This is My Forties

I'm already sick of Josh being gone. I thought I was done with this "going it alone" shit. I guess I should have known better. Things don't really change all that much when he's not here. Just a few little things... like not gettin' any! (hahaha sorry). Noah put his flight suit on yesterday and said "I'm going to school to find Daddy. He's lost. He's all alone. I go find him". Then he hopped on his trike and rode around the yard, came back and told me "I'm so so sad, really really sad" I asked him why and he replied "can't find him. I lost Daddy". It sucks. Every night when I tuck him in he tells me "Daddy coming home soon! He's at school" and I say "yep" but really he's not. We've got a long way to go.

We went to the Swamp again yesterday, but this time we brought Heather and Caleb with us. We had a great time! I still haven't been on all the trails there. We went on a new trail through the woods yesterday that ran alongside a creek and stopped at a big fenced-in pond. We saw all kinds of fun little animals and whatnot. Heather and I both had our babies strapped into their snuglis. It was definitely a good workout! We stopped to have some snacks and rehydrate for a bit. I was eating an apple and let Tristan try sucking on it and he wouldn't let me have it back. Anytime I would try to take another bite he had himself a little fit. I bet it made his poor teeth feel better. I kept a really good eye on him because I didn't want him to somehow manage to bite a chunk off of it, but he never even came close. He eventually dropped it into the nasty creek water. Surprisingly he didn't freak out. I guess he was done. I got a pretty good shot of his new tooth this ...

I uploaded a few new videos to the scrapbook site. They upload a whole lot faster and you can edit the length so I prefer to use that site. You sacrifice some of the quality, but I'm lazy so it's worth it to me ;) Tristan Getting Into Trouble Noah as the Sleeping Bag Monster Noah and Josh Coloring Easter Eggs Josh left yesterday morning. I spent the night scrapbooking, watching what I want on TV, and not having to deal with getting elbowed or snoring. I still miss him, but I like to think of positives ;) haha. Today we're heading out to the Phinizy Swamp again with Heather and Caleb. They've never been so it should be fun. Heather is like me and loves being outside. One of these days we're going to let the men watch the babies and go hiking in the woods. MMmMmmMmmmm woods... just a backpack, a water bottle, some granola bars, a utility knife, and a camera. OK maybe my binoculars and bird books too. I miss hiking on the trails at Nelson's Ledges and Mi...

We had a fun family weekend. Josh and I are both exhausted from dealing with a sugared-up 3yr old, but we're glad he had fun. You gotta let 'em go crazy once in awhile! OK... so Friday Noah and I made chocolate chip cookies. I was pretty sure it wouldn't actually work, considering the nature of the choc chip cookie, but we cut them into Eastery shapes. Flowers, butterflies, bunnies, and eggs... oh my. They looked pretty cute before they went in. Post cooking however, they looked like a huge delicious cookie blob. I think next year we'll get a pan that's shaped like a bunny or an egg or something and just do one huge cookie and decorate it after baking. Saturday we colored our Easter eggs. This was the first time for Noah and BOY was he excited. Surprisingly enough his eggs didn't end up a nasty brown color after all the dipping and re-dipping he did. Coloring eggs was a yearly thing for us... we're talking HUGE, people. We each got an entire doze...

I filled Noah's Easter basket tonight. As I was cleaning everything up I glanced over at his coloring book and saw this. Note what the heading says. I didn't read this to him and we've never done a page like this before. This could be a coincidence, surely... but as soon as I saw it I though "holy crap did he read what it said?!". Probably not, but I'd like to think that he did :) I plan to ask him tomorrow if he knows what the words are. Josh's soccer game was canceled on account of rain so we hung out and played like a family. It was glorious. I cleaned Noah's room today so we had plenty of space to bond. Josh built Noah a playhouse out of the big blocks and Noah decided it was a cat house. He was pretending to be a cat until we went to the store. He never broke character, never talked, never walked. He's been shocking me quite a bit lately. Earlier today he was beating the crap out of his Spiderman punching balloon and he suddenly st...

This was after our day at the Lake. Tristan is so stinkin' cute and smiley after a bath. Josh was kind enough to bring him downstairs and share the wealth :) My proud drooly baby is a confident sitter and crawler... sorta. He's getting there hahaha :) Noah's been coloring all week. As you can see, he stays in the lines now! Tristan was helping by drooling all over Noah's markers. Noah built a castle all by himself and insisted I take a picture of his work of art. I was impressed with the design. He's so very talented. Noah broke into the pantry and dumped out all the plastic bags and was diving into them like they were a pile of leaves. I took a video, but it's 3 minutes long and I am too lazy for it to upload. I will probably shorten it and put it onto the scrapbook site eventually. You can edit on that site. Since Noah rides his big boy bike I get to go on power walks every day with the boys. Noah rides fast enough that my legs actually hurt from tr...

