Even more exciting than walking

Dear Saku,

This morning was very special. I woke up at 6:50 am and something was different. You had not woken up once last night. Yes, my little boy, you finally slept through the night from 7sh pm to almost 7 am. I have joked about your sleeping issues, I have laughed about them, cried over them, blogged about it, had many serious conversations about them and hoped and prayed that you would finally sleep through the night. While most of my friends (and their babies) were sleeping soundly through the night, I would get up twice or even three times with you. When you only woke up once, I considered it a fabulous night. Trust me, I am not getting all excited about this being a normal night for you, but this morning, I was well rested and I am grateful for it. If you do decide that you enjoyed sleeping through the night as much as I did, you could make a regular thing:)

Love, äiti

One Step at a Time

In the last few days, Troy and I have been one of those annoying, excited first time parents about Saku's new trick. No, we do not think that he is a super baby or a genius, BUT we are excited about his increased mobility. And I am not ashamed of it:) You only get to experience your first baby's first steps once, so let me cherish them. The best part is the huge smile Saku has on his face as he walks. He is so proud of himself. He also was playing with a little girl during Sunday School today. He would crawl and she would chase him. Then he would stop and she would walk away and he would chase her. Let's be honest, I was much more engaged in my son's adorable play than the lesson. I will try to pay more attention next Sunday. Of course, the fact that I worked a 12 hour shift the night before doesn't help my ability to concentrate , but that will be a norm for me so I better just get used to it.

Saku's walking at 9 months. Don't you wish you could have him walking towards you and give him a big kiss?

Nine Months-New Tricks Every Day

Dear Saku

I cannot believe that you are nine months old. The last month has flown by as äiti and isi have tried to adjust to the new schedule and routine. You have adjusted remarkably well. Most of the days when äiti picks you up from your friends' houses, you are such a happy camper. I think you enjoy playing with the other kids.

We celebrated your ever so important 9-month mark by wearing green for St.Patrick's day and eating chocolate cheerios.

You were enjoying the cheerios so much that you wouldn't give me a smile no matter what I did.

You love eating. Cheese is one of your favorites and anything that we are eating:) You are an easy baby when it comes to eating; you don't care if I'm nursing you or you get the milk from a bottle.

Makayla and grandma came to visit for a week. You finally let grandma hold you and you enjoyed sitting on her lap. I think this made grandma very happy. It also reduced my stress levels to know that grandma was taking care of you while I was at work.

Makayla is always so excited to hang out with you. She loved picking you up and carrying you from place to place. The house seemed little quiet after she left when there wasn't as much giggling going on.

You love being outside. Anytime we open the door, you are ready to crawl to the patio.

You have enjoyed few trips to restaurants lately. You make quite the mess when you eat, but you are happy so I don't really mind.

You have spent few days with Lila. Sometimes she bullies you, but you might just have to get used to the fact that girls can be a tough thing to figure out and handle.

You have slept really well lately, which has been a great blessing. You are scared of loud noises such as the vacuum and ice maker. Also many of isi's friends seem to scare you while my friends are your friends. It must be because they are a lot prettier. You are quite the charmer. We get comments left and right for your sweet smile, silly grin and good looks. They dont even seem to care that you always have food, snot or something on your clothes.

You have learned to be silly and seem to realize when we are being silly. You are very mobile. You can stand on your own for a long periods of time and have taken multiple steps on your own. We bought you a walker and you love pushing it and cruising around. You are brave and don't get too upset when you get few bumps and bruises.

I love you, little boy. Thanks for cheering up my days. While we have never been busier, I have never been happier than to watch you grow and learn.

Äiti

And then I smelled the burned hair

I am a hard worker and I hate to be late to things, yet I always leave at the last minute. During college, there were so many mornings/afternoons when I was almost sprinting across the campus to make it to class on time. It was qu.

If I happen to get to work early as in 5-10 minutes before I have to be there, the next morning I leave about 5 minutes later and end up praying for green lights as I make my way to work.

