Our guests are leaving today - . It’s been fun having them. In a way the timing is good though. Bean was up all night throwing up, and she’s been pretty sick all day. Her fever seems relatively high, but my thermometers aren’t working. So I have her doped up on Motrin and pepto bismol (which she hates) and she’s so ready to have her house back.
As if that isn’t enough, we finally hired someone to fix the wall in the living room, and we bought our hardwoods for the floor. They came last night and worked until after dark, but in the last hour we had a pretty bad storm and we noticed that there was water leaking in somewhere and puddling on the floor. In the wall where they just finished installing the drywall. This is the same bay window where another contractor virtually tore the whole thing down and re-built it. 2 months ago. To get rid of a leak. It seems that the roof on the bay window has leaky seams. I had 3 roofers look at it last summer and none of them could find the leak.
So the guy working on it now offered me 2 options - he can seal it with a special kind of tape and paint, or he can try to weld it (but that’s risky because he might set the house on fire - so he says)… Not the best way to instill my trust. They’ve torn down the new drywall, and once the fix the roof cap on the bay window they’ll redo the drywall. Then do the floor. And then, just maybe, we can use the room again. I’ll post pictures…
My company arrived last night at 9:30, just as I was putting the last sheet on the last air mattress. And let me just say, time with old friends is sweet indeed. And extra sweet this time, because I never got much of a chance to get to know their kids, and they are such great individuals. I’m absolutely loving having them here!
Today they went to the Georgia Aquarium with my hubby, and I’m taking time to stay home and rest a bit while the kids nap. Feeding them is like feeding an army, but they’re grateful and complimentary and polite and it’s so worth it to be a blessing to them in this difficult time of transition. See, the mom and dad are checking out the US and in a little over a week they’re going back to Moldova. They’ll leave 2 of their kids in the US - but they don’t know where or how. Stress. In fact, we may end up keeping them with us. We’ll see.
But, we are having a wonderful time of fellowship and building relationships. But with all this food being thrown around and a very short time for this family to accomplish what they want, I’ll be scarce around the blogosphere for a few more days. I assume it’ll get along just fine without me…
I’ve been drooling over these nice drawer organizers over at The Container Store. But the price tag is pretty outrageous, even on sale. 2 for $12? No way. It would take me nearly $50 to organize one child’s chest of drawers. Crazy.
So last week I measured the inside of my drawers and went to Home Depot and picked up a piece of particle board. Total price tag (tax included): $9.41. I had the guys in the lumber department cut it to the dimensions I measured, and voila! The lumber department manager chewed me out a bit later, because apparently they aren’t supposed to cut pieces less than 6″ on any side, and some of mine were narrower than that. (They could have just told me no and I’d have been fine with that, but honestly I was thankful to have it done.) So when it’s time to do the next chest of drawers I’ll just have a friend cut the rest to size. To do the one chest of drawers didn’t even use 1/3 of the particle board.
Here’s what I started with
Here’s the finished product
That’s my Works for Me Wednesday. Head over to Rocks in My Dryer for more ideas!
It turns out that knitting is like most other things in life - use the skill or lose it. It hasn’t been that incredibly long since I’ve picked up my needles, but I haven’t worked on anything other than a scarf or two since Little Man was born. So in a year and a half I haven’t really knit anything substantial.
Today I needed some down time after all my prep work for our loads of company coming, so I sat down with our Ginormous TV and a knitting project that I probably started when Bean was an infant. The sad thing is, I don’t even know what it was. But I figured I could pick up the stitch where I left off, and eventually either find the pattern or turn it into something else.
But… remembering the stitches and being able to make it pretty are two different things. You can actually see the line in the knitting where I left off and picked it back up today. The beginning of it looks nice and clean, with even pretty stitches. Where I picked up today looks loose, clumsy, and awfully crooked. So, it looks like it’s time to unravel and recycle the yarn. Probably into another scarf. :sigh:
As if Little Man’s seizure, medical appointments, home renovation, and starting a business isn’t enough for me… Some friends of ours from Moldova just immigrated to the US, are living about 500 miles away from us, but they’re driving down this week to see us. Honestly, it’s great news and I can’t wait to see them. But, they have their 4 teenagers coming with them. Now, I love their kids too. But that means 6 relatively full-grown people in my house. Cooking for them is a bit of an issue (I’ve never cooked for this many people before), but the real issue is furniture. We only have 4 chairs at the dining table. Our main seating area (the living room) is completely destroyed (as in no furniture, no wall, concrete slab floor with nails sticking up). Our family room seats 6 if we really squeeze in (not 10). And I’m in the process of borrowing sleeping bags and hopefully some twin mattresses from friends. We can squeeze the 4 teens into Little Man’s room and roll his crib over to Bean’s room - I think that will be the least disruptive. And I’m going on faith that I can actually fit 4 beds into one room. Here’s to hoping!
