Real funny. Ha ha.

Saturday night I found myself stuffing the laundry in the washer and dryer while my 4 year old gave Declan a bath. Now, before you call protective services, there is a madness to my method. They were both sitting right next to me and I had one eye on the Jack-Jack  doppelganger and another on the 4 year old, who was eagerly cleaning off the Jack-Jack doppelganger. The reason he was in the tub was because he was so tired that we thought a bath would calm him down...and because of the "incident" moments before.


Like I said, he was plenty tired and needed a good calming, so we (the 3 of us) proceeded into the bathroom. Becky was exceptionally tired, and so, like Mercer Mayer's "Little Critter" I was going to do this "All By Myself!." She got to go to bed early, fortunately for her. I noticed that Decco needed a diaper change and figured his diaper was just wet. With a cloth diaper, there is nothing to be afraid of when it is just wet. I thought it was going to be so easy, that I didn't even look or get diaper wipes as I pulled his diaper off.

Dead Wrong. It was certainly a wet diaper, but it also had been heavily soiled. Eeeeeeeeeeew. I am completely inexperienced with soiled cloth diapers, er, which is to say, I lack experience changing soiled cloth diapers. I thought that my bidet (portable, clamp on) would give me a leg up. After a couple failed attempts at that  (while Declan was sitting on the floor, half naked) I resorted to using the toilet to finish up the job. When I was satisfied that my attempts had been successful, I turned back to put the baby into the tub.

I found him happily playing in a small (small nothing! That was huge!) puddle immediately around him. Eeeeeeeew 2x. Maddie was my right hand girl! I asked her to grab the wet wipes and a rag, and she obliged immediately! Bleck. It got all cleaned up, but necessitated the washing of some small shirts and pants. Ergo the washing of the clothes while the 4 year old washed the 9 month old. No one drowned. No one even slipped. It was so much fun that Maddie eventually jumped into the tub herself!

Saturday morning was supposed to find us buying a new oven from a Craigslist seller, but for some reason the Craigslist sellers are less than eager to get back to me when I send them emails. Go figure.

Oh, you want to know why we, who are renters, were looking to buy a new stove? Well, that's a good question, and one that deserves to be answered. The answer may shock you and scare you. It may even horrify you. Well, it certainly shocked, scared, and horrified Becky and Maddie.

Wednesday afternoon, around 5:30 PM Eastern, I received a phone call from Becky. It was not a phone call I'd ever like to get again, but that is beside the point. She informed me, in between sobs, that the kitchen was on fire and she called the fire department, who was on their way. She said that everyone was fine and that they were in the backyard. I got most of this as I was gathering my things and making my way toward the exit. Of course this happens when we live in Connecticut, and I'm 1.5 hours away by train.I got home and found that everyone was indeed ok, we still had a house and a kitchen, to boot.

Apparently what had happened was this: Becky was baking sweet potatoes in the oven (for home made baby food, which in all reality is much cheaper than Gerber or generic foods, and tastes WORLDS better) and had put an egg to boil on the stove. She was in the other room with Maddie, who was listening to the soundtrack to Hairspray. Suddenly she heard the fire alarm and ran into the kitchen to find a 4 foot tall raging inferno emanating from the big burner on the stove. She quickly grabbed our biggest metal lid and bravely placed it over the incendiary stove-top, and successfully put it out, for about a few seconds, but then it came back. So she told Maddie to run outside (she did, but was screaming and crying) and called 911, and the fireman said to get out and wait for them to finish the job. So a few minutes later (which apparently seemed like an eternity) a firetruck pulled up and 10 firemen in uniforms climbed the high rise stairs to our 2nd story (really 3rd story from the street) apartment, and put the fire out. It was a very traumatic experience.

Maddie put it this way when they picked me up from the train station that night, "Dad, we had a FIRE! Yeah, it was scary. We were listening to Hairspray and when it stopped there was a FIRE! And we cried and then we ran outside! Then the firemen came and then there was no fire." She reiterated this Saturday night as I was putting her to bed. She told it as though she were going through it (it was also a ploy not to have to go to sleep). "We have a fire, then we run to the kitchen, then we cry! Then we go outside and the firemen come and put out the fire."

The damage to everything but the stove was only superficial and was cleaned off by scrubbing bubbles very effectively. The stove only looks bad near the burner, whose filament is ruined. The soot on the top of the stove is easily washed off, but I don't know what other damage the stove incurred because it looks fine to use. The owner is 87 and from Italy and I think she's on a very fixed income, so we are trying to help by buying a stove, which we'll probably get from Craigslist or something. It's a good thing we have our emergency fund almost fully funded. Dave Ramsey sure is a smart fellow. Hopefully we can replenish it after this quickly and pay off the remainder of our school loans within a year or so, and then finally move on to baby step #3  (save up 3 to 6 months of expenses....like $30k for us). Then we can save up for a house. I want to buy in cash, but that's off topic.

Maddie keeps getting cuter and more articulate. She will talk about how she wants to go back to Utah and how everyone here will miss her. Or she say things like, "Just kidding!" (when really all I wanted to know was what she said because she said it so softly I couldn't hear her). Declan is getting more...mischievous. If he hears you coming behind him (he crawls) he will speed up. If you call out to him and say, "No" he will look back with a devilish grin on his face, and try to keep doing what he's doing. Sometimes you can catch him when he didn't think you were watching and he'll turn around with a shocked/surprised look on his face as if to say, "Oh, man, they caught me." That quickly turns to "Who me? I'm just a cute baby!"