Dressing up & treehouse update

Sorry for the gap in blog posts. I (Shelly) have been more than a little busy in the last two months organizing an Earth Day celebration with Local 20/20 and volunteering for the 2nd annual PT Wearable Art Show, which is a fundraiser for Jefferson County's Fund for Women and Girls.

This is the second year I wrote a script for and emceed this amazing runway fashion show. Here I am after the show with the "Best in Show" winning wearable art (a Dacron wedding dress detailed with sailcloth "feathers") modeled by the artist's mother. The artist, Riel, is second from right. Debbi, at far right, is the event chair. Kudos to ALL who were involved in this incredible effort. See more pix of the winning entries here.

Meanwhile, Soren hasn't stopped growing up. He is officially 3-3/4 today, and already answers "almost 4" when asked how old he is. Here he is on our Easter Sunday beach walk.

Most mornings, he straps on his sword and scabbard before he even eats breakfast. Here he is, fully armed, for whatever dragons or evildoers he may encounter in The Roost. (Note: it's a cap gun, and it fits in the chest pocket of his overalls.)

Another kind of dress-up has intrigued him lately: the fluffy princess and fairy costumes worn by his little girl friends. He borrowed this get-up from his friend Tayla (pictured below). Note the RC car at his feet.

 

When I promised to stock a dress-up box of his very own, we hit Goodwill and found a set of six costume noses. What a find!

Tayla is still Soren's best friend, and their shenanigans give both of our families lots of laughs and cute photo opps. I don't think I need to say more!

I'll close with an update on the backyard treehouse, which has been joined by a firepit -- meaning s'mores at least once a week. Since this photo has been taken, Jeff has added railings between all the treehouse posts.

Glad to have some time this weekend to catch up on photos -- and with you! Happy Memorial Day.

Soren's new tree house

Poor Soren... He has pink eye, but he also has a new tree house! Should we pity or envy him?

Well, if you have to stay home from preschool for a week and a half, you might as well have something fun to climb on in your own backyard!

Jeff has been busy (at least, until he caught pink eye from Soren yesterday--sigh) building this structure from salvaged lumber.

It features poles from the deer fence that was shortened when we built our garage, treated wood joists and untreated cedar planks disassembled from a deck one of Jeff's solar clients was getting rid of, and a temporary aluminum ladder for access.

The tree is a volunteer plum that was there when we cleared the lot for building, and has been doing poorly in the last year -- many dead branches. So Jeff carved it up and left a structure of branches that would support a tree house.

It will get a railing eventually.

Here's Jeff at work. This corner of our rather big backyard is the least "organized," to put it kindly. But we're working on it. There's a playhouse planned to be built out of the rest of the deck pieces at the far left of this photo.

The new planter bed (will be between the two play structures) has raspberries and strawberries, because when Jeff asked Soren what he wanted his playhouse and tree house to be like, his pithy response was, "I want them to be near berries."

I think we need not pity Soren, because he's almost all better. The pink eye diagnosis was actually the first time he's been to the doctor outside of preventative visits. His strong constitution headed off the worst, and his energy has remained high. (To my weary chagrin...)

P.S. I am the lone healthy person standing in our family of three. Pray for me!

Sleep! While the grass is growing...

How could I have forgotten Good Reason #7 in my previous post?

7. Sleep. Still not getting enough of it.

When Soren hit the 19-month mark one month ago, he started sleeping all night long (with no wake-ups that require parental assistance between his bedtime and a reasonable morning hour, such as 6 a.m.) -- now, before you start cheering, read on -- about every third night. We're not there yet! Two nights ago he was inexplicably wide awake for 2-1/2 hours in the dead middle of the night, 1:30-4 a.m. Jeff and I took shifts.

Anyway, I've vowed to get to bed earlier whenever possible, and that means starting my bedtime routine shortly after I've led Soren through his. And that's been getting later and later (with the Daylight Savings Time shift and now the daylight lingering longer), until now he doesn't fall asleep until between 8 and 9 p.m. Farewell to evenings to myself and taking time for blogging. But then, like tonight, I'll give myself permission to "stay up." The house is silent, just me and my humming computer and a cup of chamomile tea. Aaaah. (Yawn.)

I'll sign off with an update on the new crop of backyard grass. To the photo of bare dirt in the last post that was taken March 21, I add these shot today, April 29. The grass seed was sown just about a month ago.
Jeff and Soren used our push-mower to give the tallest blades a quick mow this evening. It's looking great!

P.S. Blogger tells me this is post #101 since I started this blog less than two years ago. Incredibly, that averages out to about one post a week, so I guess I'm meeting my weekly blogging goal after all!

6 good reasons why I haven't been blogging

Mom is all tied up with something she calls "real life."

I keep meaning to blog, really -- and write myself a well-intentioned reminder in my DayPlanner at least twice a week -- but real life has been taking up all my spare time. Starting with...

1. The flu. I got it Monday and thankfully breezed through it in 12 hours, thanks to my super-mom immune system and Jeff taking the day off to spend with Soren so I could sleep for five hours straight in the middle of the day (minus the time spent puking). This is the first time I've been really sick -- nonfunctional sick -- since Soren was born, so I almost enjoyed the bedrest. (The last time I threw up, I was in labor.)

Soren is currently under the weather -- thankfully,
Nannie & Papaw are here to nurse him (and me!).

But just as I recovered, Soren started throwing up -- this was Monday night and he still is unable to keep down even liquids. Poor little guy -- he's exhausted and limp. Please send good thoughts his way for his speedy recovery!

2. Taxes. We do our own accounting and paperwork (Jeff takes some masochistic pleasure in this), and that includes my small business books and reckoning. My inputs and outputs are fairly minimal, so I tot up my expenses just once a year. I try to do this in advance of April 15, but this year the filing date snuck up on us.

I'd rather share a picture of Soren dressing up than me doing Quickbooks.

We had a babysitter watch Soren for two hours last Sunday so we could get all the forms in order, and just as we thought we were done and Jeff was planning to check the math tomorrow morning (April 14!), we realized we likely qualify for the "making work pay" credit and should fill out Schedule M and recalculate. Hmmm, is it worth $800? We think probably so.

3. A successful consulting gig. Successful in that my client raised $550,000 in three months and met a March 31 fundraising deadline that unlocked $1.1 million in challenge grants. Whew!

This has been a big time commitment for me, but I was pleased to play a part in closing out the Northwest Maritime Center's $12.8 M capital campaign. I was hired in January to strategize and coordinate a local publicity campaign for the final 10 weeks of fundraising. We did an ad campaign and half a dozen press releases. It was a nail-biter, right down to the final weeks, but the community came through.

Board members celebrate!

This was an especially meaningful win for me because I devoted four years of my working life (2002-05) as an employee of the Maritime Center, handling grantwriting and communications back when the brownfield property was being cleaned up and the existing dock rebuilt. When asked to help in these final weeks of the campaign, I had to say "yes" -- because if I said "no" and the challenge grants slipped away (think of how long it could take to raise $1.1 M from other sources in today's economy!), those four years of my life would have felt slightly less productive.

As it is, our town is now home to a truly amazing maritime center with great potential to grow and showcase our maritime heritage. And it's one of Soren's favorite destinations, since he can throw rocks on the beach, watch shipwrights at work in the boatshop, and run a loop that includes stairs, a long second-story deck, an elevator, then out to the end of the dock!

Here are two articles reporting the good news on April 1:
Peninsula Daily News
Three Sheets NW

4. Visits by the grandparents. Including the Eastern Washington pair, whom we hadn't seen since Thanksgiving. Jim and Gloria made the trek over the mountains in mid-March and we were very glad to see them. They were the first official guests in The Nest, and pronounced it a cozy retreat, although Gloria's keen ears still heard Soren crying one night. Soren has been saying Jim's name for a while, but he learned to say "Glor-a" while they were here.

Sharing a book with Grandpa Jim.

Grandma Gloria helping with a haircut.

Soren has also renamed "Grannie Annie" plain "Nannie" -- apparently that is a lot easier to say. His other grandparents, Papaw and Nannie, stopped by on their way home from their road trip to California at the end of March and now they are back on emergency call, helping to nurse Soren. Auntie Jill also came for a four-day visit in late March and the three of us made a day trip to Vashon to visit Grandpa Gerry. Gotta keep in touch with the relatives!

An appropriate bridge picture:
Soren helping Auntie Jill prep our pea patch.

5. Yard work. The backyard is slowly evolving, and now that the earth-moving around The Nest is finally at an end and spring is upon us, we decided to sow some grass seed. We want to a good-sized patch of lawn next to the concrete patio, but the soil there needed a lot of work. Many long hours in March were devoted (mostly by Jeff, but yours truly had to then be responsible for Soren) to breaking up an impermeable layer of clay with a mattock tool, hand-picking hundreds of small, round rocks (the legacy of glacial till), and raking it all smooth again. Gloria helped a lot the weekend she and Jim were visiting. After a nice dry spell, which was good for working the soil, regular rains came the evening after we sowed the grass-clover mix. It's sprouting beautifully now! (Notice also the new yellow gate that Jeff built.)

Jeff prepping our backyard lawn -- a lot of hard work!

6. Saturday morning garage saling. OK, OK, so it's only been taking up one morning a weekend, but I've been scoring some great stuff. Let's see...for Soren: a Radio Flyer red wagon, a pull-toy wooden locomotive, oilcloth for making him a water-play smock, loads of books, more Disney animated classics for our VHS collection, a plastic rocking horse for our backyard play-area, and a luggage cart from a free box that he likes to push around like -- well, like a push-toy.

Soren's homemade oilcloth waterproof smock for sink play.
OK, he doesn't really like to wear it. But it works!

For me: a breadbox for the kitchen that hides unruly clutter, a shapely wooden chair already painted yellow for The Nest, an in-the-box desk lamp also for The Nest, an electric citrus juicer (I've long wanted one of these -- bought a bag of oranges today to try it out on!), and a barely-been-worn blue Speedo swimsuit that fits me tolerably well. And more.

Looking ahead...the calendar is not so full, so I will try not to ignore my notes-to-self to blog more frequently. I really miss being in touch this way. Know that, dear reader!