Painting, Pipes, and Pancakes.

So, you know you're a homeowner when… 

...your son climbs up the shelves in the closet, rips them out of the wall, and you spend your weekend replacing the shelves. Glorious. But, I didn't like the old shelves anyway, and now we get a trial run at installing shelves so we can do a better job in our bedroom closet. P.S. The instructions on the drywall toggles LIE. I was irritated enough that I went to Home Depot's website and wrote a review. GRR.

Sanding and getting ready to paint. 

Mr. Graff painting our hall closet. (If you look carefully, you can see Caleb in his baby swing.)

Rae needed to paint because Daddy was painting. 

Always look for the silver lining. 

Speaking of silver lining… I nearly had a heart attack this week. Metaphorical heart attack, that is. Rae came out and told me that there was water in the kitchen. I stomped into the kitchen, sure that Rae had dumped his cup of water on the floor. I mopped it up, griping at Rae. Then I looked down, noticed more water, griped some more, mopped some more up. 

Then I noticed that the water was still coming out. 

And out. 

And out. 

And out. 

Water was flooding into my kitchen. Enter Panic. What if all this water is seeping down from the upstairs neighbor because of the water dumped on their home during the fire? Water damage. Panic. Panic. Panic. 

The condo association sends out a contractor. He looks at it, goes upstairs, comes back, goes back upstairs. He shuts off the main water in my home. Meanwhile, the flood has gone under my fridge, under my washer and dryer and over to the wall next to my bedroom. And I have a crying baby. Panic. Panic. Panic. 

Mr. Graff comes home. He starts bailing out our kitchen with a dust pan and a bucket. Then towels. We go through all our towels.

(Rae, of course, loved running through the water) 

Howard, the contractor, comes back and goes to our water heater closet and shuts off another valve. It the valve that runs to the neighbors back hose. Apparently when the condos were built, they didn't do much in the way of separating the water lines because the condo association pays for the water, not the individual residents. So we have our upstairs neighbor's cut off valve for their outdoor hose. 

Which is fine. Unless, of course, your neighbor had a fire, their house is uninhabitable, so they turned off their heat and it is the middle of winter. So the pipes froze and then… burst.  

The water stopped flooding after Howard shut off the valve. I got to see the back of my washer/dryer for the first time. And Amra made us dinner that night. 

Silver lining? We don't have water damage and get to stay in our house. 

More silver lining? Rae told me there was a problem and he didn't cause it. I apologized for griping at him. 

 Mr. Graff finally got a chance to use his Ebleskiver pan! (He's used it before, but it's been a while.)  We made pancakes, bacon, and ebleskiver's for dinner. Here are the ebleskivers and said pan: 

Mr. Graff used bamboo skewers to flip the batter around until it cooks into nice round balls. The batter is basically pancake batter with a little extra yummy like apples or chocolate or cheese in the middle. Delicious. 

Rae got to the table before we finished setting it and helped himself to sprinkles and bacon. 

Here's what my other littles were up to… 

Joe has been keeping me up at night. Like, screaming in pain for at least two hours, then falling into a restless sleep for an hour and a half and then waking up for the day. It has been exhausting, and to be honest, I haven't expected much of myself this week. I've let Rae sit in front of the T.V. for more hours than I care to admit to just so I could get the basics done and not become a zombie. Yikes. 

[Rae tells me he likes to watch "dirty things" on the computer. He's talking about Dirty Jobs from Discovery channel.  We have a couple collections of it and like to watch it together. Also, I've noticed a striking similarity in personalities between the host Mike Rowe and Rae.]

On the other hand, after nearly a week of this, I'm getting better at calming Joe down and getting him back to sleep. Last night, it only took me an hour. And I think his ear drum burst so at least now it is draining and less painful. Also, his cyst in his mouth is growing and he chews on it and drools more. 

The up side is that the insurance approved his CT scan, so we get to schedule that and then talk to the doctor and then have surgery to remove the cyst and take another look at his ears. His doctor has now called his cyst a "ranula", and when I did research on it this week, there are three ways to treat it: remove it, open it so it drains to the mouth, or remove it and the salivary gland that it is connected to. We've done the first option twice, and it has grown back twice. So, this time, he will have the third option done---the cyst will be removed along with the gland. The Cochrane library says that the third option has a 0% recurrence rate for that procedure, where the other two have a 25%, and 38% recurrence rates. 

So, cross our fingers, we will be done with this cyst and maybe someday Joe will want to eat. 

After Nursery today at church, I picked Joe up and he lunged forward, reaching for his teachers. So sweet. I'm glad that he likes his teachers. 

