7 moves faster than the camera on my phone

7 is getting better at walking to the extent that he now carries things around. He is also too busy learning new things to take the time to eat. I decided that teaching him to use a fork may convince him that eating can be fun. It kind of works occasionally but eventually the fork ends up on the floor with the food that he doesn't want to eat.

So, to sum it all up: fast baby + slow camera + playing with forks + hiding them from daddy on the floor for later + carrying things around + needing both hands to climb the stairs on his slide = this picture.

7's new favorite tv pillow

- Joe VI

Well, ok then.

- Joe VI

1st Birthday

7 is officially a toddler. Look at him go. We started the day running a few errands, had lunch at Fritz's, and then went home for cake and presents.

How many is 7? One!

Uncle Mikael is teaching 7 how to open presents.

Wait, you want me to do what?

Its yellow!

Aunt Jennifer got him a Cozy Coupe. I think that he may be just as happy with only the steering wheel.

He really likes his car. Now that it is all together, he will walk to the car, open the door, get inside, and close the door behind him. We have to hide it at night or he will scream bloody murder when we take him out for bath and bed.

Grampa Chris got 7 a Thomas the Tank power wheels. It has handlebars to steer with a button to make it go. He was able to do it with some prompting, but it took just as much prompting to get him to stop pressing the button. He would drive (in a straight line) across the living room, hit the couch, and then look around at us for help as the wheels continued to spin.

Somehow, we didn't get any pictures of him driving his Thomas, but I am sure we will have many opportunities once we are back in our house. He will be a little older and have the whole basement to drive around.

Cake!

For this installment of the 1st birthday posts, we will look at cake pictures. Lauren and I decided to combine our efforts to make his cake. By which, I mean that I baked a cake and Lauren fixed it.

7 wasn't sure why we were all circling around to watch him eat dinner.

Here is the cake. We made the cake chocolate on chocolate because Jennifer pointed out that it would show up better in pictures.

He seemed to be enjoying himself.


A little too much. By the time he was done, he needed to go straight to an early bath.

We have posted plenty of better bathtime pictures, so what makes this one worth including? Chocolate ring around the tub.

One last picture.

House Updates

I know you'd rather see pictures of Joseph's 1st birthday, but you're going to have to wait until I sort through all of them... there are definitely a lot!

Anyway, work continues at a good pace at the house. They should be done with the framing today or tomorrow. This morning the new steel beam was hoisted into place, and they had managed to get the crookedness out of the floors/walls to about a 1/4 inch or so, which is way better than the couple of inches the house sloped before. I haven't been down to see the result (we have horrible weather, sleeting and freezing rain alternating with snow) but hope to tonight. According to the contractor, we ended up with a lot of cracking in the first floor space when they raised the floors, which was to be expected. Hopefully it can all be patched, and it will feel nice to not have the slopes throughout the back half of the house anymore!

 The picture above was taken at the top of the staircase looking south into the master bedroom and closets.

 This picture is Joe's closet, with the shower behind it.

 A view from the bathroom window looking north. Both of the new windows have been installed, and hopefully the new vents will be installed shortly, replacing the leaky gable vents on the north and south end of the house.

 We ended up deciding to take out the ceiling in the master bedroom. As you can see, there are only 2x4s holding the ceiling up, which isn't to code and would result in a sloping ceiling down the road. A definite budget buster, but overall will provide for  a nice look, since if we're going to re-frame the space, we decided to put in a tray ceiling with perimeter lighting. The ceiling height in this room is already less than 8' so we anticipate the new ceiling will make the space feel bigger. Here's hoping, at least!

 This is the west wall of the small bedroom at the top of the stairs. You can see all of the new floor joists installed, along with a few rows of roof supports and blocking to address the crazy unevenness in the roof.

This is the other side of the north bedroom. The framed in spaces with headers are for a bank of built in drawers on the left, and the small closet we'll have tucked behind the door. From here you can also see into the master bedroom, and the landing at the top of the stairs. They've removed the old treads and will be rebuilding the top portion of the staircase.

