JD’s first move— He seems to be having a pretty good time.

 Today Alan and I kissed our children good-bye and set back out–alone this time–on our big cross-country road trip.

It’s really been fun so far.

 Over the last few days I have gotten to visit both sides of our families, swim in the backyard pool with my two oldest boys, celebrate JD’s first birthday, visit a Pioneer Museum in Alabama, and even revisit the University of Alabama campus, where Alan and I got our undergraduate degrees!

Whew!

Seriously, one of the ‘funnest’ (totally SHOULD be a word) things I have done this whole summer is swim in the wading pool with Joshua and Caleb. I highly recommend it. If you haven’t swam with your kids this year, you have just got to go do it, even if it’s only a wading pool!!

***Disclosure: When you click on Amazon ads and purchase through links on this page, I do earn advertising fees.***

Photo Highlights:

I love it when they look all sweet and brotherly like this.

This is why you don’t let your husband pick out your baby’s birthday cake.

Just for the record, if I had the whole ‘baby parenting’ thing to go back and do over again, this is the ONE big tradition I would IGNORE.

Giving a one-year-old nasty sugar-laden RED birthday cake and letting them just go for it….this idea could not have come from any mother ever. Horrible idea. If I were to have any more babies, they would learn the beauty of a nice birthday bag of gummy fruit snacks–delicious and clean.

Yep. He did all the messy-baby-lovers proud. Even after the bath that followed this immediately, I still found some stray red icing–in his ear. Terrible idea. Seriously.

*********

And the road trip resumes! We made it through Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, and Arkansas today.

We are now on the western side of the Mississippi River! More photos to come in the next post.

For today, I’m going to focus on the Pioneer Museum that we visited in Alabama.

Alan and I love history stuff. I have throughly enjoyed researching my ancestry and reading history books. 1796, a Thomas Jefferson biography, an Andrew Jackson biography, The Mayflower, Rose Kennedy’s autobiography, and Ronald Reagan’s autobiography are a few of my favorites.

Therefore, this side trip was perfect for us.

Do you see the tall loblolly pine tree behind the triangular sign? That is the ‘moon tree’, grown from seeds that traveled to the moon on Apollo 14.

Beautiful. Alabama is beautiful.

This place had a collection of around 20 carriages and buggies. Love!

I have an ancestor listed on this plaque!!  So cool!

 I’ve always loved American history, but I got into the genealogy thing on accident!

A few summers ago, the two oldest boys were spending a couple of weeks in Alabama with their grandparents. I was kid-free, so I took a couple of days to just explore D.C. on my own. It was heavenly.  While I was out, I happened upon the 1st Annual Genealogy Conference at the National Archives building. It was free, so I just went right in, attended a couple of classes, and brought home a whole bunch of information. Then I got to work!

 I rarely get to do any research now. Okay. Actually, I never do any research now, but I do miss it. One day!!

******

This was an especially exciting day because we also got to visit our old stomping ground: The University of Alabama. The thing is, I have a whole lot to share about that too, so it will just have to wait until tomorrow!

Visit this link for our UA pics and stories!!

Denny Chimes

The post Cross Country Road Trip of a Lifetime: First Stop: Alabama appeared first on Stories of Our Boys.

If you NEED a chuckle today, watch this video of Daniel:

Alan:

He has been hard at work getting everything wrapped up for the move. He has made sure we have a house lined up to move into when we get there. There is SO MUCH planning that goes into a cross country move. Meanwhile, he’s been handing over his current responsibilities at work, signing out of his current post, lining up the shipment of one of our vehicles, and of course, our newest talent: calendar coordination.

We now use Google + calendars so that we know each other’s schedules. With each kid we’ve added to the family, and as the boys get older and have more of their own activities, there is just so much schedule planning that has to happen–constantly! I highly recommend the Google Calendar to all families!

This morning our church presented Alan with a Bible, engraved with his name, to thank him for his service in teaching Sunday School the past year. They had me go up there with him, and our pastor gave us a good farewell–which suddenly made this whole moving thing seem so real.

Wow! We really are almost gone!!

Alan is having to prep himself for returning to the student life. He will be getting his masters degree in engineering, and that is going to require a whole lot of math.

All I can say is, glad it’s him and not me!!

Me:

I’ve been trying to prep for this move by purge, purge, purging!  How do we have so much stuff!!??  Even after the yard sale, we are drowning in stuff. Bleh. Who needs it? I’m getting rid of as much as possible!!

