It's Hot!!

Here is what I saw on a time & temp display near my house:

Flooding

I'm taking a quick break from working to comment on some amazing people around here (at church).  In addition to preparing for VBS, the biggest event of the year (I know VBS is a big thing at many churches, but it's off the charts around here), everyone is scurrying around dealing with flooding.  Several staff members and volunteers have serious flooding in their own basements at home, and they're cleaning out the basement-level multipurpose room (gym) and kitchen at church, PLUS helping some elderly church members who need help dealing with flooded basements. I am in awe.  The only way I can describe it is a relentless pursuit of service to others.  Way to go, everybody!

Today

Other than taking a couple of insanely short naps, today has been a very happy day for Elijah and me.  (He doesn't seem affected by the short naps, but I certainly have been.  I could have used some sleep.)  

He has been happy and smiling, giggling and squirming all day long.  Even when we had lunch out at a nice restaurant.  He had crackers, and all was right with the world.  

So he is teaching me to take joy in the simple things, and enjoy every moment.  Here's a picture of him from this morning.  

Have a wonderful day!

Moving on...

It is finally hitting me that even though we're not leaving town, that we are moving on from our church home (for those who don't know---we're helping to start a new church).  And this will be our last Sunday at our church.  Mixed feelings, of course---sadness, but excitement for the future.  When we started attending SPC eight years ago, I had been out of college for less than 2 months, married for 3 weeks, and living in Park Ridge for one week.  It was the first and only church we visited.  We have changed a lot since then, and I'm looking forward to what the next eight years will bring!  

Laughing like crazy!

In case you didn't see this already on Facebook, here's a cute video of E giggling with my dad on Memorial Day.  

It's amazing, in 24 hours, he went from this to inconsolable and having a high fever.  Ear infection in both ears.  Poor kid!  I think there was something else going on, too, because he didn't want to eat, either, and uh, "gave back" the food that we did try to feed him.  So gross.  So we were a little hesitant to start him on solid food again.  But by today, he's totally fine, back to his giggly self, and I'm sick.  I really hope my illness is the same thing he had.  I'd hate to have him get sick again soon.  

So hopefully the giggles will continue and we will be illness-free for a long, long time after this.  SO not fun!

Safe

Having a quality, properly-installed infant car seat took on new meaning this weekend.  We were involved in a 3-vehicle accident, including a semi-trailer truck, on I-65 in northwest Indiana on Friday.  I'll start out by saying that we are all ok (though as my dad pointed out, some injuries don't show up until 72 hours later, so we will find out for sure in a day or two).  

After a couple of anything-that-can-go-wrong-certainly-will days, our smooth sailing out of the city abruptly came to an end at a construction zone, with miles of not just slow but stopped traffic.  Just when the lanes had finished merging from two into one, there was a rest stop adding additional merging hazards into the mix, bringing the speed down suddenly.  Fortunately, no one was going over 20 miles per hour.  A semi rear-ended an SUV which rear-ended us.  I realized later that I had never been in a highway accident before, and was shocked at how hard the impact was.

Right after the impact, after my head hit the headrest, I whipped around to see Elijah's car seat moving a bit, and he screamed and burst into tears.  Not knowing if he was hurt, when the car stopped I jumped out and into the back seat next to him.  He was moving around just fine, apparently just very scared.  Poor kid!  It was quite a jolt, and a very loud noise.  

No one in any of the vehicles was hurt.  There were paramedics on the scene, but everyone was ok.  Lots of information to be exchanged with each other and the police.  I think we were there for more than an hour.  I wasn't sure which was safer, sitting in the car holding Elijah or walking way off the road (we were right near a rest area).  But he was not tolerating sitting in the car, so we walked off and found some shade under a tree.  It was incredibly hot in the sun.  

We finally go to our destination 2 or 3 hours later than we had hoped (we did catch the very end of our niece's birthday party, though).  But we got there, alive, and with relatively minimal damage.  

I'll have to post some pictures of the car.  I don't think it'll be totaled, but it's an older car so who knows what it's worth.  The bumper is damaged, the tail lights work but popped out, and the trunk is dented in.  (The car behind us was much worse...not drivable at all.  Strangely, they live near us...just a couple of suburbs over.)  We stopped and got some duct tape to re-attach the lights.  I'm hoping it's an easy repair.  This was my grandpa's car, that we received after he passed away, and I don't think I'm ready to part with it yet.  Plus, the thing is proving itself to be pretty tough.  It had a run-in with a deer a couple of years ago, and sustained minimal damage then, as well.

This holiday weekend is turning out a little differently than planned.  But it has caused us to reflect on what's really important.  And when installing our new car seat (always supposed to replace them after an accident...I knew that, and the state trooper told us to, as well), Will said that adjusting the seat seemed a whole lot more important than the first time around.

I have a lot of reasons to be thankful.

Playing at the park

Earlier in the week, when I put Elijah down in the grass in a nearby park, he didn't seem to know what to do.  He would put his hand down to crawl, then pick it back up and decide not to go anywhere.  I think the grass was a little too pokey for him.  I also realized that he hasn't really been in grass before.  We don't have a yard, and he hasn't been crawling until recently, anyway.  So we've stuck to the stroller for the most part.    

Today, Will took him to the nearby little league diamonds on a walk, and he LOVED the grass there.  It was a lot softer than in the other park.  He was out there, playing happily, for almost two hours.  I met them there for a picnic lunch.  Ahh, so nice to be outdoors.  

Clapping, his other new skill.  

I love this hat.  But he's not a fan.  That's why they make chin straps.

Oh, to spend all day in jammies.  And to wear them in public.  

Baby on the Move!

Elijah learned to crawl a couple of weeks ago, but it's just been in the last few days that he discovered he could go all the way across the room, instead of just to a toy a few feet away.  The other day, he was playing contentedly on the floor in his room, then took a look at me, turned, and crawled out the door.  He went all the way into the living room.  Today, he went from the living room, down the hall, through our bedroom and to the bathroom.  

One by one, objects on or near the floor are disappearing.  And I'm noticing how dirty the floor is, since I'm sitting down there all the time now.  Ehh, oh well.  I've lowered my standards quite a bit in the last year.

In addition to crawling, the little guy is starting to pull up on things.  Not quite standing yet, but getting there!  Between now and when he figures out how to open drawers and cabinets, I need to consolidate all of the dangerous stuff into a few places and install some locks.  I'm not going to go crazy and put locks on everything, but I figure we should probably keep him away from the cleaning chemicals.  

Wow, busy week!

I haven't posted much in a while...basically, I'm juggling even more things for now.  I took on some freelance work, because, well, the extra income is always nice.  But mostly, I want to keep doors open for the future.  So this week I'm trying to cram in this work between my regular 25 hours of work, plus all of my non-paying work that I do every day.  :)  (Though I know it's not really very nice to refer to the baby as "non-paying work."  But it's sorta true.)

So I'm surrounded by piles of laundry, piles of mail, piles of work, piles of toys, and piles of emails...but remarkably, I'm still in a pretty good mood.  Just really tired.

More later.  :) 

A Big Week!

This has been a big week for our little guy...he learned to clap his hands, to crawl, and to sit up by himself (go from laying on the floor to sitting up).  At this rate, he will be walking by next week....and I will be woefully behind in the baby-proofing department!  Actually, I think if we had furniture that was easy for him to pull up on, he would be doing that by now.  Now I'm glad we removed the coffee table: he would be running into its sharp corners.