Orders: Check, Port call: Check, Tickets: Check-Check-Check….31 days and counting

Our time in Okinawa is coming to an end!! Sad yes, the feelings are bittersweet. Knowing that we’ll have to say “so long” to some great friends is sad, but a necessary evil in the life of the Military family. Now we are trying to experience as much of the island and the Okinawan culture that we can. Unfortunately there are things we missed, like Whale watching, Dragon Boat races, Cherry Blossom Festival, and the Lily festival to name a few. A lot of it is because I was too scared to go off base with Richard by myself when he was still little. But what’s done is done there is no going back.

Now that we’re getting things taken care of we’ve tried going out a bit more, and I’ve noticed the one thing that I’ve always been nervous about; Japanese people rushing to see Richard. And it usually happens when it’s just Jason with Richard. The minute that I walk out of the store that I was in within a minute of me being there the girls leave. I said something to Jason about it and he said it was a territory thing, they didn’t want to “invade” what was mine. The constant feeling of being watched is unnerving and when I’m out and about with Richard I really feel it. I’m kind of glad Richard isn’t a good walker yet because I’m able to keep him in the stroller rather than him getting away from me in a crowd. And as a preemptive strike for the inevitable I’ve already purchased a “leash” for him. Luckily we’ll be back in the states, but I don’t ever want to be worried about someone snatching up my baby and running off with him. There are too many sicko’s out there and if my having my child on a “leash” makes me a “bad parent” to some people, well then they need to take a look in the mirror and stop being judgmental.

Anyway off that tangent and on to what this entry is really about! Our next destination is Camp Lejeune, Jacksonville North Carolina. We’ll be within four hours (two different directions) from some of my family. And we’ll be reunited with some really good friends of ours that we graduated High school with. I can’t wait to see Charlie and Sarah Auge again and see how their Kayo has grown! Well with only 31 days left on island (One MONTH!! HOLY COW) we’re going to be busy cleaning sorting and last bit of exploring!! Pictures of the ending of our adventure to follow.

Time is moving too quickly!

 I am surprised that I haven’t had someone get after me about the fact I haven’t written a blog!! Life has been so busy… Beginning of June, Jason came home. What an amazing, long, and nerve wracking day it was!! I was planning on having one of Jason’s buddies hold Richard while I got the hug first, but when it came down to it I thought it was better if he held the sign that I made above our heads, and made Jason hug both of us. We were a little worried about how Richard would respond to Jason, but I don’t think I could have asked for a better welcome. Once Richard heard Jason’s voice his little face lit up, and he smiled as if he were saying “Hey I know you!” I managed to get a really sweet woman/photographer to take our homecoming pictures and I am so happy I did.

Then two weeks later Richard and I flew back to the states by ourselves to be home for my best friend’s wedding. I’ve been friends with Maggie Bloomgren since 9^th grade, and she’s been like a sister and someone that I could be myself with. There was no way I could in good conscience miss what would be the biggest day of her life. Especially when her wedding day just happened to be on mine and Jay’s 5^th wedding anniversary. Unfortunately because of a few of Jason’s higher ups he was unable to join us, and followed on his own the Monday after the wedding.

 Which we then spent the next two weeks all together as a family, with our families. Every day we were doing something different, seeing people and going places. We were glad that we were going to have some time back on Okinawa before he had to go back to work because we were both very tired. We went to the Erie Zoo with my sister, her husband and boys. As well as my father in law, because he just wanted to spend more time with Jason and his grandson. And on July 1^st we celebrated Richard’s turning one a month early, because I felt it was something important for our family to share with us.

While we were home we were blessed to watch a friendship blossom between Richard and his cousin Coltin. When “together” they couldn’t be more than 5 feet apart otherwise they’d start yelling. They shared their food, sippy cups and toys. I believe it made us all happy that they became such good little buddies. And it was such a precious site to see.

Needless to say we came home to Okinawa July 10^th. We managed to get our internal clocks reset, and then some just “us” family time. Thanks to Coltin one week after we got home Richard became fully mobile. Meaning no more crawling!!! And into EVERYTHING!!! I swear this child is as curious as the day is long, and I’m constantly jumping to get him out of trouble or to sooth away any bumps that happened because he was walking around like what we call “A drunken sailor”.

On July 28^th I had my very first consultant party, Tupperware!! I decided I really needed to get some cereal storage containers, and I knew the best I could find would be Tupperware. Plus I was curious what they had on sale at the time, and I think I managed to get some pretty nice stuff J Then the following week on August 4^th my Okinawa friends and family helped us to celebrate Richard’s actual birthday.

