This and that

Lydia has a new favorite thing around here: sensory "table".  I requisitioned this bin and filled it with some rice a couple of months ago.  It kinda disappeared while we were doing our whole living room renovation thing, but now it's back and Lydia LOVES it! She will stand there and play for at least 10 minutes--which is a miracle, because this girl is BUSY.  (She looks so old in this picture--I can't believe I no longer have a "baby".)

And of course, any time I am cooking ANYTHING, Lydia HAS to be up on the counter "helping" me.  If I don't automatically invite her, she grabs on to my apron and says, "cookies? cookies? pwees?  pwees?"  She thinks anytime the mixer is going, it must be cookies.  Actually, this time it was pumpkin brownies, but she absolutely HAD to help.

That girl is growing so fast ... *sigh*.  I cannot believe how many words she knows.  She will point out everything in a book, and most of the time she knows what they all are.  She knows several phrases that I can understand, but she still says complete sentences that I don't understand any part of.  We're also working on manners, which is really fun.  I just love being a mom and watching her learn and grow!

When things are lost

Yesterday Ben came home from a service project where he had been helping with parking for a special concert at church, and realized that he didn't know where his Kindle was.  He had taken his Kindle with him to help pass the time, but he never actually ended up using it.  The last place he thought he remembered it being, was on the back seat of the car.  We tore the car apart from top to bottom ... no Kindle.

We said a prayer and felt that we should drive the 30 minutes back to the church where he had been helping and see if we could find it.  Ben's parents happened to be over and they agreed to hold down the fort so I could go with Ben and help him.  After an hour and a half of searching, including driving halfway home only to receive a bit of inspiration which encouraged us to turn around and go back, we found the Kindle, smashed to bits, on the side of the road about 1/4 mile down from the church.  Ben had left the Kindle on top of the car and driven off to his assignment, not realizing at the time that the "thump" he heard on the trunk was the Kindle falling off.

Needles to say, I felt slightly sick carrying home the battered Kindle case, back cover, and battery.  We couldn't even find the main part of the Kindle.  As I sat in the car, mourning the loss of such an expensive and useful "toy", the Lord decided to teach me, I was reminded of something else I had lost a few weeks ago:

We were at a friends' house for a Halloween party 3 weeks ago, and unbeknownst to anyone, Lydia opened the front door (a lever handle, the only kind she can open), went outside, shut the door behind her, and ran off down the road.  Just at the moment of her escape, another one of the party guests who was just leaving saw Lydia, snagged her, and brought her back inside.  I had just started to look for her since it had been about a minute and a half since I had seen her.  Those ninety seconds that could have changed my life forever.  Instead, Heavenly Father sent an angel to protect my family.

In the case of the Kindle, there was no guardian angel.  We simply lost the Kindle, and it's gone.  But when things are lost, although it may be sad, they are only "things" and life will go on pretty much as it did before.  I certainly am grateful that even though I don't have a Kindle, I still have my beautiful daughter, my wonderful husband, a roof over our heads, and food on our table.  With Thanksgiving next week, I can't help but think this was an appropriate lesson for me.  This Thanksgiving, I am genuinely thankful.

I smell a __________

Yesterday I went down to the basement to talk to my husband and it smelled AWFUL down there.  I mean, it was REALLY bad.  It reminded me of the time when I was in college and I cleaned out the freezer then forgot to take out the trash ... Two days ago there had been a faint smell of something rancid, but it wasn't too bad (and Ben couldn't even smell it then ... MEN!) so I didn't worry too much about it.  But, yesterday, piewwwwiiee!!!  Even he agreed that it stunk.

But he still sat down there, studying in the stink ... Men are so weird.  Actually I believe his exact words about the smell were "swamp gas".  Right ...  Anway, I had remembered hearing a scrabbling noise in the chimney several days earlier, as if some critter had gotten itself stuck.  Ugh.  I bet you can guess where this is going.

