We've been having such fun times around here the past few months. So much fun that we haven't had time to take pictures!! Or that's my excuse, anyway. These little ones of ours are growing up so fast. Dave and I have a hard time keeping up with them. But it is such a blessing to get to watch them grow and mature.
Julia's our sweet, tender-hearted cheerleader. She is constantly telling us "Good Job!" or "Good Work!" Our favorite is when we pull into our driveway and she cheers, "Good job, Daddy! You got your babies home safe!!"
She is Dax's Little Mommy. Often telling him "No, Dax!" or "You'll get in trouble, buddy!" When he's hurt or just been reprimanded, we'll hear her in with him "Aw, buddy. You not feel good? You sad? It okay. I help you. It okay, buddy."
We hear lots of repeated snippets of things we say. One of my least shining moments came when I was trying to get the DVD player to work. I was having no luck after several tries and was just going to tell Julia we couldn't watch when I heard her say, "Damn it!" Dave came in from the kitchen and asked her, "What did you say?" And she said, "To the TV, Daddy. Damn it!" Oops. That's her Mama's fault. (It's a phrase that goes way back in our family. Back to when I was about Julia's age. I can't tell you how much I wish I could tell my Grandpa Steele that story. He would be laughing so hard.)
She is a voracious TV watcher. She loves it and would plop herself down on the couch and not move until bedtime if I let the TV be on that much. Her current top requests are "the buggies" (Miss Spider), "the princess movie" (Little Mermaid), "the zebra movie" (Madagascar) and "the fish movie" (Finding Nemo). She loves to play games on my iPod and already knows as much about how to navigate around on it as I do.
One of her favorite things to do is take pictures. She'll grab my camera and click away. We end up with a lot of pictures of toes and headless people.
Dressing up as a princess is one of her favorite things to do. She will often pick out an outfit and wear it all day long. One of these days I'll have to paint her toenails.
She is still a Daddy's Girl. We have long conversations during the day that go like this:
Julia: Daddy working? Daddy working hard?
Me: Yes. Daddy's working.
Julia: Daddy working in office?
Me: Yes. Daddy's working at his office.
Julia: I go work at office with Daddy?
That gets repeated many, many times in some variation during the day.
We also have an odd routine that happens when we put her to bed. She needs multiple reassurances that "Mommy come get me when I wake up?" Often times she'll cry out an hour into naptime just to double check that "Mommy come get me when I wake up?"
She is doing a wonderful job with potty training. She is so persistent and proud of herself.
One of her favorite things is to run around naked. She gets great joy in both the action and the announcement: "I NAKED!!"
And Dax? He is All Boy. Dave nicknamed him "Bulldog" because when he wants to do something, he hunkers down and gets it done no matter who or what is in his way. He's just as stubborn about NOT doing something he doesn't want to do. Plus, he drools. A lot :) He is so active. No sitting around watching TV for this boy (unless there's a snack involved). If he is awake, chances are that he is moving!
He's fearless when it comes to acts of physical prowess and I nearly always return to a room to find him on top of some piece of furniture. But he's shy around strangers and doesn't like loud, active crowds. He prefers hanging out with men over women with the exception of his Mommy.
He pesters his sister to distraction and is always right in the middle of what she is doing ... unless she wants him there. If she goes somewhere on her own, he wanders around looking lost until she returns. He's been enjoying her potty training as well, trying on princess panties and begging for M&Ms. They really are best friends.
He loves his blue blankie and any type of ball. He has to have both in his bed to sleep. Recently he has fallen in love with books. He will now sit still for an entire picture book and often times more than one. He loves to sit and flip through the pages. His favorites are books with animals, especially dogs.
He is in both a clingy and independent phase that is driving us a little nuts. He can't figure out if he wants to cuddle or run off and do his own thing. Often this results in a whiny little boy that is upset that whatever is happening right now is not what he wanted at all. Even if he asked for it.
His feet look enormous to me. They really aren't that big (size 5 or 6), but I guess compared to his tiny baby feet they are huge.
Good grief these babies are growing up fast!! I can't believe how quickly time is flying. Whew!
On a different note, and to make the post even longer, we had pictures made for our church directory. We spent enough to get the CD with full-sized images which means we can do prints for other family members that don't get one. If you want, you can go to our Flickr page with the pictures and then e-mail us which one(s) you want and what size.
