Things I like Doing with My boy

I love listening to my boy child play. Hearing his conversations with his Tagu, watching him play out the scenes from his Thomas videos (particularly all the crashes), seeing him get creative with the toys that he has - sometimes using them in ways I hadn't thought of before.

He sometimes will draw me into his play time. "mommy, come sit on floor" and then I'm given a toy and we play. :) But I have to mind that I don't have the wrong toy. :)

But what I love most right now is when he comes and helps me with stuff. From cooking supper last night when he helped me put the sour cream into the stroganoff. One ever so small (to me) scoop at a time and I mix it in. When he tries ever so hard to help and he spilled the hamburger on the counter and I hear an "oh oh...mommy clean it?"

When I was organizing/tidying my rooms upstairs on Tuesday, he totally refused to go to bed, Mommy was doing stuff and he could help! (at least I think that was part of his refusal). All the things he could help me move and discoveries that could be made. fun fun for a little boy.

When he's helping me with stuff he is ever such a helpful, obedient little lad. Not like when he is seriously playing and then I need him (or rather would like him) to do something....oh my....that's just asking for trouble. But we're learning and growing together in that.

He's a good boy. :)

"throw you out the window"

When I first had Justin I had some significant postpartum stuff that I needed to deal with. I survived and so did Justin, though I have to admit there were some pretty scary times between the two of us. One of the things I said at the time and occasionally meant was "I'll throw you out the window". I learned to turn that into a fun thing. (YEAH!)

Anyways, it became one the things I say to Justin on a regular basis "I can throw you out the window" or more recently "I can throw you into the snow bank!". :) Justin says no and giggles. :)

As far as I remember this is how the latest episode went: The other night I was doing something, heard Jim laugh and then came when he called me. He said "listen to Justin". Here's my boy playing with his beloved Tagu saying "Justin mad at you" "Justin throw you out the window" (as he tosses Tagu over the back of the big lazy boy) and then go rescue him. he did this over and over. I laughed. :)

Did make me very much aware of how much this little boy sees AND hears what I am saying.
Oh...that I end up being a good example of Christ to him (despite my threats to throw him out the window)....which I would never do. :)

Radical Alteration

My plans for the day: have my devotions, walk Sassy, care for bunnies, get the boy up, make breakfast, go to Toddler Time, come back for lunch, Justin to bed, work on more organizing.

My actual day thus far: had my devotions, walked the dog, get home to ..... water on the floor. Oh...what's this? Discover the guppy fish tank has sprung a leak and had done so when I took Sassy for a walk...how do I know this? The floor was dry when I crossed the same spot earlier. Just a mere 45 minutes earlier! Good thing I came in the house first instead of going right to bunny care. :) Wasn't God good?

Quickly I rescued what fish I could find. We had...four males, four females, two middling youngsters, and about 8 babies. We now have four females, two males, two middling youngsters and I was able to find at least 5 babies, two of which I know are still living. :)

I heard "I need milk" call from Justin so he got that. Then I finished setting up the new aquarium. They are now housed in a 5 gallon aquarium. Quite the difference for them from a 35 gallon. But they are swimming.

Then I emptied the gravel out of old aquarium...boy...quite the significant hole in the seal!
Justin made the job a bit harder as he "helped", but hey...at least he wanted to help!

We'll set that somewhere to dry. Jim plans to do some research to see if it is fixable, and then we'll try again. :)

Got some food out for Justin to eat, and put a movie on for him. Then I cared for the bunnies, ate a small bowl of cereal to hold me over and will see what I can figure for the rest of the day.

There won't be any toddler time this morning. I am disappointed about that, but God decided that I needed to do something else this morning. :)

NOT what I had in mind for the day.

A Good Couple of Days

There I was Tuesday, reflecting over the day and realized that even though I didn't feel very productive over the course of the day I actually was. I managed to, despite having a dentist appointment in the morning, managed to complete all the laundry, make a supper, and do some work in the upstairs rec. room. Didn't get as much done as I wanted to, but I didn't expect the freezing to hurt like a son of gun when it came out either (so I read until it was finished coming out). Jim had an executive meeting that took most of the afternoon/evening to handle.

Then Wednesday came around...I managed to have a great sleep on Tuesday night! YEAH!!!!! I don't get many of those. Anyways, got all the paperwork sorted out from the masses of piles upstairs, got that done in the morning. Got tons of dog food made (Sassy is set probably for the next three months), the dishes done, a nice supper made, played with the boy child and even had time to relax with my sweetie. I even ate healthy almost all day long! What can I say...the boy child's goldfish crackers were a bit too much of a temptation. :) Jim got some visiting done and some work on his sermons...not as much as planned because he unfortunately didn't sleep so well on Tuesday night.

Today I plan (I hope) to finish the rest of the upstairs rec room. Clean out the piggies for sure and the rabbits if the weather cooperates (needs to be mild enough mid-morning). Play outside with Justin for a bit. What else....Make supper of some sort...oh...bacon cheeseburger pasta. :) And just generally keep myself busy...I'm pretty good at that. :) I assume Jim plans to work on sermons today...probably won't see him too much here at home.

Justin & Annette Celebrate the Birth of Our Lord

One of the things that Annette has done from before we got married, was through the season of Advent up into Christmas, she would do daily Advent meditations and light Advent Candles. This year she used a book that has various pull out pieces that will form a Christmas scene, one per day of Advent. Justin enjoyed this a great deal, and so we thought we would capture it on video. This was done a little different than they would usually do it because all the characters had fallen over.



This second video is the same thing, but more in keeping with how they would do it each day through Advent. It also shows the thing the Justin enjoyed above everything else, blowing out the candles.

Snowblower AAARRG!

I finally got the snowblower back together today. The problems started back on the 17th of December. I had to shovel some snow out at the end of my in-laws driveway so we could go home. In doing so I injured my back. When we got home there was about 18" of snow in the driveway, so I waded through it and started up the snowblower. All went well until the very end when the one handle mount snapped. That made it impossible to run or control the snowblower, so I dragged it back to the garage and figured I would fix it later.

First I got a welder, and once my back felt a little better welded on the mount again. After that my back hurt more, so I couldn't continue.

When my back felt better (several days later) I cleaned up where I welded and primed and painted it. Doing this caused my back to hurt more again, and I had to wait to continue.

When my back felt better (several days later [do you see a pattern developing]) I started to bolt things back together, got the handle on, and all the controls connected, only to realize I needed to flip the blower up on its front end to get at two of the mounting bolts for the handle which are inside the area occupied by the drive assembly. The bolting of what I could get to re-aggravated my back, so I couldn't continue.


When my back felt better . . . I put the blower up so I could remove the access panel, tighened up the other two bolts that hold the handle, and replaced the access panel. Amazingly enough, this didn't bother my back too much. With everything back together I started up the blower and at first everything seemed to work, until I realized the front augers and the blower were running even though the control handle was not depressed. Weirdly enough when I pressed down the control, the auger and blower stopped. Somehow things got reversed. I took it out and using the reverse controls blew some snow to make sure everything was working. Now to figure out what made the one control work in reverse.

Again I dragged it back to the garage, but by now the gas was low enough I could flip it up on the front end, and I opened the access panel. All looked well in there, so I flipped it back down and opened up the shroud that covers the belts. Sure enough, somewhere in my working on the snowblower I had put the belt that drives the auger and blower on incorrectly. A quick change and replace the shroud. Flip it up and replace the access panel (only to notice on of the mounting points had rusted off--Oh well something else to weld in the future) and it is back together and functioning properly. Now to blow out a path to the church so I can work in my office over there in peace and quiet.