Becoming Pro's

Anyone who lives in the Chicago land area will understand and maybe sympathize with these next set of photos. The monsoon like rains that we got on Friday night were pretty unbelievable. I heard reports that we received 7 inches over the course of the night. If we were not basement dwellers I would have been thrilled at the thought of all of our vegetation getting so much to drink, however, we are basement dwellers. Thankfully we are no strangers to water in the basement. Lance has a pretty nifty contraption set up in Isaiah's room (where all the water comes in) It works perfectly when we catch it on time. However, Isaiah slept in Saturday morning, slept in until 7am!!! That is a pretty big deal in this house. We are now wondering if he was sleeping or if he was being entertained at the sound of a waterfall in his bedroom. All to say, Saturday morning we woke up to a fair amount of water in his room. We are thankful we caught it when we did, because after we started draining the water in the 3 gallon bucket (see picture #1) we had to empty it 3 times. Yes, for all you math experts, that is 9 gallons of water!!! By now though Lance and I have a system for water clean up, I get the towels and fans, Lance rigs the bucket, pulls back the carpet, and sets up the dehumidifier; and then we both start stuffing paint rollers under the carpet in the areas that we are unable to pull it back. Fans and the dehumidifier are normally on for a solid 3 days. I walk past our electric meter and see it spinning as fast as one of those rides at the fair that make you want to vomit. I have to say, both the spinning meter and the fair ride give about the same result. Thankfully I won't see the bill for another couple of weeks.

Lance has asked me multiple times over the last several water extravaganzas if I am ready to burn down the house. We then look at each other and smile with frustrated looking faces and joke about changing the nursery from a jungle theme to an underwater theme.

Drip-itty Drip Drip

Entrance to Isaiah's room with paint rollers stuffed under the carpet.

More sandbox fun

No matter how dirty I get Mama still has to kiss me. I am not sure if you can see, but I have sand all over my face.

Dada is really good at building waterfalls.

I could do this all day.

Dada built an umbrella so I don't get sunburned.

"elp"

Isaiah has a variety of new words he is using that make life both easier and harder. He says "up" when he wants held, "oh ba" when he tries to mimic mom or dad when we say "oh boy," for Grandpa and Grandma he says, "Papa" and "amma," and probably the best and worst of them is, "elp." Mama got sick of a whinny boy, so... she was either rather brilliant or naive. Isaiah would start whining every time he was frustrated with his walker running into the wall, or if he was unable to reach or figure something out. Mama started ignoring the rather fitful whining and would calmly say, "Isaiah you need to ask for help." It took about 5 more fits for Isaiah to finally realize it wasn't working and yell out in the most pathetically whinny voice, "elp." Now, about 2 weeks later I hear the word, "elp" about every 5 seconds. I must say it is far better than whining, and fairly comical, but more tiresome than ever expected.

Thanks Papa and Gramzie!!

As you could see from our earlier post, Isaiah was lucky enough to be able to celebrate his first birthday twice. The long awaited sandbox construction project was finally finished today and Isaiah was thrilled to be able to play in it. Papa and Gramzie Griswold gave us the funds to put in this super duper sandbox and Dada created it. It is an 8 ft by 4 ft by 1 ft deep box of fun. Enough sand for him to have a couple of buddies over in order to get really dirty. Here he is playing..

Fun in the sand with my dump truck

Dumping


Protection from the sun of course. The "tent" doubles as our sand box cover. Pretty smart Dada

Isaiah and Dada having fun