To Procreate, or Not To Procreate?

It's so hard to decide to have another baby, or not!  Since Macen has been born it has brought up the conversation between me and John, naturally, and we are both indecisive about it.  I honestly can't imagine being pregnant again...EVER!  There is so much to consider...

First, we have to have a bigger house, and to have that, we need to have jobs that will support our new family and the bills.  By the time that happens, Collin will be three or four, and after Collin can talk and poop in the toilet, I'm not sure I will want to go back to getting up every two hours every night and not knowing why the baby is crying.  John and I also have a lot of things we want to do as a couple, and another baby will make those things even MORE difficult.  Would Collin benefit from a sibling?  I just don't know...

It is hard to commit to following through with the decision even though I know once the baby got here, we wouldn't regret it.  Neither of us really want to stop working to stay at home with our children because we like what we get out of working.  I wish there was a computer service where you could put in your life choices, and it would calculate the correct choice for you.  Blah! 

Collin is so cute, it WOULD be a crime to leave him an only child...I just don't know...I guess we will see what God has in store for us since he is the computer system that maps out our direction!  We just have to trust in him!! 

So friends...what do you think?  Baby, or no baby? 

And Off He Goes To Save The World!

Deployments are many things.  They are scary because you worry about your loved ones safety.  They are sad because you miss that person while they are gone and you think about them every day.  They are stressful because there is so much left to chance.  You go about your life as best you can even though you are missing such a big part of it.  You do your best to focus on positive emotions and thoughts.  Even though I'm sad and I miss my sweet husband, I am so proud.  I am so proud that my husband is part of the three percent of Americans that serve in our military! 

I do pretty well going on with our day to day routine.  Believe it or not, the hardest days are when I do get to talk to him, or if I miss a chance to talk to him in the middle of the night and then I can't go back to sleep.  Any unexpected knock at the door makes me stop whatever I'm doing to take a deep breath and brace myself.  The last thing I want to see when I open my door are two uniformed officers standing there.  I can't even think about that.  Every news story coming out of Afghanistan is hard to read becuase you know that some where there is a family mourning the loss of a loved one.  I get angry at our governments indecision about THIS war when I'm pretty sure if a close loved one of theirs was deployed they would be more willing to reach an agreement on what direction to take.  Collin is missing his daddy.  Right around the time that John would normally get home Collin starts crying and is inconsolable.  Defenitally behavior that I am not used to.  Today when he started getting upset I let him watch one of the videos John recorded for him, and that seemed to help...until it was over.  It will take some time to adjust to, and I'm sure by the time we get adjusted it will almost be time for John to come home.  But that's ok with me.  We will be ready with our arms open wide. 

I have no idea what things my husband will see and experience, but I know I will be here to support him no matter what because he is my one true love.  He just has to get home, and we can handle the rest.  We have such big plans and so much to look forward to and I'm excited for him to come home so we can get started! 

John is my best friend, my sweetheart, my husband, my hero.  There is no possible replacement for him in our lives.  We will see him very soon, but for now we live the day to day!

 



To Fill You In

I haven't posted in a while because I have been busy with all the happenings in the Dozier's lives.  A lot has happened since my last post, so here is a quick recap. 

March brought my beloved brother in law home from his deployment to Afghanistan.  We had a great time welcoming him home and watching the excitement on his face when he saw his very pregnant wife's belly for the first time.  Homecomings are so emotional and exciting! 

April 1st brought our newest Dozier boy into the world!  Macen Leland Dozier is an April Fools baby!!  He came just in time so his daddy would have some nice time off to spend with them since he has been gone for so long.  It was great to welcome this sweet little man in to our lives.  It's amazing how quickly they change and grow.  He weighed 5lbs 13oz and was 19 inches long on this birth day, and is now almost two pounds heavier, and growing more and more every day.  He has the cutest little sneeze, and gets hiccups about once a day!  Megan and Mark are great parents and are handling this new journey very well.  Collin, on the other hand, isn't so excited!  It will take him more time to get used to not being the baby anymore.  One day they will be best buds and we won't even be able to tell that he used to sneak up to Macen and smack him when we weren't looking! 

