Packing and Painting

My awesome Nikkon DSLR (camera) is currently out of commission.  **insert super sad face here** I now photograph a lot more with my iPhone camera and use my mom's DSLR for events I want better pictures. I have been meaning to take it to a shop to have it repaired, but just haven't gotten around to it. I've exhausted my google search recommended fixes and it still has the same issue.

When I was looking for Gabe's fourth birthday pictures, I found some other fun photos of packing our Oklahoma home on the memory card in the broken camera.

Gabe wanted to pack everything. He was always sneaking stuff into boxes. One evening to get the boys out of my hair Casey asked Gabe to help him pack the toys from his bedroom.

That box you see there on the right...he labeled himself.

Moving is messy work!

 

 

Barrett had just begun pulling himself up on things and had mastered crawling at the time we were packing the house. That poor boy fell back on his head on the hardwoods more than I'd like to admit.

Hanging out...doing his own thing.

Caught ya!

 

 

And, shortly after that smiley shot he fell, hitting his poor head on those worn hardwood floors. Packing with an infant roaming around is challenging to say the least. Finishing work on a house with an infant roaming around...just plain dangerous.

I was in the living room, painting the front door. I was on my last six inch little section of the door before being finished with it. Barrett kept crawling up and closing and opening the door. His hand was down at the bottom where there wasn't any paint...so no big deal. It was annoying having the door moving, but I dealt with it...until I was ready to finish the bottom. I scooted him back from the door (several times), in an effort to get the door finished without him getting in the wet paint. He finally left me alone and I went to town rolling the rest of that door.

I finished it up just in time to hear Pam gasp from across the room. I turn around to see my son going slap happy in the paint tray with a mouthful of latex paint. And, this all happened the day after we found out we were going to have to replace the entire kitchen ceiling...so my mood was already pretty sour. I was exhausted and overwhelmed, so I did what any good momma on the edge of a nervous breakdown would do...I just lost my mind and started laughing...and taking photos. Never mind the fact that he literally had a mouthful of paint.

Oh, my, my, my.

He was ridiculously proud of himself,

as evidenced by the half smile in this picture.

Bath in the sink.

Still having fun.

The fun came to an abrupt halt when I took the toothbrush to the inside of his mouth. Paint is tough to wash out on an infant who doesn't know how to spit on command. And, you would think we'd have learned our lesson about keeping trays and infants on the floor at the same time. We did not, but our reaction time was better on the second go round and he only got as far as a handful of paint before we stopped him.

Barrett will try anything. He (much to my dismay) is my fearless child. He's aggressive. He recovers quickly from pain. He is absolutely mischievous. Right now one of his favorite games is crawling in the direction of the stairs, just to see the nearest supervising adult run to him before he goes headfirst downstairs. He giggles and crawls faster when he can see that an adult is indeed running after him. I can feel my hairs getting grey as I write this, just thinking about it.

We've been here nearly two months now. Our house is in contract, with a close date of May 10. We are currently waiting on estimates for repairs before we move on to finalize the sale of the house. Once we are certain the house will be sold then we'll begin the search for our new home. I am in prayer daily about this as it causes me much anxiety! I believe God will see us through this and the right house will be available at the right time. Getting to that day is a big lesson in trust. BIG lesson.