Life as we know it

Wow, where does the time go? Life has been moving along at a very swift pace and I haven't had a chance to catch my breath and update this blog for awhile. We have had a crazy year, some of which I hope I never have to repeat, and other things that have been down right amazing.

First the bad part. In June, Jamin had a fight with a table saw and unfortunately the table saw won. It was pretty devastating to me at the time because he cut 4 of his fingers on his right hand which doesn't bode well for a guy who works with his hands. To make matters worse, we were in a 4 month lapse of insurance so it left a lot of things unclear. He couldn't work and we were facing potentially huge medical bills. This was a dark time for me because I felt very hopeless and lost.

Luckily, after a few weeks Jamin's hands showed great improvement; they were able to save all of his fingers and he had regained motion in all of them. They don't even look half bad. I think that this was one of those experiences that are awful at the time but prove to be a blessing because it puts you on a better path in life. After a little soul searching, we decided that Jamin should look for a job with good benefits so that we could have a bit more stability in our life. I was worried that he wouldn't find anything in the pay range we needed because he had a bum hand. Luckily, the stars aligned and he landed a great job through the State. He is enjoying it, has a great work schedule, and it is great to have that nice pay check rolling in every two weeks. Even better, he now has great insurance that doesn't penalize for pre-existing conditions so the much-needed-final-hand surgery scheduled for March will be covered. And now that we are both gainfully employed, we are quickly chipping away at those pesky medical bills that didn't end up nearly as large as our first greedy surgeon had warned us about. I really feel like a huge weight has been lifted off our shoulders. Even though those first few weeks after the accident were challenging, we are in a better spot than we were before and we have that experience to thank for that.

Now on to better things. Preston. He charms me everyday. It is so fun watching his personality develop and hear his cute little words. We spent the last few weeks visiting my family, first my brother in the D.C. area as he graduated from Test Pilot training and then home for Christmas. It was a long time away from home but it was great to see everyone. I am glad that my bro will be back on the West Coast here in about a month and I am planning a trip to see him since he will be living oh-so-close to Disneyland. I am still not too sure what Tyler learned in his pilot training; I am pretty sure he has been in school forever. He said that he is now developing and testing weapons for the F-18 jet, so I guess if you ever see a jet flying across the California desert dropping bombs you can wave.

Being gone so long gave me a lot of uninterrupted time with Preston and I am amazed everyday at how quickly he learns. I know it's his age, but it's crazy how you start out with this little baby who is so helpless and then 20 months later he is telling you to put his shoes on so you can go buy gum at WaWa (the convenience store next to my bro's house). Sure it's not spoken that clearly (more like "shoes on babble babble gum babble babble WaWa") and if I didn't have my innate mom-language-decoder I wouldn't have a clue what he was saying. But, he can communicate his wants to me and that prevents a lot of undue tears of frustration. Tyler and I in our boredom made a list of words he now says regularly and he is up to about 30, with about 15 more that he has said just a few times. So about 45 words in all. He can get his point across.

Preston also wants to get potty trained but I am not interested. He now says, "pee pee" and takes off his pants and diaper and runs to the pot. I encourage this, but am not ready to dive head first into potty training. I have horrible visions of inevitably being stuck in traffic or in the check out line when his urges come. He hasn't mastered the ability to "hold it" so until that happens we are steering clear of potty training.

Well, if you read all of that, kudos to you. That was a lot for a blog post. I had to make it meaty since I haven't posted in so long. I will try to get some pictures up here soon. Until then, I have a lot to do before nap time is over.