Kitchen Update 5

And now things get a little more complicated...

This is my final time washing dishes in this sink. It now rests outside, by the trash cans. The tiles are in the trash, the cabinet is dismantled, the drawers are stacked in the living room.

Our new dishwashing method!

Along with paper plates and plastic cutlery, here are my new kitchen friends! Disposable, microwave steam cooking bags, oven bags and crock pot liners. And I've finally, four years into mothering, become a disposable wipe gal.
During his work, Stace ran his finger across an exposed sharp metal piece. Nurse Cora helped bandage him up. (Later that night, Stace suggested to Cora that she could be a nurse when she was older. She said, "No, I'll pump my milk for Baby Violet.")
Stace built up the window opening, to account for the countertop's six-inch backsplash. He also finished tiling out the floor where the cabinets had been. Good thing the prior owners left a stack of tiles in the garage.

In this photo, he is contemplating his wife's crazy idea of installing a track light at the top of the window opening. Today, I bought a three-light fixture, so we can have one on the sink and two shining into the playroom. I hope it will look nicely decorative, and further integrate the playroom into the house.

On Tuesday night, Stace soldered new copper pipes for the sink.

Yes, that is a blowtorch. Since I was the helper this time, I became acutely aware of how dangerous this is. Yikes.

Yep. Live blue-hot flame, inches from us. Gulp. Glad this part of the job is over.

Fish and chips

Before Stace set off on Kitchen Work Weekend #42, we went out for Fish 'n Chips at St. Clare's on Friday night.

The food is delicious, the price is fair and it's fun being with so many people.

Stace knew several people from work, including Joe, who volunteers at the fish fry every year.

Violet practiced her baby bird impression, and loved her fish, chips and rice. She got all sorts of attention from the older folks in the crowd, as she always does when we go out.

On Saturday, when the girls and I met my friend Melanie at a park, some park-goers were celebrating at a ladybug-themed birthday party.

It appeared that little terrariums, nets and big plastic tweezers were a party favor, to go along with containers of hundreds of ladybugs you can get at nurseries.

A man gave Cora the party favor, and she was very pleased. We brought home at least a dozen friendly spotted friends for our rose bushes.

11 months

Our baby is 11 months old today!

Violet has progressed a lot in the past couple of weeks. She now has several words, and she's pushing her walker around, in addition to cruising along furniture.



This week I stood Violet up behind the walker toy, and off she went.

She walks until she runs into something, or until she stumbles; then she'll push it from her knees.

We'll see if she's walking by her first birthday!

She is so proud of herself, making great squealing noises with a huge grin.

That's our Violet - usually smiling a big, happy smile!
She says "uh oh" and "doggy," which were her first words. She also says "Daddy," "ghia" for Cora and we've heard "teh tu" for thank you.
It's not a real word, but she says "Mmmmmmm!!!" when she wants more food!

I visited with my friend Melanie on Saturday and you can hear Violet saying "uh oh" at the end of this clip. It always makes me laugh to hear her saying it at naptime, when she's alone in her bedroom, throwing her animals out of the crib.

We can tell Violet is getting older in another way - she has been getting mad and screaming more the past couple of weeks. Especially when Cora and she are playing and she isn't happy about something. For example, in this video clip:

(The backstory is, Violet had been dancing to the music this toy plays, and it was adorable, until I got the camera out. A half-dozen clips later, and only one clip had a tiny bit of dancing. Stace and I agreed, though, that this one was pretty classic. It's starting to appear that Violet isn't going to let Cora push her around.)

Lastly, I was tidying up Violet's bedroom today while she untidied it.

When we emptied the playroom to change the carpet, we put the small bookcase in Violet's room. It has the baby books in it, after all, and her room has some empty space. We'll see if it ends up being a good idea!

Playroom carpet

New carpet, check!

Like we planned on that this month!

Oh well.

The second photo shows how wet the concrete was under the old carpet and pad.

Wow. It was truly soaked.

It took the men some effort to dry the concrete before they could lay the new pad.

I'm really pleased with the new carpeting. It's a darker color than we had before, sort of a tan with flecks of brown.

