When to cry over spilt milk

Taking a one-year-old on a road trip can change a four hour journey to a five hour headache. Joshua does well in the car. He likes it when we sing to him and he can generally fall asleep on his own. We turned his car seat around about a month ago, so now he can see us and it is easier to feed him from the front seat.

On the drive home from Washington last Monday Joshua was sleeping and I was trying to do the same (don’t worry, I wasn’t driving). I woke up when Joshua started to cry for no apparent reason – sometimes he just doesn’t want to be strapped down. Amanda suggested I give him his milk to try and calm him back to sleep. This particular sippy cup had a plastic cap that I had to take off but for some reason I was having some trouble. I tried pulling and was trying to hurry because Joshua wasn’t calming down. So I tried twisting…I recommend NOT twisting. The entire cap started coming off spilling milk onto my seat. I had to take my blanket that was keeping me nice and warm and use it to wipe up the milk. This was after it soaked into my pants leaving me uncomfortably chilly. On top of that, I couldn’t find my sandwich, and Joshua didn’t even really want the milk. Oh yeah… and Amanda was laughing at me. I was still wet an hour later when we switched drivers at the rest stop.

Talk about a reason to cry over spilt milk.

Spring?

This past weekend we went to Washington to see some of Amanda's family.

Who knew I was going to build a snowman...in spring...at 400 feet above sea-level?

We had great visits with Amanda's parents, cousins, aunt and uncle, brother, grandma, and friends. It was great to get away from the apartments for a bit and be spoiled with chocolate chip cookies and lemon cake. And snow.

Oh Joshua Tree

These past few days have been pretty hectic around the apartments. We’ve had several vacancies, 30-day notices, and no waiting list. Then everything changed and everyone became interested in the apartments. We’ve had to let vendors in, potential residents had to be shown apartments, paperwork had to be done for new residents, walk-throughs for move-outs/ins… We’ve been very busy and stressed. Joshua has been a good sport throughout the entire ordeal – although he is trying to come up with new cries to get our attention.

Yesterday Joshua decided to not take an afternoon nap on yet another busy day. The plumbers were supposed to come but called 15 minutes before to cancel; our cleaning lady was coming just in time for Joshua’s breakfast; I had to finish cleaning an apartment for a move-in later that day; Amanda had to get all the paperwork ready for the move-in; two different people were bringing their reservation deposits by in the afternoon (one of which wanted to look at their new apartment); and our financial advisor was coming that evening.

Back to the Joshua incident. One of the couples had come by to drop off their reservation deposit while Joshua was finishing up dinner and we were getting ready to start ours. Amanda invited them in to get a receipt. Amanda, Joshua and this couple were in the dining area, and Joshua started to cry very hard. I tried calming him down but he kept getting upset each time he’d look over and see that the couple was still there. I cleaned him up and got him out of his chair, but he really wanted Mama. The couple left and Joshua was placed in his mother’s arms where he nuzzled up to her. He still had the sniffles a bit. We were trying to figure out what could have caused him to burst out into tears (lack of nap, shots from day before, the guy’s beard, getting more teeth finally) when Joshua did a strange thing. He laughed. It was his haha laugh. It sounds fake and is hilarious and it was especially hilarious after all the crying he had done.

What a goofball.