I'm ONE!

Sorry for such a hiatus from my blog. It's been pretty crazy around here lately. My "little" boy turned one in December and now is almost 13 months! He has done nothing but bring joy to our lives this last year and I can't wait to see what this upcoming year has in store for us.

At Jaxon's one year appointment he weighed 22 pounds 3 ounces. He finally grew too! He was 30.5" long which is a huge sigh of relief since he was "stuck" at 28 inches for many months.

We're still working on Jaxon being able to stand by himself. He gets jello legs when you hold him up to stand and he just refuses to try. I think he's just perfectly content with crawling and he's going to stick with that for a while. Jaxon did say Mama a total of 3 times now! Everything is still Dada around here. He primarily says Dada and Ya. He understands what we say to him but he just isn't good at communicating back with us. He does finally have down the ASL sign for "all done", which is what he'll do when he's done eating and sometimes he'll do it during bath time. All we can do is continue working with him and hopefully he picks up some more words, or at least sign language soon.

I want to thank you all for such a successful birthday party! Jaxon had a blast and the pictures prove it! His airplane theme turned out so fun and I'm glad so many family members and friends were able to attend. I'll add pictures to the blog down at the bottom.

Well, it seems as if Jake's orders for Japan are here to stay. It'll be a crazy, stressful, fun, and overwhelming time in our life. We're set to leave in August and be in Okinawa for 3 years. Jake does get 30 days of leave before we're supposed to check into his unit, so we'll be home in July for at least a couple weeks. I am extremely nervous about a 15+ hour plane ride with an 18 month old. Hopefully he sleeps most of the time and realizes he can't get up and run around.

I should find out if I'm accepted into nursing school here within a couple weeks! So if by some fat chance we don't end up going to Japan I'll be able to go to nursing school here. I plan on getting an online Psychology degree while we're in Okinawa and then when we come back to the States I can attend an accelerated nursing program. (fingers crossed that that plan works out)

On a totally different note, Jake and I are remodeling our kitchen! We bought new kitchen cabinets and granite countertops this past weekend. Hopefully install will happen later this week. We're so excited to spruce up our old, outdated, damaged kitchen and ugly tile countertops. I will definitely post before and after pictures after renovation is complete. We also are installing new flooring for our whole downstairs. We also bought that yesterday. Jake is installing that himself, so it'll be more than just a weekend project. I'm so excited to have more countertop space and more storage in our kitchen!!

I'll end this post with some pictures from our trip home and Jaxon's birthday party. Thanks for hosting us, KC!

Until we see you again,
Alycia, Jake and Jaxon

11.5 Months

Happy December, everybody! Can you believe this time last year we were all anxiously awaiting the arrival of little baby Jaxon? Boy does time fly!


Jaxon is 11.5 months old now. I forgot to update a couple weeks ago when he turned 11 months. I did weigh him on the 14th and he was 22lbs exactly. I'm not sure how tall he is, but I still don't think he's grown any taller. This will be something we'll discuss with his pediatrician at his 1 year well-baby checkup. Jaxon absolutely loves talking now. You will hardly ever have a peaceful moment unless he's getting into something he's not supposed to. He still calls everything "dada" but he's back to saying "ya" and "hi". I swear he's never going to say "mama"! Jaxon enjoys walking his toys around the house and rearranging furniture. He's currently pushing the dining room chairs around. He's so silly! His new found love is the keyboard. He loves to play away and press all the keys to make music. We've gotten Jaxon to stand a few times on his own. If he has his hands occupied, like holding onto food, he will stand for about 10 seconds on his own. I still think he's a ways from walking, but that's just fine with me. He's as perfect as can be and I can't believe in less than 2 weeks he'll be ONE!!!! That makes this Mommy sad.  :(


I'm not sure if many of you know, but I fell down the stairs a week ago. I was carrying Jaxon and the dogs hit my leg and the perfect moment and it sent Jaxon and I tumbling down. Luckily, I was able to hold onto Jaxon really well and he didn't get hurt. The same does not go for me. I believe I broke my tailbone in the fall. I haven't been able to sit all week without being in excruciating pain. I can't get down on the floor and crawl around with Jaxon which is what I miss most. I can't workout at the gym because it gets really sore if I walk and I can't sit to do any machines either. Overall, it's a really crappy unfortunate deal. Everything I've read says it takes months to heal and even years after the incident people still have troubles sitting for long periods of time. I feel about 50 years older than my actual age right now. To make matters worse, on Thursday I had my nursing entrance exam which entailed a one hour of essay writing and 3.5 hours of testing. That was a lot of sitting, but luckily the instructor let me bring in a boppy pillow to sit on. Okay, enough of my pity party...

