Zandolit

House Chaos

We have been under construction for about two weeks now and there are many good lessons wrapped up in the chaos which has now become "normal." Josh's dad and grampa and he tore out our upstairs and insulated and sheet rocked it. I cannot say that the project is almost done exactly. Those of you who have been through this kind of process know that it probably won't be completely done until we move out of this house. The rooms are painted now though and "all" that remains is to paint the trim, hang it and move the kids in, also fix a part of Josiah's floor. Anyway, more interesting to me:
The kids and I spent a wonderful week with my mother in law and the kids while the guys were hard at work down here. We were hard at work too, don't get me wrong, keeping up with my beautiful and curious daughter is a full time job. Emma was so excited to be at Ima's house that she would not go to bed. She continuously got out and we would find her in the bathroom or on the stairs or getting into things in Elna's room. She colored herself regularly with pens and markers as she found them, She twice spilled the entire dish of sewing pins all over the floor, she dipped her hand and wash cloth into the toilet while "helping" to clean. She loved being allowed into Aunt Amber's room to "paint" with water or play with shells. She promptly fell irrevocably in love with uncle Micah (which I understand is quite common:) and followed Elna around like a little puppy. Elna was the funniest. She isn't used to toddlers and would come to me and say, "Liz did you want Emma to dump the pins on the floor? And such things. We all had a fabulous time though. (When I say we I mean me and my kids, Jody and her kids would have to give their own answer.) We are very glad though to be home now with Josh. I knew that Emma was starting to miss her daddy because she would get out the Mr Potato head, put glasses on it and say she was playing "daddy." (insert your own joke here) We really missed him.
As of now Josh and I are still sleeping in the living room and we finally split the kids up and put Josiah upstairs because they were sharing a room and not sleeping at all. Well I admit it, I am a control freak. When it comes to my kids I like schedules and predictability. I remember watching the footage of the people misplaced by hurricane Katrina and thinking I could never do that. My kids couldn't sleep on cots in a room with thousands of people. I had become so uptight about the way things had to be and I just needed to let go, so this project has been really good for me. I've realized that kids are more flexible that I am. They sleep when they get tired for the most part. I'm thankful that we are going to have bedrooms for each of the kids, but I was reminding myself the other day that
Haitians often have an entire family in one bedroom. So we are learning to be flexible. Speaking of Haiti, my father in law, Amber and Micah are going for a week and taking a team from their church. I am jealous. I'm so glad that I went though when I was free and single. I don't know when I'll be able to leave the country again. If anyone is reading this and is single and unencumbered let me encourage you to check out YWAM or the HAFF internship that I did or something, have an experience for yourself before you settle down. Let's have some richness of experience to offer our daughters (and sons, and husbands, and anybody) I'm glad I did.
I am now off of my encouragement soap box where I tell you how to live your lives, but in conclusion I would like to say that chocolate chip cookies are definitely of the Lord. Have a lovely night everyone.

posted by Liz @ 4:46 PM