Now we are preparing for another deployment.  John leaves for Afghanistan this week.  I wish he wasn't leaving during exam time, but there is little I can do about that.  I am ready to get this last deployment over with because after this he has a year left and then he is getting out of the Marine Corps.  I am looking forward to never telling him goodbye again!  I am not looking forward to the next seven months.  Collin and I will miss John tremendously.  I will be keeping myself busy by any means necessary. School, house projects, hanging out with my little man, traveling to spend time with family.  Whatever has to be done to occupy my mind.  Please pray for his safety and peace of mind during this deployment.  He will need it! 

So that is that past couple of months in a nut shell.  I will keep everyone posted on the Dozier happenings as much as possible.  Talk to you soon:)

The Thing About Couponing

I am all for saving a buck on my grocery bill, but "extreme couponing" just doesn't seem logical to me.  Do these people build a special pantry just to store all the "2 for 1" deals, and "buy these and get those"!  I can only stock so many year's supply of vitamin D, peanuts, coffee filters, bright pink lipstick, and...adult diapers?  I just don't have the room to hold on to those for 50 plus years!  There is a new show coming on TLC called "Extreme Couponing", and in the commercial it shows a lady that bought $600 in groceries and only paid $6.45 for them!  WHAT?  How is this even possible?  Where do people put this stuff? 

I am not cut out for full time couponing, but I do get excited when I save a few dollars on the items that I actually need!  Even if I save ten dollars a trip, that's forty dollars a month.  It's better than nothing and I don't have to build a storage tank to keep all my adult diapers in! 

A Little Treat!

Yesterday I treated myself to a pedicure!  It's one of life's little pleasures that I enjoy every once in a while!  It's so nice to sit in a chair that gives you a massage, while your feet soak in a bath of warm water, and just relax.  My favorite part is the foot massage, of course!  After that I could care less if they painted my toes or not, but they do! 

I chose a pretty Spring pink today and got a little flower design on my big toe!  This hour is the best way to end the week!  After a little time drying under the UV lights, you are ready to step outside with your pretty toes.  I always feel a little better about wearing my sandals when my toes look nice. :)

I hope all my girl friends have had a pedicure at least once in their life.  If you haven't, you must!  It will be love at first visit!!

Now I'm ready for Spring!

My Diet is Almost Done!

I've been on a 500 calorie diet for 18 days and have lost 20 pounds!  Go me!!  I know it's not the healthiest diet, and I'm not going to do it for much longer.  Only about 13 more days to go, and hopefully another 13 pounds, at least! 

It's so hard to stick to.  I try to get excited about my plate filled with 3 ounces of chicken, 3 ounces of either cucumber, celery, or asparagus, and half a grapefruit or a medium sized apple with a side of two Melba Toast rounds!  Doesn't that sound yummy?  No?  That's because it's not.  It is ok for a couple of days, but after that, you don't even want to eat at all because you're just not excited about what you get to eat.  I could try some different recipes since there is an entire book full of them for this diet, but that would require more work for a meal that still won't be that exciting! 

I'm going strong.  Still kicking myself in the butt for gaining all this weight in the first place, but now I know.  I have tried to add workouts to this diet, but I end up feeling sick and light headed at the end of them.  That should be easier during the maintenance faze of the diet. 

So here's to dieting!  It's not fun, but it is rewarding!!

Single Parenting

First I would like to salute all the full time single parents reading this!  I am a part-time single parent when my husband is gone training or deployed, and it is exhausting!  Collin likes me to be involved in everything!  If he is eating, he wants me to eat some too!  If he is playing, he will bring it to wherever I am so I can play with him!  On the rare occasion that he is watching tv, he has to be IN my lap!  If I get up to make him dinner, he is crying at my leg saying, "ME, ME, ME"!  As soon as his feet hit the floor he is going 100mph!  When I hear him in the morning I have to prepare myself for the day!  All of his daycare teachers say, "You have your hands full"! 

