Been thinking about our troops...

Which naturally leads to thinking about Cory, pretty much a daily event. He'll be home soon, but darn it, not soon enough. I know that nobody misses him as much as Sonja & the kids, but man... I miss him, too. Hoping he remains out of harms way for the rest of his tour and that he continues to help the Afghan people. An email he had sent described so much good - so many changes - and hopefully, despite a war that no one wanted in the first place, he and the other men & women overseas will have helped a nation rebuild itself. If nothing else, all that we can do back here at home is support them - both while overseas and when they get home.

Not a normal post from me, but I've been thinking about him so much lately, that I felt compelled to share.

I've included a picture of him with one of the local kids, in case some of you have not seen it.

Belly laughs - the best ones!!

So Logan is content, playing in his exersaucer - or should I say beating up his exersaucer? Boy energy is quite the word for him these days!! Ava decides that it's time to amuse her baby brother. She starts by hopping in front of him around the living room, chanting, "Hop hop hop! Hop hop hop!". Logan finds this quite humerous and cracks up. This gets my attention, so I watch a little bit and then, of course, grab the camera. After a bit more hopping, she channeled Emeril and kicked it up a notch. Hilarity ensues.

Oh what a beautiful morning...

Not quite. Not today. Today was more a "hurryeatyourbreakfastget
dressedbrushyourhairputonyourshoesandgrabyourbackbackhurry
hurryhurry!!!!!" morning.

Yeah.

So, here's how that "hurryeatyourbreakfastgetdressedbrushyour
hairputonyourshoesandgrabyourbackbackhurryhurryhurry!!!!!" got to be our morning...

In the wee hours between Saturday night and Sunday morning, 3am to be precise, Logan woke up and I headed downstairs for a bottle. And when I get downstairs, the kitchen clock reads 4am. "Huh?" And then my sleepy brain registers that it must be daylight savings time (our bedroom clocks auto-adjust for DST) and I calmly go back upstairs, feed him his bottle, and go back to bed.

Sunday, we had nothing going on and didn't watch much tv. What we did watch was more flipping to see what was on, not any particular show we like to watch. And unlike my normal Sunday evening, I didn't watch Desperate Housewives.

Fast forward to this morning. I'm calmly about to hand Michaela her breakfast when my sister calls at 7:20am. She always calls at 8:20am on her way to work. I answer the phone and ask her if she forgot to turn her clocks back and she gets confused and then says to me, "It's NEXT weekend." AAAGGGHHHH!!!! "I'll let you go."

Mike calls not 30 seconds after I hung up with Lauren. He's stuck in traffic because, yeah, we thought it was 6:30am when he left - not 7:30am!! Poor guy...

Scurry scurry scurry. Kids, get dressed! Michaela eat quick! We leave for school at 8:30am on a normal day. So, it was a mad rush to get out the door this morning. Plus, with Ava being sick, I had to drive. Turn the car on, see the light on reminding me "YOU NEED GAS!!!". Turn the car back off, race inside the house, grab my wallet, back to the car, turn it back on and pray I make it both to the school and then the gas station.

Thankfully, I got her to school in time to get dropped off and have one of the car line volunteers take her inside. I thought I was going to have to park and walk her in myself with the other two kiddos in tow.

I'm still feeling completely thrown off today... *sigh* What an eventful Monday morning!!

Of mermaids and princesses...

For the third year, Ava has decided to be the Little Mermaid. The infatuation hasn't dimmed, just seems to grow stronger every day. We've even discussed how when we move, Mommy would paint Ariel on Ava's bedroom wall.

Ava's school had their annual Halloween parade on Friday, which consisted of two of the classes marching around the gym for about 5 minutes in a big circle, followed by the hokey pokey. While this might not seem overly exciting to the adults, the kids LOVE it. They get to show off for Mommy, Daddy, and any other family member that wants to show up for the 10 minute event.

Here's a picture of our little Ariel, as well as a video of her doing the hokey pokey.

Millions of peaches... peaches for free...

And Logan would like nothing to do with them.

Logan astounds Mommy...

I'm going to preface this story by informing you that nothing gets in between Logan and his food. NOTHING. N-O-T-H-I-N-G.

Or at least, until today...

Ava, Logan & I went to BJ's this afternoon. As soon as we walked in, the person working the home improvement display at the door gives Ava a balloon on a stick.

Fast forward to the drive home, where Logan discovers "balloon". Ava was playing with it and apparently, Logan decided balloon = hysterical. The laughter coming out of his little body - holy cow!

Now we're home and he's woken from a nap. He's hungry and all he wants is his bottle. We sit down on the couch and I cradle him while he drinks.

And then it happens...

Ava starts tossing the balloon in the air (while I keep saying, "Be careful! Watch out for the stick!") Logan catches the balloon's movement out of the corner of his eye. And a little blip of a chuckle comes out. He turns his head to watch, still drinking, and a giggle slips out. He's about to laugh again, so before he chokes on his formula, I take the bottle out of his mouth, albeit hesitantly. "He's going to kick up a fuss and cry," I think to myself. So what happens next? Logan decides that balloon > bottle and starts laughing.

I caught a litle on video, so you get some idea... This was nothing compared to before I grabbed the camera - naturally. Oh, and note how at the very end, he finally notices the camera and hams it up... LOL Without further ado, the video:

Michaela isn't feeling well...

I'm not sure what's wrong, but she's been complaining of feeling... different. I don't know... Any ideas??

So, yeah, I had fun in Photoshop... While surfing the 'net, I read a "how to" on, of all things, changing eye color in a photograph. And what do I do? I play around with it. Michaela thought her eyes looked strange until I made them purple. Then they looked "cool".

Rainy morning...

It's rainy here in SE PA. Sky is overcast and there was a fine mist coming down earlier this morning. If only we could send the rain to CA, where it's so badly needed. I'm hoping that we hear from Mike's Aunt Joanne soon. She's out in San Diego, right near the coast. The fires don't seem to be close to her, but I can only imagine what they're all going through out there. :(

On a happy note, Logan is doing more amazing things each day. Food-wise, he is now eating baby carrots & sweet potato (I puree them in our blender), apple sauce (ohhhh, he LOVES this!!) and banana. I think banana used to be his favorite food until lunch today. He could not get enough of the apple sauce, which humors me since he made faces while eating it last night.

He can now sit tripod style for brief stints. If he moves suddenly, he loses his balance and plunk, down towards the floor he goes (I do try to catch him!) He scooched army-crawl style about an inch yesterday. Yeah, not very far, but we all know what happens when they realize what doing one thing gets them.... *gulp* I am so not ready for him to crawl, but I think he wants to. After his scooch, he then pulled his legs, bent, underneath him as if he wanted to push up. *double gulp*

Hope you enjoy this little video clip of him... He apparently was trying to launch himself out of the exersaucer, so great was his enthusiasm. Funny thing is this was just a taste of how he goes at it!