We also have to get the house all cleaned and fixed up nicely for our move-out inspection. It’s easiest to get that finished once we move out our massive amount of junk, so for now…..I did some gardening:

Oh, the weeds….

I planted this rhododendron bush 2 years ago, and it FINALLY has its first bloom. Yes!!

I forgot to get a good before picture of this plot. It was even worse…

…..and after.  Yeah, My legs are STILL sore.

Of course, I had some helpers:

Work, Dan, work. Eh….pajamas are fine.  We’re just going to get dirty anyway. 😉

That’s one happy little helper.

Look! No hands!  And thank you, Amy!  She is ALWAYS holding babies and helping us with Daniel. I’m sure she loves always having her picture on the internet, too. haaa– I bet Amy’s hoping the new tenants do NOT have a blog….

Adding the fourth baby was big for us this year. I had to cut a lot of things: gardening was one of those things. This was the first time I had worked in the dirt in an entire year.

What else have I been doing….a lot of socializing…..because you know me, that’s what I do. 😉 No, really, I just want to see everyone one last time! I’m going to miss my friends so much!!!

Then there’s the whole schooling thing to figure out. I’ve gotten a lot of mixed reviews of the school where we are going, and I just have no peace about it. I finally decided to just devote this issue to prayer. You can find plenty of good reasons for each different method of schooling. Forget about it. Two weeks ago, I told Alan to devote the week to praying about it, I did so too, and we’ll do what God leads us to do.

I did get the answers I was looking for, so at this point we are moving forward in that direction, but I’m not ready to blog about all of that yet, so we’ll talk more about our schooling plans later.

Oh! And I’ve been working on teaching Caleb how to ride a bike. It kind of makes me want to pull all of my hair out, but we’re making progress.

Daniel:

Ah, Daniel. Daniel has learned the power of the word ‘stupid.’ We’ve never had much trouble with name-calling from our first two boys, but Daniel has this keen sense for bad or taboo words. Say something nasty in front of him one or two times, and he locks in and repeats it. And repeats it. And repeats it.

“You stupid, Caweb.” You get the idea. He likes to get a reaction. We are working on that problem…best advice:  You definitely want to watch your mouth around Daniel. He’s the only 3 year old I know that uses the expressions, “What the heck!” and “Dang it.”

Redeeming qualities: He LOVES his baby brother, he is compliant in public, he’s cuddly and sweet most of the time, and he also loves to say, “I love you, Mommy.”

Of course, sometimes it goes more like this:

Me: “I love you, Daniel.”

Daniel: “No. Me love Daddy.”

Nice.

Daniel and his best bud

John David:

The gates are hung, and JD is off! He is officially a crawler, and it is just so adorable. It also makes him happier, easier to deal with, and he sleeps better at night.  All good things.

One day last week, I suddenly realized that JD is 11 months, not 10.  Huh– so he’s our latest crawler ever–I guess that probably means we don’t have to worry about him walking yet either.

So now the baby is crying and needs to be fed, so I am outta here!

The post “No! Me love Daddy!” appeared first on Stories of Our Boys.

crawling, crawling, crawling

Well, it finally happened. JD is crawling. And as promised, here are two photos of the event.

In other news, at this moment Alan just came downstairs with ideas for things I need to do to prepare for the move.  Ugh. ugh. ugh. Did I mention moving is not fun at all???

Also, why does it require so much ‘calling people’. I live in dread of having to call people. Bleh.

But here’s the good news: Date night tonight!!  Yep, that’s right.  I have like 6 different good babysitters to choose from now, so we are headed to the movies!!!  Whoo-hoo!!! We’re going to see “Mom’s Night Out.”  I’ll let you know what I think!

The post Date Night Tonight!!! appeared first on Stories of Our Boys.

Joshua burst my bubble the other day. After a whole winter of people telling me I look like a Disney Princess (Anna from Frozen), and walking around feeling pretty good about myself……la-te-da…..

Joshua says, “You don’t really look like Anna to me.  You gotta take us to go see How to Train Your Dragons 2!  Hiccup’s mom is who you really look like!  I mean, you might look a little like Anna, but really you look like Hiccup’s Mom!!  Can we go??  Will you take us??  Will you? Will you?”

Eh. I guess she’s not such a terrible person to be compared to ……child abandonment aside…. Still, I’d rather be compared to a Disney Princess.  Let’s go back to that.

Delusions are so much nicer than reality. : )  Let’s move on…

By the way, How to Train Your Dragon 2 comes to theaters in June.  Joshua is an EXPERT on when all movies and video games marketed towards little boys are released.  We don’t even have cable, but somehow he always knows these things.

