“Happa Birfday” Junior!

That’s how you say in Hannah-ian.

С днём рождения! [s DNYOM razh-DYE-nee-ya] is how you say it in Russian!

We celebrated Mr. E’s birthday on Saturday–my Valentine’s baby!  I thought about attempting a traditional Russian birthday meal (that I googled) which would involve fish (pickled or smoked), and perhaps a potato and beet salads. And these fried dumplings call pirozhkis frequently make appearances at a birthday parties, too. They are generally filled with meat, cabbage, cheese, potatoes or eggs. But no. Maybe next year.

The celebrating was pretty low-key. Unfortunately we have each taken a turn with the fevery-flu thing going around and hit Jake that day. Earlier in the week we had at last moved into our house (shout hoooooray!!), and even received our air shipment (another hooray!)!  Soooo, Eli’s special day was pretty lazy..  He wasn’t too upset about it, but turning 1 is still a big deal and at least grants some definite reflection the momma’s part. Thus, this post is to him and probably will drip of sappy sentiment. Read on if you’re into that kind of thing. 😉

Well, no we didn’t have matches. Whoops. Fail.

Hmm, what do I with this?

Stuff my face, got it!

Sweet? Seriously?

Demolished.

Dear Junior (your sometimes nickname),

Happy birthday, buddy!

Well, wow! Your three hundred and sixty-five days of life have just whizzed by. In some ways. Are you really 1??

In other ways SO MUCH has happened in your tiny year on this earth it’s almost a challenge to digest.  The day you came was very, very anticipated and FULL of hope, a little fear, and a whole lotta faith and prayer.

When I think back to the first few weeks of your life, my heart gets all bursty-feeling and my throat gets all lumpy-ish and I’m just a big mooshy pile of emotion.  Whew. You went through a lot for a little guy and oh it’s a wonderful thing you won’t remember it!  You had amazing nurses, you had amazing doctors, and you had (still have) amazing family and friends and angels supporting you (and supporting Mommy and Daddy!) and sending up prayers.  Maybe one day we will know why you were sent to us with a tumor. I hope so.  The skilled surgeons did SUCH a fantastic job and I will try forever to thank them. Your recovery, though difficult to endure (tears at your poor swollen face!), was incredible.

Ps, You better love your cute bum-scar because it’s a pretty awesome battle wound.  Just don’t get all funny-boy-humor-weirdo on us and show it off to your friends when you are older, k?  I will figure out a way to staple your pants on, count on it buddy.

You have put your mom and dad (and all your supportive, sweet loved ones) on a roller coaster ride of worry with your health you precious thing. Couldn’t you have come with an extensive manual of “This is What My Insides Look Like: What to Do Now” or “Definition of Cries Numbers 1-210”. (A “How to Get Me to Sleep. Period.” guide would also be greatly appreciated!)

But I am astounded, humbled and all sorts of thankful to be your mom and witness the amazing little miracle you are, and really how healthy you are, too. We treasure every ounce of your 22 (ish) pounds! (sap sap sappyyyy.)

A few specifics that seem simple but are kind of a big deal:

Your legs wiggle (Ohhhh do they wiggle.)

You can crawl (everywhere).

You can go potty (I mean really, you can. Eeeeeven though we go thru triple the amount of diapers a typical baby might go thru. Oh the diaper rash!)

Your appetite is fantastic (victory, victory! SERIOUSLY). Your favorite thing to eat is paper, but you also love anything I am eating.  We are in love with your food sounds–“umm aumm yum num”. Thank goodness spit up is a thing of the past!

You are standing on your own here and there–you are so so so close!

You have been infection-free (from UTIs) for six months!  (even though we’ve had a few scares and sleepless nights thinking you had one or two.)

My body won’t ever be the same (thanks to your 8.9 lbs) but it was so worth it.  You are a happy, (loud), smiley, busy busy busy, giggly, momma’s boy who bonks his head on everything, loves to get into all things and actually is rather cuddly lately (hm, or clingy?!). The discovery of climbing is well in force (payback, right Grandma?) and boy you’ve got the giggles when you make it to the top of the stairs.