My entrance exam was Thursday! The thing I've been looking forward to and dreading for the last several months. Well I'm happy to report that I did really well! My essay was great, but I won't ever receive the score I got on it. A committee of teachers will each read the essay and grade it and that score is part of my overall score to get accepted into nursing school. After the essay was the test. I had purchased a book that had 5 practice TEAS tests in it. I did the first one without studying and I scored horribly! After a day of studying I did a second test and got a whole 12% better. Then stupidly, I didn't look at the book for a month and picked it up a few days before my test date. I did the other 3 practice tests and didn't score near what I liked. I studied hard the night before my exam date and took my notes to class. The test was all online. The first section was reading- which I knew I did well because I always scored high during the practice tests. Next was math. I thought I was doing really well during it too, because I'd always calculate an answer and it was one of the given multiple choices. The third section was science. This is my forté, so I thought I didn't really need to worry about it. Boy, was I wrong! They asked me questions about things I remember learning about but of course they were buried so deep in my brain that I couldn't remember. For example, it asked me about the retention of water in the renal nephrons and what was the process called that brings the water back... umm... umm... C? I recognized all the possible answers, but I couldn't recall which one was correct. It was questions like this that left me stumped. The final section of the test was English. I'm really good at grammar (even if it doesn't show in my blog) and spelling so that was pretty easy as well. I'll tell you what though, my heart has NEVER pounded so hard in my chest than it did the moment I submitted my test and my grade was loading. Of course it took the computer a full minute to load, too, so I thought for sure I was going to have a heart attack. Then it popped up, 88%! Holy cow! I did it! I know with that score I won't have a problem getting accepted into the nursing program. The printout I received with my results on it said the national average for this test is 64.3%. The average for the people who get into this specific nursing program is 70.6%. I mean, come on, it's in the bag! I won't find out for sure if I'm accepted until mid-January, but I have a good feeling about it.

As you all know, when one thing goes right in my family, something must go wrong. Yesterday, Friday, while Jake was at work he text me the words that I was not expecting. "We got web orders to Japan. We check in there on August 14, 2013." Wow! That's all I could say. The higher ups in Jake's unit don't want Jake and his friend, James, to go to Japan because they are great assets to the shop. So up the chain of command went one person talking to the next, trying to get Jake and James to stay in the shop. The last stop is the monitor. He is the one who ultimately decides their fate. Well, we will find out Monday what he decides, but as of right now it's not looking too good. We researched our base yesterday and tried to find information about housing, vehicles, pets, etc... We won't find out much until we know for sure whether we're going or not, but we don't think we can take a car, we can't take our dogs, we can't take a lot of our furniture because housing is much smaller there. After the initial shock set it, and I got to think about it all, I don't think it's the worst thing in the world. Yes, it was terrible timing with my school. I won't get to go to nursing school now. Yes, we'll be on the other side of the WORLD for 3 years. Yes, we just bought a house and will have to rent it out. But after all that, I think it'll be a great learning experience. This will probably be my only opportunity to see Asia. Jaxon is young and he won't be taken out of school and away from his friends. I've always wanted to experience another culture and compare the American way of life to everyone else's. I won't be going alone, my friend Sarah will also be going with her baby Holleigh. Overall, I'm not completely upset about it. I knew something like this would happen eventually, my husband IS in the Marine Corps for goodness sake! We'll probably fly home once or twice while we're there, so you won't miss out on Jaxon and everyone will just have to get a Skype account so we can see each other often. And who knows, maybe all this freaking out is for nothing and Jake's monitor will say that he can stay in the unit and they can find a replacement to go to Japan. Hurry up and wait, that's the Marine Corps motto.

On a better note, we'll be home soon to see you all. We'll be celebrating Jaxon's first birthday there. Just an FYI, if you read this, we messed up on the invitations. It says the party is Sunday. It's really Saturday. The date is correct, the day of the week is not. You'd think staring at these invites for a week that I'd realize the mistake, but apparently not. I hope you all can come!


I probably won't update until after we come back to San Diego from KC. I'll have pictures from our visit and Jaxon's first birthday!

We can't wait to see you all
Love,
Alycia, Jake and Jaxon

Just a Minute to Brag

I just wanted to take a moment and brag about how smart my boy is! Jaxon has been saying 'dada" nonstop now for at least three weeks. He says 'baba' and 'dada' but it's amazing that he knows WHO dada is even though Jake has been gone for the last three weeks. We have pictures in our staircase of Jake, I and the family. Every single time we go up or down the stairs Jaxon points at a couple pictures with Jake in them and says 'dada'! And he puts his finger right on Jake's body or his face when he says it. I'll have to try and video record it sometime so you can see how smart he is! When Jax and I picked Jake up yesterday Jaxon was all smiles and started saying dada right away! It melted my heart. :)



Another thing to add to my list of things to brag about is this:

Jax and I were playing with the tennis ball about a week ago and he accidentally rolled it under the chair. He bent down, looked under the chair to see if he could see it. He reached his little arm underneath as far as he could, but couldn't quite get the ball. To my amazement, he sat up, turned around the crawled to this white Wii baseball bat. He grabbed it, took it over to the chair, stuck it under the couch and swung it back and forth and hit the ball from under the chair (with a little spotting help from Leila). I swear, I didn't give him any hints as to how to do that, I don't think he's even seen me do that before. When I finally realized what he was doing, I had to grab the camera to capture this because I knew no one would believe me. We have a mini Albert Einstein on our hands!

And lastly, Jaxon figured out how to fit through Leila's hole in the baby gate so now he just tries to climb up the stairs any chance he gets. He's so sneaky!!

