It's so hard for me to believe that my little boy is a year old today. Last year at this time I was in the hospital waiting for his birth, and wondering what it all was going to bring. It's been a challenging year, but a fantastic one as well. I love my little guy more than anything and can't imagine life without him.

I'm taking Meg's idea, and doing a photo collage.

Birth	Month 1
Month 2	Month 3
Month 4	Month 5
Month 6	Month 7
Month 8	Month 9
Month 10	Month 11
Month 12	1 Year!

For a few months now, Peter has been working on eating table food. It started with Cheerios, and has progressed to other things. Now that he's 10 months old, I figured finally we need to work to try and get him slightly onto our dinner schedule so we can have dinner as a family. There's a few problems with that though. 1) Ever since he's been 3 months old, he's eaten a large bottle right before bedtime, and 2) He likes eating table food, and is great at picking it up, but since he got his 2 front teeth in a few weeks ago he tries to chew everything in front and most of it ends up on his bib/the floor.

In any case, Leif and I are pretty tired of eating dinner after he goes to sleep (sometimes we eat as late as 8pm), which gives us less evening free time, so tonight we decided to change that up and eat around 6:30 and have Peter at the table with us. It worked out much better than I thought it would. Well, Peter ate what I put on his highchair tray, but yeah, most of it which made it to his mouth, ended up making it out of his mouth pretty quickly. But he seemed to like it, so we'll just have to keep working on it, and hope he figures this out soon.

I felt like a real family though tonight, remembering eating dinner with my parents and my brother. I'm guessing all too soon I'll be asking Peter how school was and he'll say "fine".

1 year ago, Stacy Julian asked me to design my own mini present moment scrapbook with photos as to what was happening in my life at that time.

Here's my post from then, along with some photos:

http://michelle.ogre.com/node/97

It's now 1 year later, and she's asked us to revisit that. As my time these days is really compressed, I'm doing a blog entry instead. :)

1 year ago I was pregnant and didn't know what to expect.
Now, I have an adorable little boy who is my pride and joy, and whom I love spending time with.

1 year ago I was spending time reading and playing Rock Band
Now when I'm not spending time with my family, I'm doing karate, not only as a student, but as an instructor. (Edited to add new, current photo)

1 year ago Thor was a little puppy, and Loki and Odin were 8.
Now, Thor still acts like a puppy but isn't so little, Odin is the same, and Loki was diagnosed in May with cancer and just finished his 5th and last round of chemo.

1 year ago my niece, Linnea had just come over from Sweden and was doing a year of school here as a foreign exchange student.
Now she's back in Sweden after going through senior year here, and got to participate in a real American high school graduation.

1 year ago I loved my iphone 3g.
Now, I still love my iphone 3g. :)

1 year ago I was bummed I couldn't snowboard because I was going to have a baby.
Now, we have a ski cabin and are looking forward to using it!

It's amazing how things can change in a year. I'll have to revisit this again in another year to see what's going on then.

I was watching Peter play yesterday, and it just struck me how he doesn't look like a baby anymore, he looks like a little boy. I'm not sure when the change took place exactly, but he's 10 months old today, and growing up. He's crawling like a maniac all over the place, pulls himself to standing on anything he possibly can, will walk when you hold his hands (in that jerky, unbalanced, large step way), loves to feed himself (although he can't hold a spoon yet), his top 2 teeth both broke the surface, and is very happy. We're both excited about what's to come in the future, and there are aspects of him being a baby we'll miss (like when we could put him down and have him stay there!), but we can't wait to interact even more with him.

Yahoo recently started a blog called Yodeling Mamas, which features blog entries from mothers who work at Yahoo. Anyways, I wrote my first entry recently called To Daycare, or Not to Daycare? Check it out!

I hate the mainstream news these days. Not only is it all about the worst possible stuff that happens each day, but it's all about fearmongering. Take this little article headline from CNN:

"Usually harmless turbulence can be dangerous, deadly"

Oooh, that sounds scary, and I hate to fly, so let's read the article:

"Since 1980, three people have been killed in turbulence-related accidents"
"There have been 234 turbulence-related accidents since 1980, and 114 passengers were seriously injured in those accidents"

I'm not even going to bother to give you the statistics on those numbers, but seriously, are you absolutely kidding me with that headline?

A few weeks ago Leif and I were talking about how we'll be able to snowboard again this winter since Peter is in daycare. We'll drop him off, then head up for an hour, then come home, and go to work. It got me thinking about other things we can do like that in the mornings since Peter is in daycare. As I was thinking about this, we drove by Clear Creek and saw people white water rafting on it. A few miles down the road, we drove by the Clear Creek Rafting Company. I pulled out my iphone, and saw they did couple hour trips. An idea was formed.

This morning, Leif, myself, and our friends Randy and Derek dropped Peter off at daycare really early, drove 30 minutes to the Clear Creek Rafting Company, did a 2 hour intermediate trip, and were back at our place well in time before the majority of Yahoo engineers were at work.