Your singing voice is adorable–like an “ah ah ah” kind-of yelling voice that might bother everyone else (sorry neighbors) and you even try to wave your arms like the choir conductor during church (also adorable). You love to pound the piano, or pound the table, or pound on me. You love to “wrestle” with your sister or attack her. Thank you for being so accepting of her glee in rolling you around, yanking your poor arms and sometimes sitting on you. Feet in your face or not, you totally love her and laugh the most with her. I will remind you of this later.

Balls and balloons are your passion and the fun of pushing a car along the floor is catching your attention. You usually go for emptying cupboards, suitcases & drawers (or climbing in them), or dangerous things like outlets and lamps and slamming fingers in doors. Of course.  I need eyes on you e v e r y  s e c o n d.

Photo cred: Miss H

I love you forever, little guy.

A Season of Whirlwind

I will now define a whirlwind in four words: The. Past. Three. Months.

“You kidding me??” To borrow a phrase from Hannah. No, no.. definitely not kidding.

I don’t think I could adequately describe why. Nor do I think I should try. But, I can say in all my thirty-one years (yes, yes, there are wrinkles) I cannot recall another time where I have prayed harder, cried more, slept less, ran a never-ending marathon on empty, felt more @#%!, or came completely and undoubtedly unglued. However, sun is shining, people, life is beginning to settle.

And here’s the kicker: settle where?

In the beautiful island of Sakhalin, in eastern Russia!

Yep! We are now living across the world in Russia. Many of you (oh you sweet few readers, you! Hello again! I promise not to leave you again. Really.) know Jake has been rotating over here with his job (drilling engineer) for about a year and a half. That is behind us I am GLAD to say shout. We are now one big happy family that welcomes Daddy home every night with big open arms and yelps of glee.

The preparations for this move were pretty intense, and that’s putting it lightly.  We were staying in Utah with family and the to-do-and-organize list and to-stock-up-on list and to-pack-in-certain-piles list felt endless.  I discovered how very much addicted I am to shopping on Amazon.com and oh how very much I would miss it…. Sigh. And what would you stock up on if you didn’t have a Walmart around the corner? (Oh you small-towners-without-a-Walmart I’m so impressed with you! I’m such a spoiled city girl!)

The plan would be to fly out of Texas. The company would slow-boat a 20 foot container via the ocean of all our stuff in addition to a quicker air shipment of more immediate needs.  We went from Utah to spending the holidays with Jake’s family in Colorado. More unpacking/packing things a few times from one place to another… Then it was off to Texas. Jake and his incredible helpful Dad drove down with the dogs (our dog and a friend puppy we were helping to transport) while I got to fly down with the kids. YAY for us, I know. I told you I was spoiled!!

Texas was full of fun (sarcasm times a thousand) going through more of our things we had left in storage. More piles. More packing. Or unpacking to just pack again. Have you ever wanted to inventory all your belongings? Like every single itty bity piece of paper down to the color and type of every single pair of sock? No? Well, geez I don’t know why not. It was a BLAST. No small task, honestly, I can hardly describe my gratitude to those awesome blessed people who helped us out!!!

Here’s Hannah at the storage unit, the only moment I captured. No shoes, but AT LEAST she has a coat on! So, just imagine lots of boxes and chaos filling up the hallway.

It was lovely to see Houston again–mainly the incredible friends we have there and SWEETEST people ever we stayed with who are like family.  But it felt like one thing after another kept slapping us in the face. We couldn’t escape some wretched theme song with a title like “It’s going to get worse just you wait”.

One last straw was Eli and a fever of 104 degrees the night before we were to fly out. With his history of UTIs, I was pushing for a urine sample (catheter) but that meant going to the ER. So off we went at 8pm and waited for 6 hours to be seen and another 2 hrs before we left.  This being my first ER experience, I have to say we didn’t get along very well. Guess what? We didn’t fly out the next day.

It was a UTI, or so they thought. So we treated it as such and flew out 6 days later. And he was fine. A few days on medicine, his fever was gone.  (Turns out it was not a UTI after all?? Which is great news, actually. Just a bit of a mystery.)

