You are three months old now! Look at how you smile, and listen to your little laugh. Heidi made you laugh so hard on your camping trip that you got hiccups! Last night you laughed at Sammy making an underwater volcano in the bathtub. Your laugh made Sammy laugh! You are rolling from tummy to back again – all the time. In fact, you like to do it at night, too, so you can “pedal” your bike in bed (this wakes mommy up – time to put you in Sam’s room!!). You’re sleeping 10-12 hours a night and starting to take really regular naps. You’re even putting yourself to sleep now that mommy showed you how. You read a little book about the Hawaii sea creatures and go right to sleep. You’re definitely eyeing our food and want to start eating solids. You’ll have to wait a bit more, though. You get to sit at the table with us now in your little clip-on chair, and biggest news of all – Daddy got you a BACKPACK for your hikes! He brought a brand-spankin’ new pack home from his trip to New York. He got it at The Mountaineer, one of our favorite gear shops in the Adirondacks. I can’t wait to see if you’re big enough to ride in it! OK – you’re up now, waiting for me… We love you very much, Baby Ben! (You big boy!!! I forgot to mention you’re wearing 6 month old clothes and weigh 18 lbs. Everyone – I mean EVERYONE – thinks you’re absolutely huge and tall. People comment all the time, after they comment on your happy smile.)

We counted down the days until Dave returned, drawing a part of Daddy with each passing day until there’s a whole Daddy on the day he returns. Fun to relive the ups and downs of a deployment, and the happiness of reuniting as a family once again. We even got him a … oops – he subscribes to this blog!

Sam and Anneliese waiting for s’more time to start!

We had SO much fun camping this past weekend! We had some rain on Fri but the tent held up very well – no water got in even with the windows open. There were centipedes, though! I had already taken out my contacts but thought I heard something slither as I made my way to the tent. I knew there were no snakes here so I flipped my headlamp onto the bright setting (not red night vision) to really get a good look. Two centipedes scurried away – they are fast! They were crawling right up the front of the tent trying to get in the door! So the next night I left a moat of water in front and they didn’t try that again. They don’t like a lot of water so they were hoping to join us in the tent. (Centipedes give a nasty bite in case you’re wondering why this was a big deal.) Two families joined us for the adventure – one on Friday night and one on Saturday. It was fun hanging out with them and Sam really liked running wild through the woods right behind our site. As he gets older it’s fun to give him more privileges and watch what he does. He and his two friends (the hiking buddies Anneliese and Caleigh) took the grown-ups on field trips through the woods :)  I did a good job packing for the trip and didn’t find I’d forgotten anything, so it was a successful mission. Got some of my adventure ya-yas out and had a great time with my boys. I hope you enjoy the pictures!!!

The view from the Old Pali Road. This was a fun hike with our new buddies, Liisa and Mikko-Dakota. More pictures in the album 🙂

We went for a jog to the beach at sunset to check out the moonrise. Ben enjoyed his dinner there 🙂 and Sam built volcanoes and played with the 9 yr old son of a friend of mine. Other families were out waiting for the moon as well. We should have checked the almanac first because we were half an hour early…and it got too dark to stick around. We ran home with a headlamp and reflective tape, checking out the emerging stars while Sam spotted Jupiter high in the sky.  We’ll have to do that again – it’s only a 10 min jog from home, and so peaceful in the evening.

Here we are visiting Tripler and saying thanks to the ladies who delivered Ben – Cathi, Christie and Candy (pictured above). Ben was a big smiley boy today and we really enjoyed sharing him with everyone. We threw Ben on a scale, too, since everyone wanted to know how big he was – just an ouce or two shy of 17 lb! He’s gaining about 2 lbs a month – that’s about the rate that I’m losing weight 🙂 We also looked for the doctor on the infertility team but he wasn’t in his office. We had such a great experience at Tripler and it was nice to go back and say thank you to all those involved.

Happy boy is 12 weeks today! He is such a good baby – already sleeping 11 hrs a night most night 🙂 He’s not napping well, but neither did Sam…he’ll get with the program in time 🙂 Must run – work calls. Love you, Ben!

    

We went to a free concert in Hawaii Kai last night with our friends and their girls. The boys enjoyed it, and Dave enjoyed quiet at home so he could (theoretically) nap before going in to work for the mid shift (midnight).

