Joyful Journey

Some days I can hardly believe how much joy Jackson and I experience. I love watching him run--as his little feet kick out to the side, and his arms find inefficient positions to tag along with his feet. The acquisition of words is especially joyful as he figures out how to say the right consonant at the correct time (almost all words sounding like ba and da). He finds incredible joy in practicing his jumps, pointing out all the body parts he knows and reading his favorite books. The other day, on the way home from the park, both of us found great pleasure in just sitting on the side of the road eating an apple together. Total Joy.

Of course there are other days where the journey may seem more... frustrating. With many unplanned bumps that detract a bit from the joy.

On Tuesday, after making waffles together, Jackson managed to get the cooking oil into the living room, and unscrew the top. I found it 5 hours later, and was grateful he did not purposefully dump the oil out. The bottle was merely knocked over, with half of its contents gone. Lovely.

After realizing my futile attempts to wipe it up were only making oily foot prints from the kitchen and back, I googled home remedies for the oil spill. It's hard to believe how much comfort I felt after reading accounts of victims of other toddler oil spills.

Most of the advice said to put some sort of liquid sucking stuff on top, let it sit and vacuum it up. My choices seemed to be: kitty litter, paper towels or baking soda. Since baking soda is all of 50 cents a box, I went with that one. The instructions said to leave it for 24 hours. So I dutifully placed the couch over the spill spot and left it for a while.

On Wed I began the cleanup excavation. I found vacuums don't handle oily baking soda very well, making for a very arduous cleaning project (as I now had a vacuum and a carpet to clean). Two hours after starting, I decided to move all the furniture, and take the carpet (which is just a gigantic rug) to the basement--to see if a lot of hot water in the laundry sink might do a better job.

Like the gulf oil spill, it will take time to find out the actual damage to the rug. Hot water seemed to help, but it is really too soon to tell for sure.

But, it is not too soon to realize how enjoyable it was watching Jackson discover all the new corners of the living room that popped up with all the furniture moved. He was unusually pleasant and independent during the entire cleanup process. AND, our Provo plaid couch is quite festive without the oily couch cover.



Additionally, I found the floors don't look as horrendous as I imagined without the carpet. In fact, the oil spot (partway under the couch), actually makes the wood floors look good! Maybe we'll have a larger scale oil spill and pull up more of the rugs.