Work to Do, Ere the Sun Goes Down

Mr. Graff used to work at BYU Groundskeeping. True story. When we were engaged, he drove around on a tractor repairing sprinklers. One day, I got to ride around with him on his tractor, meet his boss, meet the crew. I loved it. Mr. Graff misses his tractor. 

I think his tractor's sexy. 

Ah well… we've moved away and Mr. Graff's gotten a big-people-career-like job. 

Power drills are nice, too. 

We've spent the better part of a week taking down our old closet hardware, patching, priming, painting, and putting new closet hardware back in. And like any good home improvement project, we ran into hiccups (directions, you need to read those?) (a random metal box where we wanted to drill) and other such stuff. It could be a metaphor for life, but the ending would be: WHO CARES ABOUT PERFECTION; JUST GET THE CLOSET BACK TOGETHER. 

The end. 

It's back together. And now I want to do laundry. 

Because now I have some place to put it. 

We're all about adventures here at the Graff house. 

Adventures in eating: 

I let Caleb teethe on my apple. I think there was a time when other people's spit bothered me---and maybe it still does, but my own kids' spit? Not at all. I am routinely covered in so much of their bodily fluids (and not so fluids) that spit seems … tame. Normal. A non-issue. Yeah, I finished eating that apple after Caleb chewed on it. 

I also gave Caleb some Thin Mints. He loved these and kept begging for more, only to be given ranch or falafel. He felt a little cheated after the gloriousness of the Thin Mint. 

And we fed falafel to our niece. 

She loved it, particularly the ranch… licked that stuff off first. 

I know why the only pictures of her are when she is eating. That's the only time she stays still enough to take a picture! 

Which is a lot like Rae, except when he gets stuck… in Caleb's walker. 

"Mom, don't take a picture!" he told me. 

Of course I took it anyway. 

Some things you just gotta record for posterity. 

More adventures at the library. 

Adventures planting flowers. 

 And, adventures taking apart our cabinet doors and getting them set up to paint. 

We used child labor to get the hardware off the doors. 

Here he's taking off door handles. 

I like the tongue-sticking-out thing. 

And here he's taking off hinges. 

He was pretty quick about this. I turned around and four door handles were already done. 

Maybe I should be concerned... 

The cabinets are a little intense on the eyes without doors to hide our stuff, but I really like open shelving and the kids are not into the things as much as I thought they might be. Hallelujah! 

I put screw hooks into two 2x4s and laid them across two ladders. Then I put eye screws into the blind side of the cabinets doors. (The blind side is the edge that no one sees.) And put the doors on the 2x4s like a card file. Most people when painting kitchen cabinet doors use a garage and lay all of the doors out flat. They take a week painting one side and then another week painting the other side. We have no garage and about 20 doors and I want to get it done in a week, so the eye screw system will hopefully work. 

I plan on painting and reinstalling them next week. 

Yeehaw. Party at my house. Whoop--whoop! 

And now for some cuteness: 

He's pushing up with extended arms now! And he's figuring out how to roll from his tummy to his back. Woohoo!

And now for some quirk-i-ness: 

Joe has loved my shoes for forever. Now, I catch him walking around sporting them. And most recently, I've watched him line the up like this: 

It's quirky. And I'm hoping this is not a marker for autism. 

We had a handyman come and install our countertops recently and he does fundraising for autism. He took a particular liking to Joe and asked me if he had autism. Joe's super social, so I don't think so, but what do I know? 

And lastly for some seriousness: 

I plowed over a stop sign. 

Let's back up. Joe has not slept well for a couple weeks. Then Rae has not slept well for the last four or five nights. And of course, Caleb's sleep has been weird, too. Which means, no one has slept much. It turns out that three hours of sleep is a lot like seven, ...except I have to keep moving or I'd fall asleep. 

…Or run over a stop sign.  

Luckily, all I did was bend our license plate and minorly dent the bumper. Luckily. Oh, so luckily. 

I didn't expect the cars in front of me to be stopped so far back from the light. I was watching the road, not fiddling with my phone or the radio. Not eating or digging in my purse. But, I just didn't see it. I didn't see it. I was looking at the road, but I didn't see it. And by the time I did, I knew that I couldn't brake fast enough without slamming into the back of the little white car ahead of me. 

So, I swerved. Not into pedestrians. Not into a car heading for that particular stop sign. Just went over a curb, left some skid marks and took out the stop sign like it was nothing. 

No one was hurt. And the damage was minor. 

And, I don't even have to pay to replace the stop sign. 

Can we say grace? 

It really should not have gone down like that. Just like my home really should have had damage from the fire in February. Or it really should have had damage from the burst pipe. 

Sometimes I feel acutely the words, "…their bounds are set, they cannot pass. Thy days are known, and thy years shall not be numbered less.." (D&C 122:9) I'm alive! I didn't hurt anyone and hardly hurt anything. And it really could have been different. In a blink of an eye. 

I feel that each day is a testimony that the Lord wants me here, that's it's not my time yet. My work is not yet finished. 

And I've got a lot of work to do. 

(Someone put my stop sign back up. The dent is where my bumper hit it. You can vaguely see the skid marks.) 

A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words.

This is me and Caleb minutes after he was born. 

I love this picture because of how I felt when it was taken. Amazed. Elated. Happy. Lately, I've been pondering on my gratitude for Caleb. He's my little love note from God. A reassurance that everything is okay, I'm in His hands. He is aware of me. 

