Some Events are Exciting, Others, Not So Much

We have lift-off!

The big news is that Harper recently took her first, actual, honest steps. By actual and honest I mean that she wasn't being shoved back and forth between Matt and I, taking one half-step, and then falling into the other guy's arms. Which is the closest she's previously come to walking. There was also one evening when she took one little step between the coffee table and the couch, because she was holding onto something already and I think she just forgot to reach out with her hands first.

Wednesday night, December 14, Harper walked (five or six steps) between my mother and I several times. Her grandma was in town, picking up Jamie from UD, and spent the night with us. I was trying to show my mom the way Matt and I had been kind of pushing her back and forth, when she said, "Well we just need a little more space here." She scooted so far back I was sure Harper would fall and get a face full of carpet, but, wonder of wonders, she just kept stepping! It was exhilarating and we are all so glad that she took those first real steps in front of my mom, who is usually far away in Wisconsin. At one point she actually teetered right past my mom and out the door of the room we were in before she realized what she was doing and promptly sat down. We even got her to walk down most of the hallway leading to the bedrooms. She's not breaking any land-speed records just yet. We've done some more of the back and forth, but the walking hasn't caught on, she still prefers her own unique half-sit/half-crawl method of getting from a to b. This may have something to do with the fact that her walk makes her look like she's just stumbled out of the bar at closing time.

First steps are really all the excitement one can reasonably hope for in a week, but we seem to have more than our fair share of excitement around here. Tonight we are having some folks from Matt's work over for a holiday party. I'm quite sure I wasn't thinking clearly when I agreed to that one! Anyway, my wonderful in-laws were over hear helping clean the house yesterday (a three person cleaning team is much faster than a solo effort, imagine that!) when I asked my father-in-law to take some boxes down to the basement. He comes to the bottom of the stairs and says,"I hate to tell you this, but you have some water down here."

When he says "some water" I'm thinking that maybe Rebound left a puddle in the basement. Then I go down to have a look. Some water actually meant about a 1/4 inch of water that covered at least a quarter of the storage room down there. (The silver lining to this cloud is that my obsession with storing things off the floor or in plastic boxes finally pays off!) Water in the basement is bad news itself. It takes a turn for the worse when you realize that the water has come up out of the toilet in the basement. Gross!!!! Yes, we had a clog somewhere, so that when we flushed the toilets upstairs, it backed up and came out of the toilet in the basement.

Let's just say I am not mentally capable of handling toilet backup in my basement. . .

Thank the Lord for my in-laws, coming to the rescue once again. They left me in charge of the baby and took the wet/dry vac down and cleaned up most of the toilet water. Then a very kind 24-hour emergency drain/plumbing person cleared out our clog. Forget professional athletes, someone with that job ought to get paid millions every year.