2 Trips to Home Depot before 10am. If that doesn’t make me a grown up, I don’t know what will.

I replaced 2 sprinkler heads in our yard today. One took 10 minutes, the other took over an hour.

And not even in the way you might think. If the first repair took an hour, but I learned something that made the second repair take only 10 minutes, well, I would feel good about that.

But the first repair took 10 minutes, and the second took an hour. The really frustrating thing is, the repairs were identical. They both were simple: dig up the broken sprinkler head, unscrew it from the pipe, and screw in the new one. But the second one didn’t want to screw in. I tried over and over, with no luck. Of course, I couldn’t see what I was doing too well — the hole I dug to reach the pipe was full of muddy water — so eventually I emptied out all the water, getting the last bits with a turkey baster! Still it wouldn’t screw on.

And there was no trick to it. It didn’t work for an hour, and then, suddenly, it worked. The trick was just to keep trying relentlessly. I think this may be the trick to a lot of home repairs, so maybe that’s the skill I need to be working on most!

Kaeta on Communion

I’ve been meaning to post this one for a while.  During church a month or so ago, we were waiting for our turn to take communion, and Kaeta was sitting in my lap.  I pointed at the people kneeling at the altar, and I asked, “Kaeta, what are those people doing?”

She thought about it, then said, “Those ladies are eating picks!”

As in guitar picks.  So then I had to explain to her that the communion wafers are not guitar picks.  What in the world must she think we’re doing, going to church to eat picks every week?!

8 Months

Jonah has been on the move this month. He still isn’t crawling, but he can get where he wants to go by rolling, scooting, and pivoting. It’s not usually a straight line, but he gets there! And he’s pretty fast, too. Most of the time I’ll set him down in one spot and then when I look up a minute later, he’s already clear across the room.

But his new favorite activity is waving. It makes him so happy to wave at you as you’re coming, going, or just haven’t looked his way in a while. Or if you’re looking right at him. He doesn’t need a reason, he just loves to wave. We think he might be trying to say “hi” sometimes, because he often seems to be imitating the “ha” sound as he waves.

In the last month Jonah has acquired his first TWO teeth, and is working on three, four, and five. He also enjoys spitting and trying to do a beatbox with his lips, especially when a spoonful of carrots is on its way to his mouth. He can spray a thin layer of carrots so that it evenly covers his daddy’s entire face!

And just this week, he’s started sitting up by himself. He’s still perfecting this one, but we’ve both found him sitting up in his crib, which is really great!

What happens when you accuse a 2 year old of being a pantheist

Kaeta: (pointing out the window at the sky) I got to fly in that sky today!

Daddy: You did?  What did you see up there?

K: Birds.  I got birds on my head!

D: What color?

K: Green and blue and red and green and blue.  And red!  Dofe-tee is a bird.

D: What?

Mommy: (translating) Dorothy.

D: Oh, Dorothy is a bird?

K:  Yeah, Dorothy is a bird.  She’s a bird.  Birds are she.

D: (laughing) She’s a bird, birds are she?  You sound like a pantheist.

K: I like big girl panties!

Is the white car brokened?

Ever since the car accident, Kaeta has asked me several times a day, “Is the white car brokened?” It seems like she was more attached to that car than we were! She only rode in it a couple of times. Anyway, a typical conversation goes like this:

Mommy and Daddy: [trying to have a conversation]

Kaeta: Is the white car brokened?

M&D: [ignoring]

K: [getting progressively louder] Is the white car brokened? Is the white car brokened?? Daddy, is the white car brokened??!

D: Yes, the white car is brokened.

K: Where is the white car?

D: Where is it?

K: At a junkyawd.

There are a few variations, but I basically have this conversation 6 or 7 times a day. This morning, I’m working from home, and Kaeta came up to me and said, very sweetly:

“Daddy, I want to ask you a question.”

She’s never said that before! I don’t know where she picked that up, but I was very interested to hear what she so earnestly wanted to ask me. I said, “Yes, Kaeta?” So she looked up at me with her big brown eyes and said,

“Is the white car brokened?”

“Very Busy” means “Bother me.”

When someone’s Instant Messenger status says something like “Very busy,” or they are otherwise actively avoiding interruptions, I am always sorely tempted to bother them. I never do, but it’s always a struggle not to be “that guy.”

I’ve been on the receiving end of that kind of interruption many times, though. When things get really hairy at work, I will occasionally “hide out” in an obscure part of the office, or I’ll claim the conference room as a workspace (Dwight Schrute style) and close the door. Invariably, someone will poke their head in, say something like, “Caught ya!”, and proceed to talk for 5 minutes without regard to my visible sweat or one-word responses.

Karianne has read a couple of books by Elisabeth Elliot, including one called Keep a Quiet Heart, in which she talks about interruptions from a very different perspective.  I don’t have the book handy to quote from, but I found this synopsis:

Elisabeth Elliot has a book called “Keep a Quiet Heart” in which she often refers to the Christian’s misuse of their time. She relates it to her own life in several places where she says she’ll have been working on a book (she was once a full-time author of books and other christian resources) or even spending time with the Lord for the day and her two most sacred activities would be interrupted by a phone call or a visitor or a request by her husband. She says in the book on several occasions that while her first reaction to those interruptions was irritation and bother, she has come to realize that those interruptions were often God’s immediate answer to a prayer, what she had just been reading in the Word, or a point she was trying to make in the book. When she stepped back and looked at the situation, she could find that it was not an interruption at all, but a divine appointment that was meant to back up what she had been working on or meditating on at that very hour or day. After that realization dawned on her, she began to practice accepting all unexpected interruptions as divine appointments and it totally changed her perspective, her manner, and her ability to be flexible.

