The Rices

It's safe to say Clark will never be a professional dancer.

2012-01-31T13:31:00.000-08:00

I love that kid and his antics. I'm the luckiest person in the world.

Griffin Aaron Rice

2012-01-15T16:48:00.000-08:00

We prayed for this child and the Lord has granted us what we asked of him.

1 Samuel 1:27

Every good and perfect gift is from above.

James 1:17

From the fullness of grace we have received one blessing after another.

John 1:16

Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you, and before you were born, I consecrated you.

Jeremiah 1:5

Let the children come to me, and do not prevent them;

for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.

Matthew 19:14

I sing for joy at the works of your hands.

Psalm 92:4

And the took the children in His arms, put His hands on them, and blessed them.

Mark 10:16

Dear Griffin: 1 month

2012-01-09T19:45:00.000-08:00

Dear Griffin,

You are one month old. Actually you are older than that. I've been trying for three days to write you a letter about your first month of life but haven't gotten past the first sentence for the following reasons:

1. You started crying.

2. Clark shattered one or more of our nice bowls on the ground.

3. Clark plastered your face with stickers.

4. Clark shoved a goldfish in your mouth.

5. You pooped or something.

6. I fell asleep from the energy it now takes me to put words together.

Griffin, you are such an easy, sweet, angelic little baby. You have made the transition from one baby to two so easy for me, and for that I am so grateful. When you are old enough, just remind me how wonderful you were as a baby and I'll buy you some Bop's ice cream. I can't honestly say the past month has flown by for me. One month of you being around seems about right. You just fit right into our little family dynamic from the minute you were born and have already added so much to it. Little man, from the first second I laid eyes on you, you owned me. I am completely smitten over you and will probably never be able to tell you no. You will be spoiled and it will all be my fault.

For the first two or three weeks of your life I called you Clark. Sorry about that. The only reason is because you looked EXACTLY like your older brother. It was like some crazy sci-fi time warp situation when I held you because everything about you reminded me of him when he was a newborn. Slowly but surely, you have definitely developed your own little features and characteristics and I can see a little personality blooming everyday.

I think it is safe to say you slept through your first two weeks of life. When you can talk, I hope you'll be able to tell me what that was like. You were one sleepy boy and I had to pull out all the stops to keep you awake long enough to take a full feeding. You would have slept straight through your hunger pains if I would have let you. I had hoped once you entered the world you would have been excited to meet us, but that wasn't the case at all. I didn't mind because you love to be snuggled while you sleep. You have the most serene way of nestling your sweet little head right against my neck and staying there for hours. And that is exactly where you lived for the first week of your life. In my arms, your head against my neck, my arm holding your little bum. I love the way you smell, by the way. It is intoxicating.

I started trying to start us a little routine in your second week. It wasn't easy because of your marathon sleeping habits during the day, so I had to be super flexible. I tried to keep you awake after you ate even for 15 minutes and that was nearly impossible most of the time. I thought about sticking ice cubes down your diaper but decided that was probably cruel and unusual, and somebody should probably punch me in the face for even thinking it. It was also during your second week that you peed and pooped on me, and that was awesome. Thanks. You grew pretty fast that week because at the end of it I had to box up all of your newborn onesies and replace them with 0-3 months.

In your third week you kind of picked up on the concept of staying awake after you ate. You can stay awake for about an hour max, usually less, and then you nap for two hours. Repeat three more times throughout the day and then it is night time, and that is when the party starts. When you are awake, you are content to sit and watch the chaos that constantly surrounds you. It is a good thing you like your bouncer seat because that is where you spend a majority of the day. I would love more than anything to be holding you and rocking you and snuggling the crap out of you when you are awake, but there is a little toddler boy running around our house who has other plans for me. I do sneak some face time in with you as much as possible though and it instantly makes me giddy. You are definitely not a crier. I can count on two fingers the number of times you have cried that wasn't out of hunger or sleepiness. That is what I meant earlier when I said you are such an easy baby.

Not too much changed in your fourth week, but I did notice that you reached some pretty big milestones. You probably won't find this too impressive, but I wanted to throw you a party when I saw you reach for the little toys that hang from your bouncer. You are already batting at them and trying to make them swing. Genius. You also figured out how to put your hands together. Again, not exactly rocket science but I think you might be president one day. We took you to church at the beginning of the fourth week and you got lots of compliments on how handsome you are. You get compliments everywhere you go because you are one good looking fellow. I'm not biased at all.

Hey, do you remember that time you were born? You didn't give me a lot of heads up you were coming and you almost fell right out of my body. In case you don't remember, you can read about your story right here. I will probably use that story to guilt you into being nice to me when you are older. Well, apparently that is just your style. You are the quietest, most content baby I have ever encountered, until the very second you decide you are hungry. And then out of nowhere, you are able to belt out the loudest, most panicky yelp possible. After you eat you go back to straight up chillin' mode like you don't have a care in the world. You have spunk, and I like that about you.

By now you are probably used to the little person who is constantly screaming in your ear, sticking his finger up your nose and trying to stuff goldfish down your throat. That little person is your older brother, Clark, and really he loves you. He loves to kiss your head and pet you like a dog and say, "Hey Grif, how ya doin' great?" I can't leave him in the same room with you unattended because he doesn't really know how to handle you yet. But he loves to hold you and I have taken about three thousand pictures of him holding you to prove it. In the mornings after he wakes up, he always asks about you and wants to "hold it." You've probably noticed he can be pretty loud at times, especially in the car. But you are very patient with him, even though he can accidentally be pretty rough with you. Eventually you'll need to start sticking up for yourself, but you are playing your cards right for now.

In case you are curious, at your first doctors appointment (which was supposed to be a two week check up but since that fell during Christmas holidays, you didn't get seen until you were three weeks old), you weighed ten pounds and six ounces. You have gained a whopping one pound since you were born, which is actually kind of impressive. The doctor said big babies like you are a little slower to gain weight so he was happy. You nurse seven or eight times a day, including the middle of the night feedings, so I wasn't worried about you not gaining weight. I can already see how you have grown since the day you were born. It makes me sad and happy. More sad than happy. But still happy. But definitely sad. But happy you are healthy. But sad you are growing fast. Did you catch all that?

When it comes to night time sleep, I wouldn't say you are the world's worst sleeper, but you won't be receiving a medal any time soon. For the first couple of weeks, you clearly had your days and nights mixed up. You were up almost every hour, which meant I was up almost every hour. Ouch. Once I put you on a schedule in the day you got better at night. Instead of waking up, say, 75 times during the night, you got to where you would wake up three times. And now you are pretty consistently waking up twice, and that's ok, but I would like it if you wouldn't wake up at all. So why don't you just get right on that? On the day you turned four weeks old, I moved you to your crib in your own room. You had been sleeping in a little bassinet right next to our bed because I am incredibly lazy and unmotivated to move my body in the wee hours of the morning. While I don't enjoy doing the zombie walk from my room to yours a couple of times in the middle of the night, I absolutely love spending that time with you. You always fall asleep in my arms and we rock for a while before I put you back in your crib. We don't get to do that very much during the day so I'll take what I can get, even if I'm falling asleep too.

Grif, you are an awesome person. Daddy and I have loved spending this past month with you. You are such a breath of fresh air, even though you are incredibly gassy and you doodoo like a madman. Your little mannerisms are precious and your little squeaks and sounds make us smile. I can't promise you we are going to do everything right, but I can promise you this: we will always love you, no matter what. God will always love you more. We will always be there for you. At the end of the day, your family and faith is all you have. I am very much looking forward to watching you grow during your second month. I'm on pins and needles waiting for that first real smile. It's coming any day now, I just know it.

Love,

Mama

P.S. Our internet is acting up and won't let me post more pictures, but I will fix it soon and put some more up so you and the whole world can see how beautiful you are.

Meet Clark: 2 years old.

2012-01-09T16:46:00.000-08:00

On Friday, January 6, 2012, we celebrated Clark's second birthday. His two years of life have been the most exhilarating, heart-stirring, amazing years I could have ever dreamed of. He has brought so much joy and contentment into our lives, and I know my purpose in this life was fulfilled the day he was born. God chose me to be his mother. Aaron to be his dad. Griffin to be his brother. And since Clark has been in my life, I am truly happy. There are just no words.

Two years old. He is definitely a two year old...that is all I have to say about that. I'm not going to say he is in the terrible two's, because there is and never will be anything terrible about Clark Rice. But he has entered a phase of life where he is quick to test boundaries and he will do whatever it get takes to get a reaction from you. He'll bang his spoon on the table as loud as he possibly can just so I will tell him to stop. He will scream at the top of his lungs in the car just so I will have to scream even louder to ask him to stop. He will eat play doh just so I tell him to stop. He takes pleasure in those little things, which is why my most frequented prayer request to God is to give me more patience and self control than the average person.

I’m simply amazed at how smart he is. He gets that from me. He learns new things by the hour and has the memory of a (insert anything with a great memory). He talks all day long and we can finally have real conversations where there is a very legitimate exchange of words. He can easily tell us what he wants as opposed to just pointing and grunting and this has eliminated about 85% of frustration from both parties. Some of my favorite things he says right now are: “Thanks welcome.” He doesn’t understand that one person says thanks and the other says you’re welcome. He just says both. Same thing with “How ya doing good great.” He asks and answers himself how he is doing. Most of the time he shortens it to “How doin’ great.” He loves to find any surface with a downward slope and walk down it and say “Weeee slide.” These things won't sound funny to anybody in the world except for me and Aaron. But we love it and laugh every single time.

Something I am so excited about is the simple fact that about two weeks before his second birthday, he trashed the pacifier. It was an incredibly easy process. I told him he couldn’t have it anymore because he’s too big. He said ok. That was it. He did ask for it a few times at bedtime, but I told him no, and he never fought it. It was easy as pie. He doesn’t even try to steal Griffin’s pacis. Even though sometimes I wish I had a dadgum paci in the car when he proceeds to scream at the top of his little lungs and there is no escape route, I’m glad to have ended that stage in his life. I don’t like them but I will always have them for babies. It's a love/hate relationship.

Another big milestone he is working on is the infamous potty training. My method of potty training is probably the most unconventional method ever and I wouldn’t recommend it to any other soul on this planet. But it is working for us pretty well, and I might be the least stressed out mom ever because of it. When we are at home, Clark is naked. Not even a diaper. Bum naked. He has a little Elmo potty in the bathroom, and when he has to go he runs in there and uses it. He’s doodoo’d in it a couple of times and pees several times a day. He definitely understands the concept and doesn’t need my supervision and usually doesn’t even tell me before he goes. I’m scared to go straight to undies because when he is wearing diapers, he doesn’t hesitate to let it all out and I don’t know whether or not he would do the same thing in underwear. But maybe I’m not giving him enough credit. I’m not going to worry about it and I plan on just waiting for him to give me some assurance that he’s ready. So in the meantime, he stays in his birthday suit. And he loves it. And I love seeing his little hiney running around my house. I’m mentally sick, but you know that already if you’ve ever read even one thing on this blog.

Clark is definitely in a stick-everything-up-his-nose stage right now. I decided this was the case after I spent thirty minutes one evening trying to dig a kernel of corn out of his nose. That sucker was wedged up there pretty good and I was getting ready to load everybody up and go to the nearest ER. Eventually Clark got tired of it being there and blew it out along with three pounds of boogers. Well I guess he decided it was great fun because he sure did get a lot of attention for it, so now anything smaller than the tip of my pinky is at risk for going up the nostril. I’ve learned if I ignore him and act like I don’t see him doing it, he’s not as interested. Ah, the mind of a toddler. It’s as foreign to me as nuclear physics and more.

When it comes to food, I hereby declare Clark the worst consumer of food in the history of all two year olds. I don’t know when or where I went wrong, but at some point several months ago he decided food was overrated. He’ll eat the heck out of some fruit and string cheese and that’s about it. He will literally go six meals in a row where he will eat the equivalent of a peanut. I have tried everything but I am determined to not make meals a battlefield, so I’m just going to trust that he is not stupid and will eat when/if he gets hungry. If he could eat a steady diet of chocolate chip cookies and coke, I’m sure he would tell you that would be fine. But I like to think I’m a better mom than that. I’ll just let him go hungry instead.

The last two weeks of Clark’s second year of life were highly traumatic because he got a new little brother. We tried to prepare him for this for nine entire months. I think he is still processing some of it, as in, the reality that this little baby thing is actually going to live with us forever. What I do know is that Clark loves Griffin. I sincerely believe he loves the little guy and is so affectionate towards him. He loves to kiss him, poke his eyeballs, hug him, spit on him, help put him to bed by screaming in his ear, and rock him in his bouncer to the point that Griffin is airborne. The transition from one to two kids has been relatively painless, minus a couple of moments of severe tantrums and one really bad day on Clark’s end. I had so much help from Aaron, my mom and Aaron’s mom that I think we managed to distract Clark enough to make it through the day. Although I have been a little taken aback by his separation anxiety since Griffin was born. There have been several occasions where he did not do well at all when I had to leave him. This is odd because in the past, he'd yell "holla!" when I walked away. This past Sunday at church they had to page me out of the service because he was so upset. I’ve read this is completely normal when a new baby comes into the picture but it breaks my heart. I am hoping time will heal this scenario.

On a different note, what I never realized until Griffin arrived was just how LOUD Clark Rice is. He has an impressive set of pipes in him and they are the most noticeable when Grif is trying to fall asleep. That is why I bought an industrial strength noise maker that is so loud I don’t think we would hear a bomb go off in the next room. It’s definitely helping the G-man sleep better and I’m a lot less stressed because I don’t freak out when Clark does his hourly lung strengthening exercises.

Some things Clark loves these days are Cars, both the Pixar movie and any automobile. He loves garbage trucks, mail trucks, tractors, school buses, helicopters, trains, airplanes, 18 wheelers, 4 wheelers…are you seeing a theme? If it has an engine, he is fascinated. He loves being outside more than anything in the world. He enjoys coloring, reading the same three books, slides, running, playing hide and go seek, Blue’s Clues, swimming in the bath tub, picking boogers and placing them anywhere he wants, seeing his friends at school (Mother’s Morning Out) and church, playing football with his dad, jumping in water puddles, pointing out every single thing he sees and telling me what it is, Chuck E. Cheese with Aaron, listening to the toddler radio station on Pandora in the car, singing Itsy Bitsy Spider and You Are My Sunshine, helping me cook, wearing the boots that his Geezer got him for Christmas, talking in third person, walking in any room and yelling “HEY!”, giving Aaron, Griffin and I big slobbery kisses and sweet hugs, and being awesome. He is definitely awesome.

The thing that blows me away the most lately is just how big he is. I know this is because he is always next to Griffin, and Griffin looks so tiny to me (even though he is a fairly huge baby). Yesterday was a really tough day for Clark. I had to discipline him a lot and he was unusually temperamental so it felt like all day I was saying no or threatening him with spankings (which I hate doing but seem do it all the time because it works like magic). The whole day sucked and I don’t really know what went wrong. It started at church and lasted all day. I was so ready to put him to bed at the end of the day and start over today. But last night at about 11:30 after I fed Griffin, I started thinking about how bad I felt for Clark that his day was so bad and wanted to make it better, even if the day was technically over. I went in his room and picked him up out of his crib while he slept and rocked with him in the rocking chair for about an hour. I couldn’t believe how big he was. He felt so heavy on my lap and his long legs and arms were draped over my shoulders. Even his breath seemed heavy. It boils down to this: he’s just not a baby anymore. He hasn’t been a baby for a long time, I realize this. But lately he seems so mature and I’m kind of not ready for it. But what choice do I have in the matter? Not much of one. He’s going to keep getting bigger, one day bigger and taller than me, and I’ll need to be a big girl about it.

We love this kid so much. There are days we don't get along and there are plenty of parenting moments I am not proud of. But he always forgives me and doesn't remember all the times I lost my temper. I am still cool to him. He lights up when I enter a room and I do the same when I see him. I hope this lasts forever. My goal for the next year of his life is to slow down and enjoy him. I want to savor his little Clarkyisms and write them down so I never forget them. I want to stop being too busy to sit on the floor and color with him. I want to let him play in the bathtub for as long as he wants. I want him to be fearless. I want to stop saying no so much and let him learn his own way of doing things. And my biggest hope is that he starts to understand the gospel and love Jesus. Our church will play a big role in that, but it is definitely mine and Aaron's responsibility. Big things will happen for Clark Rice this year and I get to see every single day of it. What a blessing. Being his mom is what I am least deserving of but most grateful for. I'm looking forward to the shenanigans that Clark gets into this year and hoping I can keep up. He is definitely a dark shark on the prowl.

Griffin's Story

2011-12-16T16:23:00.000-08:00

The day of Griffin's birth seemed as if it was taken straight out of a movie scene. Aaron and I have had many past conversations where I tell him that not all labor and deliveries take 14 or more hours like Clark's did. Sometimes women go into labor and they barely make it to the hospital or end up birthing a child in their car or on a sidewalk or something crazy like that. He was convinced that only happened in the movies and that I didn't need to worry about having a hospital bag packed or anything because we would have plenty of time.

Well now he knows better.

Saturday, December 10, 2011 was an exciting, painful, scary, beautiful, and unexpected day. This is how the events of that day unfolded.

We woke up that Saturday morning as a family of three and wanted to take advantage of what little time we would spend together because Aaron planned on working that afternoon. Nothing at all was unusual about that morning. I waddled into the kitchen, fixed Clark some oatmeal, made Aaron coffee, had my bowl of Cheerios, and we spent most of the morning lounging in our pajamas. We decided to take Clark to Northpark Mall to get his picture taken with Santa Claus and then grab some lunch before Aaron headed to the office. Sounds like a fairly uneventful day if you ask me.

At about 12:45, we loaded up and headed to Northpark. Let me emphasize that at this point, I felt great. Perfectly fine. Not a clue what the rest of the day had in store for me. We got to the mall at 1:00, located Santa and the two mile long line of overzealous kids and parents waiting to sit on Santa's lap, and stood in line for almost an hour. Actually, I stood in line while Aaron entertained Clark by taking him up and down the escalator and buying him a ridiculous amount of chocolate chip cookies. I had a feeling Clark would not cooperate very well with Santa because it was so close to his nap time, so when it was Clark's turn, I warned the nice photographer lady that he was probably going to freak out and to just take the picture. There was no need to distract him or try to make him smile. It just wasn't going to be pretty.

Clearly I was right. The up close and personal view of Santa was enough to send him straight into panic mode the very second Aaron put him on his lap. I instructed the photographer to hurry up and take the picture so we could get the heck out of there before we caused a huge scene. I made my way to the cashier who I think was judging me the whole time and gave her my credit card.

At the exact moment she gave me my credit card back, I felt my very first contraction and it almost sent me to my knees. It completely took the breath out of me. It was bad. This was at approximately 2:00 p.m. I grabbed my card and the pictures out of her hand and told Aaron I was positive I just had a contraction and we needed to get out of there.

Two minutes later, I felt another contraction and it was just as painful and ridiculous as the first. And then another one came two minutes later. And another one. By that point, I started semi-freaking out. We walked out of the mall and I was trying to breath through the contractions while Aaron was letting Clark dawdle aimlessly in the parking lot. I can specifically remember Aaron patiently telling Clark to stay with him and that he couldn't run in the parking lot, and I turned around and yelled in a very demonic voice to pick up the dadgum kid and throw him in the car. It was around this time that I started getting very mean. Very, very mean.

Once we got in the car, I started timing the contractions on my phone. They were about one minute and 40 seconds apart and unbelievably painful. Even though I really wanted to go home and get my bag and take a shower and shave my legs and put make up on, we headed straight to the hospital. But not without Aaron first asking if we had time to stop at a Mexican restaurant so he could get some lunch. He was hungry, poor guy. That is a true story. He actually did that.

I would like to take a second to emphasize the timeline we were dealing with. The first contraction hit at about 2:00 p.m. while we were in the mall. We got in the car at about 2:10 to go to the hospital. In between contractions, I tried to call a few people to let them know we were on our way but ended up screaming in their ear because the next contraction came too fast. You should have been a fly on the wall in our vehicle on the journey from the mall to the hospital. I was screaming in pain like a dadgum drama queen, Aaron was trying to maneuver around some very heavy traffic on one of the worst possible roads in Jackson, and Clark was in the backseat looking at us like we were on drugs. I was demanding in a very loud tone that Aaron run every red light, weave in and out of traffic like a madman and honk at any car who dared get in our way, and yes, we went about 100 miles per hour on the interstate.

We got to the hospital at about 2:20 and I stumbled into the waiting room, looked at the lady behind the glass window and pointed at my belly and said, "this is happening right now." Then I doubled over a wheelchair sitting next to me while a contraction hit and screamed a little more. The contractions were about one and a half minutes apart by then and each one seemed to be more painful than the last. Oh the pain.

