Magic Moments

We're only six hours from Washington, D.C. I've been considering the idea of taking the boys for quite awhile. Initially, I only wanted to drive into Mt. Vernon and take them to Homeschool Days at George Washington's planation. Last year I didn't go because Cade was so little and it sounded too overwhelming to do by myself. This year I just couldn't pass it up. Tom was able to take a day off work and we went for a long, but really jam packed weekend. I have thought the boys were really too young to do the whole D.C. tour. It's so much walking and I figured they'd appreciate it more when they were older. But, I didn't want to drive six hours and just do one thing so we committed to hitting the high points in D.C. We studied all about what we would see before we left so the boys would have an idea of the significance of what they were going to see. We arrived Sunday and toured the Spy Museum. The boys had a challenge as they went through the museum in ...

Last week someone in the area organized a guided fossil hunt for homeschoolers. This is the kind of stuff the boys live for so I signed them up. If I'm honest, I didn't really want to pay $40, drive two hours one way to the middle of nowhere on a chilly day with a toddler so we could fossil hunt on the side of the road. I'm not saying that it wasn't worth it, but I am saying it wasn't my favorite day just because of the logistics. Evidently, West Virginia used to be under water. We were hunting fossils on what used to be the ocean floor. The boys found tons of fossils, big and small, and all are sitting in my garage with a whole collection of other things like rocks, and feathers, and pine cones and sea shells and any other random outdoorsy type keepsakes. ;)  Anyway, the fossils were plentiful and they were fossils of sea shells, mostly. One man found a very rare fossil of a star fish. The boys are going to talk to an archeologist about their findings on Sunday bec...

"Mama, I'm not going to eat the cookies I just want to look at them." Liar. ;) He did get to eat them but he had to wait until after dinner.

Sage puts his stuffed animals in his bed in order from youngest to oldest. The youngest stuffed animals sleep closest to him and the older ones sleep on the outside because, "it's ok if the older ones fall out of bed." Of course, as always, his beloved Penny lays across his pillow and Penny herself doubles as Sage's pillow. "Penny doesn't mind if I lay on her" is what I'm told. This pictures doesn't reflect the stuffed animals in birth order, it's just a picture I snapped the other day of Sage sleeping. His latest stuffed animal addition is the baby narwhal he bought at the Smithsonian while we were in D.C. His names is Little Tusker. It's all just so cute I can't stand it.

Cade. I almost don't know where to begin except that Cade is our littlest and our last and he's loved and adored and he's spoiled. He's two and half and was still nursing night and day and still sleeping in our bed. I can't say I regret that because I don't. We soaked up and enjoyed all of his babyhood days. But, two weeks ago life got to a point where I wasn't enjoying a baby in my bed anymore. I was tired. So, so tired of night and day neediness from my kids. I counted one night how many times Cade demanded to nurse in the night. 6 (sometimes 7) was the number it added up to. That meant I was being woken up every hour I was in bed. That explained why I was tired, why I felt like I hit a wall, and why I had zero patience during the day. I had committed to nursing Cade through cold and flu season. He's a stinker about eating veggies and taking vitamins so I was worried. But we made the decision that he needed to be in his own bed and be done nursing at n...