Tonight...

Me: First we need to put the dishes away, wrap the baby's Christmas presents and find out what time Church is.

Not the Momma: 49 degrees.

Me: ?? I said (using American Sign Language as well as English), find out what time Church is. Not find out what the temperature is.

Not the Momma: Oh. I wondered why you wanted to know what the temperature was.

We're Here. We're Alive.

What a trip. We got here, and although we're alive, we're not necessarily sane after listening to Little Monster whine and squeal for three and a half days straight. We are waiting on housing because some dork on some foreign country didn't include a piece of paper in the husband's paperwork. Nice, huh? I just hope we get into the house we wanted, without issue. It seems to me that the priorities that are supposed to be in place, aren't really there, but oh well. For now, we have a home, even if it is on wheels. We are in a nice place, and though it is chilly at night, it is not by any means cold. I will be back later to talk more about our trip across country, but for now I must rest. I just didn't want my readers to think that we'd gone too far west and driven into the Pacific.

Learning Explosion?

For some reason I had the impression that children learned things gradually through exploration and observation. Except that for some reason, Little Monster has suddenly learned all kinds of things, EVERYTHING. The amount of sudden "understanding" is amazing! The other day he performed his new trick of "Where's the ear, where's the nose." Today. Today the dogs ducked, because our socks were knocked so hard that they went flying across the room. Why?

Grami: "LittleMonster, why don't you let me change your pants?"
Little Monster, who is playing with his music table, looks up.
Grami: "Go get me a diaper and bring it here so that I can change your diaper."
Little Monster leaves his most beloved of music tables where he is rocking out to the tunes of "Jimmy Cracked Corn" and the "ABC's." Begins to walk towards the area where his toybox and diapers are kept.
Grami & I share a look that says "If he actually does that it's going to knock my socks off."
Little Monster goes over, and digs in diaper box. Pulls. Out. A. Diaper.
Another look is shared between Grami & I. We take off our shoes so that no one is injured *just in case* he actually follows the directions.
Grami: "Little Monster, bring me your diaper. I'll change your pants."

And then it happened. It's a good thing we removed shoes. Windows could have been broken from the force of the flying socks.. and that would have let all of the snow in.

Yes, he brought the diaper to my mother. Then let her change him without making a fuss.

I think I'm too easy on that kid. If he can do that, shouldn't he be able to fix his own food? What about let the dogs out? Can he pack the boxes and supervise the movers? If he can do that, he should be able to go to the store and get his own milk. Because it's snowing. and it's cold. And my Passat doesn't like to be taken out of the garage in all of that cold. And if that's the case, I might be able to get some work done around here.

For my fallen neighbors

I am having a hard time wrapping my head around what went on in Omaha yesterday. When the news blurb came on the radio, interrupting the Christmas music dance section with Little Monster, we thought it had happened somewhere else. It always happens somewhere else. But when they said "Westroads" a sick feeling erupted in my stomach. Fun Christmas dancing was over. We turned on the news and heard about the sad events that had taken place. This is the second deadliest shooting spree in Nebraska. The deadliest in such a short period of time. The worst shooting spree was spread over a few days. I know people say it whenever something like this happen, but people, things like this just don't happen here. I will not publish the name of the killer, because I don't want him to be famous. That's what he wanted. Some of his last words. My mother and I were talking about the number of victims today. The number is so close to the deadliest, that we think perhaps he was counting. He'd done his research and knew what it would take to get him a place in the history books as the shooter in Nebraska's deadliest shooting spree. He fell short (thank God), but enough people were injured that perhaps he thought he had done the job.

It was a very scary day for all of us in southeast Nebraska and western Iowa. I was grateful for the move I am in the midst of. Thankful that work has been so busy that I haven't had time to edit the 30 blog posts I have saved on my computer. Thankful that I had something to do besides sit around think about what had happened. This area of the country is very close-knit. Omaha is less than an hour from here. I go there often because they have the nearest military base. It is basically home. I was at that mall a few weeks ago. We entered and exited through Von Maur. As I end this, I don't want to focus on the person who committed the crime. I want to focus on my neighbors. Because as the days go by people will talk and we will find out how we are connected to our neighbors that were witnesses and our neighbors who became victims:

Gary Scharf, a 48 year old man is from Lincoln. The same town I'm from.
John McDonald was shopping with his wife. His life was cut short. 48 years old.
Angie Schuster was only 36 years old.
Maggie Webb was 24 years old. She had barely begun to live!
Janet Jorgensen was 66 years old an was an employee at Von Maur.
Dianne Trent, 53, was also an employee.
Gary Joy, another employee was 56.
Beverly Flynn was 47. She worked part-time wrapping gifts, probably so she could get some"extra" gifts for her three children.

Amazing, Truly Amazing.

Tonight Little Monster was running around, like he always does: getting into everything, throwing newspapers around, chasing the dogs, etc. He bent down at one point, touching his toes, which led me to make up a little impromptu song: Touch your toes, la la la, touch your nose. His response: He. put. his. finger. ON. HIS. NOSE. Maybe this makes me a bad mom, but I had NO idea he would actually listen to the words of the song and then follow the directions... correctly. I was floored. After we cheered his ability to follow those directions (and partially to get his finger OUT of his nose) I added to the song "Touch your ear." He did that as well. He had done that a few days ago, but I thought for sure it had been a fluke. He refused to show us his ear again until tonight. In one moment, I realized how stupid I've been for underestimating how much Little Monster actually understands.

This motherhood thing, it's amazing. How can one job make you feel like the biggest idiot that ever walked the face of the planet, entertain you with such simple things and at the same time make you feel like the most important, most loved person ever. Ever. I love it. It's amazing. Truly Amazing.