Heck! I don't believe me! I worked all day yesterday to get caught up with all our Flickr photos and I DID IT!!! The photos you see on Flickr are the ones I've got on my computer. (Well, the good ones, anyway!) So from now on (theoretically) I should be able to post photos as I do blog entries and stay all up-to-date and everything ... that'll probably last until we go to the Cochran Family Reunion in June and I get home with a camera load of pictures and have no time to sort through them! :) But for the next month, I intend to bask in my caught-up-ness and enjoy the guilt-free feeling of web surfing without knowing I need to be uploading photos!
Click here to go to our photo albums of our newest photos! (And there are over 200 of them so make sure you have some time! Eek!)
We've officially locked our blog. We'll miss the random comments from people that came across our blog from a Google search for "Noah's Wife's Name" and those people who dropped by from other blogs where we (okay, Joanna) left comments. However, we started the blog primarily to keep family and friends informed about our adventures since we live so far from so many of you. We are just going back to our original intent (with a little expansion to include our new blogging friends!).
If you have friends that read our blog, we're happy to include them. Simply send an email address along to us (thebouldins@gmail.com) and we'll send them an invitation to view our blog.
We have not yet discussed what will happen to the Flickr account. There is a good possibility that our pictures may have limited access soon as well. If this happens, I'll send out another e-mail with instructions on how to get a Flickr account and how to add us to your "Friends and Family" list.
Dax has the fever. Not The Fever For The Flavor Of A Pringles. Although I'm sure he'd eat them if you put them on his plate. He'll eat anything. Even Crayons and baby wipes.
Nope. He has the high fever with no other symptoms that plagued Julia two weeks ago. I can tell it's the same because when I laid him down on our bed on his back, he couldn't even summon the energy to try to roll over. And he hates to lay on his back. Just try changing his diaper if you don't believe me! He was so puny he couldn't even move his head to keep track of me in the room; he just followed me around with his eyes. Now that's pitiful!
So, if this plays out like Julia's, he's going to need much snuggling for three days (no more catching up on Flickr) and then be cranky and miserable for two days and then feel better! Oh boy!
I made it partway through April and was hoping to finish it off today. Not going to happen so you'll just have to be satisfied with half a month!
Alrighty, folks, we're making some changes.
Here's the deal ... our Flickr account tells us the number of times a photo has been viewed. Normally, our photos have pretty low stats since we post mainly for friends and family. Not so with a few recent photos ... namely the ones of the kids in the bathtub and Julia on the potty. The number of views on these is over 40 times that of our other photos!! So, if someone we know just thought these pictures were cute and have been showing them to neighbors and coworkers and friends, that's fine. Let us know. For now, we're going to go with the worst case scenario and assume that some nasty person is out there ogling our kids. Which makes my stomach turn.
Most of our pictures are still available for anyone to view whether you have a Flickr account or not. BUT, some of the more undressed pictures of the kids are now only available for Friends and Family to view. This includes most of the bath time pictures and some of the pictures of the babies right after being born. AND you can no longer download the photos unless you are marked as Friends and Family (this also means you can't view the different sizes). SO this means you'll have to sign up for an account (if you don't already have one) and let me know so we can mark you as a Friend or Family (if we haven't already) if you want to view all our photos or look at the bigger versions of the photos.
We know it's a pain and an inconvenience, but we think that's okay. If you don't know how to sign up with Flickr, call me. I'll help.
Alrighty. I have been working on getting pictures up on Flickr since I woke up this morning. And it's been an extremely satisfying thing to make progress on, but the babies are awake and I find them infinitely more interesting and satisfying than the computer. So, as my youngest cousin (Jenna-3 years old) says, "You get what you get and you don't throw a fit!" I'll work on getting more up later ... maybe ... I might just try to get the house clean(er).
You can click here for pictures of the Christmas Party at our church, Julia's birthday party in Hattiesburg, the Christmas Eve opening of presents and I've tossed the Bouldin Family Portraits in there as well because I didn't have to mess with taking out any red eye and the files were very small so they didn't take much time to load. (And those are ALL the pictures from that session ... closed eyes, messed up hair, cranky babies ... everything.)
1) Peas smell just as bad once they're pooped out as they do in the jar. (I dislike peas a lot.)
2) I uploaded pictures to the Flickr page. Go see more of what happened on our trip as well as some other photos that were supposed to be used for blog entries, but I forgot about them. (WARNING: There are a lot. In fact, I might have forgotten to mention the last time I uploaded pictures so there are even more than you might expect when I say there are a lot.)
Alrighty. Pictures from the past couple of weeks are up on the Flickr site. They are not edited and have no tags or titles, but I might work on that this weekend. Then again, I may not.
