genesis 43

quick! there has been a brief reprieve in my pregnancy doomsday malaise so i am going to try to give you a blog post until it strikes again. miraculously judah didn't make a peep from 6:45 pm last night until 7 am today. this is miraculous because i was home alone with him while jesse went camping with some youth boys (on the night of the ncaa championship, whaaaa???). i put him (judah) down and put my earplugs in, determined to not jump at every tiny peep. well, at 7 this morning i hear him through 2 doors, earplugs and the fog of sleep in his room, not crying, but jabbering like a fool, "DA DA DA DA DA DA." i wanted to leave the little rapscallion in there until he started asking for mama. so yeah, it's a good day so far. p.s. these pictures aren't cute with rounded edges because, shit takes time, y'all, and i don't know how much i have.

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one of my BFFs, natalie, lives in england and does campus ministry for jesus. she also happens to have a son that is 2 days younger than judah (though gestationally 2 weeks older). they are best friends...they have no choice in the matter. these little guys have hung out amazingly 5 times (since benj lives in england!) in their little 10 month lives. we call them the 2 little tribesmen because judah and benjamin are the names of 2 of the 12 tribes of isreal/sons of jacob. we joke that we will eventually assemble the entire chosen people of god between the two of our uteruses. i think right now we have dibs on naphtali and natalie and robert have called gad and zebulun as theirs. oh, old testament funsies.

10 month homies reunited and it feels so good!

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and here is ye olde flashback for comparison's sake:

5 weeks...hahahahahahaha. please note how teensie benj was

12 weeks...hello, prime minister chamberlain! benj bulked up in the intervening months and hasn't looked back. not matching outfits, but fully coordinating color palettes.

5 months old at becky's wedding. we were too lazy to get pics before they passed out


at christmas break, about 6.5 months old. benj had mastered crawling already so he kindly gave his brother a ride. braden thinks it's a riot. and 'twas because judah kept tapping on benj's little head.



and back to the present. utterly precious big boys. this was judah's turn to caress benj's foot.


and now it's benjamin's turn!

judah's turn again!

and after about 5 seconds it was time to put them in their matching outfits. they actually have 3 sets of matchies thanks to natalie's AMAZING gift-giving skills (i suck). here, the tribesmen sport baby threadless original onesies. this design is called "progeny" and features a mama organ, daddy guitar and baby keytar...get it? so cheeky, those threadless folks.

benj says, "what up, G?"

time for tapas! sweet potato puffs were a huge hit for judah who had never had them. benj had never had cheerios so we shared our stash in return and he went ballistic over them.

this kills me. "OMG these are sooooooo good, don't you think?"

piggies at the trough!

their faces are OOC here and totally crack me up. who even knows what we were doing to try to get smiles?

natalie attempts to read judah the fireman book before he can rip it out of her hands. meanwhile...

...benj has spotted an errant cheerio under our 8 inch tall coffee table shelf and has gone in on a rescue mission

SUCCESS!

enjoying the afterglow. "i am stuck, but that was sooooo worth it"

two homies at the bar. this will play out many times in decades to come. possibly not in matching outfits and matching cups...but who knows? please appreciate that i put judah's blender toy up on the table for added bar effect

just a little chaser

pilates break!

"maybe by the combined power of our little thigh rolls, we can take down this damn gate and finally indulge in the bounty that is fireplace rocks in our mouths!"

"um, can we help you?" "move along. nothing to see here"

"see ya next time, bff!"

these little dudes are unreal. it is beyond fun to see them interact and play and just as fun to watch them ignore each other or get in baby drama. judah is the youngest kid in his preschool class by a few months, so this was awesome to see him play with a best friend that is identical in age. surprisingly, even though judah is with kids all day, he was way more of a baby about sharing and getting bumped than benj, who hangs around with adoring college kids daily and doesn't go to preschool. i am gonna blame it on a bad nap that day and it possibly being hard for him to all of a sudden have another baby up in "his" space.

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it's so weird to be starting that phase of watching your kid get upset by one of his friends knocking him down accidentally or taking a toy from him and trying to iron it out at the parental level (where it's probably way more traumatic and delicate). luckily nat is a bestie, so that makes it no worries. even still, they seemed to have a lot of fun playing near and on top of one another...but it was defintely way more fun for me and nat to remember conversations that happened seemingly all of 3 minutes ago when we had tiny apple-sized fetuses and could hardly even imagine holding babies of our own, much less seeing them crawl and climb and play together. ahhhh, the circle of life!

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if god happens to call the braden fam home from england we are hoping they will live nearby so that this little tribal bromance will continue forever and ever. nat and i like to envision cooperative babysitting, co-bday parties, tiniest tee-ball and other dorky mommy dreams.

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time's up. gotta go barf. see ya never.