Happy Birthday, Shadow!

We are dog-sitting for our friend Jessica's little black lab this week while Jessica is on vacation. This evening, Ethan's been chasing her around the house, giving her big hugs around the neck and saying "Happy Birthday, Shadow!" each time. We are not sure why. We have been saying "I love (insert name)" and giving hugs the last few months, and I think maybe that's what he means. It is cute.

Someone had a BAD morning

Levi came into the kitchen before church yesterday and said, "Go look in the bathroom."
"Why? Is there a really big spider in there or something?" I asked
He laughed, "No, just go look."

I was sure it could be nothing good, whatever it was. I walked in cautiously and didn't see anything. It was a little bit stinky, so I thought maybe the plumbing had backed up. Then I heard a dripping sound coming from the toilet. "Great, it's backed up. Why in the world would Levi send me in here to look at this?" I thought.

I lifted the lid, and there was something black moving inside. Black and fuzzy, trying to climb up the inside of the toilet bowl. It was a squirrel.

They probably heard me screaming in Texas.

Levi thinks the little guy was running around on the roof and fell through a vent into the plumbing (I don't know if all houses have vents like this, but we have a septic system, so ours does). He must have swam through the pipes until he surfaced in a big, slippery porcelain prison. He was doing his best to get out, but between the water, the edge of the bowl, and the lid (which was, thankfully, down), he was stuck. So I opened the lid while Levi grabbed him with a towel. We took him outside and put him on the ground and watched him for a while, hoping he would get up and run away. He couldn't even walk. We figured he was pretty badly injured, so Levi quickly dispatched him, not wanting him to suffer.

What a morning. One minute you're going for a jog on the roof, the next minute, you're in watery prison. Finally, fresh air, and then a shovel ends your misery and you are in squirrel heaven.

Stories

Ethan is getting to be a little story-teller (very short stories, of course), and I am enjoying it. He has moved on from just answering a question to adding a little bit of his own information.

This morning, I left the living room with Ethan sitting on the couch with a book and Emmaline pulling up on the dog. I came running back to Emmaline lying on her back on the floor crying, the dog leaving the room as fast as he could, and Ethan standing a little way away, observing the scene. I am ashamed to say I assumed the worst. Most of Ethan's "loving violence" thus far has involved whacking Emma over the head with books or trying to sit on her shoulders and ride her. I was afraid we had reached a pushing-over stage.

"Ethan, did you push your sister over?"
"No! Doggy did it!"
"The Doggy knocked her over?"
"Wight!" (Right)

Not only do I think Ethan's not quite clever enough to invent a story like that on the spot, the dog did have a very guilty look on his face...

Similar Interests

When people hear how close in age Ethan and Emmaline are, they often comment about how much fun they'll have playing together and how nice it will be for me that they'll go through phases together. I am appreciating that more and more as Emmaline improves her crawling.
This morning, I left the kitchen for a minute and returned to find the kids sitting side by side in front of the hutch. Ethan was "explaining" to Emmaline all the joys of the drawer pulls on the front. She was cooing away attentively. They were both eating shards of a black olive they had discovered on the floor from last night's dinner. What a beautiful stage to be in together, where they can both be perfectly happy with drawer pulls and floor olives.

Just when you think you've got them figured out

I was reading two days ago and came across an article that said something along the lines of "You need to move your kid out of his crib into a bed by the time he is 35 inches." I thought to myself, "Hmm, I think Ethan is a little over 35 inches. It's so nice that he has shown absolutely no inclination to climb out of his crib. These parenting books... you have to take them with a grain of salt..."

So, of course, who did I find staring up at me from right next to the bedroom door this morning? "Wait a sec... that's not where I left you last night..." I tried to interview him about his little escape (I think of Dory on Finding Nemo every time I write that...es-ka-pay...) and didn't get very far.

"Did you climb out of bed this morning?"
Thinks for a minute...smiles... "Uh-huh!"
"Did you fall down?"
Looks a little worried, but no definite response. Not sure how to interpret that one.

I think we will be assembling the toddler bed this afternoon.

Travel Pack

Emmaline's favorite toy right now is a little pack of Kleenex, the kind you put in your purse (if you don't have a giant pack of baby wipes instead). No matter what toy she is holding, if she sees that precious Kleenex, she will go for it. She gazes at it lovingly and crunches the wrapper in her hand.

On a totally unrelated note, the men at camp have been building a bath house down in the "Outback" valley, to accommodate tent campers. I took the kids down to watch them work yesterday, and it was probably the best half hour of Ethan's week. Some of the older guys with masonry experience were laying cinder blocks, while the younger guys were running back and forth carrying bucket after bucket of concrete and cement. Ethan was a little scared of the cement mixer at first, and absolutely petrified when Levi started driving the bobcat ("No! Daddy, No!"). But he loved watching the men laying the bricks ("Mo' Mud!") and Levi shoveling pea gravel into the cement mixer. I think it was every little boy's dream.

Gross.

Samson can now open the toilet all by himself in order to drink out of it. Yeah. The dogs are totally running this house.
In other news, we are back home and back to our routine after having company and then being company at my parents'. It is nice to be making a dent in the laundry pile and the kitchen clutter after a few busy (but way more fun than housework) weeks.