stuff on. For example he wants to put socks and shoes on his feet or my feet. The past few days he has been picking up my sweaters and putting them on his shoulders and occasionally he even makes it over his head. He is very proud of himself when he does this. On Saturday, he was "helping" me fold laundry. He took a pair of my undies and quickly put them over his head. He was really happy that he could do it, and that he made me laugh, so he started dancing with my underwear hanging around his neck. Really, it doesn't get more precious then that.
Precious Moment #3 The boy loves climbing into stuff. He found a new place to climb into on Saturday, and I got a picture.

Precious Moment #4 He loves giving his stuffed animals hugs and kisses. Sorry the pic is blurry, he was moving side-to-side in a big bear hug. If only I had the setting on video!


Precious Moment #5 He is standing all by himself with a book in his hand. The only times he stands or takes a few steps by himself are when he has stuff in his hands. I hadn't gotten it on film, so here ya go, he stands. Kinda.

Six Weeks and counting

Jameo "hanging out" with his Daddy.

On Saturday Kevin left for Denver. The spring quarter began yesterday and he teaches, so he packed up and headed back home. This is by far the hardest part of the year for us, since adding a child it has gotten way harder. Kevin and I are lucky because we get the chance to spend all day with Jameson, unfortunately this has made parting that much more difficult. Jameson was asleep at 4:30 in the morning the day Kevin left, but as soon as he woke up he went looking for him, in bed, in his office, the family room, the bathroom and all day he continued his little searches peppering his crawling with "Da, Da-dee, Dada." It's pretty much all he says, and well, apparently his dad is REALLY cool, because he never ever says Momma, but Dada is what he says for everything. On top of Kevin leaving, he has three monster teeth coming in: two "eye" teeth on top and one "eye" tooth on the bottom so it hasn't helped his sleep at all, which in turn is making him a lot more upset during his waking hours.

Today when he decided napping was for the weak, he was looking at me saying (between making an elephant noise, don't ask me its new, and I found it utterly hilarious, but I couldn't laugh as I was trying to get him to go to sleep) he was saying to me: "Da, dada, da da da da da, da-dee." However, the inflection in his tone really said: "Dad wouldn't be making me sleep right now, Daddy would be playing with me. By the way, where is Dad? Haven't seen Daddy around in a few days. The dogs warned me of this, that you and Dad just disappear and they have no clue if you are ever coming back, I had begun to think those dogs were crazy, but now I am inclined to believe them. I better not fall asleep, what if you disappear too? Did I mention that Dad wouldn't make me take a nap?"

On Sunday we spoke on the phone to Kevin, and Jameson lit up. He was so excited, he totally recognized his voice and was just thrilled. Ever since then he picks up the phone ten times a day and says " 'i Da!" (hi dad) and then has a very funny "conversation" because he laughs a lot "Kevin style" throws his head back and chuckles. I have enjoyed watching my little boy have these conversations where he nods his head, laughs and talks a lot about "Da." Right before I took the video below, he was having the longest most engaging conversation, and it made me get the camera, I tried to get him to do it again to no avail. I did get a snippet of it though.


Enjoy the week. I am working on my Istanbul posts, overall, it was an AMAZING city. I loved it.

I didn't disappear, at least not for good

I apologize for the lack of posts recently. I actually have a ton of blog fodder but my computer is dying a slow death. She has been dropped a number of times which has created a problem at the power source. In order for my girl to charge, I have to hold in the power cord "just so." My index and middle fingers are numbed and burned from trying to hold it in the exact position. If you don't believe me ask Kevin. It is difficult enough trying to type one-handed and hold the power cord AND write interesting tidbits, and I can't forget to mention the crazy 12-month-old. Until I manage to get updated I will post some pics.
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Here is a quick preview of our awesome trip to Istanbul.

Birthday Boy

He wasn't too sure of the cupcakes, it looked entirely too sugary for us to actually allow him to eat it. He kept looking at us for affirmation, which made us laugh.