The fact that I have to get myself and Saku ready when we go to places has not helped my habit of barely making it on time. I try to be organized and get the diaper bag ready, figure out his clothing and food the night before and wake up little earlier to get myself ready. Yet I can never do this more than few days in a row.

On Thursday morning, I was getting ready for work and I had about 10 minutes before I had to leave. My hair was still wet and Saku's essentials weren't packed. Yet I wanted to make my hair look little better so I was working with a blow dryer and a round brush. While I was getting my hair done, I was trying to feed Saku some oatmeal. He started to whine, so I wrapped bunch of my hair around the brush and made it stick to my head when I held the blow dryer close to it and picked up Saku. Saku was happy and we made few silly faces to each other while the blow dryer was working its magic on my hair. And then the smell of burned something appeared. I had put the blow dryer too close to my hair and it seriously burned my hair. About three inches of my hair fell off and it was charred.

Since I was late, I quickly dried of the rest of my hair without any fancy brushing. I unplugged the blow dryer and left the burned hair in the sink.

By some miracle, I was able to drop Saku off to Camry's house safely and make it work on time.

How are you about getting to places on time?

Poo and Airplanes

Poo and airplanes are the two things that seem to wake up my baby most frequently.

This morning, I went to his room as he started crying around 5:45 and I changed him after I detected an unpleasant odor. I nursed him and put him back to sleep. Half an hour later, he is crying again and I made him cry it out for a while, but I realized that he wasn't going to go back to sleep so I went to get him. And he had pooped again. Honestly, it stinks(literally and figuratively) to have to change a diaper when they are supposed to be sleeping. After he had been awake for an hour, he pooped again. That is a lot of poop (or should I say stinkies for Janae) from one little boy in a few hours.

Lately diaper changes have become much more eventful as my sweet little man has figured that he can grab himself when the diaper is off. Maybe that was too much information, but every mother with a boy knows what I'm talking about.

We also have the luxury of living near the air force base and the planes seem to fly over our house during the nap time. Unfortunately more often than not, Saku wakes up as the roaring gets loud.

Another lovely feature of our neighborhood is the lady who does a carpool with someone across the street from us and every morning around 8 am, she starts honking her horn as she pulls to our neighbors drive way. Let's be honest here, I do not get to sleep in until 8 am, but it doesn't mean that it doesn't kind of bug me to hear her honking each morning.

What is waking you up or your kids up?

Lucky and Blessed

This little dude makes my heart smile. The one benefit of working (and sadly being gone) during the day is the fact that once I am home, I honestly spent 100% my time with Saku. I do not check my email or blogs or anything. It is serious mom and Saku time. Today we went to the park and Saku loved being the other kids there. Saku has become quite the little giggler. He has figured out when I'm trying to be funny and he just laughs and laughs. And look at those sweet two little teeth:)

I have been blessed with some seriously amazing men in my life. My dad is my friend and I love the fact that he was able to come and take care of Saku last week. I would come home and Saku would be happily climbing on dad or babbling with him. My dad isn't afraid to get on his hands and knees and play with my little man.

my family has the "apple cheeks" for sure!

Saku should become an eye model. i do not know if such thing even exists but he is so talented at making his eyes big.

Doesn't this picture inspire you to do the ragnar relay next year? He happened to start about 20 seconds before me and he actually was pretty fast.

I woke up at 6:15 on Friday morning, fed Saku, got dressed and ate breakfast before we drove to Mesa to meet at the Jarvis' house. Christina, Sharon, Spencer, dad and I loaded all of our stuff into the van and Mike (the driver of our van and Spencer's dad) got us on the road toward Prescott. Mike took a great care of us and navigated us through the night. He said he enjoyed the experience, but wasn't sure if he would do it again; the drivers didn't really get any sleep. We got to the start line about 10 minutes before our first runner Tyler started to run.

