Another 5:30 morning

I don't know why, but Nathan's woken up at 5:30 three times this week. He thinks it's great, because he then has time to play on the computer before school. I had been trying to wake up that early myself - but I certainly don't do it naturally like he does. If he continues to make a habit out of this, I'm going to start taking him to before school care so I can *gulp* go to the gym before work.

Nathan's had a cough for over 2 weeks now. No fever. At first is was just a dry cough that responded to OTC meds. But last Friday it turned 'wet' and he sounded congested, so we went to the doctor. She said it was allergies since he wasn't running a fever, and gave us sudafed to take for 3 days, then claritin for the next month or so. I'm thinking it's the wrong diagonis - the sudefed helps, claritin doesn't do diddly. I usually don't pay attention to medical hysteria, but with the H1N1, and a friend's 12 year old son has whooping cough that has morphed into something much worse, I'm totally willing to camp out at the doctor's office if that's what it takes to knock this out.

The Cub Scouts marched in the Liberty County Veteran's day parade last Saturday. A reporter from the local paper wanted to interview one of the older boys about what it means to honors veterans. Nathan was asked, but once we explained that veterans were soldiers like his daddy, he started crying and moved to behind some of the parked cars so other people wouldn't see him cry. Not massive wailing or sobs, just a few tears and lots of snot. It took about 10 minutes for him to pull himself together. We had another episode on Sunday night. He was fine when he went upstairs to take a shower, but when he came down, he was in the withdrawn, "I-don't-want-to-talk-about-it" mood. Haven't had any problems since.

We've skyped almost every day with Eric. He's been getting up at 3:30 am his time, which makes it 7:30 p.m. our time. Nathan becomes a complete goofball when he's using the video cam, trying to turn on every video effect and moving the camera around. Which only freezes the video. Goober.

Eric looks good. He goes to bed around 8 his time. The worst hours for soldiers is after work when they have nothing to do and they're bored. The bitchy, petty stuff comes out then. He says there's only so much card games he can take, and he doesn't want to get caught up in stupid drama, so he'd rather go to bed early. At least with his early wake up time, he can talk to us, and then get some good solo rehearsal time in.

Now he just needs to come up with some Christmas rock and rock songs.

Videos

Okay, top video is LTC Marcos speaking which was played at the Battalion FRG meeting on Tuesday - which I didn't get to go to since that's Cub Scouts Night.

The bottom video is raw footage of the night Eric left, the plane ride, and a little bit of training when they got in Kuwait.

He's not in either of them, but it helps to see what he's doing.

ToA

This photo is off the Team Marne website. 3rd ID took over control of Multinational Forces North today.

Technologically challenged

So, I've just now realized that I have lost the admin rights to my own blog here. Apparently when I tried to add my yahoo email address to it, so I could log on from either address, I made a mistake. I can't change the layout or anything. And yet I can still post. Strange. I may have to cancel this one and start another.

I did manage to take these 2 photos of Nathan yesterday with my camera phone. For moving pics, they ain't bad. Halloween in the neighborhood was about a 180 from last years. I think it's because the primary ghoul decorators have moved elsewhere. Last year was almost like a block party. This year? Snoozefest.

Now, last year Nathan had a hissy fit when I made him put his costume on and dragged him around the block for trick or treating. For him, the best part was when we got home, I popped open the hatch on the SUV, and we sat in the back and passed out candy. And up until 15 minutes before trick or treating officially began on post, he was steadfast in not wanting to go trick or treating. Yet, surprise, surprise. He sees his friend next door all decked out, and he starts to change his mind. He goes out in the skeleton hoodie to hang with Max. Then he thinks Max and his family are gonna drive somewhere for trick or treating and that he couldn't go. The meltdown of '09 is on.

Turns out they didn't drive anywhere, they walked the block. I got him to simmer down and we both went, too. But there just wasn't hardly anyone giving out candy. so we drove over to Trunk Or Treat by the PX. He didn't really get much there, either. By the time we got back home, there was still 45 minutes of Halloween time left on post, but I guess the ghouls and ghosties had all gone elsewhere, so we didn't have very many takers. Fine by me - got to watch the OU/Kansas game. But now I have way more candy than either of us need. May have to take all the smarties to work and hope the pregnant soldiers eat them all.