When you have a baby that needs a lot of attention like Collin, you feel like you have to get everything done while they are either at daycare or sleeping.  You do anything to avoid the constant crying!  I drop him off at daycare, go to class, home to get homework done, try to throw down some groceries, and clean up whatever I need to before I pick up my man because I know once he is home, there is no time for anything other than him!  Then there are the days when you have to grocery shop, or take the car in, or go to the doctor, all of which take up valuable time.  Then you come home with your crazy kid, and are welcomed by dog puke all over the floor!  Clean that up, then it is PLAY TIME!!  "OUTSIDE! ME! BALL! SUDA! ME ME ME!".  Then comes dinner time...where Collin usually doesn't like what I cook so he ends up eating bread or nutrigrain bars for dinner!  The only guarantee I have is macaroni and cheese!  Then it's clean up, bath time, book time, "TEETH"!  Luckily, Collin is a great sleeper!  Always has been!  So after he goes to sleep I get to clean up the Leggos all over the floor because he couldn't just play with ONE, he had to pour them all out, and then decide he's done with the Leggos, and move on to his cars!  Clean up toys, dinner, take the dog out, feed the dog...then, and ONLY THEN, do you get to sit down.  It is a rough twelve hour day, every day when you are a single parent.  I LOVE food, but I often forget to eat because there are other things that I feel are more important. 

I am very lucky to have family and friends near by that help me out!  Aunt Megan, or Meme as Collin calls her, is a great help.  It's just nice to have someone else to run after him every once in a while, and to make sure he stays out of the knife drawer!  Hannah and Jake watch Collin for mommy's girl nights, and Collin loves them!  He is missing his daddy a lot right now so any guy willing to play with him makes him happy!

I am freaking out a little about John's deployment coming up.  Seven months...SEVEN...by myself...single parent!  John has been gone for 4 weeks and I'm already exhausted and can't wait for him to come home.  I miss having John to entertain Collin while I get other things done around the house.  The thing I miss the most is John getting up on Saturday mornings with Collin and letting me sleep in!  Oh...I miss that!  And I miss John!  He's such a great daddy and partner.  It's hard to pick up his slack! 

Darius Rucker - This

A Dozier history from 2007 to present

Our journey began April 7th, 2007 at Living Springs Lutheran Church in Columbia, South Carolina.  It was a beautiful wedding with only our closest family present.  

We quickly moved to Jacksonville, NC where John was stationed in the Marine Corps and started our lives.  This is the picture John sent me of the house he found for us!  I couldn't help but laugh at the overgrown yard and the shutter propped up against the house.  Thanks to his and his parents hard work, it was all fixed up by the time I moved up from Florida.  We started out with absolutely nothing.  John found a washer, dryer, and futon for $75 and we had a 12 inch television with a tape player that I borrowed from my mom and dad.  Our futon was a couch by day, and a bed by night, but was a little lopsided.  John and I would play Rock, Paper, Scissors every night to see who had to sleep on the sloped side of the futon, which meant the other person was practically sleeping on top of you all night long!  Luckily, Johns Aunt and Uncle were remodeling their home, and were very generous in giving us their old furniture.  ALL of it.  We felt so blessed when that Uhaul pulled up!  John wasn't home very often due to his training schedule in the Marine Corps, so I filled my time by going to the beach and searching for a job. 



