Kitchen remodel: One Headlight

Music to accompany this post: a staple from my college days, the Wallflowers' "One Headlight." I thought it was an appropriate choice, with the chorus lyric Nothing is forever. There's got to be something better than in the middle.

We are in the middle, literally and figuratively. Our kitchen remodel has entered a quiet phase. After my last post about ripping up the floor, contractors took over. On a few Saturdays, a Monday day off, and half-days, our contractor Roy and I installed all 21 of our new, beautiful kitchen cabinets. It was a lot of work, a lot of holding heavy wood in places above my head, measuring and re-measuring and cutting and using shims. Here are a slew of pre- and post-cabinet hanging photos.

Our Mighty Moose was, and still is, mesmerized by the kitchen reconstruction. He especially loves breaking out the measuring tape and imitating us. Here he is, "helping" Roy take a measurement:

Our girls added some personal touches to a kitchen wall. I thought their pencil sketches would live on forever behind the new cabinets. The drawings were of each of them, and our whole family. I envisioned someone, decades from now, ripping out our new kitchen cabinets and coming across my daughters' artistic renderings of themselves in the fall of 2012. I liked imagining that the new owners would get a chuckle out of these stick-figure sketches. I love thinking that my girls' artwork would live on, hidden from our view, for years on end.

Later that day, Roy realized that the wall with the girls' drawings was warping out. He and ripped the wall out. Drawings? Gone.

Here is Becky the general contractor, who spent the Saturday of General Conference busing cabinets into our house. She was so energized by and excited for this sequence of events. Becky carefully labeled each cabinet drawer, door, and shelf to its corresponding cabinet, and then the drawers, doors, and shelves went back outside to our storage facility. Those will go on at the very end, once all of the dust settles.

That will be a happy day...one that I am seeing drift further out to sea on our calendar.

Mr. Moo and his proud Papa, just after the Moose woke up like clockwork at 2pm on the Saturday of General Conference. Our girls were at my parents' house for the rest of the weekend. Roy and I had spent from 8:30 until about 1:30 hanging cabinets, and I was dismayed to see that we had only cabineted one corner of our kitchen in that whole time. It took far longer than I anticipated, but we did start, correctly, with a corner and work our way out to the rest of the kitchen.

By 5pm on that Saturday at the beginning of the month, Roy and I had installed 10 of our 21 cabinets. What you see below is almost the full extent of our work. Our new sink will go below the three jutting-out cabinets in the foreground of the picture below. Our new fridge will go in the vacant space to the left of the sink, our new stove to the right and set a little further back.

That takes you to mid-October in our kitchen remodel. Check back later today for an update on where we currently stand. Meanwhile, I will be singing "Nothing is forever" in my mind. I just hope we have a working kitchen by the New Year! Feels like we have one headlight working, one totally punched out.

Go, go, go!

That is what Mr. Moo shouts whenever he is inside a car or sees a car drive past.

Hey, at least someone in our family is having a ball with our ongoing kitchen renovation!

I have recently heard from several heretofore unknown TimBeck5 readers that I am keeping you hanging on the status of our kitchen remodel. Well, fret no longer. I am home sick today and envision bringing you up to speed on our project. An update is long overdue.

6 years of 100+

 

We hit a blog milestone with today's post:

6 years in a row of 100+ posts. 

That factors out to our family journal covering our happenings about once a week, every week, 

in our family's life

since 2007.

I like how that sounds. I like knowing that we have such a long-standing family record.

Thanks for reading along!

17 months

Look who is now 17 months old! Mr. Moo, that's who. Our Mighty Moose is coming into his own in a lot of ways. He is more communicative. He definitely understands a lot of the direction we give him, and he's eager to pursue his own interests. To back up these vague generalities, here's a snapshot of his life at 17  months:

• Mr. Moo's vocabulary has expanded from one definite word (Da-da) to several: Ma-ma, shoe, voom-voom, bu (for bus), mee (for milk), mo (for more). He is still doing early intervention for speech and it's been really helpful. So, we are less anxious about his delayed speech and instead are encouraged by the progress he's making.

• He understands way better than he can speak. He understands directions, like "go outside," "open the fridge," "give that to so-and-so," "not our house, Loxi's house," "go get another book," and "time to brush teeth." It's amazing to see how this area of thinking is developing so well, while his verbal communication is still lagging. Again, we aren't worried about it, and I think it's actually normal. I am personally very intrigued thinking about how a toddler's brain develops and how, at least in the three cases I've personally witnessed in our family, it can process communication to a child better at times than it can process communication from a child. How does that work? How is it that a toddler can understand, on some level, verbal cues from an adult but not at the same time be able to translate his or her own responses back verbally? Does this train-of-thought even make sense? Maybe I'm not doing so well at communicating what I am trying to say here!

• The verbal direction that Mr. Moo despises is when I have to tell him, "No voom-voom." That means, "It's too early" or "It's too late" or "No, for the fifteenth time today" we are not going back out to our driveway to play in our cars! He adores spending anywhere from 5 minutes to an hour scampering around inside our vehicles. The greatest tragedy of his life comes whenever we need to bring car play-time to an end. 

• He is often an ocean of calm in a sea of emotionally-driven calamity. I am amazed at how much different he is from his sisters. Take, for example, Sunday morning. Mr. Moo tumbled side-over-side (instead of head-over-heels) down the full length of our front hall staircase. After 15 seconds of intense crying, he was completely done crying. No whimpering. No need to continue being held. He reached for a plastic truck, scooted out of my arms, and started playing on the floor as if the tumble never happened. His sisters' reaction would have been 180 degrees different. I am not passing judgment either way; I am just pointing out the differences in our kids' attitudes and responses. And for the record, I would revel in soothing our girls' tears if the same thing happened to them (and to a degree, it has).

Happy 17 months to our fun, precocious, 100% boy, and inquisitive little guy! 

Autumn woods

"There is a harmony in autumn, and a luster in its sky."

Last Sunday afternoon, we got away from it all--the kitchen remodel, cabin fever, our Sunday church routine, the usual rambunctiousness when our girls come home after a weekend at my parents' house. 

If only for an hour, our family's visit to a secluded woods with its pond and bright, changing leaves was a boost to our family's soul. We breathed clean air and inhaled a forest full of smells. We threw rocks in the pond and heard our echoes across the waters and in the trees. 

It was just what we needed. Well, Goose might disagree. This place is popular with dog walkers, and she got spooked each time we came across an unleashed dog.

It's my favorite time of year, with my most favorite people, doing one of my most favorite activities.

Our Clown Car

When I was a little boy, my Dad took me into Boston once a year to see the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus. I can still remember holding my Dad's hand as we walked up the dirty, inclining ramp inside the depths of the old, smelly, stuffy Boston Garden. I can still remember suddenly hearing the hushed crowd of thousands and seeing the circus apparatus dangling from all rafters of the old arena. Spotlights scanning the crowd, bright lights twirling in the hands of hundreds of kids my age, and the rabble of vendors hawking popcorn, peanuts, the circus program, drinks, gadgets and trinkets. We either sat in the nosebleed seats high above the fray or in incredibly slanted, rickety seats perched over the floor and sections of seats below us. I am sure these slanted seats enhanced my Dad's fear of heights and