About that technicolored mold on our Thanksgiving decorations...

You may remember that this past fall when Jenny and Pip pulled out the tote of Thanksgiving decorations, they discovered that they were all covered in a horrid, psychedelic colored slimy mold.
Disgusted and more than a little creeped out, they just shoved the tote back into the garage, although Pip did manage to salvage everybody's favorite Thanksgiving dec, pictured in the above post.

Nobody could figure out why that had happened. 

Well, this week the FYG and FYB made a valiant effort  at cleaning up the garage.  This meant they made paths through the chaos and put it in enough order that I can walk into the garage without screaming, bursting into tears, flinging myself to the floor and pounding my own head repeatedly against the concrete while wailing "I cannot clean this up!"

How bad was it? These are the after pictures and they show AMAZING improvement. I asked the FYG to take before pictures and she flinched from head to toe (have you ever seen a full body wince?), and said, "Are you kidding? That would just be too embarrassing."


Even more valiantly, the FYG went through that slimy tote to see if there was anything else that could be salvaged (there was, she saved a couple of glass pumpkins).


And she discovered why everything in the tote was coated in technicolored slime.

Two years ago when somebody packed up the thanksgiving decorations they had also packed up a real pie pumpkin and a couple of gourds from the garden.

We were puzzled at who would have done this and what on earth they were thinking when we remembered what else was happening two Thanksgivings ago:

I wasn't even home by the time the Thanksgiving things were packed up.  I was a hundred miles away at the children's hospital NICU supporting my oldest girl and her first child, while her distraught husband was faithfully working at his new job.

  A distressed Jenny and our then 11 year old son packed up the Thanksgiving decorations by themselves. They must have been in a fog and stuffed the real pumpkin and gourds in the tote without thinking about it.

What a difference the right diagnosis, the right medication, and a year of breastmilk provided by generous, wonderful, sacrificial lactating moms makes,eh?  And the people said AMEN!

He has a wry sense of humor, this boy.  He's not talking much, but he does sign.  One of his spontaneous signs is "I love you," although he can't quite get his pinky finger up yet.  Yesterday Pip and I were watching him while his parents were signing papers for their new house.  We were feeding him (BY MOUTH! and if you've been following this blog, you know that is another miracle!) yogurt, and some cranberry cinnamon goat's milk cheese.(BY MOUTH!  Can I get a hallelujah?)  Pip was signing 'I love you' to him and trying to get him to sign it back.  He kept grabbing her hand and opening up her fingers, as though to say, "Stop saying that."  And then he very deliberately, with a smirk on his face, opened up her fingers, pushed her hand away, turned to his food and signed "I love you" to his cream cheese.