Where's Donald Trump?

We have been finishing our basement. We started around the end of November and tomorrow it will be March. The sheet rock is up, but they won't come to "mud n' tape" until Monday. Jeff's brother has been doing most of the work and things have been going pretty well. That is until yesterday. We had another company come in and help out with the last bit of the sheet rocking (is that even a word??). Anyway, yesterday the two fellows who came over to do the work were really odd. They poured a bunch of water into the cat food, drank some of the soda from the food storage, and used some of our equipment without asking first...it really freaked me out so I made Jeff call their boss. They will not be coming back. Thank goodness. Despite that, I barely slept last night because I kept wondering if they had been wandering through my house while I was gone--aauuggh. I am creeped out. I just got that feeling from them that if I hadn't been home yesterday they would have helped themselves to whatever was in the fridge. It sounds crazy, but it's true. Oh, and the cats were totally put out that their food was floating in some guys old drink--so gross!!

In other news, Lachlan said the word cow. She used to only identify animals by their sounds, but we broke through a language barrier last week with, "cow". Just all of a sudden- I didn't even have to prompt her. She also now identifies all clothing as "tights". Apparently, pantyhose have made a huge impression. I think all women at some point can refer to some of their clothing as "tights". ha.ha.ha. I have some pants that I used to wear before Jack and I'm confident that if I put them on they would look like "tights". She also offered up one of my most humiliating moments this week. I went to the pharmacy to pick up some medications. While standing at the counter giving my info for the insurance company she grabbed onto the counter and lifted her chin over the top. When she made eye contact with the clerk she stated loud and clear, "Fries, Fries, Fries". What? Auuggh? I couldn't believe it! I was instantly one of those parents whose children spent so much time eating fast food that they just assumed that you can get fries at any service counter. Does this make me a complete hypocrite?

Jack ate a handful of last fall's Box Elder Beetles that died in the windowsill. I was totally grossed out, but then I discovered that he had shoved an orange crayon (bright orange) into the slots of Lachlan's space heater and turned it on high. By the time Jeff fished out the crayon the only thing left was the wrapper. The color contents had melted into a giant drippy orange mess on the carpet. It was bad. Real bad. I considered just cutting out an entire section of carpet, but then remembered that I had read in a Martha Stewart Magazine about how she got candle wax off her linen tablecloths. I got out the paper towels and an iron and pressed the iron on top of the towels (which were on top of the crayon). A half roll of paper towels later the wax was gone, BUT the orange stain had grown to the size of a basketball on the carpet. AND IT WAS ORANGE! So I did what every parent does when faced with a stain like that...I sprayed it with so much stain remover that I had to open a window to keep from getting poisoned. Okay, here's a product plug. I used that Oxy stain remover and I just kept blotting it out with an old towel and it worked! There is a slight tinge of orange left on that spot of carpet, but I think that once I get my carpet cleaner on it it will disappear forever. I don't know whether it was a miracle, luck or just elbow grease--what I do know is that Jack will not hold another crayon until he gets to elementary school. Oh, and Jack also got a big boy haircut. It looks really cute except that it is spiky on top and he doesn't look like an angelic baby anymore, he looks like the mischievous little bug eating, crayon melter, "i'm going to crawl down these stairs", kind of kid that he has become. Jeff said that it made him look like a different kid. I had to agree. It made me kind of sad that I did it so short

(5 minutes later) Um, nevermind that. I just caught him eating cat food at the bottom of the stairs holding a handful of sheet rock screws.