Speaking of cable, we cut our cable a month ago, and we don’t even miss it at all!  Guess how much money it’s saving us…..NONE!  Disappointing, isn’t it? Our media services were all bundled up so well, that cutting cable would save us a whopping $10 a month, and since we’re moving in June, that makes it not worth the trouble of having to hunt down the cable store and return the box.  You know?  So we just unplugged it from the wall.

Actually, Alan plugs it in once a week and watches some Revolutionary War tv show he’s into.  Ha!  So I guess we just sort of don’t have cable…..

Guess what else happened last week that I was so excited about?  The boys did so well on their report cards that I took them to Chuck E Cheese to celebrate.  Caleb had his best report card ever, all good grades, and he is now on grade level for his reading.  WAhoo!!!  Go boys, go!  Yeah, Joshua wasn’t so keen on having his picture taken while eating.  In my defense, he moves too fast for me to take his picture when he’s not eating.

They had a great time. Daniel is a Chuck E Cheese Mastermind.  

You can’t make this stuff up:  Daniel walked around to all the machines, collecting the tickets that other kids had left behind.  Before kids realize the power of tickets, they often flitter from one machine to another, without stopping to collect their tickets.  Daniel is our #1 Easter egg finder and our #1 ticket earner.  The older boys earned about 15 each.  Dan earned and collected 50.  Haaaa!

He still isn’t quite crawling yet….Instead, he scoots backwards great distances, but isn’t he adorable?

He’ll figure it out soon. I keep forgetting to mention that he is down to only two breast feedings per day.  He now eats plenty of solid food and drinks whole milk instead.  He would have no part of formula, so regular ol’ milk is working just fine.

Busy, busy week ahead, as usual!  Oh yeah!  Our EFMP paperwork was approved, and we have ‘Request for Orders’ in hand.  One step at a time.  We almost have everything we need to book a moving truck!!  Hurray!!

What’s everyone else up to this week? Hope you are all having a good one.  At least it’s raining and not snowing! April showers bring May flowers!  ; )

Best quote I saw on the internet this week:  “When you have a bad day, a really bad day, try and treat the world better than it treated you.”  –Patrick Slump

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Lots of little things are going on here in the House of Many Little Men….

This is the thing I’m most excited about:  JD is getting ready to take off.  Each day he finds his way onto his hands and knees just a little bit more.

He is also SERIOUS about his “standing practice.”  He just loves to be on his feet.  He’s extremely unsteady when you walk him, and yet the boy will randomly just let go of your hands.  Gutsy, this one.

Do you think we’ll have to hang gates before we move?  Right now he moves at the speed of sleeping turtles, so we’re good, but we have around seven weeks left in this house, and a lot can happen in that amount of time!

DID I MENTION MOVING?????

This is hands down the most stressful thing going on with me right now.  Here’s the deal:  we are a military family.  That means we can’t even book movers (set a moving date) until we have official orders in hand.

Alan has to report to his new duty station on June 30.

We have no orders.  This is April 24!!!

We keep calling.  It turns out that the EFMP is what’s holding us up.  What’s an EFMP, you ask?  Exceptional Family Member Program:  a PCS nightmare.  (PCS = Permanent Change of Station= Moving) Pray for us!  We can’t move until the EFMP people decide this is a good place for Caleb to live and get treatment.  Caleb has epilepsy.  I will be doing a post on epilepsy soon:  yes, another one, because I’m always amazed at the misconceptions that people have of it.

So that’s that.  Moving stresses me out to talk about, so let’s move on…

My #2 stressor right now is that I’m the room mom for Caleb’s class, and Staff Appreciation Week is coming up.  I volunteered to make this:

only with less Elmer’s and more pencils.  Plus, we’re adding a couple of fun gift cards for the teacher.

Do you think I can do it?  Let’s go with yes.  After all, I did make this last year:

and by ‘this’, I’m referring to the diaper cake to the right of my friend Betsy!  I forgot to take a close-up picture of it!! How do you create a masterpiece like that and forget to take a picture?  ; )

I’ll keep ya’ll updated on the ‘supply cake’!

******

Funny things I’ve seen/heard lately:

–I was going over my bank records, and I noticed a transaction that read  “Church.  $23:  charitable giving”

(Our bank categorizes our purchases.)

Alan was sitting beside me, and I thought this was an odd amount, and at a different location than our church.  I asked Alan, “Did you give $23 to a church?”

“No.  What’s the address?  Hmmm.  Let me see it.  Oh!  Ha!  Church’s chicken!”