It's shaggy, and I think it will hide the dirt very well. It's also a nice, soft surface for the girls to play on.

Stace will take a brief break from the kitchen to paint water-repelling roofing sealant onto the roof, so we hopefully can keep this carpet around longer than 17 months!

Seattle fun, and a wet welcome home

Bill and Patty live out in the woods of Seabeck, where properties are larger and more conducive to childhood adventures.

On Monday, Uncle Bill and Stace took Cora out around the outskirts of the yard, where the trees, ferns and creeks take over.

She found the kids' old swing and forts, and loved tromping through the water.

Then, it was time for more girly activities - cupcake baking! - a tradition for Cora and Aunt Patty. These ones were amazing, with homemade lemon curd and powdered sugar.

On Tuesday, we caught a morning ferry into Seattle so we could surprise Cora with a trip to the Seattle Aquarium.


She enjoyed the beautiful (and cold and windy) boat ride, and we think Violet did, too.

Then, it was on to the Aquarium!

Since Cora is in love with her little Nemo toy, and now also loves the movie, we knew she'd love it. She got to touch starfish and anemones, and come face-to-face with clown fish! Nemo!

We learned that they are also called "anemone fish," because they live near them, and that obviously is where Nemo must have got his name.

Aunt Patty spoiled both girls with soft, cuddly clownfish. Cora named hers "Marlin," for Nemo's dad. You can see the Seattle charm bracelet Patty brought Cora when she came down last year - Cora had fun finding salmon and crabs at the Aquarium, because both are charms on the bracelet, as is a ferry boat.

Violet also took everything in, pointing to the fish with eyes wide open.



After the Aquarium, we just enough time to walk through the Pike Place market to pick up lunch.

We had these amazing Russian meat pies from Piroshky's, and Cora also had a blueberry cream cheese concoction that was big enough for all of us.

Then, we were off to the airport.

After a false start - our plane had a problem and we all had to disembark and board a different one - the trip home was uneventful.

We arrived home to find our home worse off than when we left. Funny how disasters seem to strike when we're on vacation!

A tremendous rain storm Sunday dumped 6 inches of rain, and that was way, way too much for our playroom roof. We've had leaking before in big storms, but this storm was something else.

Genia was nice enough to bring in our trash cans while we were gone, and that should have been the extent of her help, since we have no pets for the time being. But, knowing the roof might leak, she and John checked in to find it pretty well flooded. They kindly moved out the major furniture - you can see the water marks on the bottom of the sofa. Boy, those sofas of my grandparents have been through the ringer in the past two years!

The smell is already bad in the house; new carpet will be installed Thursday...

Alison and Tyler's wedding

Congratulations to Alison and welcome to the family, Tyler. We're happy to have you as a cousin-in-law.

The wedding was simple, elegant and beautiful.

Alison was a stunning bride, and it was heartwarming to see such young love.

Alison and Tyler's first dance was to this fun folk song I wasn't familiar with called Home, by Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros. They're playing next month with Mumford and Sons, in San Pedro, but it's soldout. That would have been a fun show!

My parents and our family stayed at Bill and Patty's, and it was nice to spend time together for my dad's 55th birthday on Sunday.

It was also great to see my cousins Elizabeth and William - William is normally far away at college, and Elizabeth lives in California now, so having all the family together was special. Well, all but my sister - she had to stay home for her Ugly Duckling show.

Wedding rehearsal

We have been in Washington this weekend for my cousin's wedding!

Here are some shots my dad took, from Friday, the day of Alison and Tyler's wedding rehearsal and dinner.




The top photos are of the scenery outside the cabin where Patty's family stayed. Beautiful!





Cora had fun playing with the flower girl and ring bearer.





The flower girl wore Cora's dress from Casey and Bradley's wedding; it was nice to contribute and see the dress in action again.




Stace worked Friday on a slide show of photos of Alison and Tyler growing up. He did a great job.

Our girl

Cora, Cora, Cora.

How your Daddy and I do love you! Your zeal for life, your laugh, your silly dancing, your love for us and for your sister. And, these days, for that orange plastic fish.