I can honestly say that this past year has had its rough spots. I remember moments when Richard would start crying and because of how I was feeling depressed, lonely, tired and any negative feeling you could imagine, I sat with him holding him crying too. I can honestly admit I would have preferred to be back in the states with the family, but because there are no Doctors in the area that are approved by Tricare (the insurance) I knew I had to stay on Okinawa for Richard’s appointments.  In the end I have to say I have never been so happy as I am now. This little boy has brought so much joy to our lives, that I am so deeply grateful to God for our precious gift.

Now that my hormones have calmed down..

So my mom got after me about my last post. And I believe that I do need to clarify one thing, at the time I wrote the blog my post partum depression, and just depression over all was hitting me. No it does not excuse the non-acknowledgement of the good time that Richard and I had while we were at home. It does however explain that the "ruff" and "bad" things were on my mind and bothering me. Its nice to not have the black cloud of depression hanging over my head. I've been enjoying Richard more and I've put more effort into my loosing the baby weight. And now I'm getting anxious about Jason coming home, and I think that has lifted my spirits a lot. But in the end we did have a good time while home, visiting with family and friends.

Now for whats been going on lately. Right now Richard is sick. He caught a upper respiratory virus and I've had to keep him home with me all this week so that he didn't get any other babies at the CDC sick too. He's trying to work very hard on this walking thing.He is constantly pulling himself up on things and trying to get into things. I've concluded that we have a lot of stuff that we don't need. I keep trying to down-size on the amount of stuff we have, but the piles only seem to get slightly smaller rather than significantly.

The last couple of weeks I did take Richard out and around American Village to find a Birthday Present for Xander. At one place I had a bunch of the store clerks gather around and oo and ahh over how cute Richard is. I've even had baggers at the base grocery store play with him to see if they couldn't make him smile while I was checking out. The thing that made me chuckle recently was I was sitting at the pharmacy in the hospital waiting for our number to be called and I had a Marine Staff Sgt sit down next to me and randomly start playing with Richard and getting him to smile and make noises at him. It was like "you want to play with my child, sure thing!"

Next Monday we have Richard's 9 month baby well check up. I'm excited to see how much he's grown. He's gotten so big since Jason left, but I'm glad that through the pictures that I send and post on Facebook, Jason has been able to see him grow :)

Long Over due update.

I apologize for the over due update. In December Richard and I made the long exhausting trip from Okinawa to Buffalo NY to spend Christmas and New Years with family rather than being alone on the island. It took two weeks for Richard to become acclimated to the time change. And about the time we left he had decided that he was done breast feeding and needed to start having formula instead. I blame it on my stopping pumping and then the stress of dealing with some of the drama that I had to endure with when I went home. The whole experience proved the old saying "You can't go home again." I'd prefer not to go into detail about the drama, so please don't ask. The ones that it involved know about it and that's all that really matters. Lets just say I was relieved to get back to my own home and among my own stuff.
Since then Richard and I have been just doing our daily errands. I helped decorate cupcakes for a friends baby shower that she had right before she gave birth to her second baby girl. But other than that we haven't been doing much. I was able to get Richard signed in to the CDC: Child Development Center. And normally he goes twice a week for about four hours each time so that I can have some "mommy time". Unfortunately his little internal schedule got messed up so this week he is home with me while I try and correct this situation. He's doing great so far, poor thing gets bored to tears (literally) sometimes but we get through it.
I had to take him to the Dr, last week because I was afraid that he had a sinus infection. Turns out he just had a cold. However at seven and a half months Richard measured to be 28 inches and a whopping 21 pounds! He's such a heavy little chunkier. And he's started crawling now. He does a combination of the military crawl and up on his knees. He even gets into the position where it looks like he's doing planks or about to do a push up and he tries to crawl that way.
But in all honesty nothing is going on. We are still waiting to hear from housing on when we will be moved to the new building. They are scheduled to finish it at the end of April now.  So in about a month and a half we should be moved into our new apartment. Until then we just hang out in our house, with me trying to clean things because the mess gets on my nerves. This Saturday Richard and I are participating in the March of Dimes walk. But other than that its a pretty lonely existence that we have. Well Richard is screaming about something so I need to go. I'll update when something actually happens. Just know that no news is good news for the moment.

Thoughts...