So if I’m a little scarce this week - please understand. I have to make my house a little less of a wreck for our guests, and figure out how on earth to serve food to 10 people for a whole week! Breakfast, lunch, and dinner… For a week. 10 people. But we’ll figure it out. Heck, Jesus fed 5,000. Surely he’ll give me the ability to feed a fraction of that.
World Relief is a refugee resettlement agency with offices in several major US cities. Here in the Atlanta office, they’ve done a lot of work resettling Somali Bantus, many of whom spent 12 years or so in a refugee camp to get here. Hubby used to be a case worker there, and I was a m0ther-to-mother volunteer, so we have a personal connection there.
PBS is airing a great movie about it called Rain in a Dry Land, and here’s the trailer. Unfortunately PBS is airing it at really odd times (like 1 AM), but I’ll be TIVO-ing it (on my monstrous TV).
It’s an eye-opener. You just might walk away wanting to volunteer your time to help refugees like these. If nothing else, you’ll have a deeper perspective of how blessed you truly are to be where you are in life.
I’ve noticed that over the last week Little Man (18 months old) has been growing in his ‘assertiveness.’ He has his own ideas about what should happen when, and how, and where. And if he doesn’t get his way a small temper tantrum ensues. I can call it small because I’ve seen big temper tantrums - thanks to Bean. (And, in fact, hers started at about 19 months, so I think it has a lot to do with the age).
But he’s also started playing one of Bean’s games. She likes to run up to people (and kids) and kind of crash into them. Now, Bean is by far the smallest in any group of kids her age. So generally what happens is she runs into another child from her playgroup, Sunday school, or preschool, and they look down and giggle at the little bundle of joy that just bounced off them and fell to the floor. Yes, even though she’s the one instigated and she’s the one with the momentum, she’s also the one who ends up on the floor. But Little Man is a bit different. He’s taken on the tactic with Bean, and he knocks her down. Even though they’re 19 months apart there’s only 4 pounds difference between them. So he knocks her over. And thinks it’s a game. We’re trying to nip that in the bud.
And he’s started hitting things. Usually just pieces of furniture or the floor - sometimes with his hand, sometimes with a toy. And throwing things. He does that a lot. He’s had a couple of near misses with people and kids. And we’re trying to nip that in the bud too. He’s not a fan of time-outs or having things taken away from him, so hopefully we won’t have to go beyond that for now.
But this morning, he hit Bean in the face with a toy car. So he lost the car. And he went to time out. And he a stern rebuke. I don’t know what to do about it - I never had this problem with Bean. She doesn’t have an assertive bone in her. So this is new territory for me. I hate that Bean is now afraid of him though. I suppose it’ll pass in time.
Hubby has been asking for a 42″ plasma for years. We’d kind of agreed that it was a want and not a need, and our money can be much better spent elsewhere.
Until. Our neighbor mentioned yesterday that he’s selling his 50″ DL-something or other Samsung 1080 who-knows-what. Nearly new, warranty included. And at a significant savings. So now it’s in our living room. It kind of dwarfs the room. Our old TV is next to it - it looks like ‘the baby’. Or a cell phone screen when compared to the gigantor TV.
Did we need it? No. But it’s kind of cool. And it makes a fun sound when you turn it off. And it’s taking up a large part of our living room. There’s some furniture rearranging to do. And I have a feeling that when the kids wake up in the morning all they’ll want to do all day is watch TV. Life-size.
Updated 6/22: Bean came downstairs this morning and said “wow! The baby TV has a daddy!” Right on, kiddo.
I don’t know about you, but when one of my kids is having a health issue in the middle of the night, I’m always hesitant to call the on-call doc and wake him up. Is this really a problem that necessitates waking up my doctor in the middle of the night? (Maybe I’m so hesitant because I got chewed out for calling one pediatrician at 9PM on a Friday when my newborn had breathing problems… Needless to say we have a new pediatrician now) So, how happy was I to find out that both my insurance provider and the local children’s hospital both have 24-hour nurse advice lines. I’ve used them countless times - both during the day to see if I need to take my child in to see the doc or just wait it out, and for emergencies at all hours of the night. It’s so nice to know that there’s someone out there whose job is to sit by the phone and answer parents’ health questions. They’ve been able to tell me if we need immediate medical attention, if I should wait it out till the morning, or what I should rush off to the pharmacy to pick up. They’re awesome!
For more Works for Me tips, head over to Shannon’s.
. It’s been fun having them. In a way the timing is good though. Bean was up all night throwing up, and she’s been pretty sick all day. Her fever seems relatively high, but my thermometers aren’t working. So I have her doped up on Motrin and pepto bismol (which she hates) and she’s so ready to have her house back.
I’ve been drooling over these nice drawer organizers over at The Container Store. But the price tag is pretty outrageous, even on sale. 2 for $12? No way. It would take me nearly $50 to organize one child’s chest of drawers. Crazy.