I was so not prepared for this level of pain. I was fully prepared to casually walk into the hospital on my scheduled c-section day and have a baby, but definitely not prepared to experience full out labor with zero pain medication. I couldn't breathe through the contractions and I had mini panic attacks with each one.

The nurse in the ER instructed Aaron to stay in the waiting room with Clark while she admitted me, and then she had the audacity to ask me for a dadgum urine sample and my entire medical history WHILE I was standing there minutes away from giving birth. At this point, I'm pretty sure I grew horns on my head. I let my inhibitions fly out the window and vocalized any thought that entered my mind. And believe me, these were not happy thoughts. It was kind of great, actually. I had never spoken my mind like that and probably won't ever have an excuse to do it again. In fact, looking back it was kind of funny. But at the time, nothing was even close to funny.

I think it was about 2:45 when they put me in a bed and this is when I started getting very irritatable and barking unpleasantries at anyone who made eye contact with me, mostly my husband. It seemed to me at the time that they had just stuck me in a bed and completely forgot about me. I was experiencing the most horrific pain in my life and screaming every minute and a half and I desperately needed an epidural to make it out alive. Aaron assures me this wasn't the case. They had not forgotten about me, they were just getting the operating room ready and calling my doctor and the anesthesiologist and blah blah blah. All I knew is that I needed pain medication or somebody was going to have to die.

Note: I've never been one to disclose personal information on the ole blog, but years down the road I'm going to want to remember these details, so I'll try to be discreet but I'm going to go ahead and let it all out. Brace yourself. The first time they checked my labor progress I was 6 cm dilated. Ten minutes later, when I honestly didn't think I could handle the pain anymore and I was violently screaming at every poor soul that entered my presence, they checked me again and I was 8.5 cm. Aaron was standing next to me me almost the whole time, although I'm positive he would have loved to have hung out in the waiting room to avoid being brutally yelled at. Have I mentioned how bad the pain was? Because it was bad. Aaron tells me that I repeatedly yelled the phrases, "Where is the freaking anesthesiologist!?" and "pain medicine! pain medicine! pain medicine!" no less than 200 times in that short span of 10 minutes. I needed relief and fast. It was horrible.

A lot of it is a blur to me already, but I do have very vivid memories of a few things. I remember watching Aaron getting suited up in scrubs and being wheeled into the operating room and thinking how cold and strange everything was. I remember feeling my last contraction while the anesthesiologist was giving me a spinal block and the wonderful feeling of relief I felt about 30 seconds later. I remember being worried that my doctor wasn't going to make it in time but being so thankful she arrived just in time to do the procedure. She was so encouraging and calm and made the whole thing as pleasant as it could possibly be. I remember Aaron sitting close to my face and smiling at me while he held my hand. I remember my doctor holding Griffin up above the curtain and tears streaming down my face. She said over and over again that he was a big boy and was beautiful and healthy and looked great. I remember a nurse saying, "You won't believe how big this baby is. He's nine pounds, six ounces!" I remember seeing Aaron hold Griffin for the first time and how happy that made me. I remember thinking about Clark and wondering what he was doing. I remember asking my doctor if she could do a little bit of liposuction after she pulled the baby out to kick start the baby weight shedding process. I remember when they wheeled me out of the OR and my family and friends were standing in the hallway waiting for me. That was such a sweet moment that I'm going to hold on to for a long time.

So Griffin Rice was born at 3:15 that afternoon. I had no idea when that first contraction hit at the mall that only one hour and fifteen minutes later, I would be holding our newest baby boy. That hour and fifteen minutes was the longest, most horrifyingly painful time period I could ever fathom and I never want to do it again.

We spent three wonderful days in the hospital getting to know Griffin and hanging out with a steady flow of visitors. My recovery was a walk in the park (compared to the first time) and I am confident a c-section was the right decision for me this time. As soon as I publish this post, I'm going to start writing about the last three weeks and fill you in on who this Griffin kid is. This one was entirely too long so I opted to forego the three thousand pictures I've taken since he was born, but rest assured that in my next post you will be overwhelmed with how cute he is. And Clark and Griffin in the same photo is almost too much to handle in one sitting.

You won't find scrooge in our house this year.

2011-12-09T19:09:00.000-08:00

Last year I was the ultimate scrooge. I didn't put up a tree for fear that a certain one year old would terrorize it and also because I just didn't feel like it. That is me being honest. I also waited until Christmas Eve to shop for everybody in the family. And I had little motivation to decorate because I knew we wouldn't be home on Christmas morning and Clark was way too young to know any difference.

But this year is different. I believe it was the day after Thanksgiving that I was bitten by the Christmas bug and busted out the tree and what little decorations we had. Let me clarify: my Christmas decor is and never will be impressive, but that doesn't matter. It got our family in the spirit and I am so unbelievably excited for Christmas morning to roll around. The difference in this year and Christmas's past, besides the addition of a new Griffin, will be the lack of Rice's. Due to all these little babies being born and the fact that four out of five Rice kids have moved out of the great state of Mississippi (crazy, I know), it just wasn't possible to make it happen this year. So Aaron, Kelly, Clark and Griffin Rice will wake up in our house on Christmas morning, make some breakfast and hot chocolate, read the story of Jesus' birth, and then open presents. And then hopefully Clark and Griffin will want to take a Christmas morning nap at the same time. But I seriously doubt that will happen.

I love our tree. It is extra special to me this year because of the addition of 25 new Jesse Tree ornaments. We are doing the Jesse Tree as a way to really put the focus of Christmas on Jesus. I'll have an entire post dedicated to this in the very near future.

I won this bad boy playing bunco last year. It might be my favorite piece of decor I own.

Our mantle. Mantles are intimidating to decorate, if you ask me. Especially when you have to work around a Direct TV box and dvd player, and even more when you are creatively challenged, as I am. You can't see it, but there is garland up there and the words "Joy" and "Believe" pop out at you every time you look at the tv. I did the best with what I had, and maybe next year somebody can help me make it look better.

Up close view of the stockings my 91 year old grandmother, Yaya, recently stitched by hand. She's so talented and thoughtful, and these two little stockings will be in our family for the rest of our lives. You wouldn't believe the detail if you looked at it even closer. I am 100% positive I could never do that.

And we even have some presents under the tree. I'm only semi-embarrassed by the cheap bows I stuck on them. You would think after living with Megan for three years, I would have learned how to tie a pretty bow around a gift, but that is definitely not the case. I'm just proud of myself to have (almost) finished my Christmas shopping in advance and even get them wrapped before Christmas morning, which is much more my style.

And these little guys are our temporary centerpiece. I had them stuck in a box and didn't know what else to do with them. I hope it's not too tacky.

So that about covers it. I realize that whatever decorations I put up will have to eventually come down, and since procrastination is one of mine and Aaron's biggest gifts, I have a feeling we will be celebrating Valentine's Day with our Christmas tree up. I will pay somebody to take this tree down after a reasonable amount of time has passed. I will certainly not be up for the task, and I would put money on Aaron avoiding it like the plague.

Merry Christmas to all of our friends and family. To all you Rice's around the globe, it just won't be the same without you. We hope you enjoy your Christmas morning. Please take pictures. Love y'all!

My Spoon Victory

2011-12-09T11:55:00.000-08:00

I should have known our morning was bound to be tragic when I heard Clark waking up and I looked at the clock and it was 5:50 am. Friends and loved ones, this is way too early. I let him stay in his crib for at least 15 minutes thinking he would fall back asleep, but when I looked at the video monitor, he was standing up holding his blanket and crying hysterically. I went into his room holding back tears because I knew at that point he was awake for the day and so was I. My point of telling you this is because 5:50 is really early for Clark and I knew he didn't get his ideal amount of sleep which is approximately 12 hours each night. In other words, in order for him to be a happy kid throughout the day, he would have needed a good two more hours of night night.

And I was right. From the second I went in his room, the floodgates opened and I could not get him to calm down. It got old and really fast, but I was patient with him and just let him work it out until he settled down. At about 7:00, he started whining for oatmeal and I was ecstatic to hear anything other than an all out scream fest, so I fixed him a bowl and watched him scarf it down.

This is where the story actually starts. After he finished his bowl, he asked for more, which actually sounds more like the word mower. So I got some more oatmeal and poured it in his bowl and went to get the milk when I saw him trying to eat the oatmeal dry. I told him to stop eating it because we need to put milk in it and heat it up first. This was the moment that Clark broke down. Freaked out. Melted down. Panicked. Almost died. It was horrible. How dare I ask him not to eat dry oatmeal. He got so mad that he yelled, "No!!" and chunked his spoon across the room as if he was saying, "I curse the ground my mom walks on."

Whoa. He has never done this so I actually had no idea how to appropriately react. Spank? Time out? Demand an apology? I didn't know. So I gave him my mom glare, told him in a relatively calm voice that throwing the spoon was not okay and he needed to pick it up.

He walked to the spoon, picked it up, handed it to me and said "Sorry, Mommy. I love you."

Just kidding. That didn't happen at all. In fact, he screamed louder and continued his temper tantrum until I just walked out of the room and left him by himself. He followed me into the other room, still screaming, and holding his arms up like he wanted to be picked up. I told him I wasn't going to pick him up until he picked up the spoon. That didn't go over well.

For the next couple of hours I walked around cleaning up my house, leaving the spoon exactly where he threw it, and Clark literally spent an hour following me around with his blanket in his hand screaming and crying and saying "up, mama." I constantly repeated that I wasn't going to hold him until he picked up the spoon, and every couple of minutes I would ask him if he was ready to bring me the spoon and he would tell me no. Eventually he dropped the idea of being held and played by himself but I continued to ask him about the spoon. Being the stubborn mess he is, he said no every time.

At 8:50 am (remember, this all started at about 7:00), the heavens opened as I was in Clark's room putting his laundry up. He came in the room with his blanket in one hand and the spoon in the other. He slowly walked over to me, handed me the spoon, gave me a really big hug, and then asked for more oatmeal. That really happened, people. It only took two hours of refusing to hold my son, listening to a very constant, high pitched scream, and not giving him attention to send a message.

We walked into the kitchen and I made him some more oatmeal and put it in front of him. He took one look at it and pushed it away like I had just presented him with a giant bowl of poop. Instead of losing my mind, which would normally have been my first reaction, I told him that made me sad because I worked hard to make him some more oatmeal and he needed to eat it. So he pulled the bowl toward him and proceeded to eat the whole thing. I thanked him for being nice and told him I loved him and lots of other cheesy jargon.

This may not seem like a big deal, but I did a happy dance. It was a victory for me, and I'm not sure Clark learned even one thing from the whole ordeal, but whatever. Although the morning was extremely difficult to make it through, I wouldn't change anything about it because I learned a couple of valuable lessons that I'm going to keep with me for a while.

The most important thing is that I will forever reign over all the spoons in my house.

A look into my life.

2011-12-08T18:09:00.000-08:00

This is a video I took tonight of Clark after he got out of his bubble bath. He was being silly and fun and I want you to see how I get to spend my nights. I am so blessed.

Good night from the Dark Shark.

A six week catch up.

2011-12-07T12:19:00.000-08:00

I've been a stranger to my blog for about six weeks because, well, I don't know. I suppose the main reason is because I'm kind of a lazy blogger, if you haven't picked up on that throughout the life of this blog. I annoy even myself because I have promised about 35 times that I would do better but I never do. So I won't be making any more promises about that anymore. If anyone reads this, just accept the fact that I may or may not be consistent. Even though I can honestly say I wish I was consistent because this little website here is all I have to go by when it comes to our family history over the past three-ish years. I'll do better.I promise. Haha - kidding. I probably won't do better.

Anyway, here is what has been happening with us Rice's. Aaron is really enjoying his job at his law firm. He's learning a lot and tries to tell me about it, but never gets far into it before he gets interrupted by me screaming, "Clark, please don't (fill in the blank)." So even though I don't have a clue what exactly he does for 8-10 hours per day, I know he's happy doing it.

And then there is Clark. Where do I even start with that kid? He is by far the sweetest, most handsome little chump I've ever laid eyes on and I will always consider it a huge blessing and honor to stay home with him and teach him what limited information I know and most importantly, I learn from him everyday. I am learning patience in a way I never thought I'd ever have to know. After all, he is a two year old boy who shares a gene pool with Aaron Randall Rice. Whoa is all I'm going to say about that.

He's learning new things everyday. He's a curious little tot and is constantly exploring. I am loving seeing this huge world through a toddler's eyes. He's getting semi-proficient with words and we actually have conversations with him now and he can communicate with us. And as with any toddler, I am sure, the number one concept we are all trying to nail down is discipline. Clark understands it, I have no doubt. He understands consequences and spankings and even though I try not to do it too much, he definitely understands threats. His main problem right now is running away from me when I ask him to do something, and that is not okay at all with me. Every time he does it, I ask him what happens when he doesn't obey the first time and he responds by spanking himself on the leg. So he understands the consequence of not listening but he's okay with it because he continually does it. It gets old, especially when you are ridiculously pregnant and sitting down and standing up (and running after a fast two year old) is quite an ordeal that results in lots of moaning and groaning. But I am sure with much prayer, patience and practice, we will all be okay.

Some of his favorite things right now include reading, riding the four wheeler with his Geez and talking to the cows and horsies, going down big slides on his belly, running, playing with his cars and making vroom vroom noises, talking about airplanes and fire trucks, praying for his family and the cows and horsies, playing in dirt, mud, and water puddles, being outside, playing with his friends Jackson, Noah, and Barrett, going to school (pronounced cool) and church, making coffee for his dad every morning, hugging and kissing the baby (my belly), watching lame shows like Blue's Clue's, and roughhousing with Aaron. And I mean serious roughhousing. If one were to see the kind of roughhousing I'm talking about, there is a high probability Child Protective Services would pay us a visit. But then you hear the squeals of laughter and cackling coming from both dad and son and you know it's all in good fun and dad (hopefully) has everything under control.

I'm not proud of the pink paci in this picture, but this was a particularly rough no-nap day

and he fell asleep on the couch after I gave it to him.

He will turn two on January 6, and by then he would have been a big brother for about three weeks. Raise your hand if you are as nervous as I am about this. I'm anxious for several reasons, but the main one is because I am scared of not being able to appropriately give myself to these two kids (and Aaron). I'm scared of yanking away the attention I've always been able to give Clark. I'm already feeling pangs of guilt for knowing that in just a few days, I'll be repeating a variation of this phrase over and over again: "Hold on just a second, Clark." or "The baby needs to (fill in the blank)." I will be overly conscious of this when Griffin is born and will make a very concerted effort to spend as much quality time with just Clark as possible. The good news is that so far, he is showing signs of being excited about the baby and he's very nice and gentle with him in my belly. He loves to go in Griffin's room at night and say night night to his crib and point out everything that the baby is going to use. I don't know if this is foretelling of what life will actually be like or not, but I'll let you know how it goes. Probably in about six months when I get around to blogging again.

Griffin is still growing, and of that I am sure. With every ounce he gains, I feel it in my back, my muscles, my hair, toenails, everything. Last week he was a little over eight pounds, so we are expecting another 9+ pound baby by next week, unless he decides to come sooner, which would be awesome. We are having him at UMC and I am going to write a very long book one day about how much I love my doctor. If you are in the market for an obgyn, please, please, please call me.

This is our plan for Griffin's delivery. If I have not had him by Wednesday, December 14 (my roommate Megan's birthday), I will check in to the hospital at 5 am and by 7:30 am, we will be holding our newest baby. This time around I am having a c-section and I am not going to go into details for reasons you should thank me for. But I will say that I am nervous about it and would love to hear from anybody who has ever had a c-section. Please send me an email or facebook message if you can tell me that it is a piece of cake and I will breeze right through the whole thing. If you can't tell me those exact words, don't contact me. I do love the fact that his birthday will be scheduled and predictable and I can make arrangements for Clark and Jake and all the above.

In other news, Aaron and I celebrated our 7th wedding anniversary on November 20. It was a nice, low key day spent at church and lazing around the house not doing anything productive besides watching marathon episodes of Sister Wives and talking smack about the husband on the show. That guy is so creepy. Seven years of marriage - dadgum that sounds like a long time. But really it hasn't felt like it. We have lived in what seems like a thousand different cities, we were students for most of those years, I worked in a gastroenterologist office at one point and got to talk about colons all day, Aaron started and finished law school, we moved in and out of a wonderful house in Oxford, we had a kid who changed our worlds, we've had some really good times and some perfectly bad times, we got a white maltipoo who I now have a love/hate relationship with, we made some great friends, and now we are getting ready to welcome a second baby into our lives. All in seven years. And none of that would have ever happened if it weren't for Nikki, who convinced me to go with her youth group to Panama City for a church retreat that made me wear a one piece bathing suit. So thanks, Nikki. I owe you one. Oh wait, if it weren't for me, you wouldn't have met your husband, so I guess we're even. You are welcome. That is a true story, by the way.

That about sums up our lives in a few short paragraphs. Please keep our family in your prayers as we grow next week, or hopefully much sooner than that. I'm so excited to celebrate Christmas with family and watch Clark open presents for the first time. Last year he was a wee too young to actually enjoy his gifts. I'm also happy to really understand Advent for the first time this year. What a difference it makes on your entire perspective of Christmas when you look at it through the lens of the heritage of Jesus Christ.

I am going to rely on Arnie to post pictures of the new little guy and I'll try my darndest to write a little somethin' somethin' about him as soon as possible. We had a 4d ultrasound done when I was 31 weeks pregnant, and Griffin's pictures are identical to Clark's 4d pictures. That is awesome to me because I happen to think that Clark is the cutest thing to ever be born and I would be happy to be the mom of two of the cutest things to ever be born. I had another ultrasound yesterday and the nurse zoomed in on his head and showed me that Griffin has lots of hair. That made me smile. I hope his hair is all Bozo the Clown like Clark's was.

Merry Christmas, y'all.

Leland Elijah Meigs

2011-12-03T18:07:00.000-08:00

A sweet, perfect, healthy little baby boy was born today to Hannah and Daniel Meigs. It is almost impossible not being in Nashville to snuggle the ever living poo out of that new baby. I, along with the rest of the world, am waiting on pins and needles to see the amazing photos that Daniel has taken and will take of Leland Elijah Meigs. I hope you will join me in praying for their family as they learn how to be parents.

(An update on what is going on with the Aaron Rice family is currently brewing. Stay tuned, if you want).

Don't read if you are in a particularly good mood because this will ruin it.

2011-10-27T13:30:00.001-07:00

I hesitate to write about what is going on with me right now because I feel like I have done absolutely nothing but complain and bellyache to anyone and everyone that has entered my non-showered presence lately, but then I thought to myself, "Everyone is a turd and can get over it."

That is my state of mind these days. So if you're not willing to get an earful (or eyeful, I suppose, if you are reading this), I would recommend you hang up now.

About three weeks ago, I came down with a horrific cold. The combination of a constant head cold, smokers cough, sore throat, and inability to sleep due to a horrible whooping cough made for one very unhappy Kelly Anne Rice. Clark got a little bit of it in the form of a cough and runny nose but it was short lived and he never seemed too bothered by it, and Aaron fought it off with six gallons of orange juice and Airborne. But I felt like death on wheels. So I guess that began the process of my immune system going to crap.

Approximately 30 seconds after I started to feel better from my death cold, I started to get another fever and out of freaking nowhere, I got shingles. Shingles. I got shingles. If you don't know what they are, just type the word "shingles" in Google images and there you go. It is undoubtedly the worse pain I've seen since the beginning of ever and being almost 33 weeks pregnant makes it quite unbearable. Let me take a couple of seconds to describe the pain.

Imagine somebody taking a knife to an already open wound and furiously twisting said knife until it reaches whatever bone is closest. Then multiply that by 75 different locations across your body.

Or, imagine taking a nap on a a pile of burning coals, and then when you wake up, somebody pours something acidic all over the burned places and your skin just slowly withers away.

Or, imagine the worst possible sunburn you could ever get, and then your worst enemy forcing a branding iron upon your body.

I'm going to stop there because it is kind of making me feel worse just thinking about it. To make matters worse, the ability to sleep has completely vacated me and I am literally going on about seven minutes of sleep at night. For the life of me, despite the crushing pain, I cannot get comfortable enough to actually let my body fall asleep. It is ridiculous.