So, onto Russia! It was such a relief to finally make it to the airport and onto our adventure! We were allowed 3 bags/person and Eli had a ticket (hallelujah!!) so that equals 12 pieces, my friends. Twelve. Plus a stroller. Two car seats. And a bike. It was a sight, I tell you what!

This is what we think of first class (below)! AWESOME possum, baby! Super nice. (Sorry some of these pix have turned out fuzzy..) I was dreading that lengthy 14 hr flight to Tokyo (plus 3 hrs onto Sakhalin), but it was not all that bad.  I didn’t even use my whole bag of tricks. Eli needed them more than Hannah. Since his middle name is wigglemeister, I was overjoyed he had some floor space to get down and wiggle.

When we arrived in Sakhalin it was night. Blessed sleep, oh blessed sleep! Why do children not want you? Jet lag was something I was not quite prepared for. We were all exhausted, so of course the kids would just bounce right into a nice sleepy routine, right? Wrong. Poor Hannah, who will one probably be really mad I captured her very sad face at 3am in the morning. Ah well. The house we will be living in is not quite ready yet, so this was taken at the hotel we are staying at instead. I’m sorry, neighbors, I really am. I’m doing my best to keep these noisemakers calm and quiet. Can’t complain about no laundry and free breakfast, but everyone is grateful the challenging 2 & 3am mornings are a thing of the past. It took about a week and they were more in a schedule.

Snow is pretty abundant around these parts ya know, and we have had some fun breaking in our warm boots and snow suits! But don’t you just have to giggle at this cute Mr. Marshmallow below??

I could hardly get her to stop digging in the snow or eating it. She was in snow heaven.

Picture credit below: Hannah Jo photography
Such tired kiddos. He stayed alseep through the whole process of getting changed into jammies! And this little sweetie kept falling asleep in her car seat, on the way to church and then again on the way home. So we just left her there. An hour later she finally pulled herself out of such cumfy accommodations!SO, actually, if you are still with me on this essay-post…. Guess what. We got to take a break from the hotel!! Jake’s AMAZING coworker let us stay in his place while he and his wife were away. OH MY GOSH could I have just kissed them right then and there. It was such a reprieve and lovely to have a bit more leg room, to say the least. This is the view from the front door. Little people are so cute all bundled up in coats, aren’t they? Even though they scream and fight every second of putting them on. Well, at least mine do. It’s just horrible I want to keep them warm, I guess. 

Welcome to Olympia, the compound community for employees & families here. It is definitely a beautiful place and the people here are incredible. The homes/duplexes are great and the trees all around are just gorgeous. We have met many of the families here already, and everyone is super nice. It brings tears to my eyes the kindness they are willing to pour out to complete strangers!  They have truly made this adjustment so much easier.

There you go! Here is our new home! Hello Russia! We’re here! Whew. We are all in one piece and alive. It’s amazing! Now, other than making it to a few stores to pick up groceries and necessities (which is a feat all by itself I’ll tell you about later)), we haven’t done much sight seeing. Hopefully do more of that when things continue to settle, so stay tuned!

Ps, Not that it really makes sense to anyone, but the house on the left (and the left SIDE you see of the house/duplex) is where we will be in a few weeks! WOOOOT! Can hardly wait!Ta ta!

Dear Self

Since this year was kind of a big birthday (30! Aahhhhh. Yes, I have a gray hairs to prove it and look close you’ll see my wrinkles), I have been self-reflecting a bit. Who I was back in the day… who I am now… who I want to be.  I was thinking how cool it would be to write yourself letters now and give them to yourself back then (all right I stole this idea from sister)? What would I tell myself ten years ago? Twenty? Well here you go.

 

Dear 10-year-old self,

Oh you cute, long-haired, bushy-eyebrowed girl!  Listen to your sisters and cut your hair. Don’t wait four more years, please. But more importantly, bottle up that confidence of yours and keep it somewhere safe. Keep that “it’s not hard being a princess*” attitude and love, love, love yourself forever. You are going to have a wonderful life. People around you love you for YOU.  Let yourself grow out of that shyness and get ready to take on the world!  There is a plan for you. Oh, and keep writing in that journal.

