As winter comes to a close...

As I've noted in the past, time passes steadily, but quietly this time of year.  We've slipped back into our school year routines since the turn of the new year and passing of the holiday season.  It's been cold here and has snowed several times, but only once has it accumulated and lasted for a few days.  I've enjoyed the coziness of the winter, but - unlike last year - I'm looking forward to the arrival of spring:  warmer weather, lighter clothes, the return of green outside, and time to put our new garden boxes to work.  I'll even admit to daydreaming already about trips to the beach this summer - our local beach here on the Bay, as well as a much-anticipated return trip to the Outer Banks of North Carolina shortly after school ends for Gideon in mid-June.

Jeremy and I marvel at how quickly our weekends pass these days:  Gideon's indoor soccer game on Saturday afternoon, church on Sunday morning, trash duty Sunday afternoon and throw in a meal out somewhere in there and the weekend is full without us accomplishing one productive thing around the house.

But even as the daffodils and tulips start to push there way up through the crusty top layer of soil, and the crocuses and Lenten rose begin to bloom, there are signs of life and vigor in the house as well.  After almost three years in this house, we're ready to start some of the updating we knew would be necessary when we purchased it.  It will be slow and tedious and piece-meal, but it will feel so wonderful to have things looking neat, clean, and almost new.  Towards that, we've ordered a new dishwasher - the first of a few new appliances to come (all appliances are original, from 1999) - and hope to spend spring break painting the kitchen cabinets.  The countertop and flooring will also eventually be changed out.  But first, we'll spruce up the utility room by moving the chest freezer into the garage, giving the walls a fresh coat of paint, and adding shelving for an expanded pantry.

Elsewhere in the house, Graham daily wreaks havoc in every room - dumping toy baskets, knocking magnetic letters off the fridge, and emptying the dishwasher silverware basket on to the floor, one utensil at a time multiple times a day - all just like his big brother did at this age.  But he manages his chaos from all fours still - also just like big brother , who didn't walk until almost 16 months - but does occasionally walk around pushing a chair or walking toy.  He continues to be musical, figuring out how to blow on the recorder and whistle like week, and has not shown the affinity to wheeled toys like his car-pushing big brother had by this age, but rather prefers his "bah-bah" (balls).   There are lots of B words in his life, and in his vocabulary:  he LOVES bath time ("ba-ba") and cries when he realizes it is occurring without him.  He squawks with delight when he sees Brother ("buh-buh"), whether getting off the bus or meeting in the downstairs hall.

Gideon finally has another loose tooth, the last one lost last summer.  He had a long-overdue haircut a couple of weeks ago and upon seeing himself in the mirror at home, said he didn't even look like himself.  He's enjoyed his first foray into the world of soccer this winter and will continue his education on the subject in spring soccer.  Michael Jackson is his current favorite music artist - and as much as I'd like to take credit for that, I am not the one in charge of iPod programming in this house.  The last two weekends were watershed moments for him in Jeremy's eyes - he watched Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back; a year ago, I'd have thought it would have been too soon, but in the past year he seems to have finally grasped the difference between fiction and reality, and no longer wakes up at night with bad dreams brought on by something he watched the day before.  I love it, though, that the day after watching Empire, he chose Curious George off Netflix for his afternoon show.  As big as he seems to be getting, it's good to be reminded he's still really a little boy.

And it's out...

Jeremy was rewarded for six months of "acting" as manager of the Flying Qualities group with an official promotion to that position, which has him overseeing roughly 30 engineers.  He's been told a Blackberry is on its way.  Lockheed awaits direction from the government regarding cuts related to sequestration.  So work presses on.  There are now 50 JSFs in existence, ten here in Southern Maryland in flight test.  After a week-long, fleet-wide grounding due to a cracked engine blade on a Air Force variant jet at Edwards in California, normal operations have resumed.

Photo Credit:  Gideon

As for me, I celebrated birthday #39 a few weeks ago.  I joked at the time that it would be the last one I'd observed, but that's not true because #40 will be cause for a big PARTY, as I pretend there's no way I can be that old.  I've also been (mostly) off of Facebook now for three months.  I realized in December I was wasting too much time on it, and - more importantly - getting too worked up by others' thoughts, comments, notions.  So I deactivated.  And a few days went by and I didn't miss it.  A few more days.  I'd check Jeremy's occasionally - to keep up with both sides of our family, reactivate my account once a week, every other week - found I wasn't missing anything, decided I no longer wanted to seek validation for my personal life experiences in such a public forum, and just decided to stay off - mostly; I still reactivate periodically, just to make sure I'm not missing anything big.  So my readership here, since there's no longer a reminder to a wider audience is probably down to about three people - two of whom are my parents (thank you, Mama and Daddy).