Apparently he doesn't really like being the center of attention, unless its the center of mom and dad's attention. I am probably a very mean mom for posting this video, but I think its cute, and this is how he acts whenever our students come over and pay too much attention to him. He hasn't learned that they are laughing with him and not at him. He is a sensitive soul. Hopefully its just a phase.

One year ago..

The last photo of me pregnant taken February 26th

Well, it was leap year so that throws it off a bit, but on this Saturday one year ago I began my two day labor of love.
Nearly two weeks beyond the latest of the three due dates I was given, I was near my breaking point. I had already called my midwives and broken down sobbing, I wanted to have this baby and I wanted my husband to be with me, if I had to be induced, c-sectioned, I wanted him by my side. It goes to show that when we plan, life has a way of intervening to change things up. We truly thought that our son would be born somewhere between February 11th-February 22nd. Kevin would be with me for a couple weeks post-delivery and then he had to go wrap things up in Vienna. His plan was to leave that first weekend in March, and here we were on the 28th of February and no baby in sight. I was beside myself. I had fully prepared to have the baby without him if Jameson decided to make an early entrance, but we had been sitting on our expanding-butts for three weeks. My midwife, Adele, said that she would call the hospital to see if they would schedule me for an induction the following day, February 29th. I just laughed through my tears, thinking to myself, of course this baby would be born on the 29th.

She called back an hour later saying they wanted me to be two weeks post due date which wouldn't be until March 04th, but had I tried accupuncture? No, but I had tried everything else, so I called up the birth center to get a recommendation and promptly called to make an appointment. They were amazing and told me to just come in and they would fit me in. The doctor was wonderful and warm, and his name was Dr. Zhou. He was an MD and a doctor of traditional Chinese Medicine. He looked at me and said, "Yes, the baby is very big and ready to come out, let's see what we can do."

He was a bit worried since my last ultrasound had been awhile ago. He wanted to make sure there wasn't a medical reason I hadn't delivered. He performed some light accupuncture that did start some soft contractions, but I scheduled an appointment for the next day too. After the "all clear" on the ultra sound and the tech said something to the effect of he is just comfortable in there, but he looks great. I headed back to the accupuncturist. This time he said to me, "OK, now I give you accupuncture like a strong chinese woman. This is a big baby, maybe 8 pounds 4 oz, time to come out Jameson." (He got the 4 oz right...but he was three pounds off). I received the accupuncture at noon on Saturday (March 1st) and leaving the office holding Kevin's hand I could feel the crazy energy running through my body, down my legs. It was going in the right direction, we wanted the energy moving downwards. When Dr. Zhou told me that over 80% of his patients who get accupuncture to induce labor go into labor that night I was skeptical, but by the time I left his office I knew that I would go into labor that night.

By 6pm I was having regular contractions that were growing stronger by the hour. At 11:oopm, Kevin and I went on a walk. It was a cold night, but perfectly clear. The energy was still moving through my legs, and I can't describe the feeling exactly, but it was like a hot, tingly feeling. I went to bed hoping and praying that these contractions wouldn't go away as they had in the past when I went to bed.

Exile Part Zwei

Wow, time has gone much too quickly, and I realized I had yet to post the conclusion of our exile trip to Zagreb, Croatia. Unfortunately, it feels like a long time ago, and my attention is focused on our next trip to Istanbul, Turkey with the students, so I will make this post quick.
After walking around touring the inner city for the afternoon, we found a very cute coffee shop with some amazing home-baked goodness, including doughnuts.