I love Ben’s new rash guard shorty! He enjoyed his first swimming “lessons” today and Sam got a kick out of diving under water to watch Ben’s feet wiggle around. In other news, our washer bearing failed this week and we ended up replacing the washer and dryer with beautiful new LGs in a “bahama blue.” They are way too pretty 🙂 It will be fun to do laundry now! Dave goes on mids tonight – he’ll go in around 9pm and come home about 12 hrs later. Then he leaves for upstate NY later in the week for 10 days. I’m nesting to be sure I have things under control here 🙂 ha ha! Tonight I’m taking the boys to a concert while Dave naps. Wish me luck!

Big Ben is enjoying getting into the water with us! He was at the pool yesterday floating around in a little shaded floaty thing, like the big poobah he is. Today we went to the beach after Dave met us with breakfast (we jogged there). It was such a nice day that Dave offered to go back and grab the beach gear, and defer studying for a couple more hours. See Ben’s shades? He gets lots of compliments on those! Just like Sam’s, but for little guys. The swimming shorts are from Molly in Texas.

BUZZZZZ! “AAAAAAARGH! Mommy! That big, fat, fierce BEE is back!” Sam comes screaming around the deck to the front door shrieking – he does NOT like the big fat bumblebee who seems to enjoy his secret garden. Sam’s reaction is so violent it’s almost funny. We do talk to him about bees, of course, and what they do, but there’s no denying it. Sam totally loses his cool when surprized by “Buzz the Bee.” Ok – I would, too. He is quite large. The other day I was laughing as it happened again and I told Sam that Buzz “Just wants to BEEEEEEE your friend!” ha ha! Get it? Am I so funny? I was laughing out loud when Dave came home. He is saying it now, too, so I guess he thought it was pretty funny. 🙂

We went on our Thursday evening adventure again tonight – a jog to Bob’s pizza to grab a slice then run that to the middle of town and eat at a big fountain near the Farmer’s Market. We usually get to see our friends Leo and Brendan and their two girls there as well. Tonight Sam wanted to wear his running/hiking shoes and start out running with me. So he did. And he kept going and going! It was so fun – he’d slow to a walk for a little bit, talk about something he noticed, or joke about running down trash cans or jumping over pickup trucks, then take off again. He called it “blast off” and enjoyed watching mommy try to catch up. He wondered if the birds were watching him, and if the houses were saying “look at that boy go!” It was an inspired run – I started a little rhyme that went something like this…

Watch out ducks, watch out trucks!
Watch out poles, watch out holes!

Holy crow, look at that boy go!

Watch out mailboxes, watch out foxes!
Watch out vans, watch out cans!

Holy crow, look at that boy go!

We went to Sea Life Park yesterday with some friends and their kids – three moms and 9 kids all together. Whew! One of the moms is a friend of a friend but it turns out she went to UVA as well! We had a lot of fun together and I bought an annual pass for Sam. He loved the aquarium, seeing the sting rays up close (they were huge!) and turtles, then the dolphin show. (More pictures in the album.) We learned more about stingrays today – they are a relative of sharks. That lead to more learning about different classes of fish – those with cartilaginous bones and those with real bones. Then wiggling our noses to learn about cartilage vs bone. I write the new vocabulary words up on a white board for Dave to check when he gets home so he knows what the “preschool” lesson was for the day. He can also check the white board to see what I have in mind for dinner (that’s so I don’t forget!). I’m trying to be better organized 🙂

We went to Bellows AFS for a walk and light dinner at Keneke’s on Saturday afternoon. It was a nice, peaceful, inexpensive outing. We like it there so much because it’s really spacious and there is a ton for kids to do. It’s also where we camp and go trail running.

We decided to shake things up a bit this week and have a picnic dinner tonight. It was windy, but fun! More photos are in the album. I think this is the first shot of the four of us in one frame! Dave is working a lot and doing schoolwork each night, so we have to make the best of a few minutes here and there for fun. This was a good time. Sam went to the museum today with our friends, so he has been talking nonstop (once again) about volcanoes and lava, and playing native Hawaiian instruments with sticks…He was such a good boy today, and very funny. I enjoy him so much. I’m so grateful I get him all to myself every day 🙂