Here is the good news: my mother and mother-in-law are little angels just floating around being awesome. On the day that the real pain started, my mother in law, sweet, sweet Debbie Rice, drove all the way to Jackson to pick Clark up and take him back to Hattiesburg so he doesn't have to watch me suffer and he gets to ride four wheelers and talk to cows and horsies all day. I miss the stew out of him, and seeing his picture every time I look at my phone makes me tear up. I miss his little laugh and the way he pronounces the word "coffee," and I would do anything for one big hug from a Dark Shark Tank. But I realize I am completely helpless right now and I can't even shower without screaming in pain, much less hold him or entertain him all day long. So I'm happy for him, and so very thankful for Debbie for taking the initiative. And my mom has been so diligent in bringing me meals so that I don't have to think ahead. I am pretty sure I would nix eating altogether from my daily routine if it were my own responsibility, and that would not be very nice to sweet Griffin. So she is keeping my belly full of good comfort food and has a great attitude about it. And she lets me complain to her all day long.

Speaking of Griffin, listen to this: at my last doctors appointment I got an ultrasound, and at 31 weeks, the little guy already weighs 5 pounds, 12 ounces. After establishing that he is perfectly healthy in there and I am healthy (or at least was pre-shingles), the doctor said I just grow big baby boys. Note to readers: Clark was a big ole baby. And because he will most likely continue to grow at an impressive rate, my doctor won't let me go past 39 weeks. That means our Grif will be here no later than December 13. Praise our Good Lord! I'm praying fervently that these shingles will be completely gone by then because as you can imagine, that would be miserable.

So these days, I am doing a lot of resting, wincing in pain, and taking my antiviral medications and painkillers. I'm trying hard to sleep, although unfortunately that is not really happening, and being sleep deprived is starting to get quite physically painful. I'm also kind of trying not to complain so much because it is getting old even to me, but so far that is not going so well because I am going to press "publish post" on this blog in about 20 seconds.

My next order of business is to research whether or not I can put myself in a medically induced coma for the next two weeks. I'd love to wake up one day and be able to take a shower without feeling like one of the above descriptive scenarios is taking place. I'd also love to just take a shower, because I look ridiculous.

Clark: (almost) 21 months

2011-09-28T17:00:00.000-07:00

Clark the Shark is about to be 21 months old and there are so many things he does and says that I never want to forget. In fact, there are so many things I want to remember that for the past two weeks I've been writing things down as they popped in my head, and that makes blogging so much easier. How unusually organized of me. What I've realized is that each little phase he goes through tends to be too short lived. For example, do you remember the game face? Gone. Vanished. That game face made us laugh so hard and we loved finding ways to make him do it, and now all we have are the videos we took and the blog post I wrote about it. Fortunately, this realization has motivated me to start documenting every single thing because, in the words of my friend Steven Tyler, I don't want to miss a thing.

Here are some of my favorites:

He has developed the cutest accent and I love hearing the words that leave his mouth. Milk is pronounced muk. You haven't lived until you've heard Clark say the word cookie or horsie. For some reason I absolutely cannot figure out, when he says fish, it comes out as shoe. But when he says the word shoe, it clearly sounds like shoe. So in Clark's world, shoe and fish mean two different things but are pronounced the exact same way. It's cute, and I'm only a little worried about it. My favorite Clark words are door, floor, four, and more. The reason I like those specific words is because if you heard them, you would think he was raised in the most northern inch of the United States as possible. Somehow we managed to raise a very Yankee sounding little boy. The word more comes out of his mouth as mo-wa and door is do-wa. It's really cute and I love it.

When we are in public or if there is even one human being in our presence, Clark loves to repeatedly point me (mama) out to everybody within earshot. He will look at another person and point to me and say mama about 400 times in a row. It is as if he is really, really proud to show me off as his mother. He wants everybody to know I am his mama. He does the same thing when Aaron is in the room, and I've recently learned he does it with his Geez as well. He thinks everybody needs to know who these people are. I am sure this will be a short phase, and this is definitely not something I want to forget.

I love the way he dances and sings. Anytime he hears music he immediately goes to dancing, and especially when you ask him to. He stands there and sways back and forth and shakes his head and sometimes he will get to moving his arms up and down. And when you ask him to sing, he usually hums or belts out a tune that sounds like this: aahhhhhhhh. But it is definitely a song in his head and it is priceless.

I love the way he eats oatmeal in the mornings. He has become very proficient with a spoon, and when I see him sitting at the table (not in a high chair) in the morning in his jam jams eating oatmeal, he looks like a 14 year old. This should make me sad, but something about seeing a sneak peak into his future just makes me smile. He's a dadgum cute kid.

It is probably no secret to anybody now that Jake (the dog) and I don't get along very well anymore. The day we brought Clark home from the hospital was the day Jake decided to throw any and all potty training abilities out the doggie door. He barks at butterflies and wakes Clark up from naps. He poops and pees everywhere. Every morning before I go in to get Clark, I have to walk through the house picking up his nightly bowel movements because he refuses to go to the bathroom when I let him outside for the sole purpose of going to the bathroom. He's become a royal pain in my bum. Having said that, watching him and Clark interact is one of my top three favorite things in life. Clark simply adores that dog and that dog loves to play with Clark. They entertain each other for hours. Clark loves to chase him around the house squeaking and squealing and loves even more to be chased around the house. I don't know if this is a phase or not, but either way, I don't want to forget it.

Clark loves to help me clean up, and in all honesty, he's pretty good at it. When I'm unloading the dishwasher, he hands me each dish to put up and when its time to put the silverware up, he grabs a handful of spoons (or forks or knives), walks over to the drawer where the silverware goes, opens it and chunks it all in the drawer. When it's time to switch the clothes from the washer to the dryer, I hand him each item of clothing one by one and he throws it in the dryer. And I can give him almost anything and ask him to please put it in his room, and that is exactly what he does. He loves throwing trash away and putting his dirty clothes in his hamper and he's a huge fan of sweeping. I am confident this is a phase.

At 21 months old, he knows and recognizes the letters A, I, O, E, K, and J. He loves to repeat the entire alphabet after me, and on a good day, he can say abcde. Thank you, Melmo, for teaching this kid some letters before he's two.

He loves when I roll all the windows down in the car. But because my car is a piece of doodoo, the window next to his car seat doesn't roll down and I can only roll down the other three. He loves the wind to blow in his face, and 80% of the time it puts him to sleep. Rolling the windows down and turning the music up loud makes him light up like a light bulb. I love it too so it works out great for everybody.

Some of my all time favorite things he does right now is hug, kiss, and be nice. This all started when I was trying to teach him how to be nice to the baby by rubbing my belly. (Before this he had a tendency to hit the crap out of my stomach.) This explains why now when I ask him to be nice to somebody (or Jake), he immediately goes to rubbing their belly or their head or their arm. This has led to several awkward moments when strangers are involved. But he loves being nice to kids his own age and petting their heads. He also loves to hug and kiss other kids and always enjoys hugging and kissing the baby. But nothing compares to Clark locating his reflection in a mirror or window and leaning in to give himself a hug and kiss. It's really quite cute. I'm sure if you are around Clark for any extended amount of time you will either get hugged, kissed, or your belly rubbed. I sincerely hope this one is not a short phase.

Over Labor Day weekend, Clark and I road tripped to Montgomery, AL to visit some great family friends. We've been doing this for a couple of years, and it is true that every time we go Clark gets sick. Not kidding, he gets sick once a year and it is when we go to Montgomery. It's very unfortunate, and this last time was no different. He had some strange symptoms and I attributed it to teething, although no new teeth have risen since then. But anyway, out of the three nights we were there, two of them were pretty rough. Clark got a really high fever, broke out in a horrible sweat and looked plain miserable. He was really upset and looked super uncomfortable when I tried to put him in the pack n' play at bed time. I caved and for the first time in his little lifetime, I put him in my bed to sleep with me for the night. I cooled him off with a wet rag and put fans around us and he quickly calmed down and fell asleep. This happened two nights in a row and by the third night he started feeling better so he slept in the pack n' play. The reason I'm writing about this is because for those two nights, even though I got a combined 14 seconds of sleep both nights, they might be labeled as my two favorite nights ever. For those two nights, Clark slept in my arms and I got to stare at him and listen to him breathe (and snort, grunt, snore, etc.) all night long. He has never been a super affectionate baby, so moments of snuggling and cuddling are very few and far between. This is why I labeled those two particular nights some of the best and I never want to forget them.

Clark recently started a Mothers Morning Out program at a church in town and he goes two days a week for about five hours. I knew I needed some time throughout the week to myself so I can actually do things besides watch Elmo and play hide and go seek, but I had no idea how much I could benefit from that time. As it turns out, five hours is an eternity when you don’t have to work around naps, snacks, toddler woes, and poop diapers. I confess that my original motive in enrolling him in “school” is so I could come home and take a 4 hour and 45 minute nap. Well, the marathon nap hasn’t happened yet, unfortunately, but I am getting to grocery shop in peace, eat lunch with adult human beings without ever saying the words don’t throw your mac and cheese, and even clean my house, which rarely happens when the toddler man is toddling around. The good part about it all is that Clark absolutely loves going to cool. On school days, he wakes up repeating cool over and over and spends the entire morning lugging around his backpack and lunchbox. When I drop him off, he sprints toward his classroom and turns around and waves bye bye to me, and it’s really one of the sweetest things he does at this point in his life. I honestly don’t know if the MMO program is more beneficial to me or to Clark, but either way, I’m sticking with it.

And finally, one of my favorite things he does right now is when he prays for his family and friends by name. Every night when he lays down he folds his hands together and we ask him who he wants to pray for. We proceed to thank Jesus for every single member of our families and all of his friends and the four wheeler and Melmo and doors and ears. He’s getting so good at praying in that he doesn’t get distracted .5 seconds into it anymore. He will actually sit there and wait for me (or Aaron) to say Amen, and then he finishes with a loud, booming Amen! It’s a sweet, sweet time and perfect way to end our days with him. I also gave him a piggy bank and every time he puts money in it I tell him we are going to give our money to Jesus when we fill it up. He loves finding coins lying around the house because he’ll run over to me and say “Jesus, Jesus!” It makes me smile every time.

So there are a few of my favorite things at 21 months old. I am 29 weeks pregnant right now, which makes pretty much anything difficult, especially chasing around the most active almost two year old I’ve ever seen. I panic just a little bit when I think about the fact that in only two and a half months, I will have another little person to keep alive while keeping Clark happy and entertained. But I’m pretty sure I’m not the first woman on earth to do this, so I’m sure it will be fine. But in the meantime, I’m making a very concerted effort to cherish and savor these last days with just me and the Dark Shark before Griffin gets here, because if I remember correctly, newborns can be somewhat time consuming and Clark probably will not understand at first why this new little baby thing is stealing his mama away. As always, advice is always appreciated, and your prayers are very welcomed.

It’s time to go now, because Clark and Jake are being a little too rowdy right now. I need to intervene before somebody or something gets hurt. I have a feeling it is more likely to be the latter.

Flour Power

2011-09-08T18:02:00.001-07:00

In an effort to keep Clark entertained while I cleaned up a bit this afternoon, I put him in his chair and gave him half of a pound of flour to do whatever he fancied. What I didn't realize was that it would be the most thrilling thing Clark had ever experienced in his little lifetime, and I got to listen to him squeal and laugh all afternoon which turned just an ordinary day into one of the better ones.

As for the cleaning of the house, well, it didn't happen. I was having way too much fun soaking in the moment and watching Clark frolic in the flour. I wouldn't be surprised if 50 years from now, I can still vividly remember my first born son playing in my baking goods.

When I attempted to clean it up, Clark got even more excited. He thought I was sweeping the flour into nice, big piles for him to destroy again. He would belly flop onto the piles of flour and roll around and laugh hysterically.

I wish you could hear the sweet little squeaks that left this boy's mouth this afternoon. It would be the equivalent of you or I rolling around in a pile of hundred dollar bills, I'm sure.

And no flour experience could be complete without making snow angels on the kitchen floor.

Cleaning up the flour was no easy task, especially after Clark ran through the entire house, jumped all over me, rolled all over the couches, stood on tables, touched mirrors, etc. And I'll definitely be cleaning it up for the next six months, but whatever.

Life is short. And wallowing around in flour is fun.

Two creepy deer and a little boy who makes me smile.

2011-08-30T17:43:00.000-07:00

This is ridiculous, right?

First, and most importantly, will somebody please tell me why these two animals must be propped up on our living room couch pillows, and why I have to entirely avoid the side of the house where they are currently located because, well, frankly, they creep me out?

It's like a stampede of monster bucks burst through the carpeted floor and got stuck, and when Aaron found them he wanted them to be comfortable so he provided them with some nice pillows to lie on.

It's a good thing that in the very near future, they will be removed from their comfortable positions on my couch cushions and placed on a wall in Aaron's office where I don't have to look at them anymore. It's also probably a good thing Clark or Griffin won't have a dead deer on their wall staring at them as they sleep. I'm expecting Clark to need a therapist in about 10 years when he develops a problematic inability to sleep without being stared out by a dead animal. But that is neither here nor there.

And in case you haven't had your Clark fix lately...

And because everybody deserves to see a sleeping Clark...

I feel bad for anybody who isn't me. Although I wouldn't expect many people to envy me, who is currently sitting on a cushionless couch so that two dead deer may rest in peace in Griffin's future room.

Ants in his pants.

2011-08-29T11:55:00.000-07:00

Literally. Clark got some fire ants in his pants yesterday, and his first encounter with the little turds was not a good one.

Since the weather plummeted down to an astonishing 93 degrees yesterday, Clark and I took advantage of it by going for a nice stroll about two miles down the road to a nearby neighborhood that has a wawa (lake) and gucks (ducks). Clark eventually started getting ancy and squirming around to get out of the stroller, so I let put him down to run around in a ass (grass) field. Note: italicized words are Clark's version. How impressed are you with his increasing vocabulary?

At some point as he was frolicking through the ass field pretending to fly like a boyd (bird), he stepped in an ant bed. Once he realized the little ants were crawling all the way up his leg, he ran to me screaming bugs, bugs, bugs, and even though he didn't completely freak out at first, his mom did. Those little boogers were everywhere, including up his shorts, in his diaper, all over his hands and arms and in his shoes. It was so sad because he started crying as I was slapping them off and stripping him down but I knew it was too late. There were already huge welts forming on his skin and I had to hold back tears. Seeing your kid in pain has got to be one of life's most miserable feelings.

The two mile walk back to our house was much longer than I remembered, and apparently the temperature had increased by 40 degrees during those few minutes because I started sweating uncontrollably as Clark's screams got louder and louder in the stroller. It was an unfortunate situation that I never want to repeat.

The good news is that the bites did not affect him at all once we got home and I put some cream on them. He would just point to his legs and say bugs. Even though it is painful just to look at, he has completely forgotten they are there.

The bad news is that in the process of swatting them off his little body, the fire ants must have landed on me and bit the crap out of my ankles too. Those little suckers hurt and I am miserably scratching a hundred little bites every second of the day. So what I've learned about myself through this whole ordeal is that I'm a pansy, I don't handle emergency type situations very well on an emotional level, and a 19 month old has a higher pain tolerance for ant bites than me. When it was all said and done, I'd have to say it was quite the humbling experience.

My boy.

2011-08-23T07:53:00.000-07:00

I love being the mother of a boy, soon to be plural. One day Clark (and Griffin) will be a man, a husband, a father. One day he might walk his daughter down the aisle. He will provide for his family, just like his father did for him.

But for now, my boy wants to climb on the sink in the bathroom and push his car up and down the mirror making vroom vroom noises. I love him so much, so unconditionally, that I could never understand how, or why, my Father loves me much more than I could ever love my own children.

Jesus loves Jamaica.

2011-08-17T19:33:00.000-07:00

Our Jamaican vacation was exactly what this very pregnant mother of a hyperactive 19 month old could ever dream of. I had no idea how much I needed a little break from the hustle and bustle of the daily life keeping a toddler alive and well. And Aaron desperately needed the vacation. He spent three hard fought years in law school, an entire summer isolated and buried in ridiculously large and boring books studying for the Bar, and three brutal days actually taking the Bar. I don't necessarily believe he needed the vacation more than me, we just both needed it very badly in different ways.

This won't be a very interesting post because the vacation was simple, but it will definitely be long. I intend on posting all 184 of the pictures I took. The reason I say it was simple was because we spent six glorious days doing the exact same thing each day. We woke up around 8:30 to the sound of the waves hitting the shore 10 feet from our porch. Then we ate the most wonderful French toast we had ever tasted. We were on the beach by 10 and at some point we would take naps on the beach before we ate a grand lunch at one of the many restaurants on the resort. After lunch we'd lay on the beach or swim in one of the many pools from 2-6 and fit a second nap somewhere on the beach during those hours. Shower. Eat dinner. Watch whatever entertainment the Jamaicans were providing that night. Bed. Repeat. Simple. It was the most luxurious and beautiful week of my life.

When I think back about our week in Jamaica, I laugh really hard almost every single time. The week was hilarious for one reason and one reason alone, and that is because I was with Aaron Randall Rice. The truth is, we could have spent seven days in D'iberville, Mississippi and it likely would have been equally as awesome as Jamaica. You see, Aaron makes me laugh and smile more than any other person on God's green earth. And spending seven uninterrupted days with that guy made for some wonderful, hilarious memories that I will definitely reflect on for years to come.

Our flight was originally supposed to leave Jackson at 6:10 in the morning, and my brother, Drew, courageously offered to pick us up at our house at 5 a.m. to take us to the airport. Our flight ended up being delayed an hour but Drew had already picked us up, so what better way to kill time at 5 a.m. than go to Waffle House and stuff your face with a greasy, fattening breakfast right before you board a crowded airplane? Well that is what we did, and it was delicious, and Aaron spent the next 24 hours in an unfortunate, awkward state of flatulence as a result. So my piece of advice for anybody reading this: do not, under any circumstances, fly to another country with Aaron after he has just consumed anything from Waffle House. Results are not pretty. And because I was in the middle seat of a very crowded airplane, the innocent traveler sitting on the other side of me kept giving me strange and unwelcoming glances when the smell would enter his personal space. It wasn't embarrassing at all.

I honestly don't know where to begin to make you understand why we had so much fun on this particular trip. There is a high probability that not one single person who reads this will even crack a smile, and an even higher chance I lose the respect of at least two of you. But I'll risk it.

For our first full day on the beach, we inevitably spent every waking second in the crystal clear ocean or laying on comfy, plush beach chairs reading some great books. Well, my book was great. Aaron's, on the other hand, could not have possibly been more boring. How interesting can The Road to Serfdom, written by a man who has been dead for 70 years, really be? Anyway, Aaron got really into the book on the first day and wouldn't pry himself off the beach even for one second to go back to the room and reapply sunscreen or take a little break from the sun. But before I go on, let me take a moment to teach you a little something about Aaron, just in case you don't know this already.

If you know Aaron, you know that among other things, he rarely makes mistakes. He might be the most non-careless, overly cautious person you will ever know. He plans for the absolute worst case scenario in everything he does and strongly believes that everyone is out to screw him over. I am confident that law school does this to a person because he used to be quite normal, but that is neither here nor there. So what struck me as hilarious in Jamaica was the fact that bad things kept happening to Arnie and I laugh really hard when unlucky things happen to him. That is why I might be the worst possible wife and human being to ever exist. But what is even more important to note is that I always make mistakes and rarely think about consequences and unlucky is my middle name. Ok, so there is your history lesson for the day.

Example of Aaron being overly cautious by locating the safe in our room and

putting anything valued over $10 in it all times.

Back to Aaron. After a couple of hours in the sun, I made the unusual but very smart call to go inside and take a break from the heat. I asked Aaron to come and he said in a Jamaican voice, "We're in Jamaica, mon. We have to stay on the beach!" So I went inside and rested while Aaron baked in the Jamaican sun, and at the end of the day, when Aaron emerged from the beach, I smiled a big smile. The reason is because after eight or so hours in the direct sun, Aaron was brutally, horribly sunburned. You see, it felt so nice to not be in his shoes, for once. I always get sunburned, everywhere I go because I am an idiot who never wears sunscreen and Aaron lectures me all the dadgum time on the issue and I roll my eyes at him. This wasn't just any ole sunburn, though. He got blasted by the sun. He looked more like a ripe tomato than a human being, and he looked pretty miserable. It was funny. Don't curse me. Sadly, I didn't take a single picture to prove it.

So the reoccurring theme for the next four days was that I am smarter than Aaron and I got to laugh really hard every time I had to help him take his shirt off because he couldn't do it by himself. He also spent the remainder of the trip wearing a tshirt in the pool, in the ocean, under an umbrella on the beach, and at all times because he was in so much pain. He swam in a tshirt. Funny, I tell you.

