One of the things that I love about living at Tim’s parents’ house is the fireplace. There is nothing more peaceful than watching the flames flicker and dance and feel the warmth lick at my face. At night, with the fireplace running, the basement quickly becomes warm and cozy, and the bitter cold outside is forgotten. It is beside this fireplace that I am sitting this evening.

Today was pretty nondescript. This evening was relaxing. I enjoyed watching the kids pile on to Tim when they saw him walk in the door. He’s had the chance to be home a few more evenings this week and the kids are eating it up. They climb on him, hug him, and follow him around the minute he gets home. 🙂

Story time seemed extra special this evening!

Baby E was pretty excited about the Snapchat filter that made him look like ‘Creepy!’

The kids and I have a new game that we call “Armpit Caves.” In the game, I walk two fingers along the ground as I begin a tale about a very old man that decided to go on an adventure. First he visited the Foot Hills, I say as the fingers climb onto their feet. Then the man climbs the Shin Mountain, slides down the Thigh Slide, goes for a swim in the Belly Button Pond, climbs over Belly Ridge, and up to Shoulder Mountain. But the places the old man wants to visit the most, the places he can never seem to get to are “The Armpit Caves.”

While the children squirm and giggle throughout the story, the prospect of the man actually getting into the Armpit Caves is too much for them to handle. They shriek and laugh great big belly laughs that resound through the house. As they fight off the old man, he resigns himself to climbing over the Cheek Hills, onto the Nose Point, and finally to the top of Skull Island.

The kids now ask to play this game in the evenings, and I willingly oblige. You can never have too much laughter. 🙂

One day I might turn our little game into a book, and yes, I will call it “Armpit Caves!”

Baby E likes to swim at the library. Who am I to argue?

I can’t remember the last time that we woke up during the week to the sun already peaking above the horizon. No, we get up when it is dark, very dark. It’s difficult to get three sleepy kids moving in the morning without the promise of sunlight to convince them it is in fact morning. Every morning without fail, Baby E tries to convince me that it is still the middle of the night, and while my sleepy eyes and tired mind want nothing more than to crawl back into bed, the rest of me pushes through and gets us ready to go.

This morning, Baby E was talking to me on his bed in the dark corner of the basement. I could make out his figure, but it took a few minutes for my eyes to adjust to be able to see his face. Confused by what I saw, I walked to his bed and turned on the lights. All around his mouth, there was a dark, crumb-like substance. He looked at me, chatting away about it being dark, and the only thing I could do was stare at his mouth. What is going on? What happened?

It looked like he had gotten up in the middle of the night and found a chocolate cookie and proceeded to devour it, leaving the crumbs and slobber on his face. But that didn’t seem right because the cookies are out of his reach and it isn’t the type of thing he would ever do. I asked him if he had eaten anything and he insisted that he did not.

And that’s when I remembered that he had woken us up in the middle of the night. He had rolled off of his bed, and his subsequent screaming had brought both Tim and I to his bed to find him lying on the floor. We scooped him up, cuddled with him, and got him back into his bed. He cried for a little while, but quickly drifted back to sleep. What we hadn’t noticed was that he apparently hit his lip pretty good, and after he had fallen asleep and we had made our way back to our bed, his lip had bled all over his face and some on his pillow. The poor kid was a mess. When we realized what it was, we got a warm, wet towel and cleaned him off, only to find he did indeed have an impressively busted lip. I felt so guilty that I hadn’t noticed, but his bed is in a very dark corner, and he had calmed down rather quickly, so it never occurred to me to look for blood. He’s fine today. His lip is swollen and scraped, but it doesn’t seem to be bothering him at all, even when he is eating, so that’s good news.

Tonight I lined the floor with a very thick pile of blankets, so if he manages a repeat, at least there will be significant padding to cushion his fall!

It’s a strange sensation to be stuck between two homes, but that’s where we are. We spent this weekend at the new house, getting home this evening just in time to get the kids to bed. Tomorrow we start a new week.

We took the kids to the new church and they all seemed to like it. It is much smaller, I counted about thirty five other people in the service, but by the time we left the kids had made a new friend. The little girl chased after C as we left so that she could give her a hug. We are used to a congregation in the hundreds, so the intimacy of such a small group will take a little getting used to. When C and I slipped out of the service to find a bathroom, we snuck past the children’s church and there were about 8 kids in there.

It’s a nice feeling to know we have settled on a church. It feels like another big piece just fell into place!

My sister and I snuck away from the new house a little while today to run some errands and get groceries. We stopped by Target to pick up some big boy underwear for Baby E. As we were leaving, I stopped short when I saw a familiar face in the crowd. The face I knew was from a woman I have known since childhood. We went to elementary school together. She had been to my house for sleepovers. Her parents go to our church. Besides passing each other at holidays, however, we haven’t seen each other much in years. And here she was, 15 minutes from the new house. We stopped and talked for a bit, only to learn that she now lives only minutes from the new house. Her kids are the same age as C and Baby E.

What an amazing moment to realize that when we finally move to our new town, there will be a familiar face waiting there, and children my kids can quickly become friends with!

I’m praising God for that special moment, the memory of which left me smiling all day!

We had a late start to get to the new house this evening, mainly because it was an impulse decision made this afternoon. When we got home we had to eat dinner and pack before heading out. On the way, Baby E kept asking about things he could do at home, and it took me a few minutes to realize he was referring to the new house when he said home. The kids begged all week to come this weekend, so now we are here!

I had been stretched across my bed, contemplating the virtues of going to sleep last night when I heard a horrible groan coming from the living room. I went in to find Big E asleep in the rocker, decidedly sweaty. His hair stuck up in strange patches and his face contorted as he murmured to himself, still fast asleep. I touched his forehead and for the first time in days, it was cool- cold to the touch really. The fever had finally broken. He slept the rest of the night quite soundly and the fever was still gone this morning.

Since it had only been a few hours, though, he still needed to stay home. While I spent a little time with him before work, he asked if he could work on his sight words with me and pulled out a list of words they have been learning in school. He’s in kindergarten, so naturally the words are pretty simple- yes, no, has, etc. We worked on sounding out each word, or just memorizing the ones that couldn’t be sounded out (i.e.- have), when we got to the word “he.” For some reason, every time he went to pronounce it, he would exchange the ‘e’ for ‘it.’ So instead of saying ‘he’ he would say ‘hit.’ I corrected him several times until he finally said it right.

And then we moved on to ‘she.’

You can see where this is going, right?!?

I took great care to explain what sound the ‘sh’ combination made. When he was ready to try it himself he started timidly… Sh… sh… sh…

“SH!@” he shouted in glorious victory!

I burst out laughing, but quieted myself quickly, not wanting to explain why his error was so comical, and focused on the task of correcting the mistake. But, he kept doing it, honestly making the same mistake again and again and it was all I could do to hold it together. Finally we cleared that up, which relieved me to no end, as I was already imagining the embarrassing and awkward moments that could happen in his kindergarten classroom if any of the other kids knew and understood the word he was using. By the time were were finished I felt confident that we had worked the mistake away, but this evening, as he worked on his sight words from across the room, I heard the profane word once again.

Hopefully he clears it up soon, but if you hear him cursing like sailor, just quietly remind him that the word is SHE. 🙂