I don’t agree completely with her (sometimes an interruption is just an interruption), but it’s certainly a more charitable way of treating the interrupter!

Whatever Whenever: Monday, July 7, 2008

Catching up on some little Kaeta stories:

1. I’m so sleepy. Sometimes when Kaeta doesn’t take a nap and gets cranky, we tell her, “you’re very sleepy,” or something to that affect. So now, whenever we ask her to do something that she doesn’t want to, she lies down, puts her head on the ground, and says, “I’m so sleepy!” This is cute, but we ain’t buyin’ it — nice try, kid 🙂

2. But where are the poopies? One day I went to get Kaeta up from her “nap” (I have to put that in quotes, since she has been boycotting actually taking a nap for a while), and when I walked in she was completely naked. She looked up at me, smiled, and said,

“Daddy, I have poopies!”

Oh, how my heart raced. She’s not wearing a diaper. She has poopies. What could this mean?

“Kaeta,” I said, ever so calmly, “where are the poopies?”

She just smiled. “I have poopies!” she said again. “But where are the poopies?” I asked again.

Then she pointed to some wooden shelves holding some baskets. “In the basket!” she said. I looked in the top basket, and sure enough, there was a very poopy diaper. She had taken it off, carefully (for a 2 year old) folded it up, and stuck it in the basket. She had even gotten some wipes and wiped herself. She had then piled the poopy wipes on top of the shelves.

So not a total disaster… In fact, I was actually proud of her for trying to take care of it herself! So independent… *sniff*.

3. Don’t be ridiculous. Before bedtime one evening, Kaeta wanted to read the book Curious George and the Puppies. We have read this book, conservatively, a gajillion times, so I started reading it in a silly, radio announcer voice. As I started reading that way, she made a funny face, as if she were thinking, “What are you doing?” Then she looked up at me and said, “Don’t… don’t be ridiculous!”

Karianne and I just lost it. It’s hard to convey just how cute and funny that was. I’d never heard her use the word ridiculous, and we don’t say the phrase “don’t be ridiculous” much (as far as we are aware), so it was pretty neat that she put that sentence together and used it in context.

4. Dream sequence. On Sunday, I went in to wake Kaeta up in the morning, and she was sleeping soundly. I put my hand on her back and said, “Hello, little girl,” and her eyes popped open. She looked at me and said,

“That’s not a pixie!”

“What?”

“That’s not a pixie!”

“Um, you’re right, that’s not a pixie.”

She seemed to accept this. Then I put her on the changing table to change her diaper, and she kind of shook her head and said,

“I’m not ready for barbecue!”

I wonder what kind of dream she’d been having!

Now, a couple of things about me (if you only read this blog for Kaeta and Jonah stories, you can skip the rest of this post).

5. Bike Genius Part 1. I mentioned in a previous post that we recently got bikes. Well, the day after we got the bikes, everyone was napping, so I decided to take mine out for a spin. It was my first chance to ride it outside the store, so I was excited.

But immediately, something was wrong: my knees kept hitting the handlebars! Every time I pumped the peddles, my knees clipped the bars, unless I sat up in a very uncomfortable posture. I thought, this is nuts! I’ve got to do something to fix this.

I also noticed the the hand brakes were in a funny place; I really had to curl my hands under the handlebars to get to them. So, with my face set in a look of grim determination, I rode the bike back into my garage to see if I could fix it.

I started studying how it was put together, thinking about what tools I might need, but part of my brain was still thinking about those brakes. They were just so wrong… then it hit me. The handlebars were just turned around backwards. I twisted them 180 degrees, and suddenly everything worked.

So, yes, I am a bike genius.

6. Bike Genius Part 2. These bikes are not the greatest contraptions to ever grace pavement. I found that out the hard way when my chain broke the 4th time I rode the thing.

Undaunted by this, I went to a bike shop and got a “missing link,” which snaps in and replaces the link that broke. It requires no tools and costs about $2.50, so I bought 2 (which, it turns out, was very smart; sadly, that’s the only part of this story where I did something smart).

Later, I sat down by the bike and placed the chain on the gears. I tried to study how this worked a little, since I hadn’t googled to find out exactly what to do. It all seemed to make sense, so I placed the chain where it needed to go, snapped in the missing link, and started riding.

But each revolution of the wheel made a terrible grinding sound. I stopped, and it looked like I had threaded the chain wrong through this thingy at the back (which I now know is called the derailer). And it was now impossible to take the chain back off, so effective was the missing link. I fiddled with it for several minutes, but there was really nothing I could do.

Anyway, to make a long story boring, I bought a chain tool similar to this one and broke the chain once more. This is just further confirmation that I was right not to go into mechanical engineering.

Well, sorry for the long post, but I think we’re finally getting caught up!