Throughout the week, there were a series of unfortunate events that stalked Aaron and kept me in a constant state of laughter. One of the events included Aaron clogging our toilet and causing the 'engineering team' to be called to our room to resolve the problem, and another involves Aaron taking an almost incredibly painful fall on a slippery floor. What is ironic about the latter is that Aaron had spent the previous 24 hours teaching me liability law and emphasizing how reckless the resort was in laying floors that were so slippery. Sure enough, the next day we had to walk across the risky floor to get to a restaurant, and literally after Aaron took one step onto the floor, his foot slipped from under him, he made a ridiculous grunt and grabbed onto me to save himself. The grunt was hilarious, and the fact that he almost fell down was hilarious. Just thinking about it makes me laugh out loud. Seriously, I just laughed out loud. Slapstick comedy at its finest. If you were there and saw what I saw and did not laugh, then you have absolutely zero sense of humor. Or maybe my sense of humor is just sick.

We ate a lot of really good food and Griffin (the little baby boy in my belly) doubled, maybe even tripled, in size throughout the duration of the week. The Jamaicans loved to make me delicious, exotic fruit smoothies and always made sure I was "keeping the baby safe." Towards the end of the trip, all of the bartenders recognized me and would start blending the smoothie before I even approached the bar. At times, I simply wanted a glass of water but they insisted the baby needed fruit, and I gladly obliged. And perhaps the best part of the week was that I finally started feeling Griffin move while we were there, which was awesome and might just be one of the coolest feelings ever.

22 weeks

One of the best things about Jamaica, and our specific location in Jamaica, was the absolute seclusion and solitude of the beach and even the resort we stayed at. Most of the time we completely alone on the beach and there was rarely a soul in the ocean. Our room was on the corner of the resort and we had direct access to the beach, and this was our view from lying in bed:

It was absolutely breathtaking. The water was as crystal clear and aqua as I had ever seen or even knew existed. We got up close and personal with some octopus, starfish, sand dollars, etc. and loved hanging out with the Jamaicans. They are so dadgum nice and happy (and probably very high).

But after six full days of being in Jamaica, it was time to go home, and we were ready. A day less would have been too short of a vacation, and one more day would have been too long. It was just right. So even though we did the stereotypical, cliche frowny face picture because it was time to leave...

...we were actually very ready to board the plane and land in our country and scoop up our little man who we missed so painfully bad. He was clearly not as excited to see us as we were to see him, and he made that obvious as he screamed and cried the entire 90 minutes back home. Evidently he had a wonderful time in the Burg with his Geez and Gam.

So the vacation is definitely over now, especially for Arnie. He started working two days after we got home and they are definitely working the stew out of him. And the babymoon was taken just in time for Aaron's sunburn to calm down and the peeling to subside, leaving behind a nice little tan. Now all we are left to do is wait for Griffin Aaron Rice to get here and then the real party starts. Yeah mon.

Jesus hearts Jamaica. And we do too.

I just needed a face to punch.

2011-07-29T14:38:00.000-07:00

Yesterday will go down in history as possibly The Worst Day of Our Lives. It was so bad that I wanted to blog about it but didn't because I needed to cool off before I said something I would regret. I figured after a good night's sleep and some much needed rest, I would be ready to document the day that will forever haunt my memories. But when I woke up this morning, I still shivered and wanted to cry at even the thought about how horrific the day before was.

Writing about it won't do that day justice. I am sure of that. Only me, Aaron, Clark, and any other innocent bystander at the Neshoba County Fair can truly understand what went down. But I will try my best to describe the day through the eyes of a mom who will never judge another parent whose child is acting a fool again.

Let me start by saying that we shouldn't have even considered taking Clark to the fair. The week had been pretty rough on him because Aaron was taking the Bar and life pretty much flip flopped upside down as a result. But I am a selfish human being, I love the Neshoba County Fair, and I convinced myself that Clark would defy nature and be a good boy against all odds. I even went to Kroger the night before and bought a Melmo (Elmo) backpack and stuffed it with little distractions that I could disperse throughout the day, like stickers, little cars, snacks, etc. I patted myself on the shoulder at my own brilliance.

Why did I not just listen to the little voice in my head that was repeatedly shouting, "DON'T DO IT, KELLY. JUST DON'T DO IT!" Hindsight is 20/20.

We had to be at the fair by 9:30 which meant we had to leave our house no later than 7:30 to make it on time. The reason we had to be there so early was because one of our friends is running for state treasurer and we desperately wanted to support him while he gave a political speech. I was optimistic throughout the morning because Clark was being his charming little self and going with the flow while Aaron and I got ready. Even the hour and a half drive to the fair was quite nice thanks to Melmo and friends. But not even 12 seconds after we parked in the muddy slush of a parking lot in Neshoba County, Clark freaked out on us and didn't stop freaking out until approximately 2:29 in the afternoon when we left.

I don't know what happened, honestly. My first of many mistakes was bringing his little umbrella stroller. I thought he would enjoy the stroll and it would make life a tad bit easier on everybody. WRONG. He wanted nothing to do with riding in it, but everything to do with pushing it himself. This probably seems harmless, right? Well the first 15 minutes of letting him steer was annoying but we tolerated it just fine. Until we got to the very crowded stage area where all of the political candidates were giving their speeches. It was there that Clark started uncontrollably steering the stroller straight into everyone's ankles, and every time I tried to redirect him, he would throw the most obnoxious tempter tantrum I had ever seen in the history of Clark Rice. It was horrible. Not to mention that at some point in the middle of it all, Aaron and I lost each other, so I was dealing with Clark, the runaway stroller, carrying an Elmo backpack and another huge backpack that must have had bricks in it because it progressively got heavier and heavier with every step I took.

And the weather...oh my. Neshoba County Fair weather deserves an honorable mention because not only is it 104,000 degrees in the shade, but it drizzles a very annoying rain every 10 minutes. And unless you have the hair of a greek goddess (and somehow there were quite a few there and I wanted to punch them all in the face), there is no chance for a decent appearance after you've been there for even five minutes.

So anyway, Aaron and I got separated and somehow Clark and I ended up behind the stage area where all of the candidates were preparing to give their big speeches. You can imagine where I am going with this. It was not embarrassing at all when Clark had a rather unfortunate encounter with Sec. of State Delbert Hoseman. He tried to push his stroller up a steep hill where the Secretary was standing and Clark refused to go around him, so he just tried to plow straight through him. The Secretary was polite and gave him a little smile but Clark could not have been a bigger turd about it. He started screaming at a painfully high decibel and when I tried to pick him up and remove him from the situation, he stiffened his entire body and threw himself on the dirt ground and started screaming some more. Repeat this scenario with two gubernatorial candidates and at least two Sec. of State candidates and you can imagine how that hour at the fair went. What I should have done at this point was take him straight to the car and drive at a very fast pace back home but it didn't even cross my mind. I finally found Aaron after what seemed like 12 hours and made it clear to him that if he left our side again, I would punch him in the face. There was a lot of figurative punching of faces at the NCF that day.

There is a very long standing tradition of going to a friends' cabin and having a fabulous lunch after the governor gives his speech. I was sure that food would be the solution to all of Clark's problems and maybe after a big meal, he would snap out of it and go back to being his sweet, happy little self. The lunch experience was about as pleasant as chewing on glass. I had packed a lunchable for Clark and he wanted nothing to do with it, and not only did he refuse anything in it, but he would scream "NO NO NO NO" and throw a fit every time we tried to reintroduce food. So basically at this point, he had gone almost six hours without food and zero naps and it was the hottest temps Clark had ever experienced. All of those things do not make for a happy 18 month old.

We decided to call it quits when it started pouring rain and we had had enough of all the nonsense that Clark was throwing at us. There was not even a three minute period throughout the entire day that Clark was happy and that made it impossible for me, Aaron, or anybody who came in contact with us to have a good time. Aaron and I were both completely exhausted after dealing with the little crank all day, and it didn't help that near the end of our adventures, I slipped on some mud and maybe/possibly/probably broke my thumb. Then about 30 seconds after that I got really lightheaded and almost fainted. So that was the cherry on the crap sundae that was our day. The half mile walk back to the car was the longest and most cumbersome thing I might have ever had to do. It was pouring rain. Clark was screaming uncontrollably and refused to walk. He hit whoever was holding him. I was carrying the stroller and the two backpacks and holding back tears. When we got to the car, I rummaged through my trunk to scrounge up any dry clothes I could find so Clark could be comfortable on the ride home, and even though the process of undressing him and changing his diaper in the rain was perhaps the most horrifying thing anyone has ever experienced, it was worth it, because he passed out within 15 seconds of starting the car.

Unfortunately life didn't get better when we got home. The only good thing that happened that entire day was the three hour nap Clark took in the car and at home, but he woke up in the same grouchy mood as before the nap and stayed that way until I put him to bed. I closed his door, walked into my room, closed my door, turned off my phone, and laid in my bed in dead silence for about an hour until I fell asleep.

Clark's first and last Neshoba County Fair was not one of those things that I will look back on and laugh one day. Nothing about it was funny, only horrible. Upon reflection, I have realized that I am not as upset with Clark as I am myself. When I think about yesterday, I feel like I failed as a parent. I was one of those moms with one of those kids who could not control her child. I lost my temper a few times, not in front of anyone, but I am still ashamed of it. I blamed Aaron on things that were not his fault. I didn't do the only thing that would have completely remedied the entire situation, which was to just leave when things started going sour. This was the first time in motherhood that I honestly questioned everything I've ever done regarding raising a child and finally, and most importantly, I felt like I failed Clark. Yes, I was and still am hyperemotional because of the little human being growing in my belly, but yesterday was definitely one to reflect on and figure out what went wrong. And a lot went wrong, my friends. I didn't go into more detail because most of it is just embarrassing and ridiculous, but to put it simply, it was a living nightmare.

Every time I feel the sharp pain in my almost/probably broken thumb, I think about yesterday and how I wish I could just make it all go away. Even today has been difficult with Clark and I believe it is just the after effects of yesterday because it really was that bad.

Or maybe he's teething. That's always an easy way out. I should have just punched somebody in the face. I am confident that would have made me feel better.

The Final Countdown.

2011-07-22T19:50:00.000-07:00

Guess who's home? After what seems like one thousand years, Arnie is home. I have a husband now and Clark has a dada. Life can go on now, and I can finally move the shotgun that Aaron insisted I keep right next to my bed in case of an intruder while he was gone. Like I said, all is well now. It is so nice, and I'm going to try to never let him hibernate again for the rest of our lives.

The Bar Exam, the thing that Aaron has gone completely mad for, is exactly 72 hours away. The test that only defines the rest of our lives. The test that if for some reason does not go as planned, then perhaps, well, let's not go there. It is a very big deal that will last all day, everyday, for three entire days. I'm not expecting to see much of the hubs for those few days, so technically, I don't have 100% of my husband back. Even now, when he is in his own home surrounded by his loving family, he is still kind of "checked out" because his mind is constantly brewing Secured Transactions, Family Law, blah blah blah. But on Wednesday around 5:00 p.m., he will be a free man. Free from the insanity that is the Mississippi Bar Exam.

Aaron has worked so, so, so hard for this and hopefully, at the end of the day, he will be licensed to practice law in our great state. Well, not necessarily the end of the day, because we won't get the results until freaking September 15. But until then, I'm just going to go ahead and assume that is the direction he is heading in. So having accurately emphasized how hard he has worked to get to this point, I would like to make it clear that I never, under any circumstances, want to hear any dirty lawyer jokes. There are a few turds out there that appear to have soured the profession, but Arnie and his colleagues will soon make up for their grand foolishness and bring the legal field the respect it deserves. Ok, let me step off my soapbox real quick.

I'm back down now. Even though the next two or more weeks are going completely chaotic and busy and hectic and sad and wonderful, I have a feeling that for the first time in our lives, we are getting ready to be a normal family. We'll have a routine. No more classes. No more backpacks. No more exams. Ah, I can almost taste the gloriousness of that concept. In the very near future, Aaron will leave for work in the morning and then come home in the evening, and I guess maybe I'll start cooking food again. Clark will keep running laps through the living room and kitchen and this new little baby will continue to grow causing my ever increasing belly to bump into anything in its path. Speaking of the new baby, we have a name picked out, and it is wonderful. I can't wait to announce it. I don't even know what I'm waiting on. But anyway, I'm pumped about it all, if you can't tell.

So I'm not positive I'll be blogging for the next couple of weeks because after the Bar Exam, we are going straight to the Neshoba County Fair (Mississippi's Giant Houseparty), and two days after that we are leaving for beautiful Jamaica. And I am in complete denial that I won't see my Clarkimus Maximus for seven whole days. Holy crap, I honestly don't know if I can do it or if I'm even going to make it the entire vacation. But after that, and after I upload the 25,000 pictures I am bound to take, I will certainly spend some time on the blog because I know everyone will be dying to see me looking like a beached whale flopping around in the sand. Be thinking about us Rice's. We've got a lot going on right now.

A story you probably shouldn't read.

2011-07-18T12:25:00.000-07:00

From the moment I heard Clark's sweet little voice on the monitor this morning to this exact second, I am thinking the better option for today would have been to stay in bed and not do one other thing than that. But unfortunately, that is not an option because Clark's got to eat and stuff.

I'll start with breakfast. Today's menu included oatmeal, fruit, and chocolate milk with a side of Melmo. For the oatmeal I chose to use one of my nice bowls that tend to break when thrown onto concrete floors, and this morning was no different. I watched the whole thing happen in slow motion and I know it was a complete accident so I couldn't get upset, but Clark was trying to scratch a wicked mosquito bite on his arm and swiped everything on his tray to the floor, shattering the bowl and sending fruit and oatmeal all over the room. Even the sippy cup of chocolate milk failed me when the lid fell off. So that was all awesome.

After breakfast, I put him down and noticed that his diaper was barely hanging off of his hips because I didn't change it right when he woke up and it probably weighed about eight pounds. I went ahead and took it off of him and went to get a diaper and guess what? We were completely out. We had zero diapers in our house. How did I let this happen? I was fairly certain I might have left one in his diaper bag in the car, so while I was looking in the car, I let him run around naked because it is his #1 favorite thing to do in all the world. Clark was roaming free in his birthday suit and I was tearing my car apart looking for diapers, and when I came back inside, I noticed Jake walk by and he was tracking something behind him.

I'll give you one guess as to what that was. Hold your breath.

I started looking and found a very naked Clark sitting in his closet covered in poop with the goofiest little smile I had ever seen. It was definitely his poop, not Jake's, because there was evidence of the crime on his little booty. Since I did not actually witness the act, I am assuming this is what happened: he pooped in my closet and then figured all the clothes in the closet, as well as my shoes, would look much better covered in the substance. So he managed to cover all of my clothes in poop and left Aaron's side of the closet completely untouched. I am convinced he did that as a statement that he's ready for his dad to be back. I get it, Clark. I'm ready too.

He must have grown weary of the closet activity, so he went back to the original pile of poop on the floor (carpet), got enough of it on his hands and feet to be able to produce footprints and handprints all over the rest of the house, and then he called Jake over to do the same. I followed the pooprints from my closet, through the bathroom, through my bedroom, through the kitchen and into Clark's room, all around his room, back through the kitchen and around the living room couches, back through the kitchen again and into his room a final time where he landed in his closet. I tracked Jake's pooprints through the kitchen and into the laundry room, and then up the stairs to the bonus room. Does anybody have any idea how much poop this actually is to clean up? It's a lot, in case you didn't know.

The first thing I did was prop Clark up on my bathroom sink and clean his hands and feet off and then started cleaning the entire house. Oddly, I was not upset in the least. In fact, I was smiling, even laughing, because he entire time I was walking around assessing the damages, Clark was following behind me saying "Peewwwwww" because that is what I say every time I change his diaper. The whole thing was pretty funny and it actually didn't take that long to clean up because I used a brilliant product called Solumel and it is magical. But it was not funny when I went to brush my teeth and found poop in the sink from where I sat Clark down to wash his hands and feet.

The insanity doesn't end there, but I'm not going to continue because I'm sure anybody who started this post stopped at the word "pooprint." And that is fine. I just figured one day Clark's future wife should know about this. It is 3:22, Clark is taking a nap, and is still wearing a swimmer diaper. Buying diapers is next on my to do list, right next to cleaning poop out of the grout on the bathroom floor.

2011-07-15T07:44:00.000-07:00

Living in the big city of Jackson has some gigantic advantages when it comes to entertaining a very mobile toddler. It makes me wonder how in the world I survived in small town Oxford and kept Clark even remotely happy. We were limited to one park that had a couple of swings and the playground at Chick Fil A and that is about it. But here in the boasting metropolis of Jackson, Mississippi, rarely does a day go by that our schedule is not jam packed with fun little activities for a dark shark tank. It also helps that he has lots of friends to hang out with and share these activities with.

This week we spent time at Shiloh Splash Pad in Brandon with my pal Amy and her 18 month old Jackson. Jackson and Clark go way back, as in, they hung out together in our bellies long before they were actually born. Does that make sense? Anyway, the Huwe family moved to Jackson from Oxford a couple of weeks after we did so we were able to easily pick up right where we left off.

Playing in water is literally Clark's favorite thing to do. Nothing makes him happier.

Besides the creepy kid lying on the ground for no apparent reason, I love this picture.

Fortunately for me, most of my friends from high school have migrated back to Jackson, so between them and my family (who is doing a fantastic job of making sure I don't go crazy while Aaron is studying), I am constantly surrounded by people who make me laugh. Yesterday, some of these friends and I along with all of our babies, who outnumbered the adults, met at Gattitown and had a fabulous time, as usual. We managed to keep the choas to a minimum and and I would even go so far as to say the kids even had a great time.

Clark playing an overly complicated game involving rubber duckies.

And Noah took charge on the dump truck ride.

And these are my friends.

Top: Nikki holding Barrett, Shea holding Will, Megan holding Noah

Bottom: Me holding an unhappy shark, Caroline holding Natalie and Whitley Claire.

So I'd like to give all my friends a big fist bump because they make our days much more adventurous and exciting than I ever would have imagined. And also a fist bump anyone else who provides entertainment to my Clark shark. Peace and love to you all.

We are having a...

2011-07-13T19:00:00.000-07:00

Today was a very important day for our family and we are so excited to finally know what this little baby in my belly is. I'm going to go over the events of the day that led up to the big reveal and hopefully you will enjoy it as much as I did.

As I've made very clear to the entire world by now, Aaron is in his own little world out in the middle of nowhere studying for the bar. We have known for a long time he wouldn't make it to this appointment but I desperately wanted to be with him when we found out if this baby was pink or blue. When I arrived to the doctors office at 1:00 this afternoon, I gave the nurse very clear instructions to not tell me what "it" is but to write it down and seal it in an indestructible envelope. She did exactly what I asked her to and I still got to spend a good amount of time just staring at her/him on a computer screen and letting tears flow down my face because there is nothing quite like seeing the little person that God is forming in you. She didn't tell me anything other than how this baby looks perfectly healthy, and that, my friends, is beautiful news, isn't it?

She handed me the envelope and I stuffed it in my purse and tried to forget about it. Well, that wasn't easy. The envelope started talking to me and I talked back to it and told it to quit tempting me. It even plastered itself next to the window so that if I looked hard enough, I probably could have read right through the paper and could determine if it said boy or girl. But I was strong and the temptation did not get the best of me, which came as a huge surprise.

Clark, Jake, and I loaded up at 5:15 after Clark woke up from a nice three hour nap. The fact that he took a superior nap made me think he would be a pleasant little boy for the rest of the evening but good gosh, that was not the case at all. When we arrived to the cabin, Clark immediately started pointing to the wawa (water) and would not chill until we took him down to the pier. But that little envelope was burning a hole in my purse and I had had about enough. After three minutes upon arriving and giving Arnie a hug, I ripped open the envelope despite Clark screaming 'wawa' in our ears and at that moment, we learned that we would be having a little boy. Another little boy to love and snuggle. This was wonderful news to both of us and I am so excited to watch Clark teach his little brother the tricks of the trade.

We had about 12 seconds to enjoy the moment until Clark practically started hyperventilating from wanting to go look at the water. We had a really fun time sitting out there as a little family of three and listening to Clark repeat the word 'wawa' approximately five thousand times. He's a simple little guy.

Aaron grilled some pork chops and fresh corn on the cob and we had a less than pleasant meal due to Clark screaming at the top of his lungs the entire time. But honestly, it really was nice. It was the first meal we have shared together in a very long time and I wouldn't have traded Clark's nonsense for the world. After the meal, we went back down to the pier and talked about the little boy that would enter our world in five short months. How strange will it be to have another boy around? I just can't imagine it.

Eventually Clark perked up and we were able to sit back and relax. It took a while to get to that point, but it was worth the wait. I have a wonderful family, and its getting bigger and better everyday. Literally.

So that about sums up one of the most important days of our lives. It was wonderful and slightly chaotic all at the same time, but so goes life, right?

