Crazy, Beautiful

So... April, huh?

Well, the biggest occurance of that lovely month (in my opinion) was Truman's first birthday. His cousin Bryar was born just 9 days after Truman, so my brother and I decided to combine the two birthdays into one large party. It was a really sweet day, weather was gorgeous, babies were cute as all hell, a lot of family and friends turned out. My mom made an extremely girled-out butterfly cake for Bryar, which was wicked cute, and I made a rad little turtle cake for Truman. Two turtle cakes actually, a large one for the family on behalf of the boy, and a little one rollin' along in a tiny Radio Flyer wagon for the man-of-the-hour himself. They loved it of course. Truman dug right in two-fisting that sucker and stuffing his face. Bryar went about it with two delicate little fingers, trying to keep her finger nails and clothing as clean as possible. Like I said, wicked cute.

Then of course, April brought the final of 3 temporary custody hearings in my attempt to acquire full residential and legal custody of my two little boys. (I have had full custody of them from the moment they were each born, I've been just been trying to get things in legal documentation!) So, the hearing sucked. The judge we were assigned to refused to hear the case whatsoever. She read her case notes from the previous Judge and decided to force my boys and I to move back to Oregon within ten days of the hearing, so that the boys would be closer to a father who refused to see them, call them, contact them or support them in any way for the previous 12 months. We were literally in and out of that court room within 7 minutes. Not a word was allowed to be spoken on behalf of either party. Just a complete stranger's snap decision that heftily altered the futures of two innocent little boys. Righteous, gotta love this legal system.

Elliot flew down from Oregon a few days later to stay one night with us and help me drive back to Portland. We loaded up a Uhaul trailer with the necessities of our possessions, kept the boys awake all day to ensure a solid ten hours of sleep that night in the car, and had the family over for one last dinner and goodbye hoorah. We were loaded up and waving to our family around 7 p.m., and arrived in Portland around 9 a.m. the next day. Elliot did every mile of driving himself. At one point in Idaho, early in the wee hours of the morning, Truman woke up with a mild fever and we were stumped in our search for infants tylenol by closed grocers statewide. We found a safeway with inner lights still ablaze and pulled in to the parking lot. We were intercepted halfway to the doors by a sweet old gentleman who informed us that the store was in fact closed but being remodeled, which explained the lights. When we asked him for a recommendation on where to find the tylenol, he asked us to please wait for a moment, and returned minutes later with a bottle of infant's tylenol which he had purchased from inside the closed grocery store, and happily refused any sort of compensation. I wish I could remember his name but I will never forget his face, or his sweet smile of genuine care for an ailing baby. It was such an awesome gesture. Truman had a comfortable, fever-free sleep for the remainder of the trip, thanks to that sweet man.

As I said before, crazy move... beautiful drive!