The Many Faces of Eli Warkentien
I got my first one-on-one time babysitting Eli Warkentien for a bit today. Nick was working and Amy had a training thing to go to, so she asked if I’d mind watching him for a bit. She dropped him off at 3:30, freshly fed and a little tired. I sat him, cars eat and all, in the papasan at first. Harvey sniffed him a bunch and Bruce was curious for all of thirty seconds. He woke up after a few minutes and was just fine. In fact, for the whole afternoon he was pretty fine. He cried some until I threw him over my shoulder and beat his back like he likes it, and after my arms got tired I put the car seat on the floor next to the desk and rocked it with my feet while I worked. That seemed to work really well.
Amanda got home just a few minutes before Nick arrived to pick up his son. We showed him the progress on the nursery and Amanda fed Eli (with a bottle) before Nick took off to small group. He was going to be late. We did get Eli to break in the changing table for us.
After Nick left I went out to get dog food and some apple juice. Odd combination, I know.
I was feeling a little run down after I got home, mostly because of the weather, I’m guessing. It was rainy and dreary all day with some thunder throw in for good measure earlier in the day. I took pictures of Amanda (the ones I posted in yesterday’s pregnancy post, and yes, I cheated the timestream) and as she was looking up at the ceiling she noticed a new wet spot up there. We had one a while back because the pan the air conditioning unit in the attic sits on wasn’t draining properly because the tubes that run down the outside of the house had clogged up, so that was the first thing I checked. They were fine.
Getting into our attic is a pain in the ass. It’s basically just a hole cut in hr ceiling in the closet with a board covering it. There’s no ladder or stairs to get up to it so I have to get a step ladder then get Amanda to give me a little bit of a boost to boot then pull myself up it. One of these days we’re going to have some better way to get up there.
Anyway, I couldn’t find any reason for the part that was wet on the ceiling to be wet. I did find a small drip coming through some duct tape and, after talking to Phil Mercer, got an idea how to take care of that. I did find where there was some wetness above the stain in the ceiling, but I couldn’t figure out how it happened. I had Amanda run the AC for a while and I didn’t see any problem at all. It was almost like a bunch of water had been knocked out of the pan. I did use some tape to pull the drain pipe to a better angle to keep the pan a little shallower, but I’m pretty stumped.
On top of all that, when I first opened the closet I saw some regurgitated cat food. Thanks, Cobb. It didn’t do much to help my mood, as I was feeling very put-upon by life at that time. (Not because of Eli- that was a bright spot.)
I wound down by watching some TV with my lovely wife, who I thought was mad at me when she was going to bed. She wasn’t mad- she was just emotionally pregnant.
Zach Dotsey