Tuesday, September 27, 2011

The Stunt Man

As his little shirt mentions below (I do all my own stunts), we are no longer doing stunts together. It is all him.

He has become very successful at some of his stunt man moves:

Sliding on his own,



Pushing and riding the merry-go-round (I didn't even think those things still existed!)



And working his little signing magic by asking for whatever his heart desires. (Imagine "mamama", his sign for "help please" and pointing to whatever object his deems necessary at the moment, and a sweet puppy smile.) It's very hard to resist, even though my phone is nearly broken from such magical plees.

Other stunts are less successful:

His signing magic and tantrums have yet to get him a pair of scissors, knives, or a hot pan (he is OBSESSED with helping me cook, especially at very dangerous moments). I thankfully can withstand such moves.

His run and trip move is not harmful 96.8% of the time, but every now and then we get some blood--like the blood that came pouring from his mouth last week on a walk/toddler run. We were of course as prepared as a cub scout, with all of an old receipt and a water bottle to clean him up with. Sick, yet phenomenal that the mouth can stop bleeding so quickly. (He was back to playing within 3 min.)

The most unsuccessful is usually the climb and fall move. He is capable of getting off most chairs by himself, but not when he is in tantrum mode. He recently produced a bruise with this move, I wish I had taken a picture of. Imagine falling 2 feet from a chair, head first onto the bottom bar of a high chair similar to the one pictured below. Seeing that Jackson was unsupervised, it was difficult to figure out what happened, until we saw a 2" bruise exactly the same size as that bottom bar appear across his forehead. Ouch. We've learned it's nearly impossible to ice said bruises for more than one second at a time. So you just kind of... let them heal and hope he learns something?


Learning to be more careful hasn't quite set in yet. After talking to moms of other boys, it probably won't for a while. We just hope for little to no permanent damage from his stunts unless it includes learning to be more careful.


Thankfully we don't think he'll take stunting on as a profession, as the quiet, calm, calculator still holds all plenty of charm for this little man. Whew!


Wednesday, September 21, 2011

A Messy House Guest

Remember me mentioning Lee and the mess she was creating in our backyard?

Ya, TS Lee (Tropical Storm). She liked the backyard so much, she decided to move into the basement. Why not? There's a bathroom, bed and plenty of room right?

Unfortunately, Lee wasn't the best of house guests. She was kind of a strong tropical storm. Not only did she bring in 10 inches of water , but also thought we wouldn't be needing hot water or the internet while she was around. In fact, internet? It's always healthy to go on one of those diets, so why not go a good week.

Here's a bit of a recap from her stay:

Thursday morning--3 in. by the door. Grateful I was nesting the previous night and just for the heck of it cleaned up the cereal boxes, card games, and laundry.



By 4 pm, most of water was pumped out (straight into the backyard--which was probably not a good idea)...

Apparently Lee didn't feel too good about that, so she decided to show how badly she wanted to spend the night. It started pouring around then, and didn't stop until Friday evening.

By 9 pm we were pushing 6 inches, and when I went to bed at 1 am, 10 inches were in the basement with 3 sump pumps pumping it straight out to the street.



Thankfully our landlord and her husband were up for the party and came to help out into the wee morning hours.

Oh my gross. I still get heebie geebies from the dried rain on my legs after sloshing around in that stuff for so long.

The biggest culprit was probably the city pipe hooked up to our drain on the back steps.

Lee didn't have many places to go, so she came pouring in.



Thankfully, the amazing city workers must have worked all night long because miraculously, everything was drained by 6:30 am when I got up.

Heaven bless that woman for finally leaving!

And heaven surely showed us the many things for which we were grateful:
1. We don't own the house! (YAY, we don't have to permanently fix the problem ourselves)
2. All ruined furniture in the basement was free
3. It was room temperature outside (allowing us to easily leave the windows and doors open for ventilation)
4. We have an amazing network of church comrades who were so willing to help and found extra sump pumps when Home Depot was completely sold out
5. After two weeks of fans and a dehumidifier, everything is dry!!!


And Jackson??

He thought the whole thing was great fun, until I wouldn't let him play with our house guest, which caused sore tantrums for what felt like days.

He spent many hours trying to prove he was very capable of climbing to safety if need be. Even ending up on the dining room table to prove it. I seriously thought of letting him puddle jump in the basement, but then I thought of his love of bubble blowing, and decided muddy drain water was not the best place for him to be.




So we survived the upstairs quarantine and were ever so grateful when the rains totally subsided and we could go back to doing this:



Thanks for leaving Lee. Hopefully we won't be seeing you again.

Wednesday, September 7, 2011

More.... Rain

For labor day we were planning to do this:



Thankfully, we checked the weather 10 hours before we left and discovered Lee. Conspicuously causing issues in Louisiana, she/he was overarching into TN, and pretty much most other places in our backyard vicinity.



In fact our back yard currently looks like this:





So, we canceled those plans and found the one place within reasonable driving distance that wasn't supposed to be affected by the Lee-ster. At least until Tuesday when we were driving home.

Atlantic City, NJ



Not exactly on our list of places to visit, (it's the Vegas of the East, and people generally come for the Vegas part). However, we got a fabulous deal on a 2 bedroom condo, and it wasn't suppose to rain until Tuesday. PLUS free beaches (a HUGE bargain in NJ).

How did it go?
We missed the traffic by going on Labor day and leaving Tuesday, and found the beach empty with the water pleasantly warmer than the ice I grew up with.

And Jackson?




Hmm.. Water,





Buckets,


Birds,



And sand.






Thanks Lee for sending our 1 year old to toddler heaven!

And again, for the Grandma who loves to see some movement, here's a new video link:
Jackson at the Beach