Falling Apart and Catching Up

Here it is, the long winded play-by-play blog that you probably have NOT been waiting for but I feel like its necessary since I haven't posted in three weeks (which isn't that unusual, but usually its because nothing interesting has happened, this time things have been TOO interesting, or at least busy...).

Three weeks ago tomorrow, the beginning of it all:
We get the call that Jake's grandma had died early that morning. We're sad but had been expecting it for a day or two.

We walk out into our kitchen to the sound of "squish squish squish". We think, "our dishwasher leaked, what can we do? No time to deal with it now."

I begin to do laundry so I can pack up so we can head to Indiana for the funeral. It takes four hours to dry one load. Again, something is wrong, I don't know what, no time to fix it now...

We finish packing on Tuesday and then head out to do some planned Christmas shopping. Yes, we probably should have been fixing our floor and our dryer, but we had a BABYSITTER and you don't waste babysitters. So off we went went and bought NOTHING (except for a kitchen timer for myself that didn't work and had to be returned). As we're heading home our sitter calls- there is someone knocking on our door and ringing the bell repeatingly. Oh yes, it was the gas man. Our backyard neighbor had a fire and burned our gas meters and our fence. So he was coming to relight our pilot light. Definitly didn't have time to fix a fence...

So we leave for Indiana the next morning to be with family for Thanksgiving. The services were not until Friday but we thought it made more sense to avoid not traveling on the holiday. We were planning on having several Internatinal students over for Thanksgiving dinner (no pressure for me as the cook- they usually don't compare my turnkey and pumpkin pie to their mother's Thanksgiving meal!)and was sad to have to cancel that but thankfully other plans were made for all of them.

We arrive in Indiana were Jonah meets Jake's 6 male cousins, all between the ages of 17 and 23. Now, this happens to be his favorite age group for "big people friends" since his daddy with college students (of the same age). He had a blast! He also loved Jake's Uncle Collett who he called "Diet Coke" (Collett shared some with him).

After 5 days away, we returned home to not only "squish squish" but "squirt squirt". Jake spent the evening ripping up our two year old laminate flooring. It was NOT the dishwasher, but in fact the water line for our refrigerator. And due to the all of the damage from our country's recent hurricanes, our insurance company's adjusters are out of state. But someone finally got to us last week so hopefully we won't have to look at old, ugly (and now water damaged) linoleom for long!

Last Sunday Jake brought the water hose in the house and stuck it in the dryer duct. The water did not coming spraying out like it was suppose to. So he brought the hose back outside and attached a claw to the end of it (made from a coat hanger) and stuck it in the duct from the outside. He pulled out 2 HUGE lint balls. Dryer is fixed. One down, two to go.

During all of the maddness Jonah has picked up two new phrases- "One more time" (such as "blow my nose one more time" ) and "help me up" (used when he definitly does not help up).

He also has learned how to climb the play area at the mall! This is a major accomplishment in todler hood and I am so proud! The trick was is to use your toes. Steep, slick fake trees and bridges are impossible to climb if you don't!

He also has learned to open doors now and therefore developed a new habit of coming into our room whenever he wakes up instead of playing quietly in his bed for a hour or so. We are not so proud of this one.

And lastly, we rode the bus again last week (and Ninny got to come this time) and Jonah got to sit in the drivers seat while the bus was at the bus station! I hope that the excitement stops there for a few days...