We ALL Make Mistakes...

Last week, James and I both made pretty bad mistakes. The kind where you wish you could go back in time, change just a few minutes, and everything would be OK, kind of thing.

My mistake actually happened a couple of weeks ago, but came to head last Tuesday when I received a phone call from "Sheila at the Educational Development Intervention department" on the base. Apparently, the long survey that I had to fill out on Toby at his one-year well-baby visit got sent on to these guys. According to Sheila, after looking over Toby's survey, he appears to be "behind". I tried to explain to her that maybe if I was given more than five minutes to fill it out and had time to think about how I was answering, perhaps he wouldn't appear to be "behind". I also asked her if anyone bothered noting that he was born six weeks prematurely and that it might not be uncommon for him to miss the mark on those milestones just a bit... (the answer was no). The phone call lasted all of 7 or 8 minutes and my emotions went from shocked, to mad, to thinking, "well, if he is behind, I guess it will be better to catch it now", to "sure, come over, spend an afternoon with us, and he'll show you that he is NOT behind! I'm sure when it's all said and done, she is going to have to say that something is wrong with him. Fine, she can say that he should be talking by now. I know that lots of 1-year olds say a few words....I'm not worried about it though. Thomas was a slow talker, he was slow even at two, but by the time he was two and a half, he had caught up with his peers. Perhaps I would be worried if he was a "quiet" child, but he's not. He spends his days roaring and growling at the world...Toby is anything but quiet!

Naturally, since last Tuesday, James and I have been watching Toby like a hawk. But, we have concluded that he is just fine. He is curious, into everything, always on the go, "talkative" little boy who spends half of his playtime trying to do the things that Thomas does and then the other half playing on his own! It's pretty cute to watch him play ball by himself (which, of course, makes you drop what you're doing and play with him for a few minutes)! So, I think it all boils down to a big mistake on my part: not taking the survey seriously and not taking an adequate amount of time to fill it out. In my defense, I have filled things out like this for Thomas back in Maryland, always feeling like they were a waste of time, because then the doctor would ask you half the questions again verbally and never even glance at your survey. I should have asked to bring it back in a day or two or made other arrangements. Instead, Sheila is coming to visit us this Thursday at 1 PM! Believe me, I'll keep you posted! Oh, and any other surveys I have to fill out, I will certainly take seriously!

Onto James' big mistake. You know, James is a smart guy. He knows all kinds things about history, politics, finance, etc--things that I do not know a lot about...but every once in a while, I am reminded that James (bless his heart) does not have an abundant amount of "common sense". Unfortunately, I was reminded of this on Saturday morning when he came upstairs and said, "Emily, I think I have some really bad news" (you know that can never be good). He continued to tell me, that he had been downstairs, in the basement, plugging in our old desktop computer, that we haven't used since we moved here, to start working on our 2007 taxes (which should prove to be a HUGE pain in the neck this year!) and when he simply plugged it in, and it made this zzzzz-zap sound. I asked him if he checked to see if it was dual-voltage (yes) then I asked him if it had a switch on the back (yes), well, did you switch it? (no....) His reply was that everything else he has plugged in that was dual voltage didn't have the switch and at this point, I'm thinking, "but, yes, but this is our computer, the thing that has lots and lots of files and records that we may possibly need and certainly want someday, but you just went ahead and plugged it in without much thought at all, didn't you". So, the old computer is fried...James has bought a portable floppy drive something-another in attempt to retrieve the old files...particulary the old tax files. The only thing I had on there that I would consider at all "valuable" were digital pictures which I have a back-up CD for. Don't even get me started on the fact that James "isn't positive that I made copies "...

Until later,

Emily