So the other day when I looked at a calendar I realized that around this time last year I had an OBGYN Dr. tell me, that I would probably never be able to get pregnant on my own; Over the phone no less.  I hit an all-time emotional low, and after a few weeks felt like God was telling me to snap out of it and start taking care of myself and focus on my husband. And now when I think back to then, I give the baby that “probably never would be” an extra squeeze and kiss, then continue to praise God for his blessings.  Because I stopped worrying about other people so much and worrying about my husband and truly making more of an effort to be an “obedient/honorable” wife, I feel that our relationship is stronger and better than it has ever been. We laugh and marvel that we’ve been “together” for eleven years now and we’re still as crazy about one another as we were back in high school. We used to dream about what life would be like if we ever had a baby, and now we get to live it!! I remembered one day a dream Jason told me he had way back then about me picking our sleeping baby up off his chest, at the precise moment I was picking Baby Richard up from him while the two of them were passed out sleeping. J Just goes to show that Dreams really do come true.

Baby Richard, is now almost three months old. At his two month check-up on September 29^th he weighed 12.8 pounds, and was 22.83 inches. Recently when I took him into the Dr. because he has some red spots/sores in his little fat rolls between his legs, he weighed 14.85 pounds and was 23.75 inches long! He’s been sleeping for about ten and a half hours each night, which has allowed me to get some much needed sleep.

I have been very hesitant to take him off base to go for walks or shopping, mainly because he still has some pretty baby blue eyes. I keep hoping they change colors to look more like Jason’s eyes but at the same time I secretly hope that they stay their pretty blue. When I go home for Christmas I really want to get a picture of my dad with his three blue eyed grandsons. So my fingers are crossed that his eyes will at least stay blue until he gets to go to the states and meet all the family.

For the time being Jason and I are enjoying our time together. And I love watching him with Richard. I can honestly say I don’t think I’m ready for Jason to leave us again so soon, but I will endeavor to handle the upcoming separation no matter what.

One month !!!

I can't believe how time is moving so fast. My sweet little baby is one month old already!! Our little Jelly Bean is turning into such a little sweetheart. In the morning he loves to snuggle after he has his "breakfast", but then he is happiest when he's snuggling with me anyways. He snorts like a little pig when he's eating. I laugh every time because its so silly and cute. We are starting to work on learning that "I don't need mommy to hold me while I go to sleep".. So far I think its going pretty good, because he's been going down for naps by himself better. As long as he has his Bink he's happy. When ever we leave the house at first he screams at me for putting him in his car seat, but then after a couple minutes of "moving" to get to the van he calms down and will eventually fall asleep. Then he stays asleep for anywhere between 3 and 4 hours. Once in a while he'll be out for 5 hours but I try not to let that happen to often.
I am so glad that he sleeps while we're out.. mainly because that means his pretty blue jean colored eyes are shut. Reason why, the Japanese LOVE blue eyed babies. They will get in children's faces to see if they have blue eyes if its not obvious. I've even seen them come up to blond haired blue eyed babies and kiss them on the mouth without first speaking to the parents. I know it bothered that babies mother, heck it made me uncomfortable and I was just meeting the girl for the first time!! Because the light colored hair and blue eyes is so uncommon for the Japanese to "see" they love seeing babies with any "not dark" haired baby or a baby with eyes that aren't brown. (Robin be glad you cant' come out here with both your boys.. Xander would probably get completely freaked out by the attention he would get with his pretty eyes.)
I know that eventually I'll have to deal with locals getting in his face to see what color his eyes are. And more than likely I'll have them ask to take pictures with him (so they have proof they were with a blue eyed baby). I'm not going to lie, I'm a little nervous about it.. but I know that when the time comes and we have to deal with it, I'll handle it somehow. In the meantime I'll be flooding Facebook with pictures of our little man, so his daddy can "watch" him grow from afar. Thankfully soon he'll be home from this training deployment he's on. But once he goes to Afghanistan there should at least be one picture posted a day, so Jason can see how Richard is spending his days :)

At 12:25 am on August 1, 2011.....

God blessed both me and my husband with this beautiful and amazing baby boy.

Richard Everett Jones.

And thanks to the good ole' Marine Corps in combination with 9th ESB, starting week 2 after his birth I started to learn what it was like to be a "single mother". Jason had to go to the rifle range, so that left me at home with a new born baby by myself. To be honest I was scared to death, and I still sort of am. But thanks to "time" and advice from my friends who are all experienced mommies I'm getting the hang of it. My mom and dad came to Japan, and lucky for us Jason wasn't sent on his training deployment until two days after they got here; so they were able to spend some time with him.

And now baby Richard and I just "hang out" until Jason returns from the desert. Thankfully God blessed me with friends who are all willing to come over and spend time with the both of us to give me a break as well as conversation with an adult. I'll admit its hard to do this on my own without Jason, and I can't wait for him to come home. It will be nice to be a "complete" family once again.  Tomorrow Richard will be one month old, I'm sad that Jason isn't here to watch our son grow. But one day this being "separated" thing will be all over. God will give me strength when I feel as though I can't hold on anymore. Right now I praise him for his blessings that he's given me.