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