Keep your eye on the ball

Paul, Nadia, and I were tossing a football around this afternoon. Paul told Nadia to keep her eye on the ball. Of course she immediately put the ball up to her eye. Paul forgets that little ones will take idioms literally, but this then led to an explanation of what that expression means. It was a cute moment. After Nadia's bath this morning while I was wrapping her in the towel, she asked me to hold her "tight and squeezy." What a cute word squeezy is. :-) Similarly during dinner while I was talking to Paul she said, "Excuse me, I want to talk you something." The little mistakes young ones make while learning the English language are amusing.

Ian again ate 4 meals today. He had oatmeal/banana for the first three, he refused his 4th meal, and after GREAT effort we got him to eat his 5th meal at 5pm. I was concerned because his 3rd meal was at noon, and I didn't want to send him to bed at 8pm not having had anything to eat or drink since noon. I was very relieved when we finally got him to eat some pineapple cake mush. I can't say any of the meals are totally without crying or batting of the spoon, but he doesn't get any bites or drinks while he's carrying on. It's still progress.

Since Paul was working from home (no way to get to PSU), I decided to mow the lawn during Ian's "quiet time." When I left, he was playing quietly in his crib with two cars. I put a nightlight in his room in the hopes that he'd be able to see the timer. Nope. The nightlight doesn't provide enough light to see it, and since he's sleeping so well at night, I don't want to take down the room darkening shade. I put a ball and a couple of small vehicles in his crib, and instead of putting him down on his belly with his blanket over him (like I do at night), I sat him down in his crib. He only cried for a couple of minutes at first. He was quiet for 35 minutes. Paul wasn't looking at the monitor, so we don't know whether he was playing or sleeping. After that Paul said he would be quiet for 5 minutes, fuss for 5 minutes, be quiet for 5 minutes, etc. He was in bed for 75 minutes as I can't mow the whole lawn in 60 minutes. I am not sure how long he slept, but he was certainly quiet for a lot more of the time he was in the crib than he was the previous two days.

Two items of praise would be that I am wearing my contacts for the first time in six days. The pink eye is finally gone! The second would be that after not having a water heater for about 48 hours, Paul was able to dry it out and start it back up late this morning! I really appreciated my shower. It's so easy to take these things for granted. The water is gone from our basement, and I was able to mow most of the lawn. Some of it was too swampy to mow. We didn't lose any stuff from water damage this time. We moved some things to the garage, but overall the cleanup is a million times simpler this time than it was in the spring in part because we donated, sold, relocated, or threw away a lot of stuff that had been in the basement.

The town where the hospital I went for ivf and delivered the kids was really hit badly by the flood as was the town where my university is located. In the case of my university, that town it is now on record as the worst flood ever in terms of the river being the highest. It's on record as being the 2nd worst for the town where the hospital is located. It's so sad to see the pictures. Of course other areas were affected as well. Both Knoebels and Hershey Park were under water, for example. Two bison died from the flooding at Hershey Park's zoo. I feel badly for all those who lost their homes and belongings. It's going to take a long time to clean up the mess from Tropical Storm Lee. I'm grateful we don't live any closer to the river. As one of my FB friends said, this gives us a tiny taste of what the folks down south had to deal with after Hurricane Katrina.