Good News...Bad News

We had a great weekend...mostly full of good news. Let me fill you in.

Good News: I managed to get the house completely cleaned, all in the same weekend, for the first time in the history of what my mind can remember without straining. Jason did a lot of playing with Joshua outside on Saturday, which in combination with Lauren taking two good naps (longer than it takes me to get out of her bedroom, I mean) meant I could be dangerously productive. It felt so good to have clean bathrooms, empty garbage cans and no dust on the stand by our television at the same time as having clean sheets on the bed.

Good News: We managed to skirt the issue of the Disney DVD vault by finding a few copies of the Disney movies that Joshua is obsessed with currently. The whole ordering online process was a bit sketchy, even for the person who has done her fair share (and then some) of ordering online, so I fear that the videos may be bootlegged copies or in some other way illegal. But when Peter Pan and Snow White arrived in our mailbox on Saturday, you'd have thought it was Christmas morning for Joshua. This is the stuff of great bribery. And, as we've made no bones about in the past, I have absolutely no problem resorting to using it as such.

Good News: Our church's special day of community service called "Be The Church Day" was a success. The projects that were being done all day throughout Milton were pretty impressive--- a handicapped ramp being built onto someone's home, some landscaping for folks who needed assistance, a clothing/food distribution, a one day Bible School at one of the low income housing developments and a roadway cleanup. Because Joshua and Lauren would have been a real challenge on any of those projects, I signed up to help with activities for the children back at the church and was assigned to help Mrs. Mabus (yep, the same one) teach the little ones about what they could do to "Be The Church" to those around them. Mrs. Mabus had big plans--- we planted flowers (dirt everywhere), we made homemade play dough (flour everywhere), we made homemade stress balls (salt everywhere) and a few other activities that kept the kids occupied for 4 hours. I was beat. Joshua was beat. Lauren had had it up to here with other kids. But we had a great time and were happy to be a part of it.

This was one of the kids' craft projects before the rest of the gang arrived. We had our hands full for sure. There were 10 kids there ranging in age from Lauren to fourth grade.

This was Lauren's vantage point for most of the morning. As long as I kept interchanging toys for her, she'd sit there and play or roll around and try to empty out the diaper bag while I worked with the bigger kids. She made it without a nap all morning long, which led to 2 nice naps in the afternoon once we got home.

Good News: Lauren is so close to crawling. She's up on all fours most of the time now, and we've seen her take one crawling "step" (if that's what you'd call it). She hasn't let this lack of actual crawling skills slow her down one bit, though. She's off to the races as soon as you put her down on the floor most times. Her main interests are Joshua's tool bench and anything else she can get to and put in her mouth that will make him mad. Let the refereeing begin!

Bad News: While at church last evening, we discovered a way to really interrupt things. Lauren had been in a bit of a mood as soon as the service started. I reached the useful end of everything I had with me to entertain her by the time the slide show of the day's photos had finished. So I was standing in the back of the church swaying and bouncing with her, hoping she'd close her eyes and let me make it through the service. Suddenly there was a horrible crash.....at which point I realized everyone in the sanctuary was looking directly at me and the vase of flowers that used to be sitting behind me, but was now a pile of 8 million pieces of glass on the floor behind me. I swear, that girl has Go Go Gadget hands....she can swipe absolutely anything out of your hands in a millisecond. She practices this skill when you are holding her and trying to take a drink of something, or when you're holding her and trying to mix cereal (can't tell you how many bowls I've cleaned off of our floors), or when you're holding her and trying to get something out of the pantry (all of the spices get pulled off the rack). Needless to say, we quickly gathered our things and high tailed it home. And I owe First Baptist Church a new vase.