Yesterday, I kept my niece Caroline for about an hour in the morning while her mom (my sister) took Caroline's little sister to her Little Gym class. Field took his morning nap almost the entire time Caroline was here, so we played games on the computer, decorated paper with Christmas stickers, read books, and played with all of my jewelry. (Caroline loves to put on every necklace of mine at the same time and then take them off one by one oohing and awing over each piece of jewelry). Suddenly, a lot happened at once. Field woke up from his nap, my sister and youngest niece arrived at the door, and the exterminator came for his monthly spray of the outside perimeter of our house (we found ants in Field's bed one day and there have been other incidents of scary bugs in the house so we decided to do a LIGHT spray around the outside of perimeter of the house several times a year. I am not a fan of chemicals, but I am REALLY not a fan of bugs in my baby's bed so we had to do something about it!) Anyway, I was not prepared and did not know the exterminator was coming that day - usually I leave the house and kennel our dog ahead of time. I told the exterminator to go ahead and start spraying around the front and I would bring in our dog from the backyard before he went to the back gate. I closed the front door, my train of thought changed, and I completely forgot to bring in our dog, Belle. We had 3 children ages 3 and under running around the house and my mind was all over the place. A few minutes later the exterminator came back to the front door to casually tell me he opened the gate and our dog took off running as he pointed down the street. Are you kidding me? I looked out and down the street and didn't see Belle. Great. So I told me sister to hold down the fort and jumped in my car to look for Belle. I circled the neighborhood several times and no sign of Belle. I started to panic and arrived back home a complete mess. I was crying. When I walked in the door and noticed Belle's collar with her identifying information by the back door - I completely LOST IT and was pretty hysterical. We have been trying to train our dog not to bark because it wakes Field up from naps and it is just annoying to me and all the neighbors I'm sure so she has been wearing a shock collar in the morning when she does most of her barking at the morning walkers in our neighborhood. So her regular collar was not on her. All I could think was that Belle, my husband's beloved dog for many years, was gone and it was all my fault. I hysterically cried to my sister and as I was running around the house trying to figure out what to do, my niece Caroline looked at my sister and said, "I don't know why she's freaking out!" Ha. My sister had me hold down the fort this time and she took off to find Belle. In the meantime, I sat down in a chair with Field - still crying - and Caroline comes up, sits down with me and says,
"Lisa, stop your whining. It's Christmas and Santa is coming to bring you presents and look, you have a Christmas tree with a star on top and you have a TV (she started looking around the room naming things that she saw). So stop your whining."
Not but a few minutes later my sister calls to tell me to open my front door and there is Belle who sprints through the front door nearly knocking over my two nieces.
Children have such a gift of putting things in perspective and bringing us back to reality. I know I don't whine TOO much on the blog, but believe me, I whine a lot about what we are going through right now. Lately, I've whined about reflux and I've whined about the upcoming surgery. As Caroline says, STOP your whining, Lisa! It's time for me to trust in Him and be thankful for the many blessings we have been given. So tonight, I vow to stop whining. Thanks to my niece/goddaughter for reminding me how very blessed I am.
Loving his exersaucer!
Loving time with his Granddaddy!