 We had only been married for five months before John deployed to Iraq.  I had moved in with a friend who was staying in Jacksonville so I wouldn't be alone during his deployment.  The first two months were very difficult because I didn't get a phone call, letter, or email from John.  They didn't even have showers, so I guess a phone was out of the realm of possibility.  I remember the first phone call I got from John.  He sounded exhausted, and said, "Babe, I'm so nasty, I don't even want to touch myself"!  (not like that;)  I was so furious at the conditions while they were deployed.  No showers for two months, no contact with family, and a mild Cholera breakout among the battalion.  But after that it leveled out.  I heard from him almost every day and conditions had greatly improved.  There was one particular conversation that will stand out in my mind because I heard gun fire in the background, and John said, "Oh F***", and the phone was disconnected!  I thought I was going to die right then and there.  No phone call the next day...(River City) had my stomach in knots.  Luckily the next morning he was able to call, and I had never been happier to hear his voice! 

John's homecoming was April 16th 2008.  I was so nervous!  We waited for hours for the buses to show up, and once they did someone lost a compass so we had to wait another hour.  It was unbearable!  But finally, they were released into our arms! 

We were enjoying our married life.  Just the two of us. Oh and our dog Suda!  We bought our first house, a townhouse, and got pregnant on New Years Day 2009!  John reenlisted in the Marine Corps, and had three years non-deployable so it was the ideal time for us to add to our family.  It was just me John and Suda, and occasionally John's daughter, Kylieann, but our world would never be the same after Collin was born!

It is my personal belief that ten months is way too long to be pregnant!  Although my pregnancy was pretty normal as far as sickness goes, I was ENORMOUS!!  We would go out and people would ask me if I was having one or two babies!  I wish!  It seemed like such a waste of space!  When I saw family, they would look at me and say, "oh hunny!  I'm sorry!".  I had a lot of fluid!  I mean A LOT!  A Tsunami of amniotic fluid!  My poor bestie/sister in law got leaked on!  I was in labor for 36 hours and ended up needing a C-section.  Horrible experience to say the least!  Traumatizing!  But, as soon as they put Collin in my arms, my eyes welled with tears of joy!  It was all worth it! 

Now our lives are so filled with love!  Love for each other and love for our baby boy!  Collin was born October 4th, 2009 at 11:45 pm.  We are so lucky to have a perfectly healthy baby who is a good eater and sleeper!  He is almost 18 months old and I am in awe of how much he has grown and how amazing this love feels!  I can never get enough of him!  He keeps us busy!  If he's not sleeping, he's on the run!  He's such a little talker and so curious!  He loves music!  Any time a song comes on tv or the radio he does this little dance with his shoulders and claps his hands!  It's the cutest thing I've ever seen.  Every day is an adventure and a new lesson learned.  For me and for him!  Collin and daddy have such a cute relationship.  When John gets home from work Collin lights up and runs right to him.  John is such a great daddy and he honestly LOVES just spending time with his son.  He can't wait to take him fishing, and coach his t-ball team!  I can't wait to see that!! 

We are getting ready for another deployment, this time to Afghanistan.  None of us are looking forward to it, but we are looking forward to it being our LAST ONE!!  We are very proud of the time John has had in the Marine Corps, but it's not as family friendly as we would like.  We are looking forward to starting a new "civilian" chapter of our lives!  Until then, John will be relying on his skills as a Marine, and a damn good one at that!  I will be relying on my great family and friends!  Thank goodness for my sister in law, my Mego, my Wifey!  She keeps me sain!  I LOVE all of my Dozier family!  I'm so lucky to have married in to such a great, close family! 

March and April are going to be very emotional months for everyone!  March brings home our Dozier heroes!  John returns home from a five week training in California, and Mark returns home from a seven month deployment to Afghanistan!  April brings baby Macen into the world!  I have ten bucks on April 3rd!!  I can't wait to meet my nephew!  April 7th is our FOUR YEAR ANNIVERSARY!!  I'm so proud!  I can't believe it's been four years already!!  John leaves for Afghanistan with 2nd LAR at the end of April.  I am dreading it with every cell in my body, but I am encouraged that this will be it.  This is the last time we will ever be apart from eachother due to a combat deployment!  I am so ready for THAT day!  To breath easy knowing I don't have to say good-bye to him ever again! 

I will use this blog to keep everyone posted on everything going on with us.  Check in to the Daily Dozier for updates!!