So there you have it, folks!  If you eat fried chicken, it may or may not help you on your tax return!

One more:

Daniel was sitting down the other day, making his feet talk to each other.  Apparently they were having an argument of some sort:

“Your turn,” said the left

“Noooo,” replied the right, and it kind of just went on along those lines.  But then doesn’t everyone’s feet talk to each other?

The post Charitable Chicken and Other Little Tales appeared first on Stories of Our Boys.

I’m back from my Alabama visit!  I caught the last flight from Atlanta to Baltimore last night.  It is a good thing too because  each flight after it was cancelled, due to the weather. And boy, do I have some tips to share about flying with an infant. Of course, I had to go and learn them all the hard way.

Best things about my trip:

• I got to visit with family.
• I got to hold a precious newborn.
• I spent time SITTING on a sofa.  : )
• The food!  Oh, the food!!!  We had Arby’s!!!  We had Swiss Cake Rolls, Fage Greek yogurt–my very favorite, but I’m usually too cheap to buy it, pizza, and oh!  Goldfingers chicken!!!  It was a party in my tummy.  : )
• We went through many of Granny’s things, mostly clothes, jewelry, and cards that she’d saved.  I brought home a few beautiful broaches that will remind me of Granny each time I wear them.

The visit part was awesome.  The flying part was where the work came in.

Have you ever flown with an infant?  It’s not really my favorite.  While waiting to board one flight, this nice, well-meaning lady came up and talked to me.  She said, “Just wait….” and I must’ve had a look on my face that let her know this wasn’t actually my first rodeo, because she stopped and said, “Is this your first?” Of course, you know I explained that I have four, but she went on to say how much easier it is to travel with just one, rather than two or more.

Well, yes, that’s true, BUT that does not negate that traveling with even just one infant is difficult–especially when you’re traveling ALONE with the infant.  Oy.  I have flown with four different babies at different times over the years–usually without Alan–but also a time or two with him.  It’s much easier when both parents are present.

Here are a few lessons I’ve picked up over the years on flying with infants:

#1. Ergo Vs. Strollers    

While I use my Ergo often, I’m not really the queen of baby carrier wearers.  I have trouble fastening them by myself.  I also have back issues, so I can’t wear them for very long at a time.

On my flight down south, I decided to only use the Ergo. I didn’t even take a stroller with me because I figured I can travel rather quickly that way. After all, I had a crazy short layover in Atlanta.

I DO NOT RECOMMEND THAT.

If you love wearing your Ergo, fine, but I highly recommend that you have a stroller with you. Have the stroller for when your back starts to hurt so badly that you become super jealous of the people in wheelchairs.  I spent a few minutes there at the end, fantasizing over riding in one of those wheelchairs, let me tell ya!

While in Alabama, I went to the store and picked out the most awesome little almost-umbrella stroller I have ever purchased.  HIGHLY RECOMMEND THIS:

I used this stroller on the trip home, and I didn’t bother with the Ergo.  It worked much, much better, and I won’t spend two days with an achy back as a result of it either.

#2.  Food

Food is the number one way to entertain little ones on an airplane.  JD is pretty messy with his food, so for him I used a bottle of apple juice.  My kids have to drink apple juice for their bathroom issues, so it’s a guilt-free tool for us.

JD still doesn’t really take a bottle, so he mostly gnawed on it, took sips here and there, and played with it.

Breastfeeding usually solves a lot of problems too.  Don’t be afraid to breastfeed your baby on the airplane.  People, in general, are very understanding, and if they aren’t, who cares?  Babies have to eat whether your seat mate is weird about it or not!

Which brings me to point #3:

#3. Breastfeeding on an Airplane….

Oh, the joys…I have this weird problem:  When I feel nervous or uptight, my milk STOPS.  It just won’t let down for the baby.  No milk = mad baby.

Have any of you other breastfeeding mommies had this no-let-down- when- nervous problem?

On my first flight, I was walking down the aisle, looking for my seat. All I could see in the area I were men.  “Noooooo,” I thought, “Oh, please, no, oh please, no, don’t let that be my seat next to the pretty man,” because it really looked like it was.  I did not want to have to breastfeed next to the handsome man.

I was lucky.  My seat was right in front of his, right beside a SUPER sweet girl, about my age.  PHEW!!!!  She was awesome.  We had such a good time talking, I really wish I’d caught her name.  She was a kindred spirit.

All went well with the breastfeeding.

Yes, I use a nursing cover.  I forgot mine, so I had to use a blanket, which is only a little more difficult.