A few details from Cora's first month of being 4...

She was looking through one of her High Five magazines (the younger version of Highlights) and spotted a recipe for a silly apple smile, using apple slices for the lips and mini marshmallows for the teeth, held in with cream cheese.

She had such fun helping make them. She loves working in the kitchen, and I really enjoy having her help.

She likes to have our attention as she does "amazing" things, like jumping and spinning at the same time: "Look! Watch! I can do a cool trick!"

Cora also loves Play-Doh and coloring. In recent months, her coloring has transitioned from scribbling to actually coloring, choosing the colors and staying within the lines.

The picture with the flowered chair struck me and Stace - it's only maybe 2 1/2 inches high, so she was pretty detail-oriented to use a different color for the roses. She made the shamrock/heart project in Terrific Tots yesterday, and I was in class to help out. Most of the kids still colored very hard, but Cora was coloring gently, trying to color the hearts nicely and evenly.

She loves rainbows, and they are a frequent subject for her art projects. At Stroller Strides recently, we were on one end of the long line of moms and babies, and Cora noticed all the bright solid color shirts the moms were wearing: "Look! You all look like a rainbow!"
Cora also is more interested in letters and their sounds, and I know she will be reading sometime this year. She can sound out some simple words, with help.

She likes to sing, especially the songs on a CD by Jess Penner, a young songstress who performed on a Friday night at our church coffeehouse. It's happy, upbeat pop music, and we're happy to hear Cora singing along. I've got to get some video of it!
Cora's voice is still young and cute. She says "valilla" for vanilla, "naplin" for napkin, and "Nemo Finding" for "Finding Nemo."

Speaking of Nemo, Cora is well into a bandaid phase these days, and yesterday Nemo needed a bandaid for his fin, because he was hurt, too. And about those bandaids - Cora seems to hurt herself 10 times a day, and usually uses the words "straight into" when she describes what happened. ("I banged my arm straight into the chair!" I knocked my head straight into the corner!") I'm working with her on only complaining/CRYING when she's actually hurt...

And we have noticed that when she's in trouble, and we're disciplining her, she suddenly winds up banging her elbow, or stubbing her toe, etc. She'll also start crying, "I want Mummy! I want Mummy!" when I'm the one upset with her, or "I want Daddy!" when Stace is not happy with her. I think she wants us to hug her and forget about what she did or didn't do!
And over the last few days, she's said to us, "I'm scared of you!" when we're disciplining her. As if that will make us give up and allow her to misbehave.

Lastly, we've had to have a few talks with Cora about not rolling her eyes. The worst example came the day our cabinets arrived. Stace encouraged Cora to come into the garage to see them, and help him with sorting out the boxes. When she opened the garage door, Stace said something happy to her about the cabinets. Not impressed, Cora actually rolled her eyes at him. Whoa. Stace came down on her hard for that one, appropriately hard. We haven't had eye-rolling since.

All that said, Cora's been very good the past couple of days. Fun, funny, imaginative, helpful. As I said, we love her and are so thankful God saw us fit to parent her! He will never give us more than we can handle, right?!

Kitchen Update 4

Following Stace's weekend work, the kitchen is one sink and one set of drawers away from being completely devoid of cabinetry!

I'm appreciating our sink now. Soon enough, it will be gone too.

Just to make things easier for me, Stace kept the old broken dishwasher in place as a dish drying rack, with a cabinet door on top as a coffee station. Thanks, Babe!

Stace was able to remove the pantry and upper cabinets so that we can use them in the interim.

We also have bags of food in the bedroom and boxes of kitchen stuff in the living room.

Besides the demolition work, Stace redid the wiring on that wall and put in the new switches and plugs.

For the first time since we've lived here, I can flip a switch on the wall, and the garbage disposer comes on! Amazing. (I've been going under the sink to plug in, and then unplug, the disposer each time.)

The last few photos are from the demo. We finally got to use a sledgehammer! Ha! That was fun. Especially since I've really hated our countertops for the 2 1/2 years we've lived here.

I never have to wipe them down again, all the while feeling as if I'm just moving crumbs into the space between the tiles where the grout is missing.