Caleb is pretty much perfect. He's beautiful and he sleeps well at night. You can forgive him for anything because he sleeps so well. 

He's lately been trying to sit up. He'll pull his abs in and crunch forward when we try to feed him. He'll also pull his abs in an crunch forward when he is lying on his back, which makes him roll to his side. He then relaxes his abs and rolls back onto his back and repeats this until he has wound up rotating in a circle. So far, it takes him about ten minutes for him to do a 270 degree turn. 

I can also forgive him for anything because he is generally happy. He coos and smiles big. He makes all kinds of sounds that I haven't heard from Joe. He loves to babble. 

And those are my stories. We painted. We burst pipes. We ate pancakes. We're zombies and scheduling things for Joe. We love the baby. 

The end. 

Fire, Bad!

When Rae was a few weeks old, we had an earthquake. I was napping with him on the air mattress and it felt like the wall jumped out and hit me. I was so tired, I just went back to sleep. (As it turned out, the only damage in our house was a couple of pictures that fell down.)

A few days ago, the wall jumped out and hit me again, only this time it was an explosion… in my neighbor's house. 

It was almost bedtime for my boys. Joe and Rae were bathed and changed into pajamas. We were watching a movie on the couch. I think Caleb was asleep in the swing. We heard a boom and felt the whole building jump (we live in a townhouse). 

A few minutes later, there's banging on my door and someone yelling, "Evacuate!". I get the boys in coats and rush outside with Caleb and hand him to the first neighbor I see. I run inside to grad Joe and hold Rae's hand. I throw the bag of mittens and gloves onto the sidewalk. 

I call Mr. Graff. "There's a fire. You need to get home now." 

I call my brother-in-law. "There's a fire. Can we stay at your house?" 

"Whose baby is this?" my neighbor holding Caleb asks forlornly. His house is the one on fire and he's hysterical. He hands me Caleb and goes to find his wife, who is in such shock, she's not talking. Her skin is peeling---like how it peels a few days after a really bad sunburn. I hand him my phone when he asks to borrow one. "Whose phone is this?" he asks. 

Another lady offers to let the kids sit in her car. It's cold outside. I'm trying to get us as far away from the scene as possible. Fire trucks choke the entrances and exits. We walk a block north and Joel picks us up. He starts talking, but I'm only registering every other word. We're safe. We're going somewhere safe. 

I need to know what happened. I head out to get diapers and formula for Caleb. We have emergency medical supplies for Joe in the van, so I feel okay about getting his needs met. Rae just needs to sleep. We all need to sleep. 

The lieutenant walks me through my home. No water damage. No smoke smell. He tells me that water can take awhile to seep down through the houses, so it is best to stay away instead of having the roof collapse while we are sleeping. 

Mr. Graff checks the house in the morning. No water damage. We go back home and watch the construction workers board up our neighbors' houses. Rae presses his face to the front window. I try to take a shower, but every noise I hear, I'm afraid that Rae is running outside to see what is going on. 

The first picture here is from our backyard. The back wall of the neighbor's house is gone. You can see the chimney of the fireplace.

From the front yard, all you can see is a little of the siding gone. Firefighters cut holes in the roof to help put out the fire. The roof, the siding the back are all destroyed. 

The fireplace was across the wall from my upstairs neighbor's kids room. They were both in that room when it happened. I'm not sure they want to go back. The next day, the kids' roof had collapsed from water. The upstairs of their town home is a disaster. 

We watched the construction workers put up plywood. They equip a ladder with a motorized pulley that shoots the plywood upwards. Spiffy, because it was windy and the plywood would become a kite if you tried carrying it up that ladder. Plywood kite = no bueno. My house is the one with the red garland on the front railing. 

Rae can tell you all about the "Fire trucks, water, whoosh!, and going to Uncle Joel's house". The condo association is going to send someone to inspect our house to see if there is water damage. 

Life in the big city. 

And on a better note, here's more about my littles: 

Here is Rae taking a nap in his "tunnel". 

Rae likes playing big brother, especially having his picture taken with Caleb. Caleb likes Rae and particularly Joe. 

Joe, for his part, has finally accepted Caleb into his tribe. He's patting Caleb and touching his face. He  looks for Caleb's binky when he cries. He rubs Caleb's belly. Here he is stuffing Caleb's binky toward his face. 

Brotherly love. 

This is Rae with his backward-facing pants. I can't convince him that the zipper goes in front because he needs his "pockets" for his pencils and "gun". "How are you going to go potty if the zipper is in the back?" I ask. "I just PULL really hard!"

The logic on that boy. 

He wanted water, so he asked me to get it for him. "You have two hands," he tells me. 

