Pumpkins

Evan just can't catch a break with his pumpkins. We carved Evan's first pumpkin up at the ranch. It was a jolly little family event and it was perfect for his first pumpkin ever. Well, actually, first and second pumpkin ever. We had him draw on one and then cut out the outlines of it and the second one we actually cut into something that resembled a jack-o-lantern. At this age, it was definitely more for Brad and me than it was for Evan, but he still had a good time. He just got bored part way through and couldn't understand why we didn't want him to eat the seeds.

We lugged those pumpkins home from the ranch and proudly displayed them on our front porch. Of course the thought of pumpkin smashers occurred to me, but I quickly dismissed it as my paranoia.

Those pumpkins weren't sitting on our porch for more than 2 nights before I came home late to find them smashed all over our front steps.

Amy felt so bad for Evan, that weekend she carved him a new pumpkin. This one I protected more carefully. I let it sit out front during the day and then at night I carried it to the backyard to keep it safe until the following morning.

It was safe from pumpkin smashers,

but it wasn't quite safe...

Small Miracles

Yesterday, we noticed Evan's ceiling was growing a gray stain. We went up into the attic crawl space and found a small leak in the roof above his room. We took care of it as best we could, called the repair man, and went on with our lives.

Last night while Brad and I were sitting downstairs watching TV with Evan finally asleep in his own bed, we heard the faintest of noises over the monitor.

I chose to ignore it. But Brad turned to me and said, "Did you hear that?" and without an answer from me, ran upstairs to Evan's room. I didn't think twice about a little noise. The noises I'm worried about are Evan's cry or the alarm from the movement sensor in his crib that tells us he's stopped breathing. A little noise wasn't on my radar. But Brad had something I didn't. It had to do with construction, so we'll call it Father's Intuition. By the time I got upstairs, Brad already had Evan in his arms and was walking out of Evan's room with him and into our room. Before he even had a chance to put Evan down in our bed, the ceiling above Evan's crib collapsed.

It wasn't life and death. It was drywall and insulation. Evan wouldn't have been permanently injured, just a couple of cuts and bruises. But I'm so grateful it wasn't even that. So I just have to take a moment to say Thank You God for all the small miracles we see every day and thank you even more for the ones we never even know about.

With what a hard time we've had getting Evan to sleep by himself in his bed, with all the promises I've made to Evan that he's safe in his own room and that if he needs us, we're right next door, I don't even want to imagine the drama involved in trying to get him to sleep in his crib after he's been woken up by falling drywall smacking him in the head.

Once again, Thank You God for small miracles.

Really?

We can send a man to the moon but we can't make a diaper that doesn't leak?