Carrying Pineapples

Benson has had a good week.  He has definitely learned the command 'Sit,' but he still prefers to be near a carpet when doing so.  I was taking pictures of him sitting on the wood floor and I noticed that as the pictures progressed, his hind legs were slipping further apart.  He has also gone a week without an accident indoors.  Yay!  I'm still on high alert, much to everybody's delight.  Whenever he barks (and I'm upstairs), I yell down, Take him out.  Whoever is down there will yell back up that he's barking at his toy or something else.  I don't care.  Take him out.  This week our goal is to get him to sleep all night long.  Currently his bladder wakes up at 3:00 a.m.  Todd and I have traded off nights sleeping on the couch to be in the same room with him and curtail barks and whines all night long.

Henry loves the smell of Benson's dog food.  It doesn't smell good.  It smells like dog food.  But when he feeds Benson, he'll open the package, pause and inhale, then say, "I want to eat this.  It smells so good."  Every. Single. Time.  Henry, our child with the most diverse palate.  He just needs to refine his tastes a bit.

Typically each week before writing the blog, I'll check my texts to Todd for the week to see if there were any funny things the kids said or stories about them.  There haven't been many texts during the quarantine since Todd's been working just upstairs, but it's still my habit to check.  Right before sitting down to write tonight I checked.  Nearly every text back and forth was, "Benson pooped.  Back fence line near the rose bush."  "Benson peed."  "Benson, #2, 12:30, by school room."  Our lives have shrunken down to potty training.

COVID has spiked in our area and our state.  We have good friends who tested positive several weeks ago.  We had had contact with them, so we had been under an even tighter quarantined for three weeks.  Basically we're always quarantined, but we had been letting the kids play with the neighbor boy.  The stricter quarantine just meant they couldn't play with him.  This past week the three weeks were up and we were very, very blessed that none of us showed any symptoms or got sick.  Now we're back to our regular quarantine.  The kids can now play with their neighbor friend, though we're keeping it strictly outside/open air play.  It's pretty rough because it is crazy hot right now.  The heat index has been 110° most days and it feels every bit of it.

Because of the heat we've stayed indoors more often than normal.  Josiah has been painting with water colors all week long.  Every morning he eats breakfast then sets up his paints.  He's crazy good with water colors.  Whenever I use them my paper looks like washed out colors.  He somehow can get intense colors and does his shading.  He amazes us with what he produces.  If you saw the characters from the book, they look just alike.

Mr. Shark from The Bad Guys book series

Petey from Dog Man

Todd was able to help out at his university this week.  The Houston Food Bank set up on his campus for a drive-thru grocery pick-up.  Todd said that they were told that it had to be completely contactless.  That meant the drivers had to pop their trunks from inside their cars and if they could not pop them, then the workers would have to leave the groceries next to the car, walk away, and let the drivers put the food in their own cars.  Todd said they got good food - cabbages, oranges, bananas, pineapples, bread.  I was glad to see they were getting fresh produce.  Todd said they also had some day-old pasteries and bread products that they were handing out.  Some people got birthday cakes or a dozen doughnuts.  He was glad to get out and do some good.  He has been working from home for four months now.

Todd carrying pineapples like a pro.