And He's Gone

And I'm doing okay, even though I'm sad. Of course, I didn't sleep well last night, and I'm extra hormonal for "womanly" reasons, so none of that is helping me out either. But Josh left this morning. A mere two hours ago to be exact. He is off on his great adventure to Alaska, and boy does he have a lot of driving ahead of him.

He took his own Volvo, since mine has not gotten fixed yet. I do have an appointment to drop it off on Monday to get taken care of, but we waited too long and so he borrowed a nav system from the Starlings (thanks Jim!) and is making his way towards Washington state. He figures it'll take him about four days to get there, assuming he goes at least 600 miles or so each day. Fun. From Washington he'll get on a ferry. He just found out two nights ago though, that the ferry will not be taking him to Anchorage as we originally thought. Apparently the Army chose to book his passage on a vessel that will drop him off in a different part of Alaska, thus requiring him to drive another 700 miles to Anchorage after a three or four day boat ride. Sigh. But, once he's there, he'll work on getting lots of things settled and hopefully in the first week of March we should know more about when the boys and I will be packing up and leaving Oklahoma behind. (By the way, this is a picture I took of Zeke giving Josh the biggest hug ever this morning. As if he knew or something.)

In other news, Deacon's top two molars have broken through a bit and it looks like his two bottom incisors (or whichever they are that come next) are also going to make an appearance soon. Perhaps this explains his ickiness last week? He has also been terrible about being dropped off in child care lately. I mean, screaming and crying and the saddest little faces EVER. It's very unlike him. Josh took him to church last week while I stayed home with Zeke (Zman had a bit of a fever the night before), and had to pick him up from the nursery because Deacon wouldn't stop crying. It's terrible. I have no idea where it's coming from either. He usually LOVES being dropped off and playing with the other kids. (Don't worry, I've cut their bangs since taking this picture.) Deacon has also started using more and more words. It's very exciting. I think he'll catch up to Zeke vocabulary-wise very soon.

And then there's Zeke. I think he's growing some more. Someone should really put a stop to that. I think I'll be removing the harness from his carseat and using the seatbelt with it soon, since his shoulders are way above the last spot for them. And I know that sentence proabably didn't make much sense to most of you, but trust me, that it's time for an upgrade of some kind. We also bought him a booster car seat since he fits in the car without one pretty well, but I want to try fixing his car seat first. And I will close, since nap time is over and I can hear Deacon calling, with a story. The other night I woke up at 3am to Zeke coughing. I laid in bed for a minute to determine if he needed me or not, and when he stopped coughing and it was quiet, I decided he didn't. Then I heard a light banging on the wall. Intrigued, I got up, went into his room and found him putting the last of his new favorite "comfort" toys, I guess, in his bed (I snapped this shot the next morning)...

It's the books. Those books are the Little Critter books that Linda got for Zeke for Christmas two years ago. Those books are "it" right now. Zeke always has them either in his bed with him, carries the stack of them around, or has them on the floor next to his bed. And this has been every day for the past week or two. It's fabulous.