Apple Jacks

Simon easts the green ones first. The rest of the family is less choosy.

Diving boards and fork usage

Malachi proved how awesome he is by wowing his swim coach today with his improvements. Not only did he jump in the pool without help, he actually jumped from the diving board (don't think crazy - I just mean the short one that's always there, does anyone know a different name for it?). And he swam a lot more than before, and he put his face in the water all the time. In fact....he probably put his face in the water too much.

He would get easily distracted and wouldn't obey the coach's orders - even the ones he understood. I'm considering putting him in an English course anyway. We'll see.

Simon is eating with a fork and a spoon now. In fact once he's set his mind to it, he's probably not going to take it from somebody else. He's also walking a ton. He's figured out it's faster. When he gets really excited he walks fast, and then realizes he can't do that quite yet. But I don't think we're far from a runner. It's amazing how mobile he is, and is always is. He doesn't like to stop. He's awesome too.

20's

This is the last night of my 20's. I wanted to reflect on what I've accomplished...

Bought a house
Got Married
Sold said house
Moved to new State
Started college
Finished 2 years of college
Birthed child #1
Moved to new State
Birthed Child #2
Moved to new Country
Settled family in new Country
Carried Child #3 most of the way (birthed Child #3 will belong to my 30's)

My 20's have held so many great moments in my life. I expect that my 30's will be amazing, some things I'm looking forward to...

Birthing Child #3
My first trip to Disney World
Moving to Manila, The Philippines

And that's all in the first 15ish months! And those are the only things I know will happen, who knows what other things could be added to the list.

Thank you 20's for being good to me.

A Moment

I have a moment, so I'll blog a moments worth.

Malachi's 4th ever swim lesson went really well today. They decided to put him with the beginner beginners. This was a good move. He did really well compared to the rest of the class, and I think that was very encouraging for him. He even jumped into the pool (holding onto the coaches hands) with a lot less reluctance than before. He didn't cry once, and there was very little choking on water. This was a very, very good lesson for him. Hopefully his next lesson will be good. Unfortunately that's not until Thursday the 28th because of the holiday/vacation.

Seizures update: no seizures in a while. I'm reluctant to say that, because every time I say that he has a seizure. However, after some blood work the Dr. increased his dosage of Valpakine to 250 mg 3x/day. We started that on Wednesday night, but even before that he'd been seizure free (partial and tonic clonic). I don't know if I'm comfortable yet, but I'm getting there. The medicine seems to have a very good side effect: he sleeps! He hasn't slept more than 8 or 9 hours a night in a long, long time. Keppra is said to cause light sleeping in children, apparently Valpakine works the other way and is stronger than the Keppra because he's now sleeping about 11 hours a night!

Simon is teething molars. I got a call at work the other day from P who said that Simon had been crying a lot that day and he felt really hot. Turns out he had a temperature of 100.6. His fever was gone later that night, and he seemed to be in a bit of a better mood. I knew he'd been getting ready to cut a molar or two, or four, so I checked and sure enough, he cut his lower left molar. I could tell that the second one was very, very close. He cut that one that night or early the next morning.

Teething with Simon is a bit weird. He's usually fine until the actual day of cutting. That day and for a while afterwards - about four days with a normal tooth, who knows with a molar - he's got the crankiness, lack of appetite, snotty nose, etc. So that's what we've been dealing with this week. Today, it seemed to be the worst for him because he wouldn't take his afternoon nap, so by 5:30 he was stupid tired and stupider hungry because he'd eaten very little. After a very rough dinner time, daddy took him to play in his room, which seemed to make him pretty happy. Once bed time came, he was really mad again. It didn't take long for him to go to sleep though!

John got lettuce plants today at EPA (think: Lowes or Home Depot) and planted them in our gardens. We now have approximately 16 heads of lettuce growing in our garden. Our dill, spinach, and zucchini are going to overtake other plants soon if we don't give a ton away/use it all. In fact...

Today a photographer came over to do some maternity shots. She's a friend from work and has this as a side business. She took pictures of the kids and grandkids on John's side last November and we really liked what came out of that. In fact...Simon's not had one year photos, so we might want to get in on that since he's already over 14 months.

She showed me some of the shots on her camera, and I'm anxiously awaiting some samples from her. I'm trying very hard to not bug her...especially since it's only been 81/2 hours since she left. Speaking of leaving...she left with a gallon size ziplock stuffed full of spinach and a spicy pepper. This might become a tradition, anyone who leaves, leaves with food.