Caleb chirps and sings and talks. 

He sprouts teeth (two, now!). 

He needs to be up and doing (such a Graff). 

He laughs at discovering how the newspaper crinkles. 

He love his brothers. 

He is excited about new experiences. 

He's expressive and happy. 

I'm grateful for my tender mercy! 

The Battle of the Exploding Cysts

One of the reasons that we feel Joe hasn't started eating yet is exploding cysts. 

He's had a cyst under his tongue since his Tongue-Lip Adhesion when he was two weeks old. It grows, then explodes, then grows back. Sometimes it grows, it gets removed surgically, and then grows back. That's a bummer. 

This time instead of just taking out the exploding cyst, the surgeon also removed his salivary gland that was making all the cysts. No gland, no cysts. 

And, because it is Joe, this took four hours instead of two. Which left an anxious momma watching this screen (Joe is the "OR In" yellow line): 

Turns out that one salivary gland was all mixed up with another salivary gland and the surgeon had to tease the good one out and reposition it while getting rid of the bad one. It took awhile. The floor of Joe's mouth is rather weak, it just doesn't have muscle tone. 

Joe has hypotonia---he didn't have enough strength to walk until after his second birthday. His ankles are still super weak and he trips over himself and has a difficult time negotiating uneven surfaces. Although muscle gets stronger the more you use it, with hypotonia, it takes way, way, way more effort to get even slight results. 

So, the muscle in his mouth was wonky, and there was so much scar tissue from previous surgeries that everything looks funny in there anyway, which means that surgery took awhile longer than anticipated. The surgeon came out and explained what happened, while drawing diagrams for me. I like surgeons.  They get things done. 

We had to stay the night, instead of going home. Joe had oxygen blowing in his face. 

And once he woke up, he only wanted to sleep on me. 

The next morning, as soon as I took off Joe's blue hospital gown and put on his pants, he knew that meant he was going home. He shoved himself down onto the floor, and with only pants and one sock went out the door to tell all the nurses that he was going home. 

The first thing he did when we walked through the door was to go talk to Caleb. 

This battle is done, and the outcome looks good, but the war rages on. 

Holy Home Repair, Batman!

We took down our pictures and wall hangings yesterday and it's finally sinking in. 

We're moving. 

It just doesn't look like our house anymore. 

Which is a good thing, because some things really needed to go--- like our vintage yellow 70s linoleum and faux wood formica countertops. 

The bottom of the countertop had "Meadowcroft Lot--144" written on the bottom of it from WHEN IT WAS BUILT. Meadowcroft is our condo association and Lot 144 is our lot number. 

We hired a handyman to rip out the counters, sink, faucet, and sink base cabinet (that was falling apart), which was rather practical because it took him eight hours to get that out and replaced. It would have taken me three weeks, way too many youtube videos, lots of take out food (gross), and quite a lot of mental swearing to get that done. Because the one thing I've learned in home repair is that to get a "straight forward, simple" job done you will have to make at least two extra, unplanned trips to the hardware store. 

Because crazy things came up: For example, the over zealous garbage man threw part of my NEW countertop onto the asphalt to be collected when the truck came around. The handyman caught this before it actually get thrown into the truck and with a bit of adjustment, cut most of the dinged side off. Or, when one of the base cabinets was moved over three inches, we discovered an unused electrical outlet behind the cabinet. What the…? So now it has a metal cover on it and is only partially hidden by the base cabinet. 

But he fixed it, and I didn't have to, 

and we averted the three-weeks-youtube-take-out-swearing scene. 

Before: 

In progress: 

After: 

I love my new countertops and accessories, but I still cringe when I walk in my kitchen because… it's just not done yet. 

We replaced the kitchen floor a few days later, which is not as wild as replacing the (ONLY) bathroom floor. Turns out,  is easier to live without a kitchen than without a bathroom. Food prep does not have to be done in a kitchen. Pooping, well, needs a toilet. 

Unless you're little and cute and it's still legit for you to poop in your pants. Then, by all means…

While countertops were not on my DIY list, leveling out the hole where the front bushes was. And after a friend lent us her wheelbarrow, we put Raeford in it. 

And leveled out the topsoil. Threw out some grass seed. And watered. 

Do you see all three littles? 

 And the kitchen floor made the DIY list. We'd already done the entry and bathroom floors, and saved the biggest for last. 

It's still light outside in these pictures. We've been at this project for about five hours. 

After the babysitter leaves, we switch off working on the edge pieces and herding our herd and finish laying the last tile a little after the littles are in bed. 

The sun is down, and we start to grout.  

It looks pretty fantastic. I wish I had taken a picture of our washer, dryer, stove, and fridge in our living room. It felt really weird to reach from the table to the fridge to get milk. But Rae liked climbing behind  appliances, especially when he needed a time out. 

The hardest part about not having appliances in our kitchen was not having a washer and dryer. The boys' laundry was already overflowing when we started our kitchen flooring project, and Rae exacerbates the laundry dilemma by pouring water on himself and changing outfits multiple times a day. So, he was down to wearing Joe's clothes. And being naked. 

Aside from the nakedness and the appliance zoo in our living room, we were done before General Conference started. So we got to "watch" all of Conference. 

Well, as much as you can with three hooligans. 

Happy Easter!