Although it was late in the season, and we thought the water would be low and lame, we were wrong. The water level was definitely low, but they ran the intermediate trip down the advanced course in smaller boats. As a result, the 4 of us had our own boat (with a guide, of course), and went through some nice class III and IV rapids. The water was cold, the weather was gorgeous, and we had a great time.

I love this state. You definitely couldn't do this in California!

A few weeks ago we came home from the Arvada West graduation, and noticed that Loki, our 9 year old lab, was acting really weird. He ate dinner, but wasn't into it like he normally is, and wouldn't eat any peanut butter (his favorite) when we offered it to him. After watching him for a couple of hours and noticing him getting worse, we took him to the Wheat Ridge Animal Hospital. They determined that he was bleeding into his abdomen from his spleen, and had to do emergency surgery to remove his spleen. That went off without a hitch with them finding a 2 inch tumor on his spleen. It took almost a week to get back the biopsy results, but the result was that it was hemangeosarcoma, which is malignant cancer, and by the time you actually catch it, there's a 99% chance that its spread already. Since it's in the bloodstream, and microscopic, it's impossible to tell. So we were faced with 2 options, either do chemotherapy, or don't do chemotherapy. It apparently works different in dogs than in people. They use a much lower dose of everything, so side effects are pretty rare, and it can't cure the cancer, just extend his life a little and give him a good quality of life.

Without chemo his average lifespan was told to be 2-3 months, with chemo it was 6-8, which obviously isn't a whole lot more, but our dogs are our boys so as long as it would not only do something, but give him a good quality of life, then there really wasn't a choice for us.

He finished his first round of chemo on Monday (has to go back every 3 weeks for a couple of months), and seems to be doing well. He's playing and active, and while he's not completely acting normal, he's pretty close.

This whole thing just really sucks though. It's hard for me to even think of him as being sick since he's acting like himself, but I guess that's just how cancer is. Hopefully we can give him a really good summer (take him swimming, hiking, etc...). I regret that Peter most likely won't be old enough to play with Loki before Loki dies, but we'll be able to tell him stories and show him photos and videos of our crazy black lab.

Peter figured out the other day he can make funny spitting noises with his mouth. At first he'd just do it once in awhile, but yesterday he started doing it in large sequences. Fortunately because of that, I was able to get decent video of him.

Right after we got back from the Bahamas last year, I found out I was pregnant. Immediately I checked to see if it was possible to go scuba diving while pregnant. DAN said since no studies had been done on it (since nobody would obviously volunteer), they didn't know the effects of decompression or anything on a fetus, so they recommended against it. So there went my diving.

Fast forward to mid-December 2008. Peter is about a month old, and I get a call from our friend Randy announcing that he's planned the Coral Reef Scuba spring dive trip to Cozumel. I wistfully think about how cool it would be for us to be able to go, and even briefly look into the 3 of us going before I realize it'd be a pain in the butt. I wish him a good trip, and to have fun for us.

A couple weeks later, Leif volunteers to watch Peter so I can go on the trip. I tell him I can't let him do that since I'm a mom now, and my priorities have to be different. As I have the absolute best husband in the world, he insisted I go saying that he got to go to Moab while I was pregnant, and now it was my turn. I realize a week would be just slightly too long at this point, but I'm able to go half the week, from Wednesday-Sunday.

I just got back from the trip a few days ago, and am so glad I went. It wasn't just being able to dive, or being with people I knew, it was the fact that I could just unwind and relax for the first time in probably about a year. Did I miss Peter a lot? Immensely. Did I almost not go because I'd miss him too much? Yes, but I'm extremely glad I did. Basically it was just the right group of people that I knew (and the ones that I got to meet) which worked perfectly.

Wednesday I arrived just in time to catch the group as they got off the dive boat, so I had lunch with everyone, then did a shore dive that afternoon. Dinner was at La Mission, and I had Surf and Turf (mmmmm....fresh lobster).

Thursday morning I did 1 dive and then had sinus problems on the second dive, but no matter - I got to sit on the boat in the sun, and even saw a bunch of dolphins off the side of the boat. In the afternoon I got to help someone with their Rescue Diver class, and then we all went to dinner at Pepes. Not only did I have fresh lobster, but I had fresh "made at the table" caesar salad, and not just that, but they made the dressing at the table as well.

Friday I did all 3 dives for the day, and we had dinner at Primas. Fresh lobster again for dinner!

Saturday was a free day, but in the morning I did a shore dive with Scott, read my book on the beach after lunch, had a big group dinner at Hotel Cozumel (food was edible I suppose), and then went to Senor Frogs and hung out there for awhile. I really had no plans to dance (some people were dancing, and some weren't), but first they played "You Shook Me (All Night Long)", and then "Pour Some Sugar on Me", so I was hooked after that.

And Sunday we left!

It was great to dive again, just like riding a bike, and it honestly felt like I hadn't been away. I'm really glad I was able to go on the trip.