Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas everyone! We would like to wish blessings and peace to each of you.

I hope everyone is safe and warm this cold Christmas Evening. We are in the middle of a blizzard. We have about a foot of snow on the ground with high winds and it is not supposed to stop until some time tomorrow evening. I went out to scoop around the furnace and the drift right out the back door was up to my shoulder. So far we have been lucky and have not lost power. Others have not been so lucky. We are definately counting our blessings, that we have plenty of food and heat.
Grandpa taught Ben a new trick recently. While I am happy that Ben learned somthing new and that he picked it up so quickly, I am not thrilled with what it is. Grandpa taught Ben to pull his finger. Now Ben tries to pull everyones finger and makes a lovely raspberry sound every time he does it. Ben got a late nap the other day and instead of settling down to go to bed at 11:30 at night, he kept sitting up, pulling my finger and then he would laugh and laugh. While it was cute, it was not that cute at 11:30 at night. Grandpa's in trouble.

Here is a video of Ben pulling my finger.

Glad Last week is over

Last week was a very bad week for me.

It started off Monday when we had a light dusting of snow. Schedules changed and Andi needed to leave with Ben right when I got to day-care. When I pulled up I saw her car was running, and since I was just going to move Ben from one car to another, I left my van running too.

I never leave my van running. Turns out for good reason.

I went to step out on the snow and must have grabbed my door for support in case it was slick. I shut my door and went to open Ben's door, but it was locked. I went back to open my door, but it was now locked too. Great.

Now I remember why I always turn off my van, and pull the keys when I stop somewhere. When we got the van I had them program it so that all the doors automatically unlocked when I stop the van and open my door.

I ran inside and announced to Andi that she better make the call to say she would be late, as I just locked Ben in a running car that was now blocking her car in the driveway. At least the heat was on. I immediately called Randy to see if he could come from work to unlock the door. I was lucky he answered the phone, because I had forgotten he was at a class that day a good 45 minutes away. He suggested I call the police. Great!

So I called them and the said they would send someone out. Meanwhile, Ben is just hanging out in the car. I was playing peekaboo with him through the window. He thought this was a lot of fun.
About 20 minutes later a tow truck came and the very nice gentleman put what looked like 2 small blood pressure cuffs in my window, pumped them up until he could he could slide his tool that looked like a small dog catching leash and simply pulled up the lock. Wow that was easy.
Certainly an eye opener! Remind me to never leave anything valuable locked in my car (especially not my precious baby boy). I asked what I owed him and he said they don't charge when there is a child locked in the car. Wow! that was nice. Unfortunately he got away before I figured out who he worked for. I would definitely call his company again if I needed them, and would have liked to send them a tray of cookies or something. Thank you mystery tow truck man.

Then the nice police officer showed up to investigate what happened and to make sure it was not an abuse situation. I think he actually chuckled when I told him what happened. Thank you for doing your job and making sure my baby was safe.

I went to work, and actually made it pretty much on time. However I don't think I calmed down until about Thursday.

The rest of Monday way pretty uneventful. But that night it snowed some more. They called off school on Tuesday, so I volunteered to stay home with the boys and work from home. It was then that I figured out that some of my testing had to be done by Wednesday. With the forecast calling for yet more snow and high winds, I knew I would not be able to get to the office anytime soon, so I started at it from home. Luckily I was able to get quite a bit done, while serving as a referee between the big boys fighting over the play station, and trying to keep Ben out of all the drawers that don't have child locks on them yet. It is amazing how entertaining a big box of paper that needs to be shredded can be to a toddler.

We ended getting between 10 to 14 inches of snow with lots of drifting. School was canceled for 3 days so I was home with the boys. Randy had to stay home Wednesday too. Early Thursday morning Ben woke up about 3 am all stuffed up, wheezing horribly and barking like a dog. I turned the shower on to try to loosen him up with the steam, but it did not do much good. Ended up sleeping with him in the recliner. Randy got up and got ready to leave about the time Ben spiked a fever. I told Randy, I would try to get a late appointment at the Dr. but he would have to come back with the truck to get us if the plows did not come by.

The plows did not come by, so Randy did have to come get us. It turned out Ben has a sinus infection and an upper respiratory infection. Then I made Randy take us out shopping and to dinner since we were finally out of the house. Overall being snowed in was not bad. I wished I would have gotten more things put away at the new house, but between work and a sick baby, not much got done. I have next week off, so hopefully I can more things moved and organized, because right now it seems everything that I need is at the wrong house.

Ben helped the moving effort by putting himself in this box. He had a lot of fun getting in and out of it.

So far yesterday was not bad. We got to enjoy the school Christmas concert last night and got to hear John play with his band for the first time. He really is a good drummer.

Lets hope the rest of this week goes much better than last week.

Ben is walking!!

Ben is walking! OK. It really is more of a waddle, but he is finally out of the crawling position a good share of the time. It really started the Friday after Thanksgiving when he decided he wanted to stand more than crawl. He has been cruising for some time now, and letting go for a step or two, but it had never been more than that. Not anymore. He can go the entire length of the living room. He will still drop to the floor if he wants to get somewhere fast, and he sure can crawl fast. He must have grown a bit too, as he keeps getting a hold of things that I thought were safely out of reach. It is great to see him developing, but at the same time I miss my sweet little baby that rarely got into trouble. His PT said he was doing so well me may be able to go from once a month to once every 2-3 months. It is very exciting.

We started sleeping across the road on Friday. There is still plenty to move, and I only have about 1/2 of my clothes moved and am already out of room. Now I know why my Mom had 1/2 of my closet filled, plus two more when I was growning up in that house. There really is not much room in the master bedroom closet. That plus Randy and I have never had to share a room to put our clothes in before. He always got the closet and dresser in our room and I have always had to use another bedroom and dresser, in both of our previous houses. Going to have to start getting creative on where to put things to get it all to fit. I have already gotten rid of a good share of extra clothes.

Got the Playstation and TV moved yesterday in the snow. The boys are loving it.