Our Family in 2007!

This picture was taken Sunday, January 7th, right before I took James to the airport. He is on a business trip in Pennsylvania. He will be gone until the beginning of March, but he gets to come home to Jake and me every other weekend. One the positive side this trip might translate into a promotion for James. We will have to see. Shortly before he left on this trip James got his notification in the mail that he passed his Fundamentals of Engineering (State Licensing) Exam. I am very proud that he did it the first time. That is quite an accomplishment! Yesterday he drove to Niagra Falls. It sounds like he had fun, and he said he took lots of pictures.
Jake and I miss James a lot. My neighbor said, "Your like a single mom for two months." That is exactly how I feel right now. And like most single moms, I have moved back home. Well, not full time, but Jake and I are making a BUNCH of trips back and forth and we are spending the night over there frequently. I have been wondering if Jake realizes what is going on. He gets really excited whenever the phone rings and says, "Dada?" I have caught him calling James with my phone twice! This morning he called Da Da all by himself. I was laying on the couch and he was sitting on the floor in front of me playing with the phone. I thought he was just pretending to talk to someone (he does that sometimes) but then I heard James' voice. Last night James called right before Jake went to sleep and Jake heard his voice (he was cuddling on my chest), he started grabbing at the phone, but then James said he needed to call me back in ten minutes and hung up. Jake started crying. I felt so bad. I let him stay up until James called us back and he went to sleep just fine after that.
At the end of this term in May, I will resign my position and be a full time stay at home mama! I am very excited about this. I am also going to take this time off to work on my writing. Hopefully I can get some freelance assignments. I am in the process of finishing an online course through Ole Miss on parenting the first 5 years. I haven't really learned anything yet. It has been a nice refresher survey, since it has been a few years since I took any child development courses (and then I didn't have children so I didn't pay attention as closely as I should).
We are planning to purchase a home sometime this spring. We have been looking for a few months now but we have additional incentive. For my new years' resolutions I plan on gaining (and then loosing) 20-35 lbs, giving up alcohol and cutting back on caffeine. That's right! This year we are planning on adding a fourth member to our little family. The tentative date for this is September 8th, 2007. This Wednesday is our first ultrasound so then we will know more. Already this pregnancy is very different than mine with Jake. So anyway I have a documented reason to be tired and moody. I really really miss having James here with me to comfort me and take care of me like he did during the pregnancy with Jake. I know he is upset about missing the first ultrasound, but he will be home a few days later for his first weekend back.
Well Jake just found me in here on the computer. He was playing nicely with the dryer. Now he is saying "Debaahh ahh ahh." He has one hand in his mouth, so I am assuming he has decided he wants to eat his breakfast after all. It has taken me a whole week to right this. I get to type a few lines and then I have to save it. It might be a while before I can reply to e-mails, blog anymore, myspace, etc. It is part of that single parent thing I guess. I will try and post a short update Wednesday after the ultrasound. Here's hoping for a healthy bi-pole embryo tube with nice limb buds and a heartbeat! Until then, duty calls...

PS James has nicknames this one "rice nugget", for those of you that remember Jake was "peanut lizard."