Concrete up, garage door poured (!)

No, of course it's the other way around! As of this week, the concrete is poured and the garage door is up at The Nest. The interior walls also went from yellow (insulation) to white (drywall, taped and mudded, yet to be textured).
Soren missed the excitement of the cement truck because we were in Colorado, but I must say it was nice to return from that trip and find the driveway and pathways all finished. Above, a view of the dirt we've been dealing with for two months now.
Here's the tinted concrete being poured. We matched the color to the existing patio and the garage floor. That's Duke, our contractor, at right, supervising every move.
Viola! New pavement AND a garage door. The door turned out to be a color that matches the window frames, so for now we're not going to paint it.
A test opening by the guys who installed the door.
And here are two photos shot today. The top one shows all the new concrete, connecting our existing under-deck patio to the road. Soren already loves to run around and bounce balls on it. We will replace the fence and gate as soon as we're ready for another project!

And this last one shows Our Little Helper Soren. "He can't wait to grow up," Jeff says, and when he earnestly copies the adults around him, it shows.

Snow in Colorado

It snowed four inches on our second day visiting Nora in Fort Collins, Colo., and here are some pictures as proof. It's a novelty for us Western Washingtonians, so we don't really mind the inconvenience. But I wouldn't want to have to coordinate getting Soren out the door in the appropriate outerwear every day for the next six months. Look at how wet his feet got!
Soren loved clearing snow from Auntie Nora's sidewalk and road. He is such a good little helper, once a task is demonstrated.
The next day the temps were still in the high 20s, so we bundled up to take a walk on a trail along the Poudre River. You can see not much snow had melted. Here's a family portrait, sans Soren: Ann, Nora, Shelly, Bill.
Here is Soren modeling the necessity of layering. We bought the vest and some other warm clothes at the ARC, Nora's favorite thrift shop here.
Down the trail he goes...

(Soren talks about his new friends on his blog.)

Visiting Nora in Colorado

I'm posting in real-time at the end of our first full day in Colorado, where we are visiting my sister Nora for five days. Soren and I left Jeff working in Washington and made the trip with my parents, Bill and Ann (thank goodness for grandparental assistance on the flight here!).

It's nice to get out of PT, and we needed to see Nora in her graduate-school setting. She's been at the University of Northern Colorado since August 2008 and will finish her master's in public health program next May. The school is in Greeley, but she lives in Fort Collins -- both are north of Denver.
Nora hadn't seen Soren since June (here's a reminder of how much littler he was back then) and is thrilled that he is so much more mobile and able to really PLAY on the playground.
Devoted auntie that she is, Nora wore Soren in the Ergo when it was time for his one nap of the day (about 50% of our days are uni-nap now). The tour of her graduate-student office was just not exciting enough to keep his eyes open -- he fell asleep while she was checking her email.
I'll close with these photos (by Nora) of Soren with his grandpa Bill's ukelele. It's amazing how naturally he strikes the folk musician pose.
We look forward to three more full days of grins, then we fly back on Tuesday. For more grins, see Soren's blog for pix of today's pumpkin patch visit.

A note about the weather: we're getting our first taste of winter, with wet, non-sticking snow falling as our plane landed yesterday and now drier snow frosting the ground as we head to bed, although it was a lovely, clear and even warm day. Maybe Soren will get to frolick in the white stuff tomorrow!

September progress on The Nest

Didn't mean not to post any photos of the construction in September, but it appears I didn't. So here's a compressed record of the past month's progress on our two-car garage and The Nest (office/guest room).

Before the roofing material went on, the first color was applied with the spraying of the underside of the overhang. Blue, just like on The Roost. As you'll see, we planned to have the exterior of this new building closely match our existing house. So the trim is red and the doors will be yellow or blue.
All in one day the roof went on, a nice reddish composite shingle. Soren and Jeff admire it from our deck.
The siding is Hardipanel, which also sheathes the lower floor of our house. The eaves are shingled.
Our windows had been back-ordered, but eventually they arrived. Our contractor figured out a way to start siding before they were here.
Don't the shingles match nicely? Well, they should. We had one pallet of these lovely reddish cedar shingles left over from the construction of The Roost, and for six years now it's been taking up floor space in our tool shed. Finally the pallet is out of there! And there are just enough shingles left over to adorn a future playhouse for Soren (!). Our contractor has been saving bits of other construction materials for this project, too.
The driveway pour has yet to happen, but we are eagerly awaiting it, because we've been living with dust for so long. Our street has quite a slope to it, and our contractor determined that the driveway apron we were required to pour for the main house was also too sloped for him to work with. So eight feet of existing asphalt got torn up by this excavator, and the grade has been further leveled.
Then, alas, the same excavator (well, its operator, really) hit a water line. In this photo, the water is spraying high in the air because the excavator bucket is positioned in the shooting water stream.

I was in the bathroom at the time, as Soren had just pooped on the rug during a brief period of diaperlessness (ah, joy) and I was wetting a cloth for clean-up. Suddenly the water pressure dropped, and I knew just what had happened. Our water was only shut off for the afternoon while the pipe was repaired, and Soren napped most of that time, so it wasn't too much of an inconvenience.
The electrician and plumber have been busy in The Nest, and this photo (with my dad in the frame) was shot just before the insulation went in. Dad is leaning on the corner of the framed-in bathroom. The floor-to-ceiling black pipe to the left of him is where the kitchenette sink will go.

We're still waiting on drywall and that driveway pour. When they happen, you'll read about it here!

Hanging out with dad & friends

Soren's been a pretty happy chap lately. He regretfully says "bye-bye" to Jeff in the mornings when he leaves for work, and reaches frantically for him when we see him at the end of the day.

I love the vulnerable and sleepy expression on his face here! By the way, Soren's vocabulary consists of about 20 spoken words now (current favorites are BIKE and BANANA) as well as 25+ signs. He only has to see a sign a couple of times to start using it, if it's something he's very interested in. Right now, the neighbors' ducks across the street get a sign when they quack, airplanes when they fly overhead, and recently he picked up HORSE after the farm tour on Sunday (sorry, no pix of this event--I just couldn't juggle my big camera and him).

(Which leads me to mention I'm wanting to get a small point-and-shoot digital camera to carry in my purse or diaper bag. I'm leaning toward a Canon ELPH Powershot. Any favorites out there to recommend?)
Pix from recent playdates with Django (above) and Tayla (below). Soren's saying to Tayla, "That carrot looks pretty good. Can I have it to add to the carrot stick I already have stuffed in my cheeks?"
Fall is here! Enjoy it.

Strum sticks and more

I feel inspired to blog before bed because I just watched a movie about blogging--and French cooking. Yes, Julie & Julia (that would be Julia Child). It was my first movie at a movie theatre (our beloved Rose Theatre) since before Soren was born!! Ack, I couldn't believe it had been that long.

Went with two other mama friends (thanks, hubbies, for making it happen!) and I won the Monday night door prize of a gift certificate so I can come back and see another movie (sooner than 12 months from now, I hope) AND a pound of butter. Just watch the movie and you'll see why. Why didn't the main character gain any weight after cooking Julia Child's recipes for one whole year?!
So, things have been moving along at The Roost. Soren's diet now includes nuts (almonds and pecans were the first) and if ham is on the dinner menu, he won't eat anything else. The Nest has a roof, just in time. And we just enjoyed a three-day weekend with fall weather making a wet and windy entrance. But we got in a bike ride today as a family (Soren in a seat behind mine) and we got out to the Andy Mackie Music Festival on Saturday (as we did one year ago with newborn Soren--it was my first outing downtown as a postpartum mama and Soren blogged about it then). We enjoyed my dad's company, as he came over for a day visit. He shared these photos--thanks!

Andy is famous for giving harmonicas away to children and teaching them how to play them. He also sells and gives away simple strumstick kits. My dad has made one. Soren enjoyed strumming all of the ones on display.

And then he brought the harmonica Andy had given him last year and surprised him by playing it pretty darn well. He sounds like a blues musician, I kid you not. We have recordings! The second picture is of Andy kneeling on the makeshift stage to admire Soren's playing. He says he'll see Soren up on stage with him if he can just live a few more years. If you want to know more about the Harmonica Man's truly heart-warming story, watch this 2:30 minute video that was aired on CBS on May 2 of this year.
A few more pix of our cutie, with someone else's dog and with our nearly 3-y-o friend Evie. They happened to be color-coordinated!
Well, THEY SAY parenting gets easier after the first year, and we, in our tired haze, choose to believe that. Who knew one little person could take so much adult time and energy?? Do we hear affirmation?

Roof is up

The Nest has walls and a roof, as of last Friday. The above photo (taken Aug. 24) shows the framed-up walls. You can now see the dimensions of the two-car garage at right compared to the office/guestroom at left.
Soren was very interested in the truck with a crane that arrived on Aug. 25 to deliver the roof trusses.
I think he was particularly intrigued by the carpenters walking the walls. That evening, when the workers had departed and we went down to the site to explore, he wanted to climb the ladder they'd left behind!
It took only one day for all the trusses to be installed. This was later in the day on the 25th. It's the view of the new building from our upper lawn at the level of Roosevelt Street (we have a very sloping, terraced lot). We didn't want the garage to block the view of the bay from the street, and as you can see, it doesn't.
View from Adams Street, looking back at our house. The barn gate will eventually be replaced by a different fence/gate arrangement, once we figure out how the two buildings tie together.
The greatest change in view is that coming up Adams Street, although you don't see our garage until you pass a huge bush in our neighbor's yard. (This is the little house we rented while we were building The Roost. It will actually have more privacy once this project is completed, and we get some nice siding and landscaping up.
View from our third floor.
Soren checking out The Nest on his first birthday, wearing Daddy's baseball cap.
The plywood sheathing was up by the end of the day Aug. 27. The garage is going to have a huge double door.
We'll close with a shot of Carpenter Wade on the roof on a lovely, sunny Port Townsend day.