On my return flight, I DID have to sit next to a man, about my age, and guess what happened?  I felt uncomfortable, as he was not a dad yet, so I knew he was probably uncomfortable, and my milk would not let down.  What is wrong with me???  Am I the only one with this problem???  Tell me I’m not the only one!!!  Ugh.

THANKFULLY, the lady I mentioned before, that I’d talked to at the airport, who’d said, “just wait until you have two kids”, appeared out of nowhere, and rescued me with a strand of Mardi Gras beads!  JD  was in Heaven with those beads.  Thank you, bead lady!!!!

God provides.

I simply fed JD later, after we landed at the airport, in a carefully selected seat near a window, across from a nice grandparent-ish couple.  Halfway through the feeding, this young man behind me–that liked to look around, but I’d forgotten all about him–suddenly said, “Oh, sorry!” looking at me….apparently he’d gotten a peek.

There was really nothing to say to that…..so we’ll move on.

#4. When the baby fights sleep, and the crying begins….

The very last flight was when JD started to lose it.  Don’t worry, I didn’t cry, but JD sure did.  Whatever you do at home to quiet a crying baby is what works on an airplane too.

Joshua was the type of baby that never cried once, the airplane just lulled him to sleep, and I thought flying with babies was so easy.

JD was more difficult, but he only got really upset on the very last flight.  We were sitting by the “We’re not talking here,” type of guy.  Boo fun.  I do not like sitting by non-talkers.  Holding the baby with no one to talk to is lonely.  The talking soothes JD, so without it, I was left with sleepy-grumpy-poopy JD.

We’ll talk about the poopy part in a minute…..

As it turns out, it’s perfectly acceptable to stand up, rock your baby back and forth, and even sing to him.  : )  Can you picture it?  Yes, I had to resort to all of these things, but at least he went to sleep.

#5. Diaper changing on an airplane:

Somehow, JD always chose to do his business ON the airplane.  Great.  I handled this 3 different ways, all which worked just fine:

A.  On a flight where the back row was empty, I snuck back there and used that row to change his diaper where no one could see us.

B.  On a flight where I boarded first, so the seats around me were all still empty, I hastily laid JD in my lap and changed him right there.  Thankfully, it was just a wet one.

C.  JD went full-on messy diaper during our very last flight, so I just marched him down to the airplane bathroom.  Do the plane bathrooms have changing tables?  Um, no.  I put the lid to the toilet down, sat there, and changed a seriously poopy diaper right there in my lap.

This would’ve all been a lot harder with a Daniel-sized toddler.

#5.  EARS

If your ears are bothering you, their ears are probably bothering them.  I tried to keep a pacifier in his mouth for this, as it never happened when he was hungry. In the past, I have done the whole feeding during the descent thing.  The descent always seems to be the worst for ears. JD seemed to handle it best lying down, rather than sitting up.

***************

 Our journey was quite the adventure.  I do have this knack for getting myself into scrapes.  On the way home, I ran into a major snag when I couldn’t find my car in the parking garage.  

Advice to myself:  Always write down your parking space number.  

I spent ten minutes wandering around the 1st floor of the garage in the freezing cold because all I remembered was that I parked on the 1st floor, to the left of the elevators……I didn’t realize there are 4 different sets of elevators….

 I ended up with a cold, hungry baby, getting back on the shuttle bus, not really sure where to look next.

Guess what happened next?  Remember my post about the kindness of strangers?  I ran into some more angels-in-disguise.  Their names were Bob and Jan.  They were a grandparent-ish couple, and they asked me if they could drive me around the garage until we found my car.  We found it right away because I remembered exactly how I’d turned into the 1st floor and driven to the third row.  Phew!  Thank you, Bob and Jan!!

Again, God provides.  Be silenced, all ye who credit coincidence; there are few accidents.

Okay, so my next big goal is to start making better decisions so that I’m not constantly requiring help from strangers!!!

The post Expert Tips for Flying with an Infant (that I learned the hard way) appeared first on Stories of Our Boys.

  Now you probably think I’m talking about my weight plateau…..ha!

The weird part:  he hasn’t gained ANY weight in 3 months!!!!

Stats:

  It’s really fun to watch the boys interacting with their baby brother.

  I think it’s FASCINATING how germs spread though.

  I am happy to report that after the agony that was last week, this week no one is sick……so far!  Phew!

  Thank you, Lord, and thank you, Dan!  I NEEDED that!!  I really did, after yesterday–

The post The Baby Weight Plateau appeared first on Stories of Our Boys.