Monday, December 20, 2010

Make that 3 front teeth! It looks like he's got the second tooth on the top right cutting also, and the mirror image tooth on the top left isn't far behind. He's going to look so different in just a few weeks with all of these new teeth!

Sunday, December 19, 2010

All I Want For Christmas

are Joseph's two front teeth.... which have just cut the gum line! At least I think both are breaking through... we can just feel the same roughness like when the bottom two came up. Nothing to take a picture of yet, but here's hoping we'll see them soon!

10 Months!

Somehow the little guy is 10 months old! Where did this year go? He is just so much fun - we spend lots of time playing and exploring each day. I discovered earlier this week that the little guy LOVES going down slides... and can manage to get himself started and go down little slides all by himself! Of course, he usually doesn't land completely upright, but he doesn't mind.

Joseph is definitely into finger foods now. It's hard to get him to eat pureed baby food of any kind. These last few weeks, frozen or canned fruits and veggies of any kind are his favorite things to eat, along with string cheese, pieces of bagels or toast, oatmeal, grilled cheese sandwiches, beans and noodles. And while he still likes drinking from a bottle, during the day he prefers sippy cups.

He's been "talking" up a storm too... we're getting closer and closer to a true first word. And he's crawling and cruising on furniture like crazy. Along with doing crazy things with his body.... like this...

He likes to bend in half, with his head on the ground and look between his legs. This particular morning he decided to stop and play with Molly like this... notice his hand? He was petting her upside down!

Joseph has been really enjoying having the two dogs to play with these last two weeks. Molly and Lily are really good around each other, and will take turns sleeping on each of Lily's dog beds. Except for when Joseph decides it's his turn!

Thursday, December 16, 2010

Santa and Baby

We finally found some time to take Joseph to go see Santa last night. He hadn't taken very good naps due to some work we are having done at Ashley's house (the construction mess is following us everywhere we go!), so I wasn't sure how well it would go over. He was super fussy at dinner, but we decided to go for it anyway.

Whether he was just happy to be in his stroller or with Daddy, who has been working a lot lately, we don't know. But the little guy was in a great mood and had lots of fun flipping around in his stroller, standing up, waving and talking to everyone in line.


The camera was acting weird, so although we took a bunch of pictures, most came out blurry.

Wide eyed right before his turn to sit on Santa's lap...


And here's the official photo! He kept looking up at Santa, and back at us, while we danced and clapped to try to get a smile. The best we did was to get him to look and clap along, which he's in the middle of doing in the picture. Hey, no tears, so we were happy!

Progress!

After days of destruction, we finally have some progress in putting the house back together! They built a couple of temporary support braces to hold the upstairs in place while the old rotten wall between the dining room and bathroom was torn out.


Here's the wall upstairs that was the surprise on top of the surprise. You can see just under the right side of the window where the termite damage stops... and the rest of that is water damage.... pleasant, huh?

Our new support post in the basement. I think at this point they are finished rebuilding the bottom layer of the wall that was rotten, as they've moved on to the first floor today.

Another new floor joist to replace the damaged one. I'll be interested to see if the gentle slope down toward the back of the house is gone/less noticeable after all of this!
It's so nice to finally see progress being made. I need to take more pictures tomorrow, as the first floor damaged exterior shingles have been removed, and a new exterior wall is in place. Thank goodness we don't have any bad weather in the near future so they can get the house sealed up again soon!

Tuesday, December 14, 2010

From Bad to Worse

Just when we thought the remodel couldn't get much worse, it did. Apparently our house is the structural twin to the house in the movie "The Money Pit." And boy is it. Remember the wall with the termite damage upstairs? Yeah, well, when opening that space to find out just how far the damage went, the contractor discovered adjacent water damage, to the tune of that whole upstairs wall has to be torn completely out (think snowflakes blowing in through the space where an exterior wall should be) and rebuilt. And that 2-3 week timeframe? Yeah, it's been obliterated. So fun. The only upside is that with all of this mess happening in just about every corner of the house, we may just decide to go ahead and finish the upstairs into the remodeled space we were hoping to do next year, so the weeks can turn into a couple months and just be finished for good. We'll see. Here's hoping tomorrow doesn't bring more bad news.

Saturday, December 11, 2010

Hmmm....

So, when you think bathroom remodel, being able to see the shell of the bathroom from the kitchen isn't what jumps to mind for you? Me neither. But when you remodel a 60+ year old house, things don't always go as planned. Case in point:


 We found old termite damage when Joe and I opened up the bathroom walls. Initially, our contractor thought it wouldn't be a big deal to repair. However, when he came to inspect the space, he realized that the damage wasn't concentrated to the corner of the bathroom - it extends from the basement clear up to the top of the second floor. The bright spot, I guess, is that all of the damage seems to be within a 30 inch wide section, and that we found it now, not when we were opening walls to do the upstairs remodel. It's not going to be a cheap fix at all, but at least we now know why the dining room wall had a crack, can explain the sag in the dining room floor and why the dining room window seemed to be dropping down the wall... notice in the picture above two of the studs holding the window up aren't attached to the floor anymore!

Yes, that's a hole where the floor is gone. The other bright spot, sort of, is that all of this damage is concentrated right on top of the foundation, so when the plates and studs holding up the upstairs floors were gone, the house just rested on the foundation, so it didn't have far to drop.
Likewise, the damage that continues up into the ceiling led us to have to continue tearing out walls upstairs to see how bad things are...

We'll probably lose about a third of this upstairs bedroom wall before we're all said and done. I guess we have a lot more painting to do, beyond just the bathroom and hallway (we're closing up the doorway to the old linen closet and moving the door to the bathroom down a few inches). Fun times. Unfortunately, this is going to delay the bathroom being finished, so we are even more grateful to have Ashley and Mikael allowing us to stay with them. I think our hopes of being finished by the end of the year are probably dashed, along with staying in budget.

 I'm thankful we had negotiated the original bid from the contractor to save almost two thousand dollars by doing the demo and some of the finish work ourselves... I'd be even more upset to have that much more money to spend on all of this extra work. But at the end of the day, I'll be very happy to know that all of this old termite damage is repaired, and the structure will be sound again.

Thursday, December 9, 2010

Practing for Christmas Morning

 These pictures are back from Thanksgiving, and were taken as Joseph was opening a present from Grandma Dianne's parents. Without any prompting, he had this expression while opening the gift! It was the cutest and funniest thing I've seen him do in a long time - he just kept making these huge excited faces and gasping at the Frosty the Snowman book and pop up toy he received (along with the bag and tissue paper, which were equally exciting!). Dianne's parents are so generous and it was great watching the kids play with their new toys.


We weren't sure how he'd react to opening a present, but this experience gave us great hope that Christmas is going to be a blast!

Sunday, December 5, 2010

And the remodel begins...

I still have lots of Thanksgiving pictures, but wanted to post what we've been working on lately, and especially today. Due to many issues we've had with our one and only bathroom, we had wanted to remodel it for a while, but weren't looking forward to being without a functioning bathroom for a few weeks. We hoped we could save up, build a new bathroom either upstairs or downstairs, then tear our current space out. However, things don't always work out as planned. This bathroom is definitely teaching us the truth in that!

 So here are a few before pictures...

 Joseph absolutely loves playing in the bathroom, so he decided to pose and help the before pictures look much better than they should! :)



We are completely redoing the layout of the bathroom - tearing out the hall linen closet that is behind the bathtub so we can gain more space and add a double vanity. This bathroom will definitely be a workhorse for a while, at least until we can save up and add the bathroom upstairs, so we really wanted to squeeze a lot in without making it feel cramped.
 After cleaning everything out of the house (we're staying down at Ashley and Mikael's for the bulk of the time - thanks guys!!!) and moving our stuff out on Saturday, we decided to visit with Linda, who was in town for one of Joe's grandma's funeral.  She was staying with us, and graciously agreed to watch Joseph for us while we started demo on Sunday. Ashley and Mikael were happy to continue watching him when Linda had to head for the airport, so we had our bases covered to work for long stretches at a time.

We got started a little before 10 AM, and it didn't take too long before the wall separating the linen closet from the bathroom was gone, along with the sink vanity. Our walls are plaster and thus not easy to pull down, but it wasn't really that difficult.


 By about 9:30 PM we called it quits for the day, and the space looks like this now...



And the floors? Well, turns out there were 4 layers total. The lovely beige and green vinyl that we had when we moved in, under it was the turquoise linoleum in the upper left cover, followed by a tan and brown floral motif, which was on top of the original green and white tile floor.

Here's hoping our contractor says we did enough demo and they'll get started rebuilding it in a few days!

Wednesday, December 1, 2010

I realize how woefully lacking the posts were in November, so I promise to be better this month. Most of my free time has been spent working on getting things ready for our big bathroom remodel, which will be starting this weekend. Here's hoping it's finished by Christmas!!

Before we left for Grandpa Joe V's house for Thanksgiving, I snapped a few pictures of Joseph one morning - he had managed to work himself out of his pajamas all by himself, and was quite interested in the local CVS ad...


Look Mom, I'm reading too!


He loves helping me sort through the Sunday papers by pulling every add and section of the paper down off the couch, one by one. Occasionally he'll pick one up and study it, but never half out of his jammies before!