Here are some pictures I took of Jaxon when he turned 10 months old and a little before then since I've been slacking on adding photos. I'll add some later of Halloween and Jaxon painting his pumpkin, which we're doing tonight!!  :)

I am 10 months old!!!

He seriously has the prettiest blue eyes ever!

Hope you all enjoyed the update! Talk to you soon! Love you!

10 Months Old

Jaxon has turned 10 months old today. Can you believe only two months until it is his first birthday? Has it flown by so quickly for everyone else? I can't believe God gave us such a perfect baby boy last December!

Jaxon has learned so much since my last post in September. He claps, waves bye-bye, and points with his index finger at things he wants. He gets into everything in the house! One of his favorite things is to open up the pantry and take out all the food on the bottom two shelves. He also opens up the bottom drawer in the kitchen that has plastic baggies and he dumps them all out. He crawls as fast as lightning when you open the refrigerator. He is just too silly. My mom bought him a toy that he can stand up and walk behind. He cruises around the house pushing that thing everywhere. He can even turn corners with it! I'm not sure how tall Jaxon is this month but I weighed him yesterday and he weighs 21 lbs 6 oz.

Jaxon has moved past all the baby foods and is now eating big boy food. I pretty much give him whatever I make for dinner and cut it up into super small pieces for him to chew. He's pretty good at feeding himself. He's a mess whether you use a spoon to feed him or he picks it up himself, so I figured I might as well let him practice self-feeding. I haven't found a food that he didn't like. I even gave him a slice of a lemon at a restaurant and he LOVED it! He didn't even make a sour face. He kept trying to crawl across the table to finish it off.

He now has 6 teeth. 4 on top, two on bottom and I'm pretty sure he's working on #7 (a lower tooth). I brush his teeth every night during bath time. He loves to play with his toothbrush and cries when you take it away from him.  Speaking of bath time, it is Jaxon's favorite time of the day! That boy could splash,play and shrivel up to a complete prune if I let him.

He still isn't sleeping through the night. We were down to waking up only once, usually around 4 am, but then the past week and a half his night wakings have increased to 2-3 times/ night. One day Jaxon and I will get a full nights rest!

Jake has been in Yuma since early September. He's due back soon though and he'll be here just in time for Halloween! I'm so glad he'll be able to go trick or treating with us. Jaxon is dressing up as Mickey Mouse, a costume a friend let us borrow. Jaxon's girlfriend, Holleigh, is going as Minnie Mouse. I'll be sure to post pictures of those two!

My mom was able to visit for a week and a half earlier and we had fun going to the San Diego Zoo and up to Los Angeles. My dad and Debi also came to visit a couple weeks later and we went to Balboa Park and to the Safari Park. I'm really glad they were able to come visit us! We miss them all already.

Jake and I do have some news for everyone though. There is a chance we will be stationed in Okinawa, Japan as soon as Summer 2013. Nothing is for sure yet, and things in the military change everyday, let alone months in advance. There is a unit in Japan that still has the old helicopters and they'll be transitioning to the new ones (Jake's current helicopter) soon. They need guys who have certain qualifications with the new helicopters to help teach the other members of the unit. Well, Jake has almost all the qualifications he can get in his job, he's actually over-qualified for what the new unit is requesting. Since Jake just reenlisted, he has enough time left on his contract to go to Okinawa. As of right now, the new unit just needs names of people who could potentially go and since Jake fit the mold of what they're needing his name got put on the list. So much can happen in the next 8 months though, so we aren't counting on going. We think our names are on the list more as "place holders" until someone else comes along that can take the spot. Jake and I have discussed being stationed outside of the country before, because that is a reality when you're a part of the military. We always said if we were to do it that the best time would be when the kids are younger so we weren't taking them out of school and away from friends. We'd have to rent out our house and we aren't sure if we can take the dogs with us or not, so that's another hurdle we'll have to consider. We would be stationed over there for 3 years I think it is. Once the 3 years is up we'd come right back to the unit we're currently with. It'll definitely be a HUGE change and it'll really stink being away from family for so long. The only good thing is that they have military flights called Space A where military members, even dependents can fly for free on military aircraft. It's different than scheduling a reservation with Southwest airlines, if you're going home as a "vacation" you're the lowest priority for boarding the plane. You have to be extremely flexible with your departure and arrival dates because you could be bumped off the list if someone else needs that spot. At least it is free, so you can't complain too much. As for my schooling, I'm not sure what I'll do if we are chosen to go the Japan. I'm not sure if I would have to "settle" for an online degree instead of pursuing nursing like I really want to. There are colleges over there but so far with my (little amount) research the colleges don't offer any healthcare related degrees, mostly general ones like accounting, business, etc... But as Jake always tells me, don't stress about it because we aren't even sure if we're going, let alone when we're going.


We are still unsure if we'll be home for the holidays this year. It's still up in the air, but I'll be sure to spread the word as soon as we find out.

Here are some videos of Jaxon:
Jaxon Misses Daddy
Jaxon using his walker
Jaxon has never laughed so hard!



We love and miss you all and hopefully we get to see you soon!

Love,
Jake, Alycia and Jaxon