Boingers

The trash people would not take the queen mattress I stashed in our garage. Misty and I bought a new mattress last year and ever since the old spring Sealy mattress has been standing upright in our garage. Not anymore.

I put the mattress out with our trash hoping against hope that the trash man would take the large item. No such luck. I was livid. I stayed home from work, the Friday after Thanksgiving, waiting for those guys. When they wouldn't take it, I took drastic actions.

That included bolt cutters, a utility knife, and no less than 10 trash bags. I ripped the mattress along the sides, used the bolt cutters to cut out the steel frame and put it all in trash bags. This item will be taken, the trash man will not win this battle, he will take that mattress away, one way or another.

The springs that make up the mattress comprise 33 in each row (more or less). This left a ton of springs. Stashed in trash bags, it seems like the springs would be more useful for something, but I couldn't figure out what for. I decided to ask my eight year old what we could do with the springs.

"Madeline," I asked, "what would you do with about 600 of these springs?" as I held up a sample. She was laying on the couch watching TV and this caught her attention. Immediately. She sat straight up, "I would tie these to my shoe and spring . . . " she told me.

We attempted to secure a set of springs to a pair of shoes. Madeline said, "Dad. I want to name them "Boingers"." We went to the store later that day to find some velcro strips. The strips will be used to tie the spring to the foot. Unfortunately, we couldn't get the boingers to production.

Although the velcro did its job, the spring is too long and Madeline couldn't get enough leverage to depress the spring sufficiently (and reliably) while making a normal step. The springs would bend at right angles from her stride which isn't desirable. The springs are too long. Back to the "boinger" drawing board.

Garage

Do you know what it's like to have a garage and have both cars parked in this garage? I found out the answer to this question . . . it's AWESOME! I couldn't not look at the garage, with everything in it's place, all the plans working.

In the late summer I built a bench and some saw horses. These two suckers take up a lot of room. Then there was some boxes, and other stuff that needed to find a better home.

The boxes and extra bikes went to Goodwill, the rest of the stuff found a home in the house, and now both our cars are parked in our garage. It's glorious.

Beautiful Fall Day

Sunday was a gorgeous day. What a wonderful day to work outside and rake/mulch 14 bags of leaves! Madeline was really anxious to help rake the leaves. Usually, it feels like it would be easier to talk Terra and Madeline into a gum scraping than to do actual work around the house. I happily accepted her offer.

She started to rake the leaves into a pile by one of the trees. I followed her lead, and eventually after several hours all the leaves were in a pile under a birch tree. She started jumping in, Mom got the camera, and I think these are the best pictures we've ever taken. The light in the evening was great, Madeline and Jack were having so much fun, the weather was great, what a fun day.

Check out the other pictures.

Happy Veterans Day

Madeline made this card for Big Daddy.
I didn't get a card :(

Mr. Messy

Little boys are different than little girls. Jack is a train wreck and neither Misty or I recall either of the girls behaving with these manners. My favorite is the cabinets.

A few months ago I put the child safety tabs on the cabinet doors. Jack was ferociously unhappy when he discovered he was no longer able to open the cabinets, pull his favorite stuff out and throw it on the floor. He screamed, yelled, and whined a little when he discovered his new limitation.

Every weekend morning I'll fix breakfast, and Jack systematically goes to each of the cabinet doors and pulls/pushes the doors in and out, in and out. Repeatedly. Repeatedly. Repeatedly. It makes the loudest noise. He's broken one of the child fasteners, he's shaken the screw out of one of the pulls (the wood the screw fastens is stripped).

He broke the plastic off a pull drawer underneath the sink. Then, he finally sits down he comes to the drawers that I haven't locked. He rummages through and pulls out all the Ziploc bags, all the cups and throws them on the kitchen floor. That's on Saturday. Sunday: repeat.

He pulled down the candy bowl for Halloween and pulled out some Nerds candies, chewed, drooled on the box enough where he could pull the candy out, dispense on the floor, and proceed to eat at his leisure.

When he eats, he can't just eat the food. He takes it out of his mouth, looks at it, squishes it some more in his hand, then will either 1) put it back in his mouth and finish eating or 2) throws it as far as he can.

That's the other thing, the throwing. He will pick up a toy. Then walk around at a fast pace with both hands above his head. He grunts in his 15 month old, viking/pirate voice and then catapults the toy as far as he can. It doesn't have to be a toy, even. He loves to throw any number of things.

He's not afraid of mud, I think the more the better. Last time it rained and dried enough we were outside and he is a magnet to puddles, muddy dirt, can't get enough of it.