5 kids + 2 hours = 1 Mad House
I finally got the new axle installed on the trailer and backed in to take it for a test drive. I wasn't paying attention and backed over the green cable box. The box was shattered into a dozen pieces and the cables inside were ripped apart. No Internet!!
Then I get the call. “Can you watch the kids for a couple of hours?” Sure. Why not? Things have been going so well today that I actually got through getting my driver's license renewed in under 20 minutes. It's time for the train wreck.
I spent over 30 minutes on the phone with Comcast. Once I broke through the auto-response robot answering part that kept telling me to reset my modem and connected with a real person it went well. (Hint: if you're caught in ACD Hell, try hitting 0 about 8-10 times. That will often signal the system that you are unhappy.)
The technician I talked to had a good sense of humor and I have some experience with network cables so we were able to patch together a temporary fix that should hold together until a repair person can come out with another green box and some new cables. We had a good laugh over stories of old ladies calling because they were missing their soap operas.
In the meantime the kids showed up and were unusually boisterous. We fed them ramen noodles and parked them in front of the TV. Immediately there was mayhem over the fact that I called Star Wars 4 “Star Wars 1” and they wanted to watch number 1 not 4. That was settled when I told them they could either watch #4 or watch my choice of movies. They took a vote and decided that #5 (Empire Strikes Back) was what they really wanted and settled down.
Until Olivia decided to climb up on the couch and knocked Alexander's soda over on Ezra who spilled his soda on Caleb. More mayhem ensued. Cleaning up the mess and restarting the movie took a while but eventually everyone was quiet and there were no further disasters.
Olivia decided to come upstairs and play with her cars and balls. She's just past her first birthday and is pretty bright. She doesn't know many words yet but has a whole vocabulary of squeaks and eeks. We were playing fetch with her balls which was fun. It amazes me the way a small child can do the same thing over and over, 37 times, and get such a big kick out of it every time.
I would roll the ball across the floor and she would go get it and bring it back to me. Just like having my very own puppy. Then the ball rolled next to one of the others and she brought back both of them to me. We played several rounds of twosies until they rolled next to a 3rd ball. She giggled as she ran over and picked up two balls. Then she put one down and picked up the third ball. Then she looked at it, put down one of the balls and picked up the new one.
This cycle repeated
itself about 6-8 times. Each time putting down a ball so that she
could pick up the other ball and then realizing she was still missing
a ball. I just sat there trying to imagine what was going through her
mind. Finally, she gave the extra ball a kick and threw down the two
she was holding. She'd had enough of the ball paradox and went back
to playing with her cars. They seemed to make more sense to her.
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