A little aside on the doughnuts, this time of year before Lent is called faschingzeit (fasching "carnival" time). In Vienna, there is a ball somewhere nearly every night, but another exciting part of fasching is "Krapfenzeit" or "doughnut time." Kevin and I love these homemade goodies filled with a yummy vanilla cream or an apricot marmelade. We do our best to out-eat each other in regards to the krapfen, eating two or three on a good day with fresh brewed coffee. My favorite thing to do is get one fresh out of the fryer down at the EisTraüm (outdoor ice arena) and choose my filling and whether I want it powdered....mmmmm. The whole purpose of this yummy krapfen, is so the good Catholics have a sweet, easy thing to give up for Lent because after Ash Wednesday the krapfen nearly disappear until next year. (Kind of defeats the purpose, no?) I could dedicate a whole post to the Krapfen. Jameson now loves krapfen, and I will have a fun time explaining to folks back home if one of his first words is "krapfen!"

Taking a water break before naptime

And my new favorite shirt of his: Dad & Mum=ME (No denying that).

After our afternoon coffee and krapfen we walked back to the hotel and decided to incorporate an afternoon nap into our schedule. (The beauty of exile). After scouring the internet for a good restaurant on travel websites (not much info on Zagreb)we finally decided on one.
It got great write-ups and was relatively near the inner city, in an area that we were now familiar. The restaurant was called Ivica i Marica, and supposedly it was moderately priced, not too fancy, but great food. We walked in and it was MUCH nicer than we anticipated, and we looked at each other and our incredibly active 11-month-old son, and shrugged our shoulders. We were hungry, so we made peace with the idea that we might be "those people." When we arrived there were three other tables filled in our area, but no one very close to us. The waiter was great he brought us a cool high chair, that Jameson sat in for a bit while I tried to entertain him with his cup or spoon. We perused the menu and ultimately ordered on recommendation of the waiter for the regional specialties. Sometimes that can be a little dangerous, but the description of the food sounded amazing, so I wasn't worried. By the time our drinks arrived Jameson was getting antsy, and when he gets antsy, he is wiggly and talkative. I was doing everything I knew how to do to keep him from disrupting everyone's dinner, pulling out all the tricks. Right before our food arrived, the band that had been having drinks while they waited for other musicians to arrive began to play. The timing was amazing and my son sat open-mouth entranced by the beautiful stringed instruments. All through dinner he sat and watched and clapped and bopped his head. We went from being the scorn of the restaurant to all the other diners laughing and smiling at our boy. Phew! Disaster averted, this time. Oh and, in case you are wondering dinner was fantastic, I wish I had a pic, but I was too busy trying to keep Jameson entertained. The video below shows just a bit of Jameson dancing to the music. I look so frazzled, because I was frazzled!


The next day was more of the same, walking around, enjoying the weather, sun, food, oh, and how much nicer this city was than Prague.
We had requested a late check-out, so we went back to the hotel to put Jameson down for a nap before our 5.5 hour train ride home then headed to the train station. We find our train, and are surprised to find see that it goes through Hungary, instead of Slovenia, and there is no dining car and only "Big room seats" (sorry I literally translated that from german, not sure how one would describe it in English, open car?) rather than our little room we had on our ride there. The seats were not very comfortable, and my nearly year-old broken tailbone was definitely pretty sore. Jameson was exhausted but wouldn't sleep, and the arms between our chairs couldn't move so Jameson had no where to be except on my lap or in the carrier. Finally, at around 8pm he fell asleep exhausted. The train seemed to have some sort of mechanical issue because we were stopped in the middle of no where for an hour and a half. We made the best of it, and were all very excited to arrive home in Vienna before the U-bahn closed for the night.
The Longest, Slowest train ride home

Talking on the Phone

When I see this photo I see a baby Kevin

I am still writing the 2nd half of our Croatia post, sorry I lost steam, but in the meantime here is a fun video. For whatever reason Jameson was in an incredibly talkative mood while on the phone last night with my mom, his Oma last night. I dont think she knows I got a video, so surprise Mom! She was on speaker, and you can just ignore my obnoxious voice at the end. I think he is learning how the phone "works." In any case I got a short video, and it makes me laugh when I see it. I see a recurring theme with my son, he makes me laugh, a lot.