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Round Two

This week started out promising, but then we had another adventure in parenting, followed by a relapse of an illness. Luckily, the week ended a bit better than it started!

Adventure in Parenting: On Monday, shortly before lunch/nap time, I stepped out of the house really quickly to check on something outside. Joseph took the opportunity (lasting one, maybe two minutes), to lock the storm door behind me. Luckily he left the front door open, so I could see him. He did not have malicious thoughts when he locked the door, he was simply playing with the lock (a knob that seems like it needs to be twisted around a million times before it either locks or unlocks the door). I spent about 20 minutes trying to coax/coach him into being able to unlock the door, but no luck. He almost had it a few times, but he would invariably not turn it enough times or end up turning it the wrong way. I ran across the street to ask my neighbor if I could borrow her phone to call Paul (my cell phone was in the house). While waiting for him to call back (which he wouldn’t be able to do until he was able to check his voice-mail on his lunch break, 20 minutes later), my neighbor and I tried to get him to unlock the door. He was not traumatized a bit. He would switch between trying to unlock the door, sitting on the couch watching TV, and playing with his toys. When Paul called me back, I asked him to come home, which he did. By the time Paul got home, Joseph was tired of it all (he was hungry and tired…it was an hour and a half past his normal lunch/nap time) and was very grateful when Paul unlocked the door. Needless to say, we went out that evening and got a spare set of keys made and have come up with a solution so that it won’t happen again (plus, I made a new vow to always keep my keys with me if I am out of the house and Joseph is in…even if it’s just to run out to the garage to toss trash). Yeesh!

After Monday’s craziness, I was more than ready to return back to normal life. Unfortunately, it just wasn’t in the cards. Tuesday brought Paul getting sent home from work because of the government shut down (He was home this past Tue-Fri. He was told to go back to work tomorrow, but the government isn’t sure if and when he’ll get paid for this past week or any work that he’ll be doing during the shut down. Ugh.) and it brought a relapse of Joseph’s strep. We took him back to Urgent Care (I hadn’t made a follow-up appointment with his doctor because he’d finished his antibiotics and had seemed to be almost better when his temperature shot back up…after the office was closed for the day, of course) and got more antibiotics for him. Hopefully this time it’ll lick it completely!

Cute/Funny for the week: 1) Joseph was playing with his cars and other toys that we have downstairs and I could hear him singing to himself. All I could make out was, “at home, at school, at play!” I love the fact that apparently Primary songs are going through his head while he plays. 2) While playing with his maraca, I could hear Joseph singing, “Marching, marching!” repeatedly. At music playtime, they sing a song and march around the room with different instruments. After realizing what he was doing (especially since he was marching around the living room while doing it), I made a mental note to be sure to hit up music playtime, since apparently it’s sinking in more than I thought. 3) While at music playtime, we were singing a song about dinosaurs. We got to the part in the song where the dinosaurs lay down to rest. Joseph laid down and began to snore…quite loudly. It was pretty entertaining for a lot of people. 🙂

This week in pictures:

busted [1]
My view for an hour and a half on Monday…
farmer [2]
Playing with cars
biglikedaddy [3]
Luckily Paul had a spare keyboard and mouse for Joseph to mess with
typingupastorm [4]
Pretending to be like Daddy
typingupastorm2 [5]
He liked the sounds the keys made
rogerthat [6]
Trying on Daddy’s “hat”
coughcough [7]
I was showing him how to cough into his arm 🙂
giantstickbug [8]
A giant stick-bug that was hanging out on some of our Halloween decorations
castle3 [9]
Joseph has a toy knight (that he got when he had to get his face stitched up) that he was playing with. Paul helped him to make a castle with the Duplo blocks so that the knight had a place to live.
castle2 [10]
If I recall correctly, Joseph decided that his toy dinosaur needed to attack the castle. I didn’t actually see it (Paul was the photographer for the castle pictures)…I just heard a lot of roaring coming from Joseph and Paul making the comment about a dinosaur attacking.
castle [11]
Checking out the castle

Here’s to hoping that this next week will be back to normal!