Just Checking In

I haven't written for a few days, so thought I would just post a couple things that have been going on on the sidelines of everything else.  First of all, we've had the privilege of taking care of this little guy as needed (so far we've had him twice):

Isn't he a cutie?  His name is Dominic.  He is the nephew-foster baby of a lady from church who acquired him with only an hour and a half notice (she didn't even know her sister was pregnant until after he was born).  I shouldn't say too much on here, but he is actually a "meth baby", which is why he was taken away to be with his aunt.  So he's got some little quirks, but he is such a very good baby.  He never complains unless he's gassy, and is always ready to give you a big huge toothless grin.  We will have him again next weekend for three days.  It's so nice to have a baby in the house again, even though we're not used to it.  The hardest part is dealing with the tiredness from not getting a full night's rest.  But that's okay - we really enjoy taking care of him.

Another parallel plot that's going on is that my daughter, Kayla, aka PeeWee, decided to join the Army Reserves.  I have mixed feelings about it, but mostly excited because I know it will be really good for her in so many ways, and it's a good opportunity to jump-start a career.  The only thing I wish she would change is that I'd rather see her go Active Duty for SO many reasons that would be too long to list here.  I'm hoping that she will still consider it.  But in the meantime, she has some work to do before they will accept her.  The minimum weight for a female is 121 pounds and she only weighed 113 (with her clothes on).  So before she went to MEPS we got her this stuff:

It actually helped her gain two pounds in one week.  But she still looks like this:

Except, she got her haircut the other day really short, so now she looks like this:

I don't mean to pick on her, but she always did look like a stick child.  Anyhoo, as far as her medical exam goes, she passed it except for her lazy eye which she has always had.  She's supposed to go back next week and have the military optometrist decide whether or not her eyes are fit for the military.  But I think she'll be ok cuz her lazy eye isn't really that bad.  She never wears glasses, and she passed her driver's license test without any help, so at worst, the military would just make her wear glasses.  If so, then all she has to do is gain weight.  

Oh, I wish I had that problem!

Just for the record, for those who don't know, "lazy eye" does not mean "crossed eyes",  as her recruiter automatically thought.  When PW was little, we had the luck to find an eye doctor who told us that most eye doctors are too lazy too explain to their patients the difference between "lazy eye" and strabismus.  Strabismus is when the eyes cross or don't align properly.  "Lazy eye" is when one of the eyes gets "lazy" and doesn't want to work as hard as the other one, resulting in blurry vision in one eye.  So whenever you hear of someone getting surgery for "lazy eye", remember there is no such thing as surgery for "lazy eye", so they are most likely getting surgery for strabismus.  When Justin was little, he had both strabismus AND a "lazy eye".  He had surgery to fix the strabismus, but still wears glasses for the "lazy eye".  In the year 2000, I myself had eye surgery for strabismus.  PW never had strabismus, but has a "lazy eye".  No surgery will fix that.

Understand, rubberband?

Other than that, I got all my Easter boxes done.  I got them all done early for a change, so it's nice that I won't have to panic about those. 

AND I already ordered my seeds for my vegetable garden this year.   Chuck is more serious about buying a greenhouse, so I'm going to again try cucumbers, and then I will try for the first time tomatoes and sweet corn (only a few stalks).  So now I just have to wait for the right time to start some seeds indoors.  And when I do that, it'll be another post of course.

I also got that anniversary card almost done.  I'm just trying to decide how I want to bind all the pages together.  At this stage, when I'm almost done with it, I'm afraid I'm going to do something to ruin all my work, so I hesitate to do anything, and it just sits there and sits there and sits there, while I stare at it and stare at it and stare at it, when really I could have it all completed in less than an hour if I just did it.  I think this weekend I'll just take the plunge and brad all the pages together, and hopefully it'll still look nice.

And THEN, I can get to work on that binding for Steph's quilt,  which has been put on the back burner for too long now. Hopefully I will be able to start on that this weekend.  But we'll see.