The Table Slide

I actually wrote this in February.  I never posted it because I was trying to add a video that just would never load.  So as you're reading it remember this was in February, and we were tired of winter.


This is what happens when you leave three engineer-minded males alone:

This table slide was actually the result of a brainchild of the two-year-old engineer. But the backstory starts last summer.

Last August I noticed some standing water in our basement. Our basement had always been dry so I mentioned this to my engineer husband expecting him to promptly diagnose and fix the problem. Evidently he thought my "the basement is flooded" reports were just the over-reaction of a pregnant woman because he didn't investigate.  In fact he just reassured me, "It's a basement, it's supposed to be wet" (this is really out of character for him). Until the door to the storage area wouldn't shut because it was swollen with water and there was mold growing on the walls we put up just months before. Then he acted on it rather quickly. Turns out our water softener was leaking.

Side note: You know how with your first pregnancy you follow all the rules and microwave your lunch meat and won't even look at Caesar dressing. Well, by the third when your husband reroutes the water around the filter to fix the water soften for a week and half, it doesn't even occur to you that you shouldn't drink it. And then once the water system is fixed you're like, "oh that's why I was so sick."  But that really has nothing to do with the table slide.

Really, the only thing the basement flooding last summer has to do with our table slide is that it left our banquet table water damaged and unusable for normal table purposes.  We had planned to get rid of it, but hadn't gotten around to the task of maneuvering it through the basement around the toys, up the stairs, outside, and to where ever one disposes of large water damaged banquet tables.

The whole table slide came about because of another basement flood.  I was down doing laundry on a very raining day and noticed puddles again.  I texted G, "BASEMENT FLOOD."  Evidently he's learned to believe me about these things because he came home over lunch to investigate (this was the first of two times that week I sent him urgent texts and he had to home over lunch, the other time was a few days later when we had the chicken massacre).

GD was in little engineer heaven.  He put on his rain boots and headed downstairs with G to solve the problem.  They discovered it was not the rain that caused the flooded, but our 20 year old water heater had rusted through and it was time to replace it.

One piece of advice my mom gave me growing up was, "Marry someone who can either fix things, or afford to pay someone else."  I married the former, and then gave him two little assistants.  Within four hours we had a new water heater up and running, partially wired by a four-year-old.

And a cardboard box that it came in to play with.  The cardboard box was turned into several different things before, about a week later, GE had a eureka moment that it would make a great slide coming off of their plastic play fort in the basement.  The cardboard wasn't quite strong enough to hold two boys trying to slide down it.  So their father brought out the twice-water-damaged banquet table and, tadah, we now have the latest and greatest innovation in mid-winter indoor fun.

We've had minimal injuries on it. So far.

How NOT to Milk a Goat In 40 Easy Steps

     We have been milking Tractor for about a week and a half now and, let me tell you, the excitement and glamour is definitely waning.  The "buckets and buckets" of goat milk GD was planning on getting is in reality only 1/4 a cup a day.  I probably could get more, but Tractor doesn't like to be milked.  According to a couple different blogs I should be able to milk-train my goat in 3 days or less using such methods as feeding, talking calmly, caressing, and psychic powers.  Although I haven't tapped into my psychic powers yet, it's been 10 days and I'm still getting kicked.  Since there are over half a million google hits on how to milk a goat, I thought I would tell you how NOT to milk a goat.

  

Goat Milking

     If you've ever read or watched Curious George you know there's nothing that little tailless monkey can't do. George pretty much knows everything.  Or at least that's what GD thinks. So he was pretty adamant that he didn't need to be taught how to milk a goat; he already knew how because he watched curious George milk a cow    (GD also claims the Berenstain Bears taught him how to ice skate without him ever stepping foot on the ice.). I tried to reason with him. 

      How do you know George knows how to milk a cow correctly?  Does he have extensive dairy farming experience?  Is that the only way to milk something?  Are cows and goats the same? Is George even real? 

Basically it was all met with "but he's George!"  GD has never believed in Santa clause but he is convinced Curious George is real. 

     Eventfully I convinced him to watch a YouTube video of some random hillbillies showing how to milk a goat (side note, I recently taught him how to click on other videos in YouTube and he is utterly amazed at the amount of videos my computer contains. He really has no idea. ). Turns out George didn't really do it right. I don't think George even cleans off the teats or sterilizes the bucket when he milks The Rankins' cow Daisy.   GD was kind of crushed that George's pedestal was taken down a few notches by backwoods YouTubers; I guess to him YouTube is even more omniscient than George. Honestly I did kind of question the reliability of such a video but I figured it was a more accurate goat milking demonstration than a cartoon personified monkey learning to milk a cartoon cow in 12 minutes or less while teaching kids to love STEM.  

     Anyway, the moment the boys had been anxiously waiting for finally came.  Mower was two weeks old and Tractor was ready to be milked. The boys built a stanchion, we gathered up milking supplies, and we headed out to the barn in the rain. 

     The first issue was that the boys forgot to account for Tractor's horns in the stanchion dimensions and we couldn't get her in without taking some of it apart. The second problem was that Mower had been nursing recently and Tractor had no milk to be milked. After GD, G, and I all tried without a drop of milk in the bowl, GE said exasperatedly, "Let me do it."  I kind of expected the two year old to end up being the successful one. He definitely has a way with animals so I wouldn't have been surprised if he had been the one to finally coax some milk out. But he didn't. And Tractor was totally over it. 

     The next evening the boys went out to try again but were again unsuccessful. I decided, having substantial lactating experience myself, that I was going to take control of the situation and get some goat milk. I happened to be wearing KM at the time and , So I milked a goat while baby wearing. It was an interesting experience and probably not the best idea but I did get a little milk out and felt like a real pioneer or super crunchy or...something. And then Tractor stepped in the bowl and got manure in it so the milk was a little crunchy too and we had to dump it. 
    The next night we put KM in the stroller and got just enough for the boys to each have a taste. The verdict from GD was that it tastes like coconut milk but G said we need to work on it tasting less goaty.