Since the team was split into two vans, we didn't get to see the other van very much. Everyone was looking fresh and excited at the start line. As the first van runners completed their runs, our van ate lunch at a park in downtown Prescott and walked around the town. My dad made a comment "Ragnar isn't so bad after all". I think he spoke too soon at that point:)

Van #2 runners sporting their official ragnar shirts. I loved hanging out with these people during the relay. Our team name was rocking relay team, which supposedly sounded like a middle age woman team name according to some young single adults that Christina talked to. Sharon said that we have included something about pumping in our name since Christina, Camille and I took turns pumping in the backseat. Poor Mike probably heard more about breast milk and pumping than he ever wanted to.

I was so ready to start my first run, which was 7.1 miles of nice rolling hills. I felt so fabulous. It was hard, but it wasn't too hard. I felt strong and enjoyed the darkness around me. About three miles into the run, I passed another runner and we ended up running together for the rest of the race. She was about 5 steps behind me, which was a great motivation to keep a constant pace. My average pace was 8:40 per mile. Troy surprised me and drove to Congress to meet me at the exchange 12. Saku was sleeping in the car, so I even got to see my little boy. After I finished my run, our van found some food at Safeway and paid two dollars to sleep on a gym floor at an elementary school. I only slept for hour and half and I actually felt terrible when I woke up. I was exhausted and stiff and wanted to keep sleeping. Fortunately, my attitude changed before it was time to run again.

My dad is amazing. He had some crazy hills and I knew that he was hurting. At one point, I almost wanted to cry when I saw him struggling during his first leg. He did a fabulous job and had a great attitude. I know he was very sore the next day, but how lucky am I to have shared this experience with him. How many dads would fly across the world to do a relay with their daughter? Thank you isi!

Due to the accident, the race was on hold for three hours or so. My van was supposed to run from exchange 18 to exchange 24; instead, the race officials made everyone drive to exchange 24. This brought changes to our distances and we ended up doubling up for several legs to make sure that everyone could run three times. We continued our run around 6 am as Sharon took off to conquer an 8.5 mile leg. Camille and I ended up running together for our second leg that was 6.3 miles. We had trainer together, so it felt good to run together during the race. We had some rough hills(just like everyone else) and I told her that walking wasn't an option so we just kept running and encouraging each other. We even passed a guy right before the finish line. We ended up running an average pace of 8:56 per mile.

We had to wear reflective vests and headlamps when it was dark outside for our safety. I did not like running with the vest on since it kept bouncing up and down and side to side. Thanks to the Jarvis' family for providing all of our gear.

Troy was one of our volunteers and ended up working at the last exchange before the finish line. It was nice to see him before I started the last easy 3 mile run. It was so nice to know that it was only three miles and completely flat. I tried to keep a pace of 8:30 per mile and I think I was able to keep up with it. My watch died after 1.6 miles so I don't know how fast I was running for the last little bit.

Camille was the one to hand off our relay bracelet to me. She made it look so easy.

Most of the team was able to come to the finish line. The team made a human tunnel for me, which was fun. We also did this for Spencer as he finished a seriously difficult run earlier.

Everyone ran toward the finish line. I know my dad said that I was being so competitive that I wouldn't wait for the team; however, I wasn't sure if they were running behind me and I was too tired to look back. Camry and Chad are leading the pack.

Camille still looking strong!

Spencer, Sharon, dad and Christina and Sam's leg. Christina looks like she really isn't sure if running is really worth it. She ran up (and down) some crazy hills and I am so impressed by her.

Christina, Camille, Camry, Sam, dad, I, Spencer and Sharon.(we missed Becky, Tyler and Dani who went home to spend time with their families)

I kept telling people that this wasn't "my relay" or "my team", but I sure am grateful for these fabulous people for joining me for this relay. I know few of them said they would do it again:) We'll have to see what's going on next year. I would definitely do it again. This time I would add some fun costumes and decorations for the vans and train little harder:)

Honestly, I don't feel like I was really able to capture the experience of relay in words. We were less stinky than expected, pretty much as tired as I thought we would be and I loved hanging out with these people just as I knew I would.