Flooring Is Fun!

Phil woke up not feeling great. I had accidentally purchased the wrong type of sausage at Whole Foods last week, and the variety didn't quite give Phil a migraine, but he wasn't feeling well. And he got up to find me out with the calf, frustrated over my attempted milking (which involved a lot of dancing around), and a calf who would not stand still and suck. Well, she tried to suck, but didn't actually get anything to drink.

Phil had no better success. So he stopped and determined to try again later.

Long before Phil felt he had consumed enough coffee or rested his head, Abraham was begging to lay more flooring. While I washed dishes and listened to Car Talk, Abraham and Phil went to start laying floor. Only the very top of the board is bamboo, under about seven layers of touch finish.

Three times before Tom and Ray were done advising folks on their cars, Abraham came to ask if I wanted to come and watch what they were doing.

It was amazing to see. Put a board in place. Whack the tapping block along the edge and watch the board click into place.

Abraham fetches the next board, while the first is being whacked.

Board after board. I sat on the floor, baby on the front in the Ergo, and put in boards.

And when we got far enough in the main room, we transitioned into the next room (brilliant Phil had figured that that was what we would do, and it worked perfectly, with little need for cutting).

Sometime in the afternoon, Abraham got tired of carrying, and just ran around on the long expanse of new, smooth floor.

He was thrilled.

By the end of the day, we had done almost the whole house, minus some trim and a small room and a storage closet. It felt like a miracle!

By midday, the calf drank down her bottle, so that was a relief. No tubing this baby!

Phil also told me that Abraham had come down with hives while I was at the party the night before. Jadon has experience with how to deal with hives. He got the homeopathic tablets needed. And then, in a stroke of brilliance, he took the quercetin and nettle pills and dissolved them, not in water, but in EmergenC. He knew his brother wouldn't be able to swallow the herb pills. And he knew that he had issues swallowing the vitamin C horse pill. So he found the EmergenC, new to the house since he last had hives, and dissolved that, which also made the concoction taste better, if not look better.

Abraham was fine. And when Abraham came down with hives again on Saturday night, I watched Jadon go through the same sequence, including standing next to Abraham's bed for twenty minutes or so, patiently waiting for his brother to finish drinking the small mug.

Perhaps there is something in the flooring that is making Abraham break out? Hopefully not forever!

And I was so pleased to open a gift basket, placed in my car the night before. I had a diaper bag back when Jadon was born, but felt like my entire life was spent either stocking or unstocking that thing, or looking through the twenty pockets to see which one held the one thing I needed (usually I had to look through the nineteen wrong pockets before I found what I was looking for in the twentieth). No more diaper bags for me! Since then, I've used the pocket on the Ergo to carry a few wipes and a diaper, though with Caleb, I've needed a few more supplies, so I have carried a paper bag.

And that works. It tore last week as I got into church, entirely nullifying its usefulness. But I still supported the concept of a bag with no pockets. And that is what was in my gift basket: a handmade cloth bag with a single big pouch, about as close to a reusable grocery bag as you could get. Cute, thoughtful, needed ... and totally unimagined by me, so a welcome surprise.

And a cute hat that Caleb will live in for now.