Weird, Creepy, Insomnia Producing!

On Wednesday I spent the day at Mom and Dad's like I do almost every week. Like almost every week it was pretty late by the time we left. Around 8:30ish, which is good for Kaleb since that is his bedtime and he conks right out in the car. So we pull up to our house at about 9ish to find the garage door open and the light on.

WHAT?!?!?!?!?! The garage door is open with the light on!!! We KNOW that when we left that morning it had been closed and its not like we accidentally hit the door opener in the car - that hasn't worked in years.

So Nick goes in the house to check things out and the first thing is the cat is meowing at the door in the house. We KNOW that cat was outside when we left because we both thought it was weird that he was sitting on top of the dew covered car and getting wet.

I'm waiting and waiting in the car for him to come back out and give me the bad news and imagining all sorts of nasty thing when he does come back out and say that everything is fine. The front and back doors are still locked and nothing has been stolen or moved or anything. There isn't anyone hiding in our closets or bathtubs. Just that the cat peed on the kitchen floor.

WHAT?!?!?! Someone opened our garage door, turned on the light, let the cat in and left?!?!

I am of course totally freaked out and am nervously trying to care for our baby and not think about all the bad things that could have happened. So Nick calls the sheriff's department and they send two people out very quickly (must have had nothing else going on) and they both say that its very odd and at least nothing was stolen. Not "Oh, somebody just down the road had this happen to them the other day", like we were hoping to hear.

It was past midnight by the time I wound down enough to go to sleep and Nick slept on the couch that night just in case anyone came back. We found out yesterday from our neighbor that when his wife left for work at 11:30am that the garage door was open then. I felt so bad for our poor cat being inside all the time with no AC or even water set out for him because he is now an outside cat. The only water out was out was in a pot in the kitchen sink.

It is going to be a long time before I feel completely secure in my own home again. Which is very sad.

A Goldfish Story

A long time ago when I was living in Logan Utah, my 6th grade class had an abundance of goldfish for whatever reason (I'm very hazy on the details cause it was a long time ago). They made the offer that anyone who wanted could take one home for a pet. I was so excited to go home and tell my parents because I was sure that they would let me have one. So of course I had a huge disappointing evening when my Dad immediately said NO!

But not being a very obedient child, I brought one home anyway. Very grudgingly I was allowed to keep it. Its home was on the living room shelf about the couch. I remember climbing on the couch everyday to feed it and talk to it a bit.

So it came as a huge shock one day when I went to feed it to find that it was gone! I couldn't believe my eyes that the fish was missing. After being dumbfounded for several minutes, my first thought was that my dad has flushed it down the toilet because he was still upset that I had brought it home.

Quite a while later my mother was doing some detailed vacuuming and was moving all the furniture, when I heard her shout something about a fish. She started to take apart the vacuum and saying that she thinks she just vacuumed up my fish. Sure enough in the bag was a little, dried up skeletal goldfish. The only conclusion that we came up with was that he had jumped out of the bowl and landed behind the couch.

I look back on it now and just laugh. I mean why did I ever think that my dad had flushed the poor thing. All the water was still in the bowl. He didn't seem to care beyond the initial bringing it home after he said no. I guess I was still feeling a little guilty about that  :)

Obsessions of the Month

#1
CHOCOLATE

I'm only obsessed because I can't have any right now. I had to cut it out of my diet because my sweet little baby was having tummy troubles. He is doing ever so much better now, but I miss chocolate with a passion.

#2

Story Time

It is definitely all about me getting out of the house and not feeling trapped where story time is concerned. My 19 month old doesn't really get anything out of it yet. The only time he sat still was when they read a story about a dump truck. We did miss one week because of sickness but have gone the rest of the past 5 weeks. I'm really glad my husband has been supportive about me going and leaving the better gas mileage car with me on those days (cause I can't drive stick... YET).

#3

Breastfeeding

I am so glad that I'm back in the groove with feeding my baby. I had forgotten how often babies need to eat and that I can't eat certain kinds of foods and even how my cover worked. I feel so bad about the first month for my son because he could have been a much happier baby if I had just remembered that I couldn't eat certain foods the first few months. I also kept thinking "AGAIN?! You just ate I swear". Now I'm just like "Ok, I'll feed you". I totally love how convenient it is and that I can take my baby anywhere with me and I don't have to pack a ton of stuff for him.

#4

Diapers

Two kids under two in cloth diapers means I'm changing diapers all day long and washing them every day. Sigh.

