So, today is my birthday. The alarm went off at 6:30 because we have to be up and moving ASAP to finish everything that we didn't finish last night before the packers get here this morning. The first thing my husband said to me this morning was "Let's get moving", which he quickly ammended to "Happy Birthday."

Yesterday he did surprise me with an ice cream cake from Coldstone Creamery and a birthday card that Ben picked out. Like everything else that Ben picks out it had a dog on the front of it. :) He (Ben) also came into the house saying "Happy happy happy" for awhile and then when handing me the card added "birthday". It was very sweet.

My birthday plans include leftover cake for breakfast followed by coffee and some Flintstone Chewable Vitamins to round the meal off. A mad dash hour of packing and praying that stays asleep til the movers arrive at 8:00. At that point I get him up and dr ...

I wrote out this long elaborate blog about our itinerary and then came back to see if anyone had read it and yet and what do I find? Oh, it's gone. It's not here. It's not here. I spent all that stupid time on it this morning and it's gone. Seriously, I don't have time for this kind of nonsense.

Here's a short version. August 1st we leave Georgia. August 5th we get to California.

If I find myself with a passel of time and much much less frustration than I'm feeling about this situation later then maybe I'll repost it. Good grief.

It's starting to sink in that we are really leaving this god-forsaken state of Georgia. We've talked about leaving for so long and now we're going and it's just surreal, and even sometimes sad. We said goodbye to our friends from small group on Sunday. That was very sad for me. I cried while they prayed for us, and I was teary on the way home, and then I was weepy when I got home. These have been some of our first real friends outside the military, the first church friends that we've really gotten to know and now we're leaving. It's hard. It's harder than I thought it would be. I'm still very excited to go, but it's harder than I thought.

These are things that I think about that make it hard for me to comtemplate just being *gone* and that make me cry:

1)  We're leaving the house where my son lived as an infant 2) When we pull up to our driveway he says "home, home, home" 3) We're leaving the only babysitter that he's ever known and p ...

I found something for Ben the other day that I had been looking for for a while now and I found it when I wasn't even looking for it. It's a toddler Bible that is in a board book style so that he can actually *have* it, instead of me just keeping it for him. It's made my Little Golden Book and is pretty cute. My only gripe about it would be that all the characters look suspiciously North American White as if all the Bible stories were taking place in Nebraska... Anyway, you win some you lose some, I'll address that issue with him later.

Later on, after I had given it to him we were sitting and looking through the pictures. By this point he learned which person Jesus was and he flipped to a page that had a picture of Jesus and John the Baptist. He pointed at Jesus. "Jesus." Then he pointed at John the Baptist and said, "Jesus buddy."

Oh man, I lost it. It was so funny.

We have all our family pictures hanging up in our hallway so we stop often on our way up and down the steps and talk about the pictures. This morning on our way down to breakfast we stopped by a picture of all us girls and mom and dad. This was our conversation:

Me: "Who do you see, Ben?"
B: "Bonnie." And he stuck a pudgy little finger right on her face.                                                            ...

This event is probably about a month or so old by now, but I'm just getting around to blogging it. Starting around 18 months Benjamin began to disdain using a spoon. He had the physical ability (for the most part) to scoop his food, but he just didn't want to anymore, or he would eat nicely for a few minutes and then get a little more creative... I'd also like to say here that I'm not a stickler for neatness, I understand that toddlers are messy, are still developing their coordination, and that sometimes making a mess is both fun and developmentally appropriate. There were/are plenty of times that he would/still will get frustrated when trying to "fork" something and switch to his fingers. I don't mind that. But spoon-food is different.

So, here Ben and I are at post-nap snack time. He's eating yogurt. All is well. I'm doing stuff in the kitchen and was apparently too involved in whatever it was. I look over to his highchair and see Ben with a fistful of yogurt ...

Overall, I think that "nice" is a pretty generic kind of non-word. It's about the equivalent of saying, "Oh." You know you have to say something, but you don't know what to really say so you just call it "nice". Nice dress, nice paint color, nice dog... But, all that aside as I went throughout my day on Saturday I realized that we were just having a nice day.

Ben woke up around 8:00 and Andrew got up with him and went downstairs. I was awake, I just wasn't exactly moving yet. I was celebrating the fact that after six weeks of it I wasn't the only adult in the house anymore and so someone else got to respond when Ben squawked. I admit that I did try to go back to sleep, but I couldn't mostly because I just really really really needed to pee.

I meandered my way downstairs after about twenty minutes. Benjamin's diaper had already been changed, which was...nice. There's nothing good about a diaper that's been on ...

I've been very absorbed by my son's boyness lately. He's *always* been an awake-on-the-go-loud-and-now kind of guy, but in the last few weeks it's just been a whole new deal. I think that part of this is probably related to his age as he gets closer and closer to two. (And for any interested parties: The twos will not be "terrible" in this house. I hate that phrase and all the negativity that it invites. Will we cruise through them probably not, but I refuse to categorize the second year of my child's life as terrible just because there's some developmental ground to be covered.)

Ben's new hobbies involve running around the circle in our house (kitchen, hallway, living room). He runs quietly, until he can't control his laughing, and then he comes right up to me and ROARS while throwing his arms up in the air. I do my motherly duty and throw my hands up like claws and roar back at him. He starts laughing and goes around the loop again. And this isn't once or twice ...

Apparently, Ben has decided that today is a book kind of day. He's been bringing me books nonstop since he woke up this morning. Some days (like today) he really likes to be read to, some days he likes to sit beside me on the couch and he'll read his own book and I get to read my own book (I like those days). He's doing a little of that today. Other days though, he wants nothing to do with books. The idea of sitting still is apparently repulsive to him and so we'll only read at naptime and bedtime. Luckily, those days aren't very often.

Today we have read:

Kitten (affectionately called by Ben the "titty book" ...the "kk" sound is a little hard... ), My Big Truck Book (2x), The Eensy Weensy Spider, Once Upon a Potty, The Truck book, Noni Touches, Under the Sea, Spot Plays Hide & Seek, Philadelphia Chickens (not all of it, but a lot of it), Sheep in a Jeep, A Ride in a Fire Truck, Funny Bunnies, One Fish Two Fish Red Fi ...

I had to go to the pharmacy the other week on a Saturday. I generally try to avoid this like the plague, because they only have a few windows open, they're notoriously slow, and the place is filled with retirees.

We show up at 9:30 with the optimistic plan that we'll just run in and grab my prescription quickly, and then we'll take Andrew so coffee at work as a surprise. I take my number, which to my dismay, is THIRTY numbers away from the one they're currently serving. They have three windows open out of nine and like I feared the place is running at the speed of retirees. In fact, when we walk in I think we were the only people in the lobby who didn't remember the Titanic sinking.

Ben stands quietly and holds my hand for about half a second and then is bored. The good news is that old people have to sit down while they wait (and I NEVER get to sit down and wait) so there was plenty of hallway space available for Ben to run around in. So he did. Up the hallway ...