Happy Birthday, William!

 Seven years ago today, William Thomas Buschelman entered the world and our lives.  Man, time is going fast.  I remember telling myself the mantra: Just get through the first year.  I was pretty scared about having two children (boys no less) so close together.  Turns out, it is pretty awesome.  I tell everyone who inquires how much I love the 21 month gap. 

 Will is a wonderful kid to be around.  He is interested in everything and wants to learn as much as he can.  He'd be a teacher's dream.  If you could handle the questions.

 I've said it before, but I love leaving books around and later discovering William nose deep in them.  Most recently, it has been space books.  But, he will read about other countries, about the human body, history, math related texts, and really enjoys looking at optical illusions.  He will run and find me to show me the twist he has discovered.  Generally with a: It's so cool!

 We have a joke among my family that Will is going to someday dominate the world.  His mind is very quick to grasp things, but we are learning that he is slow in answering.  He wants to give a completely honest answer and if he realizes he misspoke, he really wants to make sure you understand why.  One day we were on a walk and asked the children how they knew they were loved.  Dom and Molly gave quick answers, but Will didn't say anything.  Several minutes later as we were eating ice cream at our destination, he asked if he could answer.  I wish I could remember what he said (I lose a point), but it was still memorable in that Eric and I realized we needed to always give Will a little more time than we might normally be comfortable with in order to answer.  Really, we should give all children this extra time.  A friend told me that you should silently count to 5 before thinking a child is just ignoring you.  Solid advice.

 Will thoroughly enjoyed celebrating our Epic Pi Day!  He was excited to do all of the little ridiculous activities I had planned.  He was particularly eager to eat the chocolate pie as well.

 I easily forget how young Will is.  He is quite responsible and thorough in everything he tells you he will do.  (Now, if he didn't agree...don't count on it getting done). 

 Over the last year, he has become quite the sports kid.  But, not like Dominic.  Will is less raw enthusiasm and more strategy oriented.  He doesn't quite understand why people don't just follow his fool-proof plan to victory.  One day, Will.  One day.

 Of course, he is still as silly as ever.  I love hearing him and Dom laugh over some joke that I don't understand (a generation thing, I'm sure).  Will throws his head back and lets out a loud guffaw, or sometimes a little giggle through a large smile that shows off his dimples.  But, he never fakes amusement and will tell you to your face that you are not funny.  (We are working on his politeness)  He and Molly have become each others imaginative play partners.  They will disappear for literally hours in the Florida Room and create worlds and stories that are as real to them as anything else.  And, of course, he loves John and takes complete delight in just about everything John does.  John is just the most adorable and clever baby anyone could possibly meet.  (Though, Cousin Zachary is a close second)

Dear William,
  We love you so much and can't believe how lucky we are to be your parents.  You do and say amazing things every day and I wish I could remember to just keep a notebook handy to jot them down.  I don't even mind sharing my root beer and cheesecake with you.  I love you THAT MUCH!  (That's a lot, by the way, everyone would tell you so).  As you enter the age of reason, I know that you will continue to grow into a caring and thought filled individual.  We will (almost) always be up for listening to your stories and answering your many questions.  Or I will find plenty of books for you to read up on the subject. Or direct you to the nearest brain puzzle.

Have a wonderful day, week, month, and year.  You are quite a special little man and we Thank God that we get to be a part of your life.

Love you to Pluto and Back!
Mom

Pros and Cons for the refrigerator breaking

Last week, our fridge started making a very loud sound and never stopped.  As we've had to make several maintenance requests in the last couple of weeks and the fridge was still cooling, we let it go for a day.  By Tuesday, I realized that the landlord should probably know in case the situation got worse.  Which it did by Wednesday afternoon.  By the time a repairman came on Thursday, the fridge was at 53 degrees and the freezer was at 41 degrees.  (Will and I had a highly education discussion on necessary conditions for water to stay frozen...I just wish he wouldn't have constantly been asking me questions while I was trying to salvage as much of our freezer contents as possible.  #homeschool) By Friday morning, we walked in a silent kitchen.  The fridge was completely dead and the temperature on the inside by Saturday felt almost warmer than room temperature.  And it feels weird to open a refrigerator door and not be blasted by cool air.

Fortunately for the owner...not so much for us...the refrigerator should be under warranty.  However, the earliest that someone from the company (that the repairman did not work for) could come out was July 13th.  At first this didn't seem like a huge deal.  Just a bit of an inconvenience.  Which leads to my list of cons:

1.  No ice. The kids and I love ice in our drinks.  We drink ice water constantly.  The fact it is the middle of the summer only adds to the terrible situation we found ourselves in on Friday.  It was hot, the water out of the tap is lukewarm at its coolest.  I'm pretty sure the fact I didn't drink much of anything that day has led to a sore throat.  I am literally parched! Eric did buy some ice on Saturday morning to keep milk cool and we've resupplied it each morning since. This is fine, but getting ice out of those bags for a drink is really hard when it is all melted together.  Not to mention, the discomfort from handling ice for longer than you intend to as you try to break it apart.  That one surprised me a bit.  Oh, and the fact our first cooler leaked the melted ice water.  Poor John slipped twice before we realized what was going on.

2.  No cold milk.  Ever drink room temperature milk?  I rest my case.  In order to have cold milk we have to buy the lower capacity quantities so that we can drink it all in a day or so.  Depressing for this cheapskate.

3.  Every time I want anything, I need to go to the mini-fridge in the screened-in porch.  Not such a big deal, unless I'm attempting to avoid a certain 1-year-old who cries and begs to be held as soon as he sees me.  Which then makes meal prep a little harder.

4.  Loss of food that just didn't make the priority list.  This included leftover spaghetti sauce/pesto/macaroni and cheese and some vegetables (that may have been on their way out anyway...but, the loss of cooling definitely pushed them over the edge).  There is some lunch meat we kept...but, we may be pressing our luck with that. 

5.  Loss of use of the beer/soda fridge in order to salvage the massive amounts of dairy products I had recently purchased in my monthly grocery shopping trip.  See reason 1, and this becomes even more of a hardship. And on 4th of July no less!

However, after a day of dealing/not really dealing with not having a fridge, we put our critical thinking skills to good use and started to see the positive side of things.

1.  A chance to get rid of all of those bottles and foods that you hang on to because you might use them at some point.  Ok, I used the word 'you'...but, maybe you don't.  I do however.

2.  You eat what you have, because otherwise it will go bad. For this reason, we had root beer floats for lunch.  That ice cream was taking up some valuable freezer space, too.

3.  One can really clean the fridge since it is completely empty.

4.  An opportunity to live a little like you are in Europe.  I went and bought croissants and fresh fruit on Sunday morning in lieu of eggs and bacon.  It was pretty nice. 

5. Coming to terms with the fact this is not even close to the worst that could happen and, frankly, it isn't that bad.

Hopefully we will get a functioning refrigerator in the next couple of weeks.  Until then, we'll just pretend we are camping out.   And try to eat all of the ice cream. #priorities