Now I don't want anybody to feel sorry for Arnie as he is locked up in the sticks studying 10 or more hours per day. He actually told me tonight that the only thing he gets up from studying for is to eat, poop, and pee. He has a nice little set up and trust me, his living arrangements are quite enviable.

Poor guy, this is what he has to wake up to every morning.

And on a completely unrelated and equally unimportant note, Aaron was more productive than usual yesterday. Being 40 miles from the nearest barber, he resorted to giving himself a haircut because apparently it was just too long for him deal with. This was not a smart decision. The proof lies in the photo below. It would make me so happy to see lots of witty comments about how terrible his hair looks on his Facebook wall.

So there you have it. A sweet little boy will join the Rice family on or around December 21. Until then, I am going to soak up every minute I can with Clark because even though it will certainly be more wonderful than I can possibly comprehend, I really am going to miss our family dynamic as it is right now. And also in the meantime, Aaron and I are going to be choosing the perfect name and hopefully the new little guy will approve. If not, there is nothing he can do about it.

The bar exam is a mere 12 days away. Aaron has informed me that I am never to remind him of how many days he has left. Blissful ignorance, I suppose? But every hour that goes by increasingly more painful and stressful, so I would ask that you continue to think of him and pray for his sanity. We all know he's going to do great, but he definitely does not. I guess if he doesn't pass the bar, he can always fall back on his mad haircutting skills. I'd be proud either way.

2011-07-11T08:18:00.000-07:00

Aaron

Aaron is MIA until July 27 which is the last day of the Mississippi Bar Exam. Since our move to Jackson, he has studied no less than 10 hours per day almost every day. And because he is a total nerd who takes things to the highest extreme, last week he packed up three weeks worth of clothes and food and moved to a small cabin in the middle of nowhere where he is completely removed from any and all distractions. He has no internet, tv, and is screening his calls like he is being hunted by the mafia. This temporary living situation of ours completely stinks and I am beyond ready to bid farewell to the single mom lifestyle. It is hard.

My husband has traveled the world and we have had to say some very sad goodbyes approximately 4, 483 times throughout our relationship. It is never easy, and this past one was no different. Even though I knew he would only be gone for about three weeks, it was painful helping him packing his truck up and watching him drive off. Clark misses him in a huge way and points at every little thing that could possibly be associated with Aaron and repeats "dada, dada, dada, dada" two hundred thousand times per day. To say Clark is obsessed with Aaron would be a huge understatement. I don't even know if it's healthy. I'm not jealous at all.

Clark

Guess who just turned 18 months old? The answer is Clark. Our little man is a grown man now. It makes me cringe when I think about how fast the past year and a half has gone by. I'm starting to see some truth to the cliche statements such as, "before you know it, he'll be [fill in the blank]." Starting kindergarden? Going on a date? Going to college? Holy cannoli, it is true.

Clark has been on the move for the past nine months of his life. He started walking when he was nine months old and since then has not slowed down for even one second. This very mobile toddler has a personality that is out of this world and charms the crap out of everybody he meets. His favorite thing to do in life is to finish eating at a restaurant as fast as possible so he can get out of his high chair and run around giving everyone a high five. Fortunately for us, he has not come across a grumpy turd who refused to entertain him with a return high five. He makes people smile everywhere we go. He laughs a lot and it is the most contagious thing you will ever experience.

Clark's favorite things these days include anything and everything Elmo (pronounced Melmo) and Sesame Street. We watch it every morning at 9:00 and he has memorized every commercial leading up to the theme song. He gets more and more excited with each passing commercial and starts freaking out when 'Sunny Days' starts. It's nothing short of hilarious. He has several Sesame Street books and they are first thing he wants to look at when he wakes up in the morning. Before he even gets out of his crib, he wants me to give him a couple of his books so he can look at Melmo. It's kind of creepy, but I'm just going to go with it for now.

He's still pretty decent in the food category. He'll eat almost anything we put in front of him, but he will absolutely devour spaghetti, chocolate milk, fruit, broccoli, eggs, pasta, and fruit snacks. He is pretty good at using a spoon but it is not uncommon for him to hold a spoon in one hand and eat his food with his other hand, which is fairly counterproductive if you ask me. But whatever.

He loves to dance, clap, hug, kiss, spin around in circles, climb on the coffee table, anything having to do with water (specifically splash pads or spray grounds), and reading books. By reading books, I mean simply pointing to pictures and having us say the words. He is not fan of actually reading the story line. He is full of energy and it is a very rare occasion when he will sit still even for a minute. Unless of course Melmo is on and then the world and everything in it stops completely until its over. He also loves getting in and out of his Cozy Coupe car, beating the tar out of Jake, copying whatever we do and say, helping me empty the dishwasher, looking through the photo albums on the coffee table and repeating everybody's names, and did I mention Elmo?

As far as words go, I think he's doing great. He has a stash of about 30 words that he repeats over and over again and he learns new words fairly easily. Some of these words include hot (which he associates with any and all foods, whether or not it is actually hot), dog (pronounced doag), cat, baby, bye bye, water (pronounced wawa), car, shoe, sock, Melmo, Clark, and Jake. There are certainly more words, I just can't think of them at the moment. Of course he is proficient at mama and dada, and he knows almost all of his aunts, uncles, cousins, and grandparents. He talks a lot of jibberish but I feel like it will all turn into something legitimate soon.

I would be a horrible person if I didn't take a second to expound upon the relationship between Clark and his father. It is one like I have never seen nor did I ever imagine. I mentioned earlier that Clark is obsessed with Aaron. Well, it is true. When Aaron walks in the room Clark is in, you would think Jesus himself entered. The room gets brighter. Angelic songs instantly play in the background of life. Its amazing, and I am only slightly exaggerating. They have a very special bond already and it makes me really happy. Reading together is their thing. Before bedtime (and before Aaron became a hermit), Aaron will plop down in the recliner in Clark's room, Clark will get a book and climb up in his lap and nestle into this nook of his arm and sit undisturbed for record amounts of time. Clark will point at every single thing on every single page and have Aaron repeat the word over and over again until they have "read" the entire book. And then he jumps down, runs and finds a different book, and repeat the process again. Reading really is their thing. It might honestly be Clark's favorite thing to do. Let me make this clear: Clark would never in ten million years sit in my lap undisturbed while I tried to read a book to him. Trust me, it would never happen. But with Aaron it is like a sweet reward at the end of the day. I don't want anyone to think I am sitting here throwing myself a pity party. I know Clark likes me and he may even love me sometimes, but it doesn't take a genius to see their is a clear difference with Aaron. I think it's sweet and I'm not going to deny it.

There are a few things he does that makes my heart melt on a daily basis. Every night when we put him in his crib, he folds his hands together and we pray. We thank God for all of his family members and the babies that will be born soon and pray for healing for people that are sick. For a reason unknown to anybody but Clark, every time we pray for Drew or Chase (my brothers), or Ryan (Aaron's brother), or Geez (Aaron's dad), Clark starts laughing. He cracks up at even the mention of their names. There is no explanation other than he thinks these four people are just hilarious. Another thing he does that melts my heart is when I get him out of his car seat and put him down, he automatically reaches up to hold my hand. He knows he has to hold my hand if we are out in public and he never protests. Holding his hand as we walk through a parking lot, a store, or really anywhere at all is one of my all time favorite things in the world to do. And another thing that has become more of an addiction than anything is when I sneak into his room before I go to sleep and stare at him for a few seconds as he sleeps. I do this every single night and nothing could ever stop me. I love to watch him sleep. Creepy? Yes, probably. At least I'm not taking pictures of him anymore, but I'm not promising it doesn't happen on rare occasions. Clark sleeping is one of the sweetest things I can possibly imagine, especially when he has his little butt stuck in the air. I'll take a picture next time it happens and you can see for yourself how sweet it is.

My biggest regret over the past couple of months is the lack of pictures I have taken. I recently got a new phone that takes pretty good pictures, so I tend to forget to bring my awesome camera everywhere I go. Starting today, I'm going to do better. That is a promise.

So there is Clark in a nutshell at 18 months old. He will always be my little man. I can't wait to see him as a big brother, as long as he doesn't treat the new baby like he treats Jake. That would be bad on so many levels.

Kelly

I am trucking along with the pregnancy just fine. At almost 17 weeks, I look like I'm 39 weeks but at least I have my energy back. We are finding out in 48 hours if this little person is a boy or girl and I think it is going to get A LOT more real. Not that it isn't totally real already, but assigning a gender is a lot more tangible of a concept to grasp. Not referring to our baby as "it" will be nice.

Aaron will not be with me at the ultrasound because of his complete isolation from society, so I am going to ask the nurse to not tell me what it is but write it down and put it in an envelope so I can't see it. Later that evening, I am going to drive to the little cabin where Aaron is hibernating and we are going to have a nice dinner, then open the envelope and find out together. When I get back to civilization on Wednesday night, I'll be sure to announce to everyone whether Clark will have a little brother to beat up on or a little sister to beat up on.

In other news, we are finally feeling settled in and at home in Jackson. My goal for this week is to hang pictures and remove all of the boxes that are piled in corners around the house. I might even get around to sweeping/mopping, which has not happened one time since we have been here. Clark's feet constantly look like he lives in a mud puddle. I love being in Jackson because we are a stone's throw from most of my family and soooooo much closer to Aaron's family in Hattiesburg. Clark and I recently had a blast hanging out with the entire Rice family over the fourth of July, and I'm waiting for them to get off their bums and post pictures on Facebook so that I can share them on my blog (ahem, Haley, Audrey, Hannah, Daniel, etc). Sadly, Aaron had to miss the big Rice party event because, well, you can probably guess by now. He was studying. But in a short three weeks, he can return to life and all will be well in the world again.

All will be well, indeed. Three days after he finishes the bar exam, we will spend seven wonderful days in beautiful Jamaica where we will celebrate the end of an era and anticipate the next (very busy) stage of our lives. And when I say we, that excludes Clark the Dark Shark. He will be having his own lavish vacation with his Geez and Gam and I have no doubt he will spend hours and hours enjoying extended four wheeler excursions around Sumrall, MS. I'm getting so excited about our vacation and even though I will be approximately four thousand pounds in weight, I will expose my huge pregnant belly to all of Jamaica as I plop myself on the beach and sleep all day and all night and eat tons of pretty fruit. We deserve this, people.

Well that is about it for the Aaron Rice clan. We are doing well, just ready for Arnie to be back. The next three weeks will include a lot of me trying to keep a dark shark occupied, so any ideas would be greatly appreciated. I must go now because as I type this outside on the back patio, I just realized that Clark has locked me out of the house. I'll let you know how this turns out.

And we're back.

2011-05-25T17:44:00.000-07:00

I'm back from my blogging hiatus. I have been dreading my next blog post. Not at all because I have something bad to write about, but because there is SO much going on that it is going to require a good chunk of my sweet time that could be better spent sleeping or taking a nap. My last post was well over a month ago, and in that time, here are a few of the most important things that have happened. As hard as it may be, please try to make it to the end of the this post.

1. Aaron graduated from law school. Aaron graduated from law school. Repeat: Aaron graduated from law school. Did you hear me? He GRADUATED. With honors. It was a wonderful day with lots of family and friends celebrating one of the most important moments of his professional life. I am so proud of him I don't even know what to do about it. It's time for a cliche: the past three years have gone by on wings. It's so hard to believe its over. We made friends that we will keep for a lifetime. We belonged to an amazing church family. Somewhere in those three years, we morphed into adults, I think. We had a little kiddo that is now a young man. Aaron pulled way too many all nighters studying and writing 100+ page papers about boring jargon and it felt like we were never going step out of the student lifestyle. But stick Aaron in the oven because HE IS DONE. Yeehaw.

2. Aaron got a job. This is another one of those sentences that needs to be repeated six times, but I won't do that to you again. He will be working at a wonderful firm in Jackson called Daniel Coker Horton and Bell, and I can't even begin to describe how blessed we feel that he got a position there. If there ever was a time we felt God's hand working in the depths of our lives, it was in the last 2-3 months of our lives. We are beyond confident that God placed Aaron at this particular firm. I might have to dedicate an entire blog post to what went down between February and May of 2011. It would blow you away.

3. We moved to Jackson. We are renting a house in the Flowood area and get this: we are less than half a mile from anything we could ever need. Target, grocery stores, any kind of shopping you can imagine, parks, spraygrounds, and the list goes on. This is very different from our Oxford situation and I love it. The best part of living here is that we now live close to my entire family and much, much closer to Aaron's family in Hattiesburg. For the past 10 years we have lived two or more hours away, which isn't too terribly far, but we had to miss a lot of birthday parties and family get togethers. Another benefit of living here is that Liz and Amy, my two best friends from Oxford, also moved here and get this: Aaron and Amy's husband, Stephen, will be working together at the same firm. It would have been devastating not living in the same town as these two girls. I am happy. And perhaps the biggest benefit for me is the simple fact that I now live in the same town as NIKKI! YAY! This hasn't been the case in a really long time and we have certainly taken advantage of our close proximity so far. I have missed the stew out of her. She's my homie.

4. Aaron is studying for the bar. If I'm being honest, it sucks. He had approximately one week off after he graduated until he had to start taking classes to prepare for the Mississippi Bar Exam. He will take it July 25-27 and will find out if he passed in September. In case you are not familiar, it is not just a test. It is fair game to expect any aspect of the law to be on this hand written exam, and if you aren't aware, the law is a pretty big sucker. There will be questions on areas of the law that Aaron didn't even touch on in law school, which means he has to teach himself that entire area of law himself and be ready to write a huge essay on it. It takes three days to take it and he will spend no less than 15 hours per day until then studying and preparing for it. So even though he is a law school graduate, he won't around very much. Actually, I'll see him much less now than I ever did in law school, including his first year. Yuck. But I guess it's the name of the game and I'm supporting him.

5. Last but certainly not least, Clark is going to be a big brother! We purposefully decided to wait a while before telling anybody but now that I am into my second trimester, we are finally ready to make the announcement. We are beyond excited and even though we were somewhat shocked, we are definitely ready to grow our little family. I can't even imagine what it will be like starting over with another little tot. I have forgotten almost everything about newborns and it will feel like I am starting from scratch, but hopefully it will all come back to me and I don't completely freak out on everyone. The nausea hasn't been terrible but notably worse than with Clark, which makes me think its a girl. But supposedly that is an old wives' tale with zero scientific backup, so who knows? More than anything I'm just having a hard time keeping my eyes open. Fatigue is my worst enemy these days. It doesn't help that I'm chasing around a VERY mobile toddler all day. The new little baby is due to make his or her appearance on or around December 21, which is four days before Christmas and two weeks before Clark's second birthday. Lord help us all around the Christmas holidays!

Clark is now 17 months old and I'm looking forward to posting his next update, which will be my next priority. He is definitely a dark shark tank these days and more than ever, I am so grateful to be able to stay home with him so I can watch him grow. He is such a little ham. My apologies that it has been over a month since I've visited the blog, and even though I say this way too often, I'm going to do better. There is too much going on in our lives right now I'm going to want to remember one day. And also I have about seventeen bajillion pictures that I feel the entire world needs to see. So until next time...hope everybody enjoys this ridiculous weather and has a grand week!

Good morning.

2011-05-01T05:02:00.000-07:00

It is not often that I sit down on a Sunday morning to update the blog, but Clark apparently wanted me to suffer some cruel and unusual punishment this morning by waking up at at some ungodly hour. The sun was barely up if that gives you a better idea of what time it was. I haven't greeted this hour in a long time and I want to cry. I watched him on the video monitor for a good fifteen minutes hoping and praying that this was just a fluke and he would realize his folly and fall back asleep, but this didn't happen. I went in there to make sure he didn't wake up with a fever, and within 1.5 seconds of seeing me he started laughing and screaming choo-choo (which is his favorite thing to say now), which was really cute and I couldn't be mad anymore for waking up with the roosters. So after he ate his blueberry waffle, two scrambled eggs, five strawberries, half a piece of my toast, and a bowl of oatmeal, I plopped on the couch, turned on the Cat and the Hat, and pulled out the computer to attempt to form sentences while Clark pulls out all the contents of Aaron's wallet and hides them like Easter eggs around the house. Don't let me forget to tell Aaron his driver's license is in a bowl in the pantry. The only good news in this scenario is that he will most likely go down for a morning nap about an hour earlier than usual and down I will go too for a nice little snooze before church.

There has been a lot of exciting stuff happening in our neck of the woods in the past couple of months. I'm going to write about these exciting happenings soon. Not now because its 6:17 a.m. and I try not to be too productive before 10 a.m. This morning I just felt the need to tell a story about me at the doctors office Friday afternoon.

Last Monday, for a reason completely unknown to myself, my left knee started throbbing as if somebody took a sledgehammer and pummeled it into a million pieces. It was ridiculously painful and got horribly worse throughout the week. Besides going on a short uneventful jog that morning, there was absolutely no explanation for the pain. With every day that passed, I stubbornly convinced myself that the next day would be better and never took so much as a Tylenol to relieve the pain. I just hobbled around complained a lot to my husband and almost 16 month old. By Friday, I suppose I had had enough pain for the week so I called and made an appointment with a doctor. Fortunately they had a spot open that afternoon and I could see the light beaming at the end of the tunnel. I was looking forward to a dream drug that would zap my pain away and I could skip out of the doctors office and frolic in a field of daisies.

Well, after checking in and then waiting for TWO HOURS in a very small room that seemed to get smaller and smaller with each passing minute, I finally talked to the doctor about what was going on. After I nonverbally cursed him for making me wait two hours, he ordered the nurse to do an x-ray to see what was going on in this crazy knee of mine. Not surprisingly, I waited another 30 minutes after the x-ray was taken for him to come back into the tiny and growing tinier room to look at the dadgum images. He looked at it for less than 10 seconds and declared I have a torn medial meniscus and there was absolutely nothing we could do about it. He prescribed rest, stretching, and no more jogging. Genius. And then he bid me farewell by handing me a blue piece of paper saying I owed him $719.00. Let the nonverbal cursing resume.

I took the blue piece of paper to the check out counter and prayed silently that I did not have to write this lady a check for $719.00 and that my insurance would pull through. She asked me if I normally had to pay anything after a doctors appointment, and I said no. Unethical? Maybe. I just didn't know. Sometimes I do and sometimes I don't. I'm sure I'll get a bill first thing Monday morning for $719.00 and I will appropriately hobble down to the floor and cry at that time. The lady asked me if I wanted a copy of the receipt and even though I considered making a political statement by saying yes and then shredding it into a million pieces right in front of her face, I politely declined by saying I didn't think it was necessary.

This is what got me:

After declining, she handed me a copy of the receipt anyway, and this is what she said. I think I can remember it verbatim.

"Are you sure, honey? I think your parents are going to want an explanation when they get a bill like this in the mail."

I looked at her, and with my wedding ring finger leading the way, I grabbed the paper and said, "Thank you, but my parents won't have anything to do with this."

"Oh, honey, you look like you're 15 years old. I just assumed...." she tried redeem herself. I robotically thanked her for the copy and hobbled out of the office.

This will not seem like a big deal to anyone else in the world, but I was livid for one main reason. The reason is because this lady continually called me honey, which happens to fall into one of my biggest pet peeve categories. I HATE being called sweetie, honey, darling, etc., by anybody who is not related to me by blood or marriage. It grates on me like a dripping faucet and I get uncharacteristically irritable. Especially in a retail situation. Women in retail love to call me sweetie and I respond by storming out of the premises immediately. It bothers me. Another reason I became quickly frustrated in front of the check out lady is because she said I look like a 15 year old. Is this true? I wasn't wearing a Justin Bieber tshirt. I was clearly wearing a wedding ring. What's the deal? I realize I don't have wrinkles around my eyes yet, but seriously, 15 years old? Maybe I'm insecure because even though I have almost been married seven years and have a child, I still don't feel like an adult. But being physically compared to a 15 year old girl is hardly complimentary.

Well, there's my Sunday morning rant. You're welcome for that. It is now 8:01, I have spent the last hour and half trying to write this nonsense post while convincing Clark that Jake's food is icky and he shouldn't eat it. His breath and Jake's breath have a remarkable resemblance now. But it is finally time for our nap.

Before I sign off, it is SO IMPORTANT that every single person who reads this goes to my roommate Megan's blog and purchase one or more of her adoption tshirts, which are unbelievably cute, by the way.

Megan and Russ are going to bring a baby home in the near future and guess what? WE CAN HELP THEM. They have a tshirt fund to help them with the costs of the adoption and would appreciate every dime they can get. I honestly cannot think of two people more deserving of a sweet little baby, and if I can buy two tshirts to support them, you can bet your bottom dollar I'm going to. You don't have to know them personally to buy their shirt. Just know they are an amazing, Christ centered couple and will be perfect parents to the child that God has picked for them. So please, please, please pray for my friends, Megan and Russ, and support them by wearing this cute shirt. You can read about their journey and order the shirts directly from her blog. Love you, Megan! I can't wait to meet Baby Johnson!

