Long Car Rides

This week we are starting a long week vacation. We will be traveling by car through three states before coming back home. Our long travels will take us through Kansas to Colorado to Nebraska back to Kansas and then home to Missouri. We will be spending more time in the car, I think than anywhere else. It will be quite an adventure traveling with two young boys. The trip will be broken up somewhat by Darius needing to eat every three hours. Hopefully they won't get too car seat sore.

Through our travels we get to stay in a hotel. I haven't stayed in one since, well, actually I can't remember how long it's been. At least before Samuel was born, how long before I don't know. I'm looking forward to that, although it will make providing for Samuel's meals much harder. Because of his milk allergy, we can't really trust any food at restaurants, so we will be providing our own for him. One of my friends who works for a screen printing place is printing up a shirt for him to wear, to keep others from feeding him. It says: Milk Allergy, Please Don't Feed Me. We will be around a lot of relatives whom we haven't seen in years and don't know about his milk allergy. Hopefully this will help.

The exciting part of the trip is celebrating my grandparents' 60th wedding anniversary. I'm at a loss for words about being together for 60 years, especially today when marriages don't last very long at all. My prayer is that Josh's and my marriage will last that long or longer.

Well, this will be the last post for at least a week or longer. We are leaving in two days and will get back around the middle of next week sometime. I'll definitely blog about our adventure.

Monkey

We now have a monkey in our house, by the name of Samuel. He figured out how to climb into his high chair Saturday night. He had tried while I was fixing supper and slipped off twice, bumping his lip. Later on, Josh and I were conversing in the living room and he mentioned the word "Jews". Samuel thought he said "juice", so he went running into the kitchen repeating it. We got a good laugh out of that. Anyway, he was standing by his high chair and by the time I had glanced away to say something to Josh and looked back, he was in his high chair. He had climbed up there all by himself. We have seen him do it several times since then. He's also figured out that if he pushes our dining room chairs against wall, he can climb up into them (they have wheels on the bottom). We will have to be very watchful with him now, so he doesn't try to climb on the book shelf or anything else disastrous.

Two Sides of Mothering

There are two sides to mothering. The first side is the glamorous side. This side includes the hugs, the smiles and all that is enjoyable about it. The second side is the unglamorous side. This side includes the sleepless nights, explosive diapers, cleaning up after sick kids, and the crying that doesn't seem to end after numerous rounds of trying everything possible. It's amazing how both sides coexist.

This week has been slowly increasing on the unglamorous side. Each morning this week, I've awaken to Samuel crying, "Da-da, Da-da" in a voice that tells me that something is wrong. (He knows how to say momma, but chooses to call me da-da instead.) When I've gone in to get him, I could tell that he was sick sometime during the night. Each day it has gotten worse with the climax being today. Samuel has pretty much gotten a bath almost every morning this week, since that was the easiest way to clean him up. He loves baths and could take one several times a day, but was very sore and didn't enjoy it this morning. I'm very thankful that we have our own washing machine and dryer, because it has been used every day this week. I'm really hoping that whatever bug he has will clear his system quickly. I really don't enjoy waking up to that each morning (who would). It doesn't really start the day off right. I have to really keep in mind that he has no control over it and is not doing it on purpose. (Especially when I'm so tired and foggy from just waking up.) This does result in extra snuggling in the morning, since he (and I) need it. Even though this is the side of mothering that is less than desired, it still is a part of it and makes me appreciate the glamorous side.

MySpace

I now have a MySpace page. When my sister was down, she showed me hers and let me use it to search for some of my friends. Well, I got hooked. Yesterday I started setting up my own page. It will probably take awhile since I will be figuring out what to post on it. I am excited to hear from friends that I haven't talked to for awhile since high school or college. Hopefully I can keep up with it .

Busy Time

A lot has been going on in the past week. Normal life stuff plus my sis and her family came to visit. It was so fun to see Micah and Rachel again. I enjoyed watching all of the kids interact together. Although, Samuel had asthma issues the whole time and only in the past day or so was feeling better. It seems that any time we go some where or have people come to us, his asthma acts up. Maybe he has an aversion to family or wants to make sure he isn't forgotten. We are going on a big vacation at the end of the month and are worried about how he is going to do. But we will be prepared with better asthma meds so hopefully that will curb the big problems.

Other than that, life is going on as normal. The boys are growing like weeds and learning new things all of the time.