The BIG blog challenge for June

I am participating in this challenge which is on scrapbook.com. It comes along at exactly the same time that I decided to create my own blog to try out this madness called blogging. There is a topic listed for each day of June and we get to pick which days we want to participate. Sounds like fun! You can check it out if you want to. The BIG blog challenge for June

Wonder and *PLAY*

This blog is called Duda Scraps, so I guess I need a blog about or with some layouts. So here are the 2 latest ones. I really have the bug to do some scrapping, but with Ethan's whininess the last couple of weeks, I haven't gotten much accomplished.


The first one is a picture that I just love. Ethan looking out the front window, looks like he's wishing he was outside or something. He loves getting up on the table and looking out the window, especially when the trains go by. click to enlarge


The 2nd one is Ethan out in the front yard playing on his castle slide. He had climbed up it all by himself for the 1st time and looked rather proud of himself. He really is usually a happy baby. Even though these were taken on separate days, I thought they kind of "went together" so they are on facing pages with complementary color schemes. TFL!!! click to enlarge

Caution!!! Whining ahead!!!

Especially when it keeps me up all hours of the night. Especially when I've given my child every possible medication known to mothers and he still cries. He went to bed okay last night but right when I was getting ready to hit the sack myself, yep, he's up. So I rock him and he calms down and gets sleepy (or falls asleep, I can't tell in the dark) so I lay him down in his bed and go to my own bed. He's quiet for a while...long enough for me to think he's gonna stay asleep and I start to doze off. Nope, he's awake! So we go through this whole process two more times. I finally gave up and pulled the futon out and laid him down with me. But, of course he didn't want to lay down but sit and squirm. I think we finally dozed off sometime after 1am, I think. At some point this morning (there's no clock in his room so I have no concept of time which may or may not be a bad thing) he sat up damn near screaming. In my fog, I wasn't sure what was going on...finally found his paci that he had lost and we both fell back asleep.

When will this end? He's 16 months old now, and I'm really over getting up in the middle of the night. We had let him CIO a couple of months ago...really hard to do, but sooooooo worth it. And now I feel like we've (by we, I mean me and Ethan, since Craig has no part of this) have taken 2 or 3 or even 4 steps backwards. How did this happen? When will it end? I need some sleep...

Walking the Bridge

Martye talked me into it. She's good at that...But really it wasn't that hard to do. A walk on the Biloxi Bay Bridge (the fact that they took Ocean Springs off the title still irks me, but whatever) sounded like fun and I know several people that had already walked it and there were always cars parked at the foot of it. So we got there between 5:00 and 5:30 pm...I usually am not out and about at this time if I can possibly help it due to the sheer amount of traffic. I was amazed by the number of cars parked there! The old gas station was full and so was the parking area on the side of the road. There were tons of people, and in good Southern fashion, quite a bit of socializing going on. Most on the bridge were in groups (us included!) . We, and by that I mean, Lauren saw several people that she knew, so we stopped and talked with them. The twins, of course, got the most attention, being that they are...twins. Lauren had a good time be-bopping along and looking over the sides, running ahead and lagging behind, but surprisingly, no whining from her. The wind was blowing pretty good, so the heat and noise from the traffic were not issues. Martye and I felt the burn in our thighs and calves almost immediately, which made us realize just how out of shape we are. We originally thought that we would walk the entire bridge and back, but ended up only going halfway...fine by me! On the way back we stopped at the sitting area that's about halfway to the halfway point... It's just an outcropping with a bench in it. The scrapper in me had to take some pics for the scrapbooks!

Aunt name

Ok, so right now the older kids call me Aunt Sarah. Which is ok, I guess. For the twins I've been saying Auntie Sarah, mostly to Abby, because she's the one who seems to like me more. Eli is just so nonchalant about everything. I really would like some kind of cute aunt name, but there's not that many options out there for "Sarah". Here's what I've come up with so far...

• Rahrah
• Sasa
• Essie
• Nana

So that's the best I could come up with after way too much surfing on the net. Opinions on these or suggestions for something else are greatly welcomed.

This thing they call blogging

I guess I'm going to try it out. I wonder if I'll just be talking to myself...