I took this video on the 12th. He was able to sit up all of a sudden. Today he was up for at least 10 minutes or so. AND the crazy child was standing up while holding onto Noah's little table.

Apparently there are 12 lakes on base here that are open to the military. They have camping and boating and fishing. Josh showed me a few of them over the weekend. Now Noah, Tristan, and I have a whole lot more to explore :) I love anything outdoors, but especially wooded areas. The entire base smells like pine trees... except at night when we're down-wind of the paper factory, then it smells more like a public restroom at a bad Mexican restaurant. I am really loving this post so far.

Tristan was officially 6 months old yesterday. He can sit up for about a minute now without any outside help and he's getting better every day. He's still working on the crawling. He's eating baby food and we're working on getting him to actually like sippy cups and juice or water. It's a process. He's really great with his hands already and is such a strong baby. According to babycenter Tristan is advanced! He's already developed stranger anxiety, which is something that isn't supposed to happen until around 7 or 8 months. I don't know what that means, really... I mean... what part of the brain develops fear of strangers and is it good that it has developed early? Child's Age Mastered Skills (most kids can do) Emerging Skills (half of kids can do) Advanced Skills (a few kids can do) 6 months • Turns toward sounds and voices • Imitates sounds • Rolls over in both directions • Is ready for solid foods • Sits without support • Mouths...

I've compiled a list of little things that annoy me in any given day. In no particular order. The suction in the trash can that holds onto the bag for what seems like hours. The dust left in a bag of cereal from all the smashed corpses of the nuggets that didn't make it (especially shredded wheat grrr). When you go to throw something away and it hits the lid and falls out of the can instead of making it into the bag. Going to make cookies or some other deliciousness only to find out that although you remembered to preheat the oven, you forgot to buy eggs or butter. Backing the car into the garage to make unloading groceries easier only to find that you didn't go in far enough and now can't get the baby out of the back seat. Getting the bills ready to ship out, but forgetting to mail them... again. Doing dishes yet again. Going grocery shopping yet again. Laundry... again. Trying to figure out what's clean and what's dirty in the hubby's pile of cl...

The weather looks like it's going to stay nice the rest of the week so I think we're going to explore the Augusta Canal. Today we took a little tour of the Enterprise Mill. It was so odd walking in here because there are businesses all over the bottom floor. Law firms, sprint, Boy Scouts of America, and others are nestled in the old mill among the machinery and chipping paint. The 2nd and 3rd floor is home to apartments! Noah was sure to turn every knob, flip every switch, and pull every lever on the old machinery in the hallways. It was a pretty cool place. I like how they incorporated the modern, but still kept the integrity and history of the Mill. Outside there was a little walking path along the Savannah River and access to the boat tour (which I think we would have taken if anyone had been there). You could see the Granite Company and the Butt Bridge (yes it is actually called the Butt Bridge) from the path so I snapped a few shots. There weren't many places...

After the swamp I tried to get Tristan to take a decent nap, but he had enough sleep in the car I guess. I packed a few snacks and we all left for the soccer game. Josh is the coach, by the way. His team won 3 to 1. Josh put 2 of those goals in :) The game took a little longer than usual because the other team's goalie accidentally took a knee to the forehead. It ended up knocking him out for about 5 minutes and he was taken away in an ambulance. I hope he's ok. At least he was conscious again. I'm sure he'll be fine. Noah kept himself entertained with an orange soccer ball. He was really good the entire time. He didn't cause any trouble at all. He found an extra pair of Daddy's shin guards and HAD to put them on. He had them on his thighs, his calves, the backs of his thighs, and finally his shins. The went up past his knees, but he wanted to be like Daddy! Tristan got pretty grumpy towards the end. He was so tired after today that I was impresse...

Well today was a nice day and I was feeling pretty energetic so I took the boys back out to the Phinizy Swamp. Noah needed the exercise... ok ok mostly I did. After the storms we had this week it was a little muddy on some of the trails. I told Noah to stay near the edge by the grass and he took that as his personal invitation to walk through the grass, of course. Tristan just went with the flow, as usual. He just was quiet most of the time, taking it all in. We ended up turning around to take the high road, which resulted in a pretty great time. We were high and dry most of our walk. There were a few puddles here and there, but mostly we stuck to the paved trails. Noah got a kick out of all the dried footprints and the cracks in the mud. He kept looking down and telling me all about the tracks in the mud. He also couldn't help but break them apart. We walked along a new part of the swamp we hadn't seen . It was more "swampy" than the last time we went. I...