It’s easy to simply not see big milestones because you’re too busy, moving too fast, too tired, or thinking about tomorrow instead of just appreciating today. It’s been especially true for me the last month or so, what with holidays, refrigerators, and the sick-sick. So I’m going to focus on a nice, good thing today, because I haven’t done that for a while.
Thessaly’s comprehension of what’s being said to her is increasing daily. I noticed this most significantly one day last week. There are dispensers for foamy hand sanitizer at the gym’s childcare center, and I often summon a flowery-smelling glop and rub it into her hands so she’s distracted a little while I buckle Torbin into his bucket.
As we were walking out to the parking lot (well, as *I* was walking; she and her brother were being carried…jesus, they’re getting heavy), I just happened to ask her if her hands smelled good. She looked at me, and then put her hands to her nose and sniffed. Now, this might not seem like that big of a deal, but it really, really is. For a number of reasons.
The fact that she put her hands to her face meant that she knew what ‘hands’ were, and that I was talking about *her* hands. This isn’t a big leap for her, since we’ve often gone through a picture book with a picture of a baby’s hands, and we ask her “Where’s Thessaly’s hand?”
And more amazingly, she knew what it meant to “smell”. She knew that in order to smell something, she needed to put them to her nose and inhale. This is the bigger milestone, because we don’t say “smell” or refer to the sense of smell (except perhaps to exclaim that she has a stinky little butt and needs a change) on a regular basis. Since my hands were full of bucket and girl, she got no prompting from me as to what to do.
I didn’t realize the monumental aspect of this simple act until much later, and it made me smile. She’s getting big.
### Fridge update
Because it’s still not a closed issue, I’ll sully the happy post with some news of Warners’ Stellian’s ongoing efforts to fix my fridge.
On the Monday morning following Thanksgiving, Erin called WS and managed to convince them that they should get someone out to our house ASAP. The service rep agreed and said that she would work to get a tech out that very day and call back with the results of her efforts. Erin gave the rep her work number as a point of contact.
Cut to me in my living room about an hour later, 9-ish, home with the kids, and wearing a puzzled expression as I watched a WS van pull up to the house. I later learned that Erin had received no phone call from the service rep to establish a time for a tech to come out or to verify whether or not someone would be home at 9am on a weekday.
Fortunately, this cowboy-like style of dispatching techs from the hip without confirming whether or not someone was home at 9am on a weekday wasn’t an issue since I’m home with the kids.
It was the same tech from the previous Friday. He pulled the shelves out of the fridge and spent the next hour or so with his head either buried in the machine or on the phone to LG. Thankfully, this time the tech decided to rail against the LG tech’s opinion that another controller board be ordered and actually coaxed quality troubleshooting out of himself and LG. Eventually, they seemed to figure out what the problem was:
The water reservoir was leaking into the vent that allowed cold air from the freezer to come up into the refrigerator. And since the freezer was in hyper-freeze mode for the last month as it waited for a new controller board, it froze the leaking water as well as the reservoir itself. That frozen water needed to be melted.
The problem was that there was no way to safely do that with the fridge in my kitchen. It needed to go to the shop. This was good news. Why? Why would the fact that the solution involved taking away my fridge make me happy? Because this solution came with a loaner refrigerator!! Finally, I would have a properly functioning device that would keep my food cold! Huzzah!!!
And so it came to be that before the noon bell chimed I had a functional refrigerator in my kitchen. I didn’t care that it was significantly smaller than mine. I didn’t care that it came at the cost of snowcaked boots of the delivery guys marching several times back and forth through my house. My food is cold now!
But the fun hasn’t stopped!
On Friday of last week, Erin received a call from WS. The rep on the phone was calling with an estimate of $300+ for the repair of the unit, and needed to know if we would like to go ahead and pay for the repairs. Erin kindly informed the rep that we had purchased the extended warranty and that we *did* expect the repairs to be performed, and we did not expect to have to pay one penny for them to *be* performed.
Unable, for a reason incomprehensible to me, to confirm while on the phone whether or not Erin was telling the truth, the rep had to call back later. Which she did. It seems that the repairs should be completed by Monday or Tuesday of this week.
Want to read about my bad experience with Warners’ Stellian and their extended warranty from the start? I’ve created a new category here at the Q-Blog that contains all posts that touch on the subject of my powerfully bad experience with Warners’ Stellian.
[Check it out.](http://q-burger.com/category/blog/bad-warners-stellian/)
They wanted to charge you for repairs on a unit you’ve owned less than 6 months for defects in materials/workmanship??? Even if you hadn’t bought the extended service plan, they still couldn’t charge you.
How the Grinch Stole Javen’s Fridge “…there’s a vent in this fridge that won’t blow cold air. So I’m taking it home to my work shop, my dear. I’ll fix it up there, then I’ll bring it back here.” His “van” wasn’t towed by a basset hound with an antler tied to his head was it?