Kaleb Ralph - 19 Months

Loves, loves the movie Cars. He will sit through almost the entire movie which is a really long time for his age. He will ask to watch it several times a day, but so far I've tried to keep it to once a day. Sometimes we'll watch the end a couple of times. Car is also the one word he will consistently say.

Loves to Help:
          - Aunt Shannon unload the dishwasher. Once it was open and he decided to do it himself by putting assorted dishes in the corner cupboard. It was so cute seeing the plates, cups, and tupperware scattered among the pots and pans that live there.
           - Do the laundry. He will help me carry the dirty clothes to the laundry room and once added clean clothes that I had on the couch to fold. We have a stool in there (so he doesn't use it in the kitchen to climb up to everything he is not supposed to get into) and he will stand there and throw the clothes in the washer. He always wants to add the soap too. Our washer and dryer are opposite each other so I will just throw the clothes across to the dryer and if they don't make it all the way and are sitting on the door, he will push them all the way in for me.
          - Feed the cats. We give him the food at the garage door to take though the living room to the bathroom to put in the cat's bowls and he always wants the cats to go in front of him, while they only want to follow the food. Its very funny to watch and usually we have to herd all 3 of them to the bathroom.
          - Put away groceries.
          - Daddy with his tools. For daddy that's not really helping :)
          - Mommy get her newspaper.

Insists that all the stuffed animals he sleeps with come out to the living room in the morning and after his nap. Which is really funny cause he can't carry them all and gets really frustrated when he can't pick them all up.

Thanks to his parents, thinks that stickers belong on his head.

Has brown sugar and cinnamon oatmeal for breakfast almost everyday.

Loves taking a bath. In fact we cannot even mention the words bath, shower, or wash without him tugging at his clothes and running to the bathroom.

Loves to just be with his Daddy. Nick takes care of him the most when he is home because Kaleb is always following him around and asking him for things.

Prefers his Grandma to his parents any day. If mom or dad leave him and he is with Grandma, he doesn't even notice that we left. However when Grandma leaves without Kaleb, he cries and cries. I sure hope that he has just as good a relationship with his other Grandmas when we are able to see them more.

Last because it is the most important, Kaleb LOVES to be outside. If I let him he would live outside. He asks to go out all the time and will run and get his shoes for us to put on him. He has a small obsession with shoes because to him it means that it is time to go out. For a few months we had to put away our shoes because if he saw them he would bring them to us to put on and would get so very unhappy when we weren't going outside. He loves to just wander around outside and sometimes will head off down the street to the rock pile (a pile of very small rocks about 5 feet wide and 2 feet tall) where he will climb up and down and show me the big rocks he finds. He also likes to follow the kitties off into the field next to our house and gets quite far sometimes. He has figured out that the front of the house with the road, the neighbor's houses, and the rock pile are far more interesting than the back yard with the garden that mommy won't let him plod all over or the fire pit that mommy says is completely off limits. When I try to hang my laundry on the line, I'm constantly running after him to bring him back to the back yard where I can see him. It is nice that he wants to go out all the time cause it gets me out of the house and into the fresh air.

I am so blessed to have this little man in my life and can't wait to see what he discovers tomorrow!

My First Pie

I know this is a little after the fact but oh well.

During Thanksgiving this year I made my first pie ever. I've helped other people make pies before but this was the first time I did most of the work. Well maybe I did most of the work. I started making the pie dough but didn't have a pastry cutter and was very uncoordinated with the knives so my Mom took over with that. I did roll it out and put in in the pan. I was going to cut up the apples but was going really slow so Mom and Nick did that too. I did manage to mix the filling together and put the top on and make a little pattern in the crust. So I sort of made my first pie for Thanksgiving.

Pet Peeve this week

I would have to go with the automatic flushing toilets. I mean what does it matter if you have to touch the toilet to flush it when you are just going to wash your hands anyway? I don't like any of them. From the ones that flush when you are still sitting there to the ones where you have to wave your hand in front of it to get it to actually flush, I really don't like them all. And I really hate the ones that flush so vigorously that water gets sprayed up on the toilet seat and the next poor person that comes in after you is going to think that you hover peed.

And what is with the automatic faucets and soap dispensers and paper towel dispensers when you just have to touch the dirty door handle? And they never put a garbage can next to the door so if you want to use a paper towel to open the door you have somewhere to throw it when you are done.

Whew, just had to get that off my chest.

:P to my Mother

Mom sent me this picture and told me to post it, so here I am posting it.

Kaleb only wanted to hold him for a second and then he pushed him away and he still does it 3 weeks later :)