 

Dear 16-year-old self,

You can’t figure out life completely, so don’t try too hard. Remember there is a plan and you have a choice to be happy. Happy attracts happy. Light attracts light.  Lift your chin up and LAUGH more. Memorize some jokes or something and tell them to yourself when that dark, gloomy monster of self-doubt comes knocking at the door. Hold on tight to the truths you know-you are a daughter of Heavenly Father who loves you! Never let anyone tell you different or that you are not good enough. Don’t waste energy beating yourself up! Stop stop stop.

It’s ok, you are kind of intense sometimes. So, take a big dose of chill and relax. Quit rushing around when you’re in a hurry. It drives people crazy. 🙂

You are smart and will get through chemistry. Yes, you will eventually go on a date, no worries hon.  But remember you don’t have to hold a boy’s hand just because he grabs it. Oh and that cute “bread boy?” Yeah, give him a call. He does totally like you. It’s worth getting over your phone-phobia and that traditional mindset that guys should call you first. He won’t. So call him.

Get a real straightener. Take a writing class. Or two. Or many. Keep playing the piano. Quit reading Jack Weyland and quit throwing up your food.

 

Dear 19-year-old self,

Woohoo! You’re in college, baby!  You will have some crazy fun times and have some super opportunities, so hang in there. Keep taking pictures! You will never regret more girl nights with your roomies and Craigo’s Pizza. Take some special ed classes. You have a knack with kids so utilize that gift. And geez! Take a break from staying at the library until it closes. Go swing dancing or something.  Join a yoga class. Buy tickets for the Colin Ray concert–you will regret it if you don’t.  Enjoy that wrinkle-blemish-free face of yours! It ain’t gonna last forever.

Take some deep breaths. Quit worrying about what everyone and their dog thinks about you. Get out of that comfort zone of quietness and you will be grateful. Forgetting about yourself and being involved will be worth it. Join some service organizations on campus–don’t wait until you’re a senior. They are super and you will meet some awesome people. Serve, serve, serve. You will “find” yourself much quicker that way than trying so hard to be perfect. It is OKAY TO MAKE MISTAKES. Did you hear me? The Savior heals and you are good enough to be healed NOW. So let him. Don’t wait any longer. Remember there is a plan.

Ps, don’t you dare take your eyes off the parking lot while driving that suburban. It may be empty, but it still has a light post.

 

Dear 22-year-old self,

An LDS mission? Yes! You will LOVE it! It will be hard. But you will have fabulous experiences and meet people who will change your life forever. Hang in there, sister. Spread that light of yours. Remember thr bottle of confidence from when you were ten? USE IT! And don’t worry, that first transfer really will end and time does fly by. Call Sister Pugh to talk when you need it. (Please bring some cute clothes though, ok?) Smile!

 

Dear 25-year-old self,

Wedding bells! Once again sweetie, it’s really time to forget yourself. This is a must in marriage so get used to it. And yes, it’s worth every effort. This man LOVES you so bask in that love! Quit worrying about being the perfect wife and enjoy being HIS wife. He was a pretty persistent neighbor boy and didn’t give up, ya know. And you know what? He never will.  He will always be there for you.

Go camping more often. Get a mountain bike. You will like going to the gym at 6am. Eventually. Take horse riding lessons from someone you are not married to. Plan fun dates. Forget about that place in Park City. Trust me, it’s lame. Use your camera more often. Don’t get the blue Dodge from Ken Garff. Put some curtains up in your kitchen, it too sparse! Be spontaneous. Remind yourself you can do hard things and tell yourself those jokes now and then. Keep that gratitude journal going. Bear your testimony more often and read your scriptures every day.

Remember there is a plan. This life is good, so enjoy the journey. The next five years will be fantastic.

 

*I’m told this story of when I was a wee lass: My sister had a shirt that said “It’s hard being a princess.” Well, my cute five-year-old (oh wait, Mom, how old was I?) said “It’s not hard for me!” Ha ha.  Wish I really did have that kind of confidence now!