I started searching high and low for the source of the smell.  I got the flashlight and looked in the crawl space ...   It's super creepy down there.  You could definitely stash several dead bodies in there and no one would ever find them.  Well, except for the smell, maybe.  But there was nothing there this time.

I stuck my nose in the bathroom ... nothing quite that offensive in there.

I went outside and sniffed around the chimney ... inconclusive.

Back inside, I sniffed at a hole in the wall between the 2 basement rooms ... nothing.

Then, I sniffed at the woodstove.  BINGO.

But surely there wouldn't be anything in the actual woodstove right?  It's probably stuck between the pipe and the chimney structure.  That would be just my luck.  I decide to open the woodstove anyway, just to be sure.

5 minutes later ...

I finally figure out how to open the darn thing.  Very slowly I opened the door, caught a glimpse of the inside and hurriedly shut it.  Yep, dead squirrel, curled up on the floor of the woodstove.  Ick, ick, ick, and blech.  I ran upstairs and outside, just to make sure I'm not smelling it any more, and took several gulps of fresh air. Ewwwwwwww!  I would have been a REALLY bad pioneer.

Five hours later my husband finally decides to take care of the squirrel.  FIVE HOURS.  Seriously?  His excuse ... "It's raining".  I even took a box, bags and gloves (and Lysol) downstairs for him.  Oh well, I guess he was the one that had to sit in that stinky room!  Which still had a residue of the smell this morning, by the way, and he complained when I opened the window.  "Too cold," he says.  "Too bad," I said!

Potty Awareness

Lately I've been working really hard on "Potty Awareness" with Lydia.  It's not potty training, per se, which I'm not convinced she's ready for, but I am constantly pointing out anything and everything related to going potty.  I am hoping this will make it so that she understands that the potty is not something to be afraid of, and something that is very normal for everyone to do.  I will put her on the potty sometimes (we have a fabulous toddler-sized toilet seat built in to the adult one) and she will sit there very happily and read books.  She has actually gone pee pee in the potty a couple of times on accident, but it wasn't very recent so it doesn't count for much.  I can tell she's starting to get the concept of the potty, though.  Whenever anyone around here has ... ahem ... gas (which is ... uh ...extremely rare) she proudly announces "poopy!" as soon as she hears the "wind".  Last week she was standing up in the bathtub and she points to herself and says "pee pee" and I look in time to see that she is peeing in the bathwater.  Then tonight after her bath, she was standing in our bedroom and I was doing something really quick before getting her dressed.  She shouts, "Poopy! Potty!" and I look at her really hard for a second trying to decide if she is wanting to sit on the potty or whether she was just saying words that she knows.  I had just decided it was probably a false alarm when she started peeing on my floor.  Lovely.  I scooped her up and put her on the potty, but she was already done.  I wiped the pee off her leg, tossed the tp in the toilet and she flushed the potty, waving "buh-bye!"   On the other hand ... maybe she is ready for a more serious attempt at potty training ...

A New Direction

Things have been ... interesting ... around here lately.  The most important news is that my husband no longer has a job.  We've known it was coming for a while, but we didn't know how soon until it actually happened.  The good news is that Ben has finally decided what he wants to be when he grow up!  His plan is to move into the Computer/IT industry beginning with getting his A+ certification.  He's been studying for the test for a couple of weeks now and he should be able to take the it before Christmas.  With his A+ certification, he can get a job doing tech support like "Geek Squad" or something similar to build up his skill base and gain some experience in the industry.  He's actually really excited about it, and we both feel really good about this new direction.  I think with his personality, this kind of a job will suit him pretty well.  He's such a nerd ...

It should be an adventure, anyway.  Of course, unemployment is no picnic, but we're very blessed to have no credit card debt, no car payments, and we've got some money in savings.  We could have done better with our food storage, but it is what it is.  Live and learn!  Of course, prayers are always appreciated.  We will need them!