The pregnancy is getting difficult. It's becoming increasingly difficult to do anything. Thank god for my maternity belt, which I'll get good use out of tomorrow at our Easter Egg Hunt. This is a work event, and I've been voluntold for crafts. I hate doing crafts...of all the things I could do that's what I hate the most. However, I like doing crafts at this event because it's the first thing on the schedule. I'll be able to enjoy the rest of the time half working half hanging/out with the kids. Also, this is my first time going to the DCM's (Deputy Cheif of Mission) residence, so that should be fun for me.

John and I are looking forward to our family vacation for Semana Santa (Holy Week). We leave mid-week and get home in time to be visited by the Easter Bunny - yay! This will be Simon's first conscious Easter, it should be fun.

And now my moment is over. John has requested I pick a movie, and so I shall.

Check Up

Saw the Dr. today. Blood pressure: good. Measurements: good. Weight: good (we think. his online chart system was down, so he didn't know for sure). I told him that I've felt some contractions lately and that they're sporadic, only hurt a bit, and usually just on one side (the right side normally, although the other night and tonight the pain was on the bottom half). He asked if the baby's moving and I said...a lot. He did an exam and said that it's definitely Braxton Hicks contractions. I'm not dilated, so I'm not in labor. I see him again in a month.

Hiatus

I'm considering a hiatus from blogging. It's a bit of a time suck, and then I feel bad when I don't blog. John said "back blogging (blogging about something that happened a long time ago (more than a week in blog time))" doesn't work.

So...I'm considering a hiatus. Life is so busy - how do you do it ladies?! With only two kids and a part time job, I have a hard time keeping this up. I've applied for the CLO job and that would add two more days a week of work for me. And then I'll have three kids instead of two! I barely even facebook anymore! Although, I do facebook more than I blog.

Lack of content is not a problem for me, I could list more than a handful of topics right now. For those who read to keep up with the kids, I'm sorry. For those who read to learn about FS life or life in Costa Rica, I'm a bit less sorry, but I'm sorry to you too. I know that reading blogs is a great way to get a peek into life of somewhere you're going to live.

This hiatus is not guaranteed, but very, very likely. If you'd like to friend me on facebook and haven't you can find me as Sara Simmons Roy current city San Jose, Costa Rica. I'm not great at putting up pictures, but I do update my status (albeit less than I used to).

Where Do I Start?

Well I'll tell you where I won't start. That major seizure event that I told you about, that's now 16 days in the past? I've written it all down in a very lengthy and detailed story of the event. I'm on the third page in Word, single spaced. I moved it from notepad because I was getting annoyed with notepad. However, we don't really have Word on this computer, so it's not registered, so I can't copy, paste, add, subtract, do anything with it. So for now the very detailed description is on hold. I'll just tell you, Malachi's fine. He started a new therapy that night that has taken full effect in his blood and we haven't seen any (and I mean any) seizure activity in about a week.

So I'll start with training in NOVA/D.C.. I love FSI, that's right Drng Adventure, I said it. I've loved it since John started there. For me it's a symbol of the beginning of a new life. John had so many good times there, and now so have I. The training was intense. It was very overwhelming, I know I just used a superlative in front of overwhelming, but I feel like I can and any other person that goes through that training would agree. Today I finally was able to put it into words - it was 40 hours of training, but it was more like 50 or 60 hours of training all crammed in. There's so much more to the job than I thought. I now have a great respect for CLO's, and will never look down on one - unless they suck (I've heard that happens).

Right now I'm a CLO Assistant (CLO/A), and my main responsibility is the newsletter, with that I also keep up the paper files, and make sure the welcome books and welcome packets are taken care of. I also make the flyers for our events, I also do the finances for CLO (yikes!), but that's not very involved. Other than that, I really don't do much. I'll take messages for the CLO, and I keep the office open on Wednesdays. But there's so much more to the job than that!

Our CLO plans our events, does all of the work for families and the area schools, is the CLO rep. on the Emergency Action Pannel (the people at the Embassy who are in charge during an emergency), helps the EFM's with employment inside and outside the mission, and more! She does so much in only 32 hours a week.

She's leaving this summer, and I've applied for the job. I feel like after training, I have so much to offer that position. I came home with almost four pages of ideas and reminders, most of them one liners, only about seven personal. I wasn't even able to touch that list at work last week to organize it, hopefully I can do that this week.

I made some good connections there too. One of the Co-CLO's from Buenos Aires and I hung out the last two nights doing a bunch of shopping and eating at Chipotle (both nights). I wanted to take her to Dogfish Head Alehouse, but the wait was already 45-60 minutes by the time we got there. I passed around a piece of paper at training one day and got everyone's contact information, and then put it together in Excel when I got to work on Wednesday. We now all have 23 connections we didn't have before.

I had so much fun being in the States, and being at job training. But I learned, as John did when he went to Thailand by himself last August, that home is where our family is. I couldn't wait to get home on Saturday morning. That's a whole other story...have you looked up MIA yet? You should.