Some pictures from the last Rice reunion.

2011-04-17T17:34:00.000-07:00

Clark got a haircut.

2011-04-05T15:12:00.000-07:00

Aaron put his foot down yesterday. He had had enough. Over the weekend somebody told him he had a beautiful daughter, and I guess that was the straw that broke the camels back. Its true, Clark's hair was getting pretty long. It went way past his ears and the curls started disappearing because of the length. But good grief, it was cute. I loved it. It was part of his personality and character, and I was scared to death that once we cut those little curls off they would never come back. Even though I was dead set on prolonging his first haircut until Clark's 16th birthday, somehow Aaron convinced me to bite the bullet. It was time.

We decided to take him to the barber shop where Aaron and every other male specimen in Oxford gets a haircut. He nervously sat on Aaron's lap while we put a cover over him and I got my camera ready. Wanda, our very patient stylist, proceeded to comb all the raggedy curls out so she could start cutting. Clark didn't like it very much but was easy to distract with a root beer flavored sucker. The beloved sucker did wonders for us yesterday. I started getting panicky with each snip because I could see the little curls just falling helplessly to the floor. Soon enough, Clark started getting uneasy with the whole situation and began to freak out, which I definitely expected. Wanda kept telling me to talk to him to get him to calm down but I was too busy trying to keep myself from having a panic attack in the middle of the barber shop. It was almost too much to handle. For me, that is. Clark handled it wonderfully minus his 45 seconds of unpleasantness. I thought about the time I was in horrible labor with a 9.5 pound baby and Aaron was there to hold my hand and I could squeeze the ever living crap out of it when I got uncomfortable. Well, yesterday, I could have used that hand again. I was uncomfortable but had to pretend to be cool. I am so not cool. I never really have been. Ask Aaron or anybody who has ever met me.

When she finished, I mustered a weak "Thank you" out of my mouth and then tried to crawl into a dark hole and sob. His curls were gone. His sweet ringlets were completely out of sight. Surely you can understand my sadness? We paid Wanda and walked to my car so I could yell at Aaron for peer pressuring me into doing something that neither Clark or myself was ready for. He tried to convince me that once we gave him a bath and brushed his hair the curls would reappear like magic. I told him to talk to the hand because the face wasn't listening and then spun my tires as I peeled out of the parking lot in pure anger.

I didn't actually do that last part. I used my blinker and drove very carefully out of the parking lot.

When we got home I started making dinner while Aaron kept Clark entertained. When it was time for Clark's bath, I'm sure Aaron made some kind of stupid comment like "get ready to be amazed by the reappearing curls." I wouldn't know. He was getting the silent treatment.

I'll skip the part about what we had for dinner get to the part that you want to hear.

The good news is the curls came back. The bad news is the curls came back. I was beyond ecstatic that once we towel dried the crap out of his head, those sweet little curls just did their thing. They bounced around in every direction and did a happy dance on his little head. I would even go so far as to say that this haircut makes Clark EVEN cuter. Was that even possible? Oh happy day.

But why is this bad news, you might ask? Because for at least the next 72 years, I get to listen to a wide variety of following comments:

See, what'd I tell ya about that haircut?

I was right about the haircut wasn't I?

Aren't you glad he got a haircut?

Aren't you glad I convinced you to get him a haircut?

I'm the most awesome person ever aren't I?

Don't you think I'm awesome?

Tell me I'm awesome.

The truth is, Aaron is awesome and I'm glad he convinced me to get Clark a haircut. Perhaps the haircut symbolizes something much bigger than curls. Clark's first haircut means Clark is growing up and there is nothing I can do about it. I'm positive I will have the same overreaction with Clark's first poop in the toilet, his first day of kindergarten, his first lost tooth, etc, but I really don't think I can help it. It's out of my hands. Although I'm sure there are pills out there for people like me.

This was a ridiculous long way to say this sentence: Clark got a haircut.

Spring Break '11. Whoop whoop!

2011-03-24T11:22:00.001-07:00

Last week was Aaron's final spring break and we came one step closer to ending this long chapter of life called "Arnie the Student." After 24 years, he finally has to bid farewell to his beloved Spring Break. We wanted to do something adventurous, different, and flippin' awesome, and we definitely wanted to stay far, far away from Spring Break locations that would include girls in scantily clad bikinis and guys who look like a steroid balloon about to burst. You see, we have experienced Panama City at Spring Break before, and we stuck out like sore thumbs. Trust me, you're going to want to avoid that particular area of the globe unless you meet at least one of the criteria I mentioned earlier (scantily clad or balloon.)

It did not take long to decide backpacking would be a sweet gig for us. We called up some good family friends who live in Montgomery and who truly are backpacking/camping/hiking experts and invited them along so we could watch and learn. And also because they are quite possibly the most awesome group of people on this earth to hang out with and we easily spend the entire time laughing our bums off together. Hannah and Daniel joined us in Montgomery and Aaron's parents GENEROUSLY met us there to watch Clark while we hiked. I love Clark with every fiber of my being, but I believe camping with him would be the most unpleasant experience imaginable.

Daniel, Kelly, Hannah, Aaron, Jill, Jake, and Matt

We left on Sunday afternoon and drove two hours either north, east, south or west, I didn't pay attention. When we got there and after we briefly went our separate ways to pee in the woods, we hiked about a mile and set up camp right next to a stream that turned into beautiful waterfalls. Aaron, being the brilliant son of a gun he is, immediately put his six pack of Guinness in a garbage bag and placed it in the stream so it could be nice and chilled by nightfall. Before you judge him for backpacking with a six pack of beer, keep in mind that I hiked with a bottle of wine and a Dixie cup in my pack. Now you can judge all you want.

Daniel

We set up the tents and hammocks, explored the waterfalls, gathered enough sticks to keep a fire going all night, and started hunting wildlife for dinner. We didn't actually do that last one, we ate chunky soup out of a little gas stove for dinner. But other than that, we were roughing it pretty hardcore. We got the fire going and spent the entire evening sitting around it singing lullabies. Well, not so much singing but a lot of making fun of each other and telling embarrassing stories. We laughed a lot and I still laugh out loud when I think about that night.

Some of us grossly miscalculated the weather and spent every second of the wee morning hours shivering in sleeping bags and trying to not die, which means we got approximately zero hours of sleep that night. But if I could go back and re-do it, I probably wouldn't change anything because it just gave us one more thing to laugh about the next day. One member of our party got a full ten or more hours of sleep and we all were very happy for him. So much so that we wanted to punch him in the face when we had to wake him up because it was time to start packing up to go. (Just kidding, Jake. Nobody wanted to punch you.)

We packed our sleep deprived selves up, hiked back to the cars, and drove to town to devour the most delicious burger and milkshake my buds have ever tasted. We were still laughing at the fast food restaurant even though we were looking skanky and smelling pretty rough. Seriously, it was an awesome trip and I can't wait to do it again. Howells, Frazers, Rices, and Meigs: we MUST do this again and very soon.

Howell siblings. These kids really know how to have a good time.

There are a few more pictures of the trip on Daniel's blog. The rest of the week was spent in Jackson and Hattiesburg and I took about 403 pictures to prove it. Stay tuned...I plan to write about the rest of the week tomorrow.

The Game Face 2.0

2011-03-08T18:03:00.000-08:00

Clark's game face has extended to bath time. He makes it every time the water turns on or off and it might just be the cutest thing I've seen in 14 months. Enjoy!

And please excuse any body parts that might be exposed. Keep in mind it is bath time.

The Fashion Edition.

2011-03-08T12:25:00.000-08:00

Clark doesn't own one smocked outfit. Nothing he wears, or has ever worn in his entire life, is monogrammed with his initials. In fact, almost all of his threads can be found at Target, Walmart, or Baby Gap (but only when they are having a HUGE sale). I'm not opposed to smocks or monograms or all of the froo froo that accompanies baby clothes, but I'm certainly not going to pay more for Clark's clothes than I would my own. So even though he's not going to be featured on the cover of any fritzy children's boutique magazine, I try to do the best with what I've got.

This is Clark's usual Sunday attire.

I also call it his "It's Been A Long Day At The Office" look:

Shoes: Toys R Us ($7.00)

Pants: Target ($5.00)

Shirt: Walmart ($5.00)

This is his typical loungewear attire.

He likes to sport the no-pants look for comfort reasons.

Shirt that features all the coolest superheroes: Target ($5.00)

Pants: free

Socks: Walmart (6 pairs for $5.00)

Clark's activewear.

Any shirt that has a plane on it gets two thumbs up.

Shirt: Target ($5.00)

Pants: Target ($5.00)

New Balance kicks: They are probably expensive, but they were a gift and Clark wears them every single day.

This is Clark's "My Dad Dressed Me Today" look:

(His dad dressed him. Which explains the blinding tackiness.)

Camo fleece hat with ears: Walmart ($4.00)

Shirt with Snoopy on it: Baby Gap ($3.00 on the sale rack)

Pants: I have no idea where these are from. Probably Walmart, which means they are less than $5.00.

Shoes: Toys R Us ($7.00)

Unfortunately, I have a feeling Clark will not be receiving the "Best Dressed" Award in his toddler years. However, I do believe he has a good shot at the "Cutest And Most Awesome Kid On Earth" Award.

That's all for now. I'm getting ready to post another Game Face video that is sure to make you smile.

Farewell, morning nap.

2011-03-01T17:59:00.000-08:00

It appears that Clark recently made the decision to drop his morning nap. After two weeks of fighting him for several hours every single morning, it's pretty clear he has no interest in a morning nap anymore. Nobody is more sad about this than me, because I protected that nap with my life. I treasured it. It was my friend. It was during this time that I either took a nice little nap myself or I bathed, and I can't imagine how much my life is going to change now that my 90 minutes of morning peacetime has been ripped right out of my hands. The whole thing really saddens me and also stresses me out. I'm sad because that is just another piece of tangible evidence that he's getting older. I remember (cliche: like it was yesterday) when he taking four good naps a day and now he's just taking one? How did that happen? Anyway, now I'm going to start the painful process of restructuring our day to figure out exactly when the solo nap is going to be. The name of the game is trial and error, I guess. I was hoping to not have to deal with this for at least a few more months, but Clark had other plans. So I guess I'll roll with it and quit my bellyaching.

You know what really bothers me? So much so that I want to throw a temper tantrum every time it happens? When drivers do not turn right on red. Seriously, it is becoming one of my biggest pet peeves, even more than when somebody asks me if I'm in a bad mood or keeps their hands in their pockets. Why would one not take advantage of the right on red system? I'm pretty sure our forefathers knew what they were talking about when they invented it, so why spit in their faces? Please, do me a gigantic favor, and because you feel sorry for me that I will never take a morning nap again, please turn right on red. Always. It's important to me and every other driver in America and any other country that implements this brilliant system. Thanks.

And I'd like to end this post by sharing a story that happened this afternoon after Clark took his only nap of the day. I needed to kill some time so I buckled Clarkimus into the car and headed to...the car wash. Sounds exciting, right? Imagine with me, if you will, about how awesome it must be to experience an automatic car wash for the first time. Clark must have thought it was the coolest thing he'd ever seen in all 14 months of his life because he put his game face on and kept it on for a solid five minutes. I tried to use my phone to video it but my phone happens to be a gigantic piece of poop and I've been lobbying Arnie to get me a new one for a long time. But that is not the story I mentioned earlier. In an effort to keep him distracted until dinner time, when we got home I took him outside in the backyard, gave him a ball, and let him frolic around for a while. Eventually that got old to him, so I took the ball and threw it up on the roof and let it fall back down to the ground. Clark thought it was pretty funny and let out a chuckle or two. The second time I threw it on the roof, I managed to angle it perfectly towards Clark's face, because that is exactly where it landed. And seriously, the ball slammed onto his face. I had just smacked my son in the face with a ball. He looked at me with the most disgusted expression possible, and then had a two minute freak out, and then wanted me to do it again. He's pretty great like that. If I ever smack you in the face, I hope you will forgive me in the same way.

The Game Face

2011-02-25T18:34:00.000-08:00

Before we left for Nashville a few weeks ago, I went to Walmart to buy a portable dvd player and a few Sesame Street dvds. This was a wise decision because the entire road trip turned out being quite pleasant, although we will forever have the theme song to Sesame Street playing in our heads. Sunny days, sweeping the clouds away. One of the dvds is a Name That Shape and Color game show episode, and apparently Clark became particularly fond of it during the trip. I didn't think much of it until we got home and put it in the real dvd player so Clark could watch it at home.

Apparently every time he hears the theme song to the dvd, he makes the same excited and completely surprised facial expression. He was probably doing it the entire time we were in the car but we never saw it. It's most likely the cutest thing he does right now and I'm so glad I captured it on video so I'll never forget it.

He repeatedly makes that game face every single time it comes on. Seriously, its cute isn't it? I'm digging his quirkiness. If you haven't met him yet, you need to. He's a good kid.

This was my third post of the day. What gives?

Mayonnaise. Its delicious.

2011-02-25T10:08:00.000-08:00

This morning in my ELL (English Language Learners) class, I was going over a new list of vocabulary and we got stuck on two concepts that completely dumbfounded my students. First of all, it sounds really strange to call them students, because they are all older than me. It sounds even stranger to refer to them as my students, but that is not the point here. I was trying to teach them these two very simple ideas: there is food that is delicious, and there is food that tastes terrible. Sounds easy enough, no? No.

Good gosh. It was like I was explaining Einstein's Theory of Relativity, which I probably could have done much better than I did today. I showed them pictures of cookies, cake, ice cream, and hamburgers, and repeated "delicious" over and over and over again. And I described that I really like cookies, cake, ice cream and hambugers, so I think they are delicious. And then I pointed to pickles and said I really do not like pickles, so I think they taste terrible. My students got so excited about these concepts. They laughed out loud, hysterically in fact, as I went on and on about things that are delicious and things that taste terrible. What in the world is so freaking funny about pickles tasting terrible to me?

Anyway, after I literally could not think of another way to describe the difference between delicious/terrible, I turned it over to them and got the class to tell me foods they think are delicious or terrible. And this is no lie: all of them proceeded to tell me how delicious mayonnaise is, and it is their favorite food, and it does not taste terrible to them. All of them! I thought maybe they were trying to say something different and mayo was just the word that was coming out of their mouths, so I went to the refrigerator and brought them a jar of mayo and asked them if this is what they are talking about. Yes! Yes! Mayonnaise! Mayonnaise! They lit up like a light bulb when I showed them the dadgum jar of mayonnaise. What the what?!

Absolutely clueless as to what the heck was going on, I acknowledged their love of mayonnaise and asked them what else they thought was delicious. "Mayonnaise! Mayonnaise is delicious!" Holy cow. I have never seen anybody so excited about a condiment. They told me they didn't think any food tasted terrible, and mayonnaise tasted delicious. I tried to explain that more than one food can taste delicious. For example, I (pointing to myself) think cupcakes, cookies, ice cream, and chocolate cake are ALL delicious foods. Not just one, but all of them are delicious. This might just be why I have not lost my baby weight. Just a thought. Simple enough? NO! Mayonnaise is delicious! To teach a concept that probably should have taken less than three minutes, we spent no less than an hour talking about...you guessed it...mayonnaise. And how delicious it is, and there is no other food out there that tasted terrible.

Having said all that, this class is great. We really have a good time, and I end up doing a lot of role playing and acting like a fool to try to get my point across. It is bascially a giant two hour long game of charades. But it works, and I think they are learning enough to survive out there in the foreign land of Oxford, Mississippi. I'm going to go make a mayonnaise sandwich now just to see what the big deal is.

I dedicate this post to Nikki, who has an ever growing fear of mayonnaise. I thought she would appreciate this more than the average joe.

Photo Edition

2011-02-24T17:34:00.000-08:00

The last time I posted a picture was December 19, and Clarkimus Maximus has changed a lot in the past two months. I'm assuming we have friends and family out there who want to see what we have been up to, so I hereby dedicate this entire post to many photos and very little of my jibberish. This is bound to be lengthy so one should brace oneself for the lengthiness. Great sentence, Kelly. Great sentence.

We recently invited ourselves to Nashville to hang out with Hannah and Daniel a few weeks ago and had a blast. It was an absolutely delightful five hour drive because on the morning of the trip, I made a last minute excursion to the Walmarts to procure a portable dvd player and three Sesame Street dvd's. We set that bad boy up and Clark fixated on Elmo pretty much the entire time.

We stopped at the Casey Jones museum to stretch our legs and let Jake pee.

Aaron may or may not have had to explain to me who Casey Jones was.

Clark drank some orange soda at a mini ice cream parlor.

It was dadgum cute.

And of course we stood in line in the snow to eat at Pancake Pantry.

Clark ate his first pancake and I hope he doesn't think all pancakes taste that good.

Because one day, he'll have to eat mine and I'm afraid he'll be disappointed.

Aaron and Daniel played a lot of XBox 360.

And we all played a lot of Wii, and I am hooked.

Mom, Daddy, anybody, I want a Wii for Christmas. Thanks.

I still sneak in Clark's room after he goes to sleep and take pictures.

I wonder if thats weird. Seems creepy. I wonder if Aaron does that to me?

Meet our Clark. He's cute and perfect and has pretty teeth.

When I look at this picture, which I do forty seven times everyday, I get emotional.

Because when I look at this picture, it is way too easy for me to visualize what he'll look like as a four year old.

How cute is this hat? I bought it in Nashville at the cute shop where Hannah works.

It might be my favorite Clark purchase to date.

The pictures below were taken this afternoon. I LOVE days like today.

It was a beautiful, breezy day and we tried to soak in as much Vit D as possible.

Does this picture make your heart melt? It does mine.

Look at me getting creative with my camera!

You might have to tilt your head to the right to see it clearly.

He wasn't posing in this picture.

I was jumping up and down and screaming his name and he looked at me like I was crazy. Looks like someone need to comb his hair.

Love this. Love this. Love this.

Look at my boy. And look at Jake's rear end in the background.

I apologize if I just made your heart remelt.

I can't help the sweetness of my life.

Clark showing off his grill.

Oh, and I want you to pay special attention to his new kicks.

Aaron's best friend and former roommate, Austin Johnson, bought him these sweet New Balances for his birthday.

He previously had New Balances (also bought by his Uncle Austin), but he grew out of them and I think his toenails are permanently crooked because I neglected to buy him new shoes.

Now he totally rocks the size five shoe.

Is anybody as jealous as I am about this kid's perfect head of hair?

I would kill for locks like these.

You're almost done. Hang in there. Finish the race you started.

The next several pictures are Clark in the nude. But he's one, so its ok.

After a bath, it is tradition that he spend at least thirty minutes naked.

Its good for the soul. For a one year old's soul. Not yours.

And of course, torturing Jake while naked is important too.

One of Clark's favorite things to do these days is point to animals in his Bible and have us repeat what it is over and over and over and over and over again.

Hippo, Hippo, Hippo, Elephant, Elephant, Elephant, Doggy, Doggy, Doggy....

Do I even need to say anything about this one? Nikki, what are your thoughts?

Until next time,

The Rices

Aaron.

2011-02-24T12:13:00.001-08:00

Aaron has been bit by the running bug and now is suffering from a severe case of obsessive running disorder. Less than a month ago, he woke up one random morning and said to himself, "I think I'll go run today." And he ran a mile and half after having not run for years and years and more years. He ran three miles the next day. And six the next. And he's probably going to run 53 tomorrow.

A couple of days ago, he told me he wanted a goal to work towards, so he chose to run the Frostbite Half Marathon in Starkville in February of 2012. And he was excited about it, until the next day, when he said to himself, "No, I think I want to do a full marathon instead. And I don't want to wait until February. I think I'll go ahead and do one in October." So he got online, found the Marine Corps Marathon, and signed up right then and there. This is a great insight into the soul of the man that is Aaron Randall Rice. He puts his mind to something big, and then he just freaking does it. I knew this about him when I told him I would marry him and I thank God quite often that he hasn't changed.

I'm pretty excited about his newfound running obsession because it gives us something to do together. Am I going to run the marathon with him? Heck no. But during these next couple of months as he is working up to the big runs, I might be able to keep up with him and we can share a hobby, which does not happen often because I don't obsess over law and politics and he doesn't love potty humor or slapstick comedy like I do. We are two different people with different hobbies and interests but whatever makes up Aaron and Kelly happens to work.

I'm getting ready to brag on him in a big way, so hold your breath or close up shop now if cheesiness makes you gag. You've been warned.

