Winter Wunderbar

D's first birthday was last Sunday. We had a blast. She loved opening presents & playing with her new toys. She seemed a bit baffled by her cake, though. I had to stick her hands in it & she immediately pulled them out & held them up for Grammy to wipe off. So dainty. She seemed to rather like demolishing the cake with her spoon. All in all, it was a fun time.

Fall semester has concluded with me passing all of my classes. I even got an A in one of them. Pretty freakin' great, if you ask me. Since I don't have to retake one of Fall semester's classes, I'm on track for completing my mortuary science degree in Summer 2013. That's just 2 more semesters folks. I'm so anxious to get home to Alaska, I may just skip the entire graduation ceremony in favor of packing up my family & boogieing back to the Last Frontier. I'm sure my family will talk me into flying back for it though.

We are going home for the holidays however. We leave in 11 days & we are woefully unprepared. I've been pouring over ever book & article I can get my hands on. Reading blog posts from other traveling mamas. Doing gobs of research on airline policies. Coming up with plans & then contingency plans by the bucketful. I still feel like it'll be a complete catastrophe.

Two layovers, one comfortably long & one very, very short. I'm really hoping D sleeps a good portion of the long flight & is her usual curious self at the airports. We've done two roadtrips this year & she's done remarkably well. My relatives often joke that she must not be a real baby because she hardly ever complains.

I'm blessed, really. But I spend an awful lot of time waiting for the other shoe to drop. This is supposed to be harder, isn't it? She's a year old now & we haven't had one midnight run to the ER, she sleeps soundly through the night 99% of the time, & tantrums are very few & far between. I feel bad for feeling bad that we don't suffer like so many other new parents. Yeah, I'm confused by that too.

A Little Background

By little, I mean LITTLE. Seriously abridged. Completely summarized. Without much detail at all, really. Because if I gave it all away at the get-go, I'd have nothing to write about here. Always got to leave em wanting more, right?Here goes.

My name is Kat (or Kittie if you know me well). I am mom to a little girl (we'll refer to her as D) & Significant Other to my beloved J. He & I have been together for eight years. We're not married (yet). I've been holding out for the wedding I want not the wedding I have to settle for. That's not the kind of girl I am.

 D snuck up on us, though. J & I hadn't planned on having kids until a bit further down the road. D had other ideas & formulated a sneak-attack. She's a damn ninja.

J & I started our life together in Alaska, our home state. It's also where I got a taste for the funeral business. I worked as an admin assistant & office manager for a funeral home for almost two years. It was during my time there that I realized funeral service was what I wanted to do with my life. Not a common career choice but it feels right for me. A couple variables came together & we moved to Nashville, TN so I could attend mortuary college, get a degree & become a licensed funeral director/ embalmer.

Of course, nothing we ever do is easy & the theme of our lives has always been entropic - where there is order created, chaos ensues. A few months after we arrived in TN & shortly after I began my first semester of Mortuary College, I became pregnant. Here's the kicker - I didn't find out I was pregnant for almost 6 months. Say what you will but fact remains, I had no pregnancy-specific symptoms (morning sickness, etc) & what symptoms I did have were easily attributed to the huge amounts of stress I'd been under.

 However even after the pregnancy was realized, I knew I couldn't give up on school. I continued my coursework in my last trimester & gave birth to my beautiful daughter November 25, 2011. The following Monday (2.5 days postpartum for those keeping score at home) I completed my first of 4 final exams for that semester & managed to get my best grades of my time at that school.

 Yeah, I rock.

Again, a few variables came together that determined it was more beneficial to take the following semester off & hit it hard the semester after. I got a good 4 months to do the full-time stay-at-home mom thing. Even though it drove me crazy at times, I wouldn't change it. I feel pretty lucky to have been able to stay at home w/ my baby those first few months.

 Life isn't without it's struggles (understatement of the century) but all in all, we do alright. D makes sure we smile every day & we work as hard as we can to keep the smiles coming.

 So, dear reader, thank you for joining me in documenting this journey. There are a whole lot of Mommy Blogs out there so thanks for taking the time for mine.