Electrical work is up next, and they should be insulating the space at the end of next week. I met with the contractor today who seems to think we're still on track to be finished by the end of March.... at least the space will be insulated and sheetrock hung by the time we return from California!

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Trip to the zoo

The weather here has gotten crazy nice. Yesterday we decided to take advantage of the 70 degree temps and took a quick trip to the zoo. Joseph really seemed to have a good time watching all of the animals and hamming it up for the camera!
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Music Lover

7 is starting to have favorite songs. When a toy can play multiple songs, he will keep pushing the button until his favorite one comes on and then he will stop and dance until it is over. Then he does it again. What did kids do before electronic toys? What did parents do before electronic toys?

In this video, he seems to like all songs.

Attic Update

Every day it's amazing how much progress the crew is making at the house. Tonight I stopped by, and the HVAC guys had been there, installing ductwork in the ceiling space, and taking out some of the existing ductwork from the bedroom. Hopefully now that we'll have a unit for each floor, they'll both be more efficient at heating and cooling the spaces, and the first floor will be more comfortable than it has been in the past.

Other than the space where the arches are opening up in the first floor, I think it's safe to say that the demo work is finished. Today they installed the new floor joists over the garage, since the existing joists weren't sufficient to support any weight.

The rafter ties are installed in the bathroom and closet space, along with the outside walls. It's fun seeing the space take shape! The picture below is the south end of the house - I'm standing at the top of the staircase looking south.

The large ductwork running the length of the house to supply heat and cold air was installed today.

 Most of the rough plumbing that will be in the floor is finished. The shower and sink faucets and valves I ordered are supposed to show up tomorrow, so as soon as the walls of the shower are framed in we'll see that space take shape.

The floor joists under the window are three deep to support the weight of the new cast iron pedestal tub that will be sitting under the window. If only we had a better view! 

Current views looking north. The new windows have arrived, so I imagine those will get installed soon. There are framers and the plumber/electrician working at the same time, so I imagine after the rough plumbing is finished, they'll get started on the electrical. We also have some structural enhancements to make in the basement that should be happening soon.



And in Joseph news, he is definitely liking walking! About 85% of the time he wanted to move around today, he'd get there on his feet! He gets so excited, squawking and squeaking.

One of the things I was dreading with him getting older was having to transition away from bottles to sippy cups. However, like everything else he does, Joseph made it super easy on us. Over the last few weeks, he's been refusing his bedtime bottle, and was really fussy in the mornings when we'd give him a bottle. I decided to see if switching over to formula in a sippy cup would work, and it's been great! I think now that he has the cup, he's actually drinking more each day than when we'd use bottles with the cups. So the bottles have been packed up... sniff, sniff. :)

A Walking Little Fool

Our little crawler has turned into a daredevil walker. While he still crawls over half the time he's trying get anywhere, within the last day or two, he's become much more confident in his walking abilities and will stop crawling a few feet from whatever he's headed toward to stand up and walk the rest of the way. Tonight after Joe got home from work, Joseph was walking around almost exclusively. Until Joe pulled out his camera to try and capture it. Luckily, I was able to catch a bit of the action before bathtime. He still has a long way to go before being steady on his feet, but he's getting so much better!

Bubbles

Tonight Joe gave Joseph a super long bath. Wondering what was going on in there, I peeked my head in to see what was going on. Turns out, Joe was teaching Joseph how to blow bubbles in the water, and they both were having a crazy good time. Joseph was laughing so hard I had to grab the camera and video a bit of them laughing and playing. Their laughter was infectious!

Valentine's Day a little early

When I left my parents' house on Monday, I accidentally forgot Joseph's winter coat. I don't put him in it when strapping him in the carseat, and since we hadn't gone anywhere, it's was out of sight, out of mind. Oops. We've had lows below zero this week, so my mom was kind enough to mail it back up to us, along with a Valentine's gift for the little guy.

He thought the card was sweet, but really was more interested in the small box of chocolate candies. :) Joe picked one out, cut it into small pieces, and gave him one.

His reaction?