I'm very proud of him. I'm proud of him all the time because he is always trying his hardest to be the best Aaron Rice he can. This was never clearer to me than in March of 2005. He laid in a hospital bed in ICU with a mangled body, yet I never heard one single complaint from him. Within hours of waking up from a 72 hour medically induced coma, he was smiling, laughing, and cracking jokes with the nursing staff. I can remember visitors (sometimes celebrities) walking in his room expecting to have to entertain a depressed, war torn, sulking Marine, but instead walking out having been truly encouraged and uplifted because Aaron just has that effect on people. I think it was one day after he arrived at Bethesda that he started telling his doctors to hurry and fix him so he could get back to his brothers in Iraq and continue to fight their war with them. I wanted to take a hammer to his face and knock him out for speaking such nonsense, but I knew he was genuine. He was ready to get on his feet (or foot, rather) and pick up where he left off.

I think it was less than a month after he was injured that he hopped on a bike (sans a left leg) and rode about 15 miles through Rock Creek Park in Washington DC. It was maybe a month later that he biked from Baltimore, MD to D.C., a 45 mile ride, also without a prosthetic leg. And in the days between that, he spent hours upon hours everyday in a physical therapy room being tortured by Army therapists who pushed him until he blacked out.

A couple of weeks after he was fitted with his first prosthetic leg, he went rock climbing, biking, and white water rafting in Colorado. A couple of weeks after that, he went snowboarding and was cruising black diamonds on his second day on the slopes. Two months after receiving his first leg, he decided to run the Army Ten Miler and against the recommendation of the entire medical staff at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, he ran it, ran it well, and crossed the finished line with his arms in the air and the biggest smile I've ever seen in my life. Well, I didn't actually see him cross the finish line because I was about 20 minutes behind him trying not to throw up my innards. But I've seen pictures, and trust me, the smile is big. I could keep going, but surely by now you get my point...he's unbelievable. Don't you agree?

So even though its been six years since he's laced up the ole' running shoes, he's going to train and finish this marathon in typical Aaron Rice fashion. I'll be the one wearing my I'm On Team Arnie shirt on the sideline jumping up and down like a gigantic fool and probably bawling my eyes out when he crosses the finish line, because that just seems like something I would do. So I'd like to raise my glass to my Arnie, who never ceases to amaze me, even after almost 11 years. Cheers, mate. Thanks for being you.

The cheesiness ends here.

This is me bellyaching.

2011-02-20T17:35:00.000-08:00

I'm going to start blogging more.

There are several times throughout the day that a thought pops into my head and I think to myself how I should definitely throw it up on the blog because surely everybody in the world will think its great. And then at the end of the day after I've eaten my three bowls of Yarnell's blueberries and cream frozen yogurt and after I've watched the news (and by news, I mean Desperate Housewives, Modern Family, The Bachelor, etc.), one of two things happen. I either fall asleep with my laptop on my chest before I get started or I get three sentences into a good post and then I fall asleep. And both of those things are likely to happen before 9:30 p.m. I am completely worthless by 7:31 every night, because that is one minute after we put Clark to bed and I crawl on my hands and knees to my couch that is kind of starting to smell like Jake's pee.

I suppose the reason I am so completely exhausted and worthless at the end of the day is because Clark is CRAZY busy and it is almost impossible to keep up with the kid all day long. From the second he wakes up at 7am to the second he goes to bed, he is on the move and won't stop for three seconds to take a chill pill. He doesn't even slow down to poop in his diaper. I think he poops while he is running. All I have to say about it is this: stay at home moms deserve life's most sweetest, generous rewards. Husbands of stay at home moms need to step up their A-game because it is VERY easy to feel worn down and defeated. Can I get an amen?

I've got about seven billion pictures and some really awesome videos I'm going to plaster all over this blog as soon as I find the time/energy/motivation/camera cord. In the meantime, here are a few Clarkimus updates:

*he's learning all sorts of new tricks everyday

*he likes to dance to music

*he says two words: ball and Jake

*he weighs about 23 pounds

*he has all of his teeth minus one molar that should be coming in soon

*he experienced his first fever a couple of weeks ago, and it was so sad

*he will kiss you if you ask him to

*he will hug you if you ask him to

*he likes to jump but doesn't catch air quite yet

*he is a sucker for applause and will do anything to get it

*he loves stacking blocks on top of each other

*he loves Elmo and anything Sesame Street

*he and Jake are developing a strong relationship

*he knows where his toes, eyes, ears and bellybutton are

*he loves testing boundaries but does not love getting in trouble

*he loves being naked

*he makes the most awesome facial expression when he gets excited

*he loves finding any random object around the house and throwing it in the bath tub

*he runs to the door when I say "Let's go."

*he likes running in the grass

*he likes cold grapes

*he loves playing with his girlfriend, Rowan Kaigler, who now lives right down the street

*he likes to spin around in circles

*he is getting ready to drop his morning nap and take one long nap in the afternoon

*he always poops at or around 9:30 in the morning

*he has eaten Quaker oatmeal every single morning for the past two months

*he eats the heck out of some edamame

*he is starting to throw some horrendous tempter tantrums

*his laugh makes my heart melt

*he smiles all day long

*he's asleep right now, and I'm tempted to go wake him up just to give him a kiss

*but I'm not going to do that, because that would be stupid.

200

2011-02-09T19:15:00.000-08:00

Guess what. This is my 200th post. That means anybody who has read this blog from the first post until now has wasted approximately 1,000 minutes of their lives. I do apologize. I wish I could say this post is going to be a doozy, but its just not.

All I want to do in this post is direct everybody's attention to Hannah's blog. We recently traveled to Nashville to spend the weekend with her and Daniel and I will certainly be documenting that trip here in the very near future. It was a blast. And guess what I did not do the entire time we were there? Take a picture. But in the meantime, please watch the videos she posted of me whooping up on Aaron on the Wii and the one of Clark eating his first sushi.

Speaking of Clark, he's not sleeping a whole lot these days. Speaking of sleep, I'm not doing much of it either as a result. Speaking of me, I'm always tired. Speaking of Aaron, he's cute.

P.S. In the Wii video, I'm wearing Ashley's adoption tshirt. I would like everyone to purchase one here to help her and her hubs bring their baby home.

As of late.

2011-01-31T19:51:00.000-08:00

1. In December, I started working on a very part time basis. The law firm I worked for before I gave birth to Clarkimus Maximus hired me to work on a top secret confidential high security rogue government project and the inner weaving of United States might unravel without my intelligence. Actually I'm just scanning and making copies of old real estate files and saving them on an external hard drive. I'm pretty sure Clark could do that. But they are letting me come in whenever I can with no set hours or schedule, and seriously, its a huge blessing. Not that I'm making millions, or thousands, or even hundreds of dollars, but every little bit helps during this time in our lives and if we can save our pennies and dimes, I think we're going to make it out alive.

2. We (correction: I) have spent the majority of the month of January filling out and completing the necessary paperwork for Aaron to apply to sit for the Mississippi Bar Exam. The application involves everything from noting every speeding ticket he ever got in his life to documenting whether he wears boxers or briefs. Wouldn't you like to know? This flippin' application is no joke and I am confident that Aaron would have chosen another life path if he was forced to fill out the application on his own. He tends to curse and throw things when he has to fill out paperwork of any shape or size and I put my party pants on when the opportunity presents itself. There is nothing more fulfilling than filling out name, address, date of birth, social security number, drivers license, phone number, marital status, etc. I would be happy to do anybody's paperwork free of charge, especially if you give me a really good pen. I simply go wild with a good writing pen. Anyway, the application was a beast, and I am happy to say it is sent in and we are in the clear. He is scheduled to take the bar at the end of July and hopefully he will pass and we can live happily ever after. The end. And he wears boxers just in case you had to know. Blue boxers.

3. I volunteered to teach an ELL (English Language Learners) class at our church for an entire semester. Honestly, I think I'm in way over my head. I can't even teach Aaron how to not leave his toenail clippers on my pillowcase or teach Clark that eating the volcanic ash rocks in the fireplace are probably not good for the health. But for two hours on Friday mornings I will cluelessly stand up in front of men and women from around the globe and teach them how to speak English. The only reason I am not completely freaking out over this is because I know I was put in this position for a very specific reason, and even though I'm sure He could have found somebody much more knowledgeable in this area, I'm trusting that God is using me in His kingdom. I would like to ask for your prayers, please, because when they told me I needed to teach them things like vocabulary words and pronouns, I almost cried because I don't know what a pronoun is. Prayers would be nice. Oh and a brief explanation of a pronoun would be nice also.

4. As I type this, Aaron is cleaning up his fingernail clippings that were laying on the bed. Maybe there is hope.

Have a great week.

Meet Clark: 12 (and a half) months

2011-01-16T11:06:00.000-08:00

Note to readers: This is really late but Nikki has been bellyaching about me posting Clark's one year update and threatened to not be my best friend anymore if I didn't hustle. So I started typing just to get her to quit her bellyaching, and it turned into an ridiculously long post. So be sure to properly hydrate and take breaks if needed, and my feelings will not be hurt if you make the wise decision to jump ship now. Just don't tell me if you did jump ship or my feelings might get hurt.

I've been procrastinating updating the ole blog because I know its going to be nearly impossible to cover everything we've been up to in the past month and a half. Not only did we drive halfway across the United States and back, but we survived the biggest snowstorm that 2011 has ever seen and celebrated Clark's first birthday in a huge way. The majority of the past 50 or so days have been spent on the road and living out of suitcases and pack and plays, but they were some great days, nonetheless. So now that we are back in the comfort of our own home and the familiar sound of Jake barking every six seconds at absolutely nothing of importance, I am going to attempt to recap the last month of Clark's first year of life.

The days between December 6, 2010 and January 6, 2011 were nothing but insanely fun. Well I can't say nothing but fun, because some days were exhausting, emotional, and extremely sad. But in large part, all of us Rice's had a lot of fun. Aaron finished his last exam on the 17th and when he finished, we threw our hands up in the air because that meant he only has one more semester of school. Ever. In his entire life. This is the home stretch, people, and it feels so right. Aaron was long gone to the library for every minute of every day for about three weeks, so that left me and the Clarkimus to fend for ourselves. We did a lot of playing and when we weren't playing, we played some more and thats about it. I think it was in those three weeks that Clark went from toddling, to walking, to running, to a full out sprint everywhere he goes. The kid is always in a hurry everywhere he goes, which means he falls a lot, and each fall precedes a dramatic my-world-is-falling-apart episode, and its really all pretty awesome. He loves to run...straight into trouble. He runs to the bathroom to stick his hands and whatever he has in his hands in the toilet. He runs to the fireplace and puts the rocks in his mouth. He runs to Jake's dog food bowls to ingest some of Jake's food. He runs to the trash can and knocks it over. He runs away from you when you tell him its time to change the diaper. He runs and just doesn't stop. You would think I would have lost about 40 pounds since he started walking, but it just didn't work out that way for me.

Over the past month, Clarkimus really started embracing bath time. Its really fun to say, "You ready for bath?" and watch him run to the bath tub because its the most amazing place on earth. Some other things he's loving at the moment are goldfish (the edible kind), all of his new toys he got for Christmas and his birthday (which I just realized how expensive this time of year will be for the rest of our lives), being outside, his extended family who spoiled him rotten for a solid month, riding on 4 wheelers, playing hide and go seek, being chased by a monster, his MSU cowbell (Go Dawgs!), spinning around in circles, kicking balls, smacking his lips, stomping the floor, climbing on anything and everything, green beans, Quaker oatmeal, blueberries (nothing has changed there), rough housing with Aaron (and I mean serious rough housing), slapping people in the face (which is not okay and we are trying to nip it in the bud), opening and closing the dryer door, hitting Jake in the face and trying to eat Jake's nose, watching Baby Einstein, drinking the heck out of some whole milk, running around naked, using his sippy cup (finally!), playing with his buddies, making new noises, building an even stronger relationship with Jake, taking some serious blows to the head when he falls down, eating some of Aaron's textbooks, swinging at the park, his big boy car seat that lets him face forward, filling up his diaper with contents that could evacuate a small country, experimenting with all sorts of new exotic foods, climbing stairs, and playing an awesome game that consists of crying to get picked up, and then crying because he wants to be put down immediately, and repeat this nonsense 493 times in a row.

The twelfth month also brought with it a few temper tantrums that I never would have expected. He does not like for you to take something away from him (like a rusty nail he found and wants to chew on or a golf ball cloaked in a spider web he found in the corner of the garage) and he will let the entire population of Taylor, Mississippi know if you try. It started amidst all the holiday traveling and I attributed the tantrums to being overtired or him being off his schedule or if all else fails, blame it on teething. The Shark grew four molars this month, which had to be miserable, so I tried to be sympathetic. Really, I did. I made every excuse in the book because I could not believe our Clark could be such a turd sometimes. But now that all the teeth are in, we are back home, and our little routine is back on track, he continues to throw the dadgum tantrums and I guess its because he's one now and I have to just deal with it. The only way we deal with these tantrums is just to ignore him until he gets distracted by something different. If there is another fool proof method of handling tempter tantrums, hit me up immediately, por favor.

Clark got to spend some much needed quality time with his aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents and great grandparents during his twelfth month of life. He learned how to wrap everybody around his little finger pretty quickly and it wasn't long before he had his aunts and uncles walking him around outside in the 12 degree weather just because that is what he wanted to do at the time. Somehow he convinced his Geez (Aaron's dad) to take him out on the four wheeler 19 times a day for about two weeks, and now every time he sees a four wheeler (which is quite often in our neighborhood), he has a meltdown and has to sit on it or he might pass out from sheer excitement. He got to go bear hunting with my dad. He ate his first Memaw's Christmas Eve dinner with my family. He discovered sweet tea. The entire time we were in Hattiesburg, he played his little heart out from the second he woke up in the morning until the very second we put him to bed, which left one very exhausted mama at the end of the day. (But not too exhausted to enjoy a glass or wine or two with some other Rice women. My sisters in law are pretty great. You should know them.) And the day we got back from all of our holiday travels, almost a foot of snow dumped out of the sky and Clark got to put his snow boots on (which were really his New Balance tennis shoes wrapped in Walmart bags).

On January 6, we celebrated the birthdays of Clark Rice and Debbie Rice in Hattiesburg. Every time the thought occurs to me that Clark shares a birthday with his grandmother, I smile. I think its awesome. For the first time in 365 days, Clark experienced his first taste of processed sugar when we gave him a cupcake. He went his entire first year without eating sugar or dessert of any fashion, so I was halfway expecting him to flip out over the cupcake we put in front of him. He was mildly amused at best. He stuck the tip of one finger in the icing and then realized it was stuck to his finger and then tried his hardest to shake it off. To be honest, I'm glad he didn't like it. You see, I have zero self discipline when it comes to dessert, and I do not want to pass that trait on to my spawn. So the less processed sugar he has as a young chap, the less likely he is to be a sugar fene like his madre. We celebrated his birthday again nine days later in Oxford with a cake the size of Neptune. (I have no idea how big Neptune is. The word came to me because I just watched an episode of Sid the Science Kid on PBS Kids. Surely Neptune is bigger than a cupcake, and that is the point I was trying to make.) All of Clark's friends came (both of them) and most of his family and we all celebrated his first year together. Arnie grilled some burgers on the Big Green Egg and I would have to give the party and the burgers an A+.

Here is a summary of the greatest year of our lives: Clark Randall Rice was born on January 6, 2010 at 7:08 p.m. after a pleasant 12 hours of labor and a brutal, torturous two and a half hours of delivery. We brought him home from the hospital on January 8, 2010. We had a consistent flow of family and friends visit and I didn't have to cook or clean for about a month. When he was four weeks old we took our first road trip to Jackson and Hattiesburg for everyone to meet him. When he was six weeks old, we started doing a flexible version of Babywise. At 12 weeks old, he started sleeping through the night. The day he turned four months old, he started waking up five or six or 75 times during the night and did so for the entire fourth month. At four months (I think) he started rolling over and almost rolled off the bed about twenty times before we learned to not leave him unattended on a high surface. When he turned five months old he started sleeping again and never looked back. We spent month number five on the coast where he started eating solids and spent every day on the beach or lounging in a pool. He started sitting up by himself during this month too. Oh, and the most important thing that happened during month number five was when two of the coolest guys on the face of the earth were born to my best friend, Nikki Bonhag. We came back to Oxford when he was six months old and he started crawling and Aaron started his final year of law school (both of these things were equally important in my book). When he was seven months we went back down to Hattiesburg so Clark could watch his Uncle Ryan marry his Aunt Bek and he finally got to meet his cousin, Isaac. When he was nine months old, he weaned himself of nursing and started drinking formula. During this month he also started walking, which quickly turned into a fast sprint by the time he was ten months old. By ten months he was pretty much off of all baby food and eating human food. When he was 11 months old, he celebrated his first Christmas and not quite two weeks after that, he turned one.

Now that Clark is 380 something days old, I guess its natural for me to be a little sentimental. When I think back on what a crazy, cheerio infested year it was, my first thought is to give Clarkimus props for handling it so great considering he was given two parents that didn't have a clue what they were doing and still don't. He was born into this world to a mom who has a sick obsession with his naked bum and a dad who constantly tries to explain to him the fourth amendment every chance he gets. I would have to say the theme of the year was "I don't know" because those three words were verbalized no less than three million five hundred thousand times over the course of the year. I'm grateful that Clark is so quick to forgive, because if he kept a record of all the stupid things we did or said to him, I'm pretty sure he would hit the highway with his thumb in the air waiting for a less insane set of parents to pick him up.

Oh what a learning process it all was. Learning how to change a diaper, make him laugh, how to comfort him when he falls down, how to teach him words, how to discipline him...all of these are things we learned and will have to continually relearn in the days ahead. But so far, we've done ok. I would probably give us A+. I'm not even going to ask Clark what grade he would give us. I'm kidding...I think he really likes us. Especially when we ask him if he wants a blueberry.

This year is bound to be just as crazy as the last. At some point in 2011, we will move to a different city and we have no clue where that will be. And if it is in the good Lord's perfect design for our lives, maybe another baby will be part of the craziness that is our lives. In a few months Clark will probably start communicating in a less babbling sort of way. Aaron will graduate law school and take the beastly Mississippi Bar Exam. Hopefully after that he will get a job and we can buy things like shampoo and toothpaste without stressing out about it. All I know is Arnie, Clark, Jake and I are ready for whatever journey God takes us on.

I'm going to skip the pictures part of the update because I think this post is already too dadgum long without them. And I smell something suspicious either coming from the Aaron's side of the room or Clark's diaper and I need to investigate immediately. But click here and here to look at some of the most recent pictures I posted on facebook (you don't have to have a facebook account to view them).

Nikki challenged me to do something she is doing on her blog and I'm thinking about joining her. In short, you are given a topic and you share whatever you want to about it on your blog. The first topic was marriage and her post about it was nothing short of amazing. Read it here. But it would be WAY outside of my comfort zone and I not positive its going to happen. I've accepted this about myself, but I'm not exactly on my A game when it comes to expressing my thoughts on paper and these would be topics that I'm not super comfortable sharing with the entire world. Not that the entire world reads this blog, but surely you get my point. So if it happens, be prepared for anything. If it doesn't happen, you will continue to read about Clark's (or Aaron's or Jake's) bowel movements and nothing of significant value whatsoever. Either option is fine, hopefully.

Ok, thats enough for now. Have a good day.

The Year of Clark Rice

2011-01-05T20:06:00.000-08:00

36 weeks in the belly:

20 minutes old:

1 day old:

1 month:

2 months:

2 months again:

3 months:

4 months:

5 months:

5 months again:

6 months:

6 months again:

7 months:

8 months:

9 months:

10 months:

11 months:

12 months:

Happy Birthday, Clark Randall Rice. We love you so much!

One year update to follow.

At least MSU blocked that punt.

2011-01-04T09:38:00.000-08:00

This past weekend, Aaron and I ventured off to Jacksonville, Florida to watch MSU spank Michigan in the Gator Bowl. The entire weekend was hilariously awesome and I'm so glad I had the cahones to pry myself away from Clarkimus long enough to realize how vital getaway weekends must be to my sanity. That was a terribly long sentence. Read it again if you must.

The goal was to leave Hattiesburg on Friday morning before Clark woke up. I know myself well enough to know if I had to say bye to him for three days, I would most certainly have a complete meltdown and change my mind about the whole trip and never let him out of my vision for the rest of his life. And y'all, guess what? We did it. We left on time. On time, that is. I need to bask in the glory of that sentence for just a moment because never, ever in the history of Aaron Rice has this ever happened. Punctuality is not his forte. We left (almost) exactly when we planned to. I did a victory dance in the passenger seat at 7:30 a.m. when we were pulling out of the driveway. That is not a very important detail to the weekend, and I can't promise this post is going to get anymore exciting than that.

Anyway, as it turns out, all of the hours I spent in the car with Arnie were my favorite part of the entire trip. You see, Aaron and I are road trip champions and always have been. We spent the first four years of our courtship on the road trying to make a long distance relationship work. And it did work, by the way. We are married now. But it has been quite some time since we ventured off together without a screaming little turkey in the backseat and having to stop every seven seconds to nurse or change a diaper. So it was a bit refreshing to hit the open road and only stop when Aaron had to poop. It was a nine hour road trip that honestly felt like thirty minutes. We talked the whole time. And not about the Constitution. But about trees.

I've gotten used to this and it makes me laugh now. Aaron is the proud son of a Registered Forester and as a result, can look at a pine tree and tell me exactly how old it is and what its father did for a living. While driving, his eyes are rarely on the road because he is too busy surveying the landscape and explaining why that tree over there can kick the butt of that tree over there. He explains why the ground is too wet for such and such a tree to survive. And something about trees competing with each other for something or another. I don't know. But he enjoys talking about trees almost as much as he does about politics, and that says a lot. I bet you didn't know that about my Arnie, did you?

Back to the road trip. I knew first thing it was going to be a good trip when we stopped at Wards to get breakfast and Aaron made a last minute decision to order a Big One hamburger. The reason they call it the Big One is because, well, its freaking huge. And messy. And disgusting looking, but y'all, its dadgum good. I might have to pause my life so I can go get one right now. I proclaim this burger to be one of the best in its business, but it is by no means a breakfast burger. In fact, I've changed my mind about going to get one because I just got a visual image of Aaron sloppily inhaling the Big One at 9:00 a.m. and I just got nauseated. So after eating his burger, large fries, and an extra, extra large root beer, and a couple of gas releases that almost caused a mass exodus of everyone in the car, me, Aaron, and Susan hit the open road. Susan became our best friend on this trip, but eventually she just started creeping us out. She knew every detail about us and could even predict where we were going in life. Susan is the voice on our Tom Tom and I will take her with me everywhere I go for the rest of my life. She's a Rice now. Simply brilliant and amazing in every way.

When we weren't talking about trees or hanging our heads out the window to escape the terror of Aaron's latest bowels, we were laughing and reminiscing about the old days. The year of 2011 marks the end of a decade, and Aaron and I spent that entire decade together. That's a lot of dates, flowers, arguments, New Years Eve kisses, and embarrassing moments, and it was fun chatting about them in the car. In between conversations about the Spring Breaks we spent together and people's legs getting blown off, Aaron had to floss his teeth. Random? Yes. But you see, Aaron's New Years Resolution was to practice better dental hygiene, and he has taken this to the most extreme measure imaginable. It started off with him just acknowledging that he needed to brush his teeth at night. Because, well, he just never did that. But I still loved him. The seemingly innocent NY Resolution turned into this crazy, psychotic need to freaking floss his teeth 22.5 hours a day. It just so happens that he found these portable flosser things, so you can bet your bottom dollar that at any given moment he's got a flosser thing in his pocket, two or three in the cup holder of whatever vehicle he is in, and one behind his ear. I just love him so much. One last thing about the road trip: we bought fudge at a gas station. And it was fabulous and made me cry.

Susan took us directly to our hotel in Jacksonville and she knew the exact minute we would arrive. Creepy, right? We arrived at 6:00 Central Standard Time and upon chatting with a nice lady in the elevator, we learned the hotel was offering a Happy Hour type shindig in the lounge from 4:00-7:00 throughout the weekend. This meant we had an hour to get ready and catch the last couple minutes of the free open bar and free food. If its free, give me three, right? When we arrived to the lounge with about 15 minutes to spare, there was no evidence of a happy hour, which made us sad. It was at this moment that we should have realized the time difference. It was actually 8:00 (Eastern Standard Time), which meant it was an entire hour after the party was over. But no, no. We didn't figure this out until many, many hours later.

This was the setting we soon found ourselves in: New Years Eve, Florida, Party, Fireworks, Alcohol, Hotdogs, and more. So we decided to forego Susan and the trusty Camry and hail a cab to drive us to a Mississippi State Alumni Party. So it turns out we are in fact very smart, despite the failure to acknowledge the dadgum time change.

Remember: Over the Limit, Under Arrest (as every billboard in Mississippi likes to remind you).

Our first cab driver was a fine man named Kirk. He gave me his personal cell phone and told me to holla at him if we needed another ride. That is not an important detail to this story at all. The MSU Alumni Party we went to was fun but only for two reasons. It was overcrowded, which didn't fare well with Aaron's flatulence issues, and lines were four thousand people long for food, drinks, and potty. And Aaron started getting fidgety because he "hates places with a lot of people." His words, not mine. He can really be a turd sometimes. But I'll tell you the two reasons the party was the most awesome place on planet earth.

1. We got to hang out with my fabulous college roomie, Megan, and her hubs, Russ. It had probably been nine or more months since we last saw these two and I've missed them something awful. But getting to hang out with them all night made the painstakingly long lines completely worth it. Also, for the first time in 26 years, I ate a hot dog because I felt some intense peer pressure coming from Megan. It was pretty disgusting. Seriously, a hot dog? But I'm glad I could share the experience with my roomie. I always have so much fun with her and sometimes I'm tempted to pack up all my belongings and move to whatever neighborhood she lives in just so I can always be in her presence.

And I would be a complete failure not to mention and give props to Russ Johnson for his usage of the word "postface." Russ, it really is a word. This is the Wikipedia definition: A postface is the opposite of a preface, a brief article or explanatory information placed at the end of a book. It is a great word, and although I don't think you used it in the correct context that night, I'm so proud of you for your attempt. I bet you didn't think I'd remember that. Bring it.

2. Something happened before the party that I will never forget for the rest of my life. It was epic. It was one of those blue moon situations that just never happens. I won an argument with Aaron. I was right about something. I was sooooo very right and he was sooooo wrong. Kirk the Cab Driver dropped us off in downtown Jacksonville and we walked toward the Alumni party and eventually made our way to end of the 58 mile long line of people waiting to get in. It was ridiculously long and I was dreading it. Fortunately for us, a very nice young couple approached us and offered to sell us their arm bands at cost so that we could walk right up to the front of the line, show the security peeps the arm bands, and walk on in. The nice young couple explained they didn't want to stay at the party and had cut the arm bands off enough so that somebody else could use still use them. So we swapped cash for arm bands and I jumped for joy and started making my way to the front of the line. It was about 15 seconds later that Aaron started freaking out and saying we were scammed and blah blah blah. You would not have wanted to see Aaron and Kelly Rice standing in the parking lot yelling at each other that night. It was not pretty. I tried to explain to him that we already had exactly what everyone was standing in line to buy so we could just bust up in that party and avoid the bloomin' line. Aaron was being a stubborn turd and said he didn't think it was going to work and refused to cut in front of everyone. I repeat: turd! I'll skip over the not so glamourous details of the argument that took place in front of 2,000 MSU alumnus, but we were in fact able to walk right up to the gate, show them our arm bands, and enter the party. I gloated all night. And the entire weekend. And even five minutes ago because I thought about it again. I realize its such a small victory, but its just so uncommon for me to get something right that I have to enjoy it to the highest power when it does happen.

We partied with all the Bulldogs all night long, and by party, I mean waited in long lines for 30 minutes to get one drink or 45 minutes to use the little girls room. As I waited in these lines I entertained myself and those around me by updating my Facebook status in a way that might have been less than flattering to Aaron, but he was a darn good sport. We rang in the New Year with a sweet kiss and a beautiful fireworks show and by 12:03 we were looking for the closest exit because we are old and we "hate places with lots of people."

We were stranded in J'ville and Susan was nowhere in sight so we had to hail a cab along with 30 million other MSU alum at the party. We took the offer of a little dude riding a bike with a tiny carriage type thing attached to it (Aaron kept calling it a rickshaw, whatever that means). We told him to take us as far as $6 would go, which turned out to be about 10 yards. We hopped off the bike carriage and spotted a cab across the street to which I ran as fast as I could to in an attempt to beat all the other little turds trying to find rides. I looked like a giant fool, but thats neither here nor there. We got in the cab with four other unpleasant human beings and listened as the woman driver (whom Aaron kept referring to as a dude) told us about her lesbianism. Needless to say it was an interesting ride across town. We stayed up just long enough to destroy the large pepperoni/sausage and jalapeno pizza from Papa Johns we ordered from the cab (disgusting, I know, but Aaron loves the sausage/jalapeno combo). Pizza, hot dogs, fudge, alcohol, and Wards in one day. We could be in a documentary.

The next day was game day and I slept in until the sun was setting. Not really. It was more like 10:00, but it felt like I had completely slept the day away, and it was fabulous. We got decked out in our maroon attire and called yet another cab to take us to the stadium. The reason for the second cab is because Aaron and I have been together long enough to know and accept that being in a strange, huge city in major traffic and trying to find a cheap parking place are all the ingredients leading up to a great big fight between us. We actually ended up paying less in cab fares than we would have buying a parking pass, so all is well.

The game was dadgum awesome. Our seats were awesome. The weather was beautiful. The Bulldogs played a game we won't soon forget. In fact, Aaron watched the Gator Bowl a second time on tv two nights ago. We cheered our little bums off and enjoyed watching our friendly Michigan neighbors wallow in sorrow. I also discovered my favorite way of watching a football game: with a margarita (or two). I was dumbfounded that a stadium sold liquor. Dumbfounded I tell you. After the Bulldogs won, Dan Mullen gave a speech, Relf accepted his MVP award, and after every single Michigan fan had cleared the stadium, we started the long journey to nowhere. Remember how we took a cab? Again, we find ourselves stranded in J'ville, but this time, there were zero cabs to be found. So we walked about 14 miles into the heart of downtown until we found a very shady, sketchy, unreliable looking cab that we hopped into without hesitation. He took us to our hotel and we might have gotten the bad end of the deal on that one, but I'm not dwelling on it. Oh, and I have to mention the fact that on our way out of the stadium, Aaron and I almost got scammed out of every dollar to our name. Our identity was one pawn away from being stolen. It was crazy. Somewhere in the last two sentences I have hidden a sarcastic tone, so ask Aaron about that in your free time.

After sitting in direct sunlight for five hours and then walking 1,403 miles, we were completely exhausted. But not too exhausted to stuff our faces at the Cheesecake Factory. We ate a ridiculous amount of food and I sincerely wish I would have ordered the beef ribs that Aaron had but I will never regret ordering that piece of Snicker cheesecake. It was heaven on a plate with a ton of cool whip. That is another thing about my Arnie. Not only is he right 98% of the time, but he always, always orders the right thing at restaurants. You would think after ten years, I would have learned to just order the same thing as him, but I just haven't gotten to that special place yet. At least I know to go to the front of a line if I already have an arm band. Oops, there I go again. I'm gloating.

After our cheesecake escapade we waddled back to our hotel and crashed. And continued sleeping until about 11:00 the next morning. It was delightful. By the time we checked out of the hotel, we were feening for some Clarkimus so we decided to forego dining out in some snazzy J'ville restaurant for lunch and hit the closest Wendy's drive through. I wanted to punch myself in the face after I finished that last french fry, but I didn't. And Aaron seemed to enjoy his Double Baconator with extra bacon just fine. The ride back to Mississippi was definitely longer than the ride to Florida but not bad at all. We did a lot of talking and a lot of smack talking too. When I'm in the car with Aaron, I like to play a little game called "I'll give you anything if you can tell me who sings this." I always win at this game. He's definitely not on his A game when it comes to music of any nature, unless of course its Johnny Cash or Hank Williams. He is usually so painfully wrong and I like to point at him and make fun of him. For example, a Fleetwood Mac song same on and he guessed it was Madonna. Seriously, Arnie?

It was really an awesome weekend with the hubs. I enjoyed my time with him so much. He's so fun and thoughtful and I'm so glad he's my mate for life. And Aaron had a great weekend too. When I asked him what his favorite part of the weekend was, he said it was when MSU blocked that punt from Michigan. It is a good thing MSU blocked that punt, because if not, I guess he wouldn't have a had an awesome weekend like me. It wasn't the most flattering way to tell me he enjoyed spending time with me, but I'll take what I can get. And just because of that, I feel justified in telling the world that Aaron is currently using a pink loofa. Bring it, Aaron. You won't win.

We arrived back in Hattiesburg at 7:00, just in time to spend some much needed snuggling time with Clark before he went to bed. I'll never forget how big and perfect his smile was when he saw me walk through the door. He was so happy to see me and let me love on him for about 15 seconds until he saw his dad walk through the door. He's obsessed with Aaron and thinks his daddy is the coolest thing since sliced green beans. I dig that though. I love seeing them together.

And that ends our fabulous getaway weekend. Upon starting this post I had no idea it was going to be the novel that it turned out to be, but I guess it makes up for the three weeks I have gone without blogging. In less than 48 hours, Clark will be a one year old. I have no idea how to blog about that so it might be another three weeks or so until I work up the nerve to accept the subject matter and put my thoughts into words. Thanks for reading about our little excursion. If nothing else, I hope it helped you understand the big dweeb I married and how much I love him.

DPP: Day 19

2010-12-19T18:42:00.000-08:00

This can't be comfortable.

But traveling just got eight million times more pleasant now that he is turned around and can look out the windows. He looks so much older than I'm willing to accept when I see him in his big boy car seat.

DPP: Day 18

2010-12-19T18:14:00.000-08:00

It's not very impressive, but this is the extent of our Christmas shopping. I haven't wrapped the box of Great Value Toasted Whole Grain Oats or the mini Constitution sitting on the table, but I'll get to that tonight.

DPP: Day 17

2010-12-19T18:11:00.000-08:00

Clark enjoys a lively breakfast with his Bek and Rynie. He's definitely got them wrapped around his little finger.

DPP: Day 16

2010-12-19T07:42:00.000-08:00

I'm still very behind. But I WILL post 25 DPP's even if I finish in March of 2014. I'm that committed to this thing.

This morning Clark woke up snotty and drippy and because we didn't want him getting all the little kiddos in the nursery snotty and drippy, we decided to miss church today. I knew he was coming down with a cold of some fashion because yesterday was quite possibly the most miserable day in the history of Clark Rice. Which made it quite possibly the most miserable day in histories of Aaron Rice and Kelly Rice. And Clark's cold was also due any day now because Aaron currently has a bitter nasty one and its only a matter of time before the rest of us get it. Its just how life works. So this morning, after I scraped off all the snot that had caked up on his face from last night, I did what any smart and reasonable mother would do and let him play outside in the wet grass and freezing 35 degree weather. Being outside is Clark's most thrilling reward on earth and he was salivating at the mouth at the front door just waiting for me to give in because I always do. So I dressed him in his cold weather gear and let him toddle around the front yard for a few minutes to get it out of his system.

Red sock and orange sock. Story of his life.

Now I'm just going to sit here and patiently wait for my cold to rear its snotty, drippy, ugly head. There's no avoiding it. The good news is that I get to battle my cold over Christmas and our awesome Jacksonville vacation. Wait, that's not good news it all. So I would like to offer a special thanks to Aaron for infecting us all. You're the best.

DPP: Day 15

2010-12-17T06:41:00.000-08:00

I'm cheating but I need to catch up because I missed the past two days. There is no excuse other than me being a complete slacker in every department of my life. So this is Wednesday's DPP even though I took these photos today. I'm a turd, no?

The Declaration of Independence was sitting on my coffee table this morning because Aaron had to read something out of it to me yesterday. You can imagine how awesome that was.

Clark's early interest in this book makes me feel sorry for his future wife.

DPP: Day 14

2010-12-14T19:39:00.000-08:00

Tonight I left Clark in the hands of my awesome friend Amy and her 11.5 month old son Jackson while I spent the evening playing bunco with some of the gals in my neighborhood. I honestly didn't know what to expect from Clark being up way past his bedtime but I needed a little gal pal time so I risked it. Amy said she had Clark and Jackson in the tub together and when Jackson playfully splashed a little water in Clark's face, he freaked out and acted scared of Jackson and avoided him for the entire night. It's good to know I have a little pansy on my hands. Next on my motherly agenda is to toughen him up and splash water in his face until he can act like a man about it. That's a joke. Kind of. But seriously.

When I picked him up at about 8:15 I could tell he was completely exhausted and Amy said he had been fighting sleep like a champion for about 30 minutes. He fell asleep within .5 seconds of me putting him in the car and slept the whole way home. On the way home, I had to slow down and swerve to miss two cows because they were chilling in the middle of the road with zero intentions of moving. Only in Taylor, Mississippi do cow owners let their cows roam free. Anyway, when we got home I put him straight to bed and watched him flop around in his crib until he found a comfortable position. He fell asleep immediately and I was completely struck by how sweet and perfect he is.

It was at that moment that I had an out of body experience and couldn't stop myself from climbing into his crib, putting my arm around him and snuggling the crap out of him. He instinctively nestled in close to me and I could feel his breath on my face and I decided that was the happiest and sweetest moment in my entire life. I laid there with Clark in my arms for almost 30 minutes and then realized if I didn't exhibit some sort of self control I would spend the entire night in a baby crib and quite possibly do the same thing every night for the rest of my existence. So I ungracefully removed myself from the situation and barely woke him up in the process but that gave me one last chance to kiss his hand and tell him night night.

I know he wouldn't have let me do that if he hadn't been so completely exhausted from staying up so late, so really I owe those 30 minutes of what was the closest thing to heaven I have ever experienced to Amy. He might have been a complete turd at her house but I got the really good end of the deal at the end of the night. So thanks Amy!

You see the space to the left of Clark?

That's where I spent the best part of my evening.

DPP: Day 13

2010-12-14T06:29:00.000-08:00

I didn't take any pictures yesterday, so I'm posting one I took a couple of days ago of the aftermath of Hurricane Clark. This was the 12th time that day Clark cleaned out the bottom cabinets. I'm hoping Santa brings Clark some real toys for Christmas so my pots and pans can take a breather.

DPP: Day 12

2010-12-12T17:57:00.000-08:00

Please find something cuter than this. Not possible.

DPP: Day 11

2010-12-11T07:33:00.001-08:00

I realize this might look bad.

But don't judge the baby. He knows not what he does.

He just likes to stack things and make things roll.

It's not his fault.

DPP: Day 10

2010-12-11T07:10:00.000-08:00

Welcome back Arnie!

After what seemed like decades, I finally got my husband back! He went into hibernation sometime in late October to get ready for exams and write papers and it was an extremely rare moment when we got to spend stress free time together. It has been like this at the end of every semester since he started law school in August of 2008, but this one seemed particularly rough and I kind of missed him all the dadgum time. The good news is this could potentially be the last rough semester of Aaron's life, because next semester (repeat: last semester EVER), will supposedly be a cake walk compared to previous ones. And then he will graduate and we can have 12 more babies. Its going to be great.

To celebrate, we ate sushi and rented a movie. And when it was over, I did not say goodbye to Aaron because he did not have to go right back to the library to study. It was wonderful. I'm delighted to have the hubs back and start our last Christmas break ever together.

Congratulations for being awesome Aaron Randall Rice!

DPP: Day 9

2010-12-09T14:45:00.001-08:00

At two different points during this day, I have managed to slice two fingers in half (shown above), bruise the heck out of my ankle, and hit my funny bone so bad against my dresser that it sent me to the floor. I hate days like this.

DPP: Day 8

2010-12-09T14:40:00.000-08:00

This picture is deceiving. It appears as if Clark proactively brushes his teeth and doesn't mind the process, when the truth is he screams and freaks out as if I was trying to yank a tooth right out of his mouth. That is why I brush his teeth once a week. I've got to do better.

DPP: Day 7

2010-12-07T15:47:00.000-08:00

I'm staying strong with the December Photo Project, which surprises me more than anybody after that last marathon post, only for today I have another video.

There many days I dislike Jake. I definitely disliked him this evening when I came home and spotted a few turds in the hallway. The dog is five years old and let go of any potty training skills he learned as a young pup. He barks at every leaf that falls on the ground. He freaks the heck out if somebody walks by. He's gassy. He licks Jake in the mouth and that really is disgusting. He barks every single time we walk in the door. He makes it miserable to invite someone over because they will spend the first fifteen minutes of their visit being yapped at by a little white nuisance.

But Clark thinks he walks on water. Jake is Clark's best friend. So as much as it pains me to admit it, I kind of have to like him too but only because he makes Clark smile. And laugh, as you'll in this video.

Before you watch it, pay close attention to the complete disgustingness that is my house because its not embarrassing at all. Also, you might notice some continuity in Clark's sock situation.

Ok, I've said too much.