Woah, where have I been???

Ok, it's been since April 2011 since I posted last, and I guess you could say A LOT has gone on in our lives since then!!

Let's start with Mike getting an employment offer from BNSF (Burlington Northern Santa Fe) for a conductor trainee position in Seattle. Yep, pretty much turned our world upside down for the last 4 months!! Mike left Lafayette on May 9th and started work on May 16th. Sean and I stayed in Louisiana until we knew it was for sure. The idea of moving back to Washington was a bit scary. But honestly we had nowhere to go at that point but up- Mike had been laid off and living off of unemployment since January, and had exhausted all of his resources for finding a job in Louisiana (other than going back to diving, but he had pretty much lost interest in leaving his family to go offshore a long time ago). So we kind of knew that when he did find a job, it would probably mean uprooting our lives and moving away.

So I enrolled Sean in preschool about a week after Mike had left. We had already been looking for a while, since we knew Mike would get a job at some point. So luckily I already knew which one we liked best and knew they had an open spot. Being a "single" working mom is some tough business though!! Dropping Sean off before I went into work, then picking him up on my way home, to have a messy house and a dog to come home to, and having to quickly throw something together for dinner. Not to mention knowing I would eventually be packing our 3 bedroom house up by myself.... Luckily I have the coolest friends ever in Louisiana and they helped me a lot with packing, organizing, selling furniture, and just plain keeping my sanity!!

I quit my job at AT&T in June. I couldn't handle the stress anymore, and my new schedule conflicted with Sean's so much that I was going to have to drop him at daycare and also have my friend pick him up, and I was also having to work every Saturday, so I wasn't really going to see him much and didn't like that idea at all. Especially with his Daddy already being gone, and we still didn't know how much longer before we would be reunited. I was majorly stressed, but looking back now I am glad I made that decision. I ended up getting extremely sick right after my last day, and I honestly think it was all of the stress that made my body susceptible to it.

So thanks to my Lafayette ladies, I was able to pack up the house into a 15 foot moving van, attach a tow dolly onto the back of it, and bring it and my car almost 3,000 miles to WA by myself (well, not technically by myself- our dog Jax was a great travel companion!) Before "moving day" I flew Sean to my parents' house on the Oregon coast so that he wasn't forced to do the drive with me as well. It took me about 5 days to get from Louisiana back to the coast again- I left Monday July 25th around 3pm, and got to Portland, OR on Friday July 29th around 5pm.

Now we are finally settled into our cozy 3 bedroom apartment in Renton, WA. Mike is really enjoying his job with the railroad. His schedule has been a little crazy and unpredictable, but it's nothing worse than what he dealt with when he was diving. Actually it is much better, because he isn't going to spend weeks away from us anymore, the longest he has been gone so far is two days. And after he completes his training program in October, he won't really have to travel at all if he doesn't want to.

Sean has been a real trooper through it all. The last 3 months for him have consisted of:

1.) Going to a new preschool for about 6 weeks and then staying home with Mommy again

2.) Getting super sick and dealing with a nasty summer "cold" from May to July (which turns out it must have been allergies because it cleared up as soon as we got to the west coast)

3.) Watching his entire house get packed up over a 10 week period

4.) Flying to Oregon and staying with Mommy at Nana and Grampa's

5.) Driving to Washington for the weekend to see Daddy (after 10 weeks of not seeing him)

6.) Driving back to the Oregon coast

7.) Being away from Mommy for a whole week!! Yikes!! At Nana and Grampa's house while she drove the moving van

8.) Driving back to Washington with Nana to move into his new apartment home, finally under the same roof as Mommy, Daddy, and Jax all at the same time

It was officially 12 weeks since we had lived with Mike on the day we moved into our apartment. But hopefully it is the last time we will have to have an extended time away from each other again!

I feel like it all went by so slowly while it was happening. But now that I am living in Washington, I feel like it happened so fast!! I miss my Louisiana friends so much. And it is so strange getting used to living here again. This is the place where I grew up- not the place where I became a Mom. The idea of raising my child here after being away for so long is still sinking in. I associate this place with my childhood, not my son's!! But it is slowly starting to feel normal again. I have seen a handful of my old "besties," and still have a few more calls to make as well. I am really lookin forward to rekindling a lot of my old friendships, as well as meeting other new mommies to be friends with.

The other thing I wanted to update on very quickly is our son- he is amazing!! I can't believe how much he has changed over the last 6 months. It feels like yesterday that he started walking, right around his first birthday. Now he is 18 months old, and the kid RUNS everywhere he goes. He talks all the time, and is so interested in learning EVERYTHING there is to know! He is completely and utterly OBSESSED with letters. I think it is because his favorite TV shows were always 'Super Why' and "Word World,' and they both are all about letters, reading, etc. He has some foam letters, and some magnetic letters for the fridge, and some blocks that have letters on them too. He surprisingly knows almost all of the names of the letters, and a lot of their phonetic sounds too!! He can sort of spell his own name (thanks to putting it in big letters on his wall) and is always finding letters everywhere we go and making sure to point them all to us. Our new favorite routine is when we go for walks around the apartment complex- he points to all of the letters on each building and tells me what they are. He even plays "hide and seek" with some of them. Like, we will pass the 'R' building and he'll shout "R!!" and then he'll say "S?? S?? Ooooo??" ('Ooooo' is his way of saying 'where are you?') When we get to the 'S' building he'll get excited, like he finally found it after searching for so long!! He has been lots of fun lately : )

He has also been very needy, I believe as a result of all the changes he has gone through. I am trying to take it all one day at a time, but it's kind of a tricky situation. He was very independent before, never really needy for me or whiny for attention. Even when he went to daycare, he wasn't frantic to have me come back for him. But now sometimes when I even leave the room he will start to throw a tantrum. Other times, though, he doesn't seem to care. I am still trying to figure out the best way to respond to his behavior, but I am sure it will start to get better once he realizes that we will be staying here for a while.

Anyways, it's getting late now and I think if I write much more this blog post will no longer be fun to read. So I will leave you with this, and try to keep updating when I can. I will also try to post some pictures later. I still need to get back to my 30 day blog challenge, so hopefully I will post more on that soon!!