{{popup DSC03935.JPG DSC03935 640×480}}Khai is four months old today!

Right now I’m eating M&M’s (emmen-emmen, as Max calls ‘em. heh.), and I don’t care that I’m not supposed to have them. Mmmm, chocolate.

It was a good day– this wonderfully cool weather persists, and I love it. I have all of the windows open… unheard of in a Texas September. ;) Aunt Jenn came up to play for the day, and Matt & Jenny stopped by for a bit, as well. Both boys drifted off to sleep quickly and easily tonight; I’m getting used to having two kids now. It’s getting easier as Khai gets older, and as I figure out how to juggle everything .

I bought some bulbs: tulips, daffodils, and lilies. I need to do some research on GardenWeb so I’ll know when and where to plant them. I was going to wait until next year to start anything so it would be easier to be outside to care for them, but I think Khai will be walking by the time these come up next spring.

The stores already have Christmas stuff out! I know it’s early, but I’m already getting excited. I love love love Christmas, and I didn’t get to decorate or have a tree last year. Max is at a wonderful age now, and I can’t wait to experience the holidays with him. I’ve already been trying to explain Halloween; we’re going to decorate the house early in October so that he’ll have the whole month to look forward to it. The Christmas tree is going up the week after Thanksgiving– and we’ll have lights on the house even if I have to put them there myself. :) I won’t get to be at the big family get-together in Santa Fe since we were with my family last year for Christmas. I so wish we could be there, but we made an agreement to swap xmas and Thanksgivings between families every year, and it’s not fair to go back on that. Not getting to be with my family for every holiday is truly the hardest thing about being married. I guess I can consider myself lucky to have such wonderful in-laws, though; they treat me like one of their own, and I truly enjoy spending time with them.

Oh! It looks like I will get to see Stef at Thanksgiving! It seems like it has been so long since we’ve seen each other… I can’t remember when it last was. Also, we’re trekking out to see Nancy sometime soon– Max is already excited because I’ve told him about her horses. “Yeehaw!”

Less than two weeks til Josh leaves for New York. Wow.

I’ve got a few kinks to iron out here and there, but lack the motivation to sit down and take care of it all. For now I’ll pretend that they give my site character. Yeah, that’s it.

My Joshy is leaving me for six weeks to do a residency in Poughkeepsie, New York! It’s going to be so strange to have him gone for that long — I’m going to miss him terribly. He will come back every two weeks for a weekend visit, so at least that will break it up a bit. I hope it’s not too hard on Max– I think between phone calls and emails/pictures he will be all right. Khai probably won’t notice that anything has changed– but he will sure be different when Josh gets back; six weeks is an eternity in infant time.

I just got through reading Orson Scott Card’s books Ender’s Game and Speaker for the Dead; next up is Xenocide. There’s a fourth book in the series, and then another four books detailing the same events in a different character’s perspective– the “shadow” books. The author had been recommended to me before, but I hadn’t read any books until now– Josh started reading them and was dying to talk to me about the story, so I had to read them, too. :) I liked Ender’s Game better than Speaker, though the premise behind the latter is a little more complex. I wonder if the boys will read science fiction since we have so much of it lying around? That reminds me– I saw a Heinlen novel for pre-teens at Barnes & Noble today: Have Space Suit, Will Travel. Hmm. It was on a display with several other books under a banner that read, “Like Harry Potter? Then you might also like….” It made me curious. In linking that book, I also notice that there is an original, uncut version of Stranger in a Strange Land– one of the best books I think I’ve read. Time to update the wish list.