I put away the pliers he's stolen from the tool bucket. "It's a little tool!" Meaning, he's little, so little tools are for him. 

When he doesn't want to do something, he'll say, "NO. NOT." And when he does, "I can help." Or, "I got this." If we say no, he says, "but I LIKE caffeine" or whatever it is we're talking about.  (That one was Grandma's soda.)

On the way to church (which was cancelled), Rae was singing along to "Follow the Prophet". It made my heart happy. He's at a fun age. 

A little about my Littles

Caleb is adorable. Pull on my heartstrings, adorable. Caleb makes a sound that is a cross between a trill and a "raspberry". After diaper changes, we work on helping Caleb learn to roll and have a little tummy time. He's my first kid that is willing to do it! He seems to get excited when we practice rolling and tries to use his little tummy muscles to roll over. When we read books to Caleb, his eyes get real big and he seems so intent on the pictures.

He sleeps like a champ. We swaddle him---which he doesn't like for a few minutes---then he is out hard for seven to nine hours. When he does wake up in the middle of the night, he's still so tired that he just eats and drifts off again. Amazing. When he's awake, he's interested in faces and people and prefers his brothers. Joe likes touching him and Rae likes doing things for him (like making his bottle... too much formula for the water he added, but he was so proud of himself).

Joe is walking and has been for a bit over a month and a half. He's unsteady, mostly because his ankles are still so weak, but he keeps working on it and getting better. We are going to have surgery again soon. His cyst alongside his tongue keeps growing back, so this time he's going to have the salivary gland completely removed, too. I just hope that we don't have to stay inpatient. I'd rather just take him home. We'll see.

Joe has started "head banging" when he gets frustrated. He's not really been one for tantrums. If he does get mad, it only lasts a little while. The head banging is harder to deal with.

Joe loves the book, Trains Go by Steve Light, especially the "speed train goes WHOOOOSHHHHHH". Joe runs his finger along the word "WHOOOOOSHHHHH" and I make the sound effect. He also is digging That's Not My Dinosaur, particularly the front cover, which says, "That's not my dinosaur, his body is too squashy."

The physical therapist made Joe do wheelbarrows, and Joe laughed and giggled and kept trying to do it. She always comments that most kids don't like being pushed to do things, but other than rolling, Joe has loved working hard and learning new things.

The best thing about Joe recently has been putting him to bed! We've been working with him on helping him stay in bed and sleep. I think we finally have hit a point where Joe understands that when we put him in bed and tuck him in, it is time to sleep. This makes naptime and bedtime so much nicer because if Joe sleeps, Rae follows suit more easily.

This is his "birthday cake". It's cheese,
with scissors and stickers.

Rae. His pretend play has increased exponentially. He'll have long conversations on a pretend phone. He pretends it is raining inside. He pretends one object is another, etc. etc. I love this new language explosion because it's getting easier to ask Rae to do what I want him to do. I usually have to repeat the explanation three or four times, but he is starting to understand. And if an explanation is not enough to deter him, changing the subject can usually distract Rae out of whatever he was trying to do. I still have to resort to more Draconian measures like time outs or taking the object (like the tablet or umbrella) up out of reach, but it seems to be less frequent and less intense.

Mr. Graff was talking to me about going to the "place of books", so that Rae would not hear "library" and get all excited about going. But, sure enough, "place of books" was enough. "LIBRARY! I go put my shoes on," he says.

Rae's going through an interesting building phase. He takes the couch cushions, various stools, buckets and milk crates and makes tunnels, bridges, and towers. He loves digging in the backyard. He likes getting attention for helping Caleb---bringing Caleb his binky, a blanket, or reading a story to him. "He's a good little boy, Mom" Rae will tell me. "He's beautiful. Mom, you're beautiful." Then he will snuggle close for some extra loves. I'll tell him I love him "forever and ever" and he'll respond, "eber and eber" which melts my heart.

Reading to Caleb. 

I like that Rae loves his family. He always asking where everyone is. "Where's Squid go? Where's Uncle Tony? Where's Grandma? Where's Amra?" And on and on… down to Sparta. I've even heard Bruiser on the list.

And there's a little about my Littles!

My, What a Lovely… Caboose.

We went to the B&O railway museum in Baltimore, and I think the best part was… the caboose. There was, of course, lovely model trains, a telegraph, the stationer's quarters, and a giant lego train which you could push buttons and make things happen. 

But my favorite part was the caboose. 

It was frigid outside and a bit cramped inside for all eleven of us, but fun, too. The kids climbed and bounced around in a relatively safe, contained space. We must have played in there for half an hour. Wahoo.