A One-Year-Old lands in St. Louis

Seriously?  It's been almost a month!?  Lots to fill you in on.

Ben "retired" (his term, not mine) on April 1.  Since then we've been crazy busy planning the move and a birthday party, but since he doesn't become re-employed for another two weeks, hopefully he'll get a little downtime in soon.  We did manage to take a trip to Windsor Castle, Bath, and Stonehenge.  Beautiful.  But we were so wiped out by that that trip that we cancelled the additional day trip to Canterbury that we had hoped to go on.  It's been unbelievably fantastic to have Ben home, both for helping take care of Jack and for rediscovering how much we love spending time with one another.  I don't think I could have gone through such a stressful two-week period with anyone else in the world by my side. 

Jack turned 1 on Sunday, officially putting him in the toddler as opposed to infant category, which has made me a little sentimental.  Of course, he is now walking so much and so well that it would be hard for me to deny that he's a toddle-er.  He's seriously all over the place.  Even those of you who saw him our last few days in London wouldn't believe how well he's now walking just a week later!

The birthday festivities lasted all weekend--from the crawfish boil that Grammy and Granddad held for him in Houston on Friday through the massive family blowout at Nonna and Pops's house in Warrensburg on Sunday afternoon.  Jack loved it--he was all smiles all the time.

Jack's birthday presents from Ben and me included, among other things, a rocking horse with a bit of a twist and a set of nuts and bolts for him to twist.  But his favorite present from us seems to be his toy baby grand piano.  Super cute.  He looks like Schroeder while banging on it.  I promise to post lots of pictures as soon as I find our camera cord that's somewhere in one of our suitcases.

Which brings me to our other big news--we've made our move!  After two days of the movers packing and many tears with Stacy (and lots more once we were actually apart), we left for the airport hotel Tuesday night.  The 10 1/2 hour flight to Houston was amazing.  Jack took 2 naps of over an hour and a half each.  As we were getting off the plane about half the other passengers stopped to wave bye-bye to Jack and tell him by name that he had been such a good boy on the flight.  He also slept the entire 2 hour flight from Houston to Kansas City.  Amazing.  

Monday we made the trek to St. Louis to see our house for the first time.  Nonna and Pops and Uncle Stephen and his girlfriend Kelly did a fantastic job--we were thrilled to see where we'll be living.  Unfortunately we've hit a little snag in the closing process (it's a long story), so instead of closing tomorrow morning as we were supposed to, we now may be staying with Uncle Stephen a few more days and not closing until Thursday or Friday.  Really frustrating, but now we're in the home stretch.  Of course, we won't have much to put in our brand new house (which is over 3 times the size of our London flat!) at first because our shipment from the movers isn't supposed to arrive until mid-May!  So I suppose a few more days shouldn't make that big a difference!

We'll be sending out an email to everyone with our new address and cell phone numbers, and again, once we get settled I promise lots more pictures and more frequent updates.  Just because we're closer to home doesn't mean I'm going to stop the blog.

Moving plans and a barrage of photos

Things for the move are starting to fall into place.  Ben's last day is next Tuesday, April 1, the movers are coming April 7 and 8, and we're leaving April 9.  We'll spend a few days in Houston with Ben's parents, then head to Kansas City to spend a day or two with my parents.

And then we'll move into our new home!  We've bought a brand new place (still a week or so from being finished!) in Brentwood, which is one of the really close in suburbs, one that doesn't feel like a suburb at all.  There's a public elementary school 3 blocks away, a Catholic elementary school 3 blocks the other direction, a park 4 blocks away, and it's within a mile of two Paneras, a Whole Foods, a Target Greatland, a highly rated Cajun takeout place, and a Sonic.  I will be in midwestern middle-class American consumerist heaven without having to be in midwestern middle-class American suburban hell.  So perfect.  Strangely enough, one of my mommy friends in London used to live on the street where we'll be living, so I'll also have someone to give me tips on the area.

Jack has been completely over chicken pox for about two weeks now, and it looks like the only scar he may carry is just above his right eyebrow--the only spot you can see on my previously

 posted picture.  But here's a picture of him at the height of his spottiness.  Also as you can see, his umbilical hernia is still bulging, especially with all the stress walking and wiggling puts on it.  Dr. Hay has continued to assure us that it's nothing dangerous or painful and that it should heal without surgery within the next year or two.

Speaking of Dr. Hay, Jack has his last visit with him last week.  Although it was a little early, Jack got the two 1-year immunizations and amazingly didn't make a single cry--not a peep!  I really hope that we can find another good pediatrician in St. Louis, because I'm going to miss Dr. Hay a lot. 

Our Easter was very nice and was punctuated by a weeklong visit from Jack's Grammy and Granddad.  Easter was also especially good because Ben had a 4-day weekend (Good Friday and Easter Monday are national holidays here) during which he only went into the office for a total of an hour and a half!  We seized the opportunity to take a daytrip to Cambridge and an adventure to the London Aquarium.  During the past week Jack's intermittent attempts to walk

 without his walker started coming more frequently and became more prolonged, and he is now

regularly taking 4 or 5 steps on his own!  While I still can't catch him in the middle of the floor, he walks the triangle between our two loveseats and our coffee table so frequently that I have

caught some video of that.  Being Jack, he's not doing this movement thing halfway, so instead of walking staggeringly like most babies, Jack seems to have mostly skipped standing and walking all together and has moved straight into running.

A few other random pictures:

During his chicken pox confinement, Jack developed a very strong attachment to the vacuum as his new favorite toy.  It's a Dyson, so I have to admit I like it a lot myself, but Jack's attachment transcends mine by far.  He not only runs to it screaming with excitement any time I open the hall closet, but he also pushes it along the floor as if it was his walker.  A difficult feat, but he does it well.  I'll post video of it some other time.

This is a picture of Jack's zebra after snack time today.  

One of Jack's favorite snacks are fake Cheetos--organic puffed baby food corn sticks covered in carrot powder that taste reasonably good but like their unhealthy counterparts tend to make a pretty big mess.  Today Jack decided that he wanted to share his snack with his zebra, leaving it with a nice orange smudge near its mouth.  So sweetly generous that I think I'll leave it there.

Shattered

in British parlance means beyond exhausted.  I'm there.  Jack's spots have been mostly clear for almost a week, but he's now having residual sickness fallout from a weakened immune system.  So high fevers and lots of vomiting last night that sent us scurrying for the doctor again.

Not enough energy for a full update on Jack post, but here's one I've been meaning to link to for a while now.

A few months ago I came across a blurb in The Week that made me understand my burgeoning postnatal depression slightly better.  I knew I was in bad shape in October and November, but I'm only just starting to realize that it's not fixed yet and has no possibility of being fixed until Ben is home and I get some sleep.  See it below:

Health Scare of the Week: Crazy--or Just Sleepy?

People who don't get enough sleep act as if they're mentally ill, falling prey to wild emotional swings, says a new study.  Researchers performed brain scans on two groups of young, healthy people, half of whom were deprived of sleep for just one night.  When the subjects were shown a series of images ranging from benign to disturbing (a tarantula on someone's shoulder, an attacking shark, disfigured burn victims), the people who had slept well the night before acted normally: Their brains interpreted the resulting fear and disgust in context, so they remained relatively calm.  But the sleep-deprived brains went haywire, sending lots of panicky signals to the brain stem, which manages primitive fight-or-flight responses.  These sleep-deprivedpeople, in fact, exhibited the kind of emotional instability usually seen in the mentally ill, laughing wildly one minute and crying hysterically the next.  "The emotional parts of the brain just seem to run amok," University of California at Berkeley neuroscientist Matthew Walker tells USA Today.  

Previous research has found that people with mental illness are often chronically sleep-deprived, and psychologists had assumed that it was the illness causing the sleep problems.  Now they think it could be the other way around.  The current epidemic of depression and other mental illness among teens, some psychologists say, could be related to the frenetic multitasking and resulting lack of sleep now common in this age group. 

Seriously?  That's the conclusion researchers drew from subjects who had gone through just one night of sleep deprivation!?  So if one night makes you mentally ill, what does 8 or 9 months do to you?  How about the implications that has on the rate of depression among new mothers, a group for which "frenetic multitasking" and "lack of sleep" are not just common but universal!?

A Pox in Our House

So Jack's illnesses of last week (a stuffy nose and, bizarrely, a urinary tract infection) that I never got a chance to write about have now been dwarfed by the finding that he has come down with chicken pox.  Yes, chicken pox have sprung up all over my poor little baby's body.  You can see one of the biggest spots in this picture, just above his right eyebrow, and if you look really closely you can see the calamine lotion in his hair.  Poor baby.

He's not scratching at them, but they must be bothering him because last night he didn't sleep for more than an hour at a time.  And that was even with me in bed with him.  So I'm shattered and am not going to write more right now.  Dr. Hay just gave us the go-ahead to use a decongestant/pain reliever called Medised, so hopefully tonight will be better.

The most annoying thing of all about this?  Just last week I scheduled Jack's 1 year immunizations and checkup for March 20--a little early since we're leaving and I wanted to do it with Dr. Hay rather than find a pediatrician right after we get to St. Louis--and the chicken pox vaccine is typically included with that round of shots.  He was less than 3 weeks from being immunized.  Ugh.

Hooray!!!

I don't have time to write much because we're off to playgroup as soon as Jack wakes up, but 

WE'RE MOVING HOME!!!  

The basics (I'll fill in more later):

We'll be living in St. Louis.

Ben will be working for Bryan Cave.  

We leave April 9!