Hey Dad, there's more right there! He seriously wouldn't stop pointing at the rest of the chocolate. 

Until Joe picked up the piece and showed it to him. This one? This is what you want?



Yup! Super happy to eat the rest of the strawberry creme filled chocolate all by himself! Let's hope tomorrow's piece is just as well received :)

Framing

One full dumpster load later, and the majority of the demo is done! There's still some demo to take place at the bottom of the stairwell, but that's not critical to the 2nd floor progress. Yesterday the crew started framing the space in, and it's coming along nicely. Another couple of days, and we should be able to see the shape of the second floor take place!

They tore out the upper portion of the staircase wall today, which will become an open railing and the top of the stairs leading to the small bedroom on the north of the house. It's simply amazing how much bigger it makes the staircase feel already! I was standing on the stairs at the bottom of the staircase when I took this picture.

The plaster is off the north and east walls of the bedroom, and all of the vermiculite insulation is gone! Hooray! Hopefully once properly insulated, this room will be much more comfortable in the winter and suumer.

This is the south end of the house. New decking has been laid down temporarily.

This is the one closet at the end of the bathroom, that we anticipate will be used for off-season clothes storage. It's going to be really short (6' at the front, quickly sloping to 4' at the back end) but I figured it would be a good usage of the extra space we have and keep the symmetry of the bathroom with the linen closet that will be opposite it.

This is the view standing in front of the south window and looking north. They have framed the west wall up to the chimney. Joe's closet will have recessed drawers and shelves, thus the need for a short header (that's where his closet will be). Mine is the open space to the north of it.

The north end of the house without much done. The guys discovered that the floor joists in this section have been spliced, and thus need to be rebuilt/reinforced before moving forward. No one anticipated this, so they've been waiting for the lumber to finish it up.

Joe was at the house this morning with the plumber starting running the very rough lines. It's so exciting to see all of this moving forward so quickly. I've been researching fixtures like crazy in the hopes that we can get most things ordered in the next day, as they'll be ready for them soon!

Demo begins again

Last week while we were out of town, the construction crew started work on our house! Apparently, that same snow storm that dumped 12" outside the house also deposited about 8" inside the attic, through the gable vent on the north end of the attic. Hmmm. Add that to the list of things that have to be replaced!

By the time I made it back in town last night, I really couldn't wait to see how things were going. After Joe came home from work, I went down to check it out.

 This is the old closet into the unfinished space. The doorway into the space will be taken out soon, but now it's in place to kind of keep the heated, finished space separate from the attic.

Both the closet at the top of the stairs and the larger closet in the bedroom have been torn out. It's amazing how much bigger the room feels! They will be taking the plaster off the north and east walls so the old vermiculite insulation can come out and be replaced with much better new insulation.

 The also removed all of the old decking from the unfinished attic, and cleared out all of the insulation between the floor joists. They have to sister all of the existing floor joists in order to make the floor stronger, and the contractor expected them to be finished with that process today.

It's amazing how fast things seem to be moving. No major hiccups yet, and they're planning on roughing in the plumbing, laying the floor decking and new floor insulation and start framing walls by the end of the week!

Birthday practice

Before heading back to Kansas City yesterday morning, Grammy decided that Joseph could use some practice before his first birthday, and grabbed a Packers decorated cupcake to test out. Yes, he had a normal lunch before the cupcake, so we weren't sure what he was going to think about it. In preparation, we shut the dogs up in the laundry room so they couldn't get at him or tempt him into feeding them.

And then we unwrapped it, placed it on the tray, and watched.

It didn't take long for his fingers to become coated in green frosting, which quickly got all over everything. And the little thumb sucker decided that his fingers and thumbs tasted better than ever when coated in frosting!

 He only probably had a few bites before destroying the cupcake and smearing the frosting everywhere. He certainly enjoyed himself!

 The absolute best part of the cupcake though? The special middle of the day bath he got from Grammy so he'd be nice and clean for the car ride back home!

I took a video of the whole process, which probably lasted 5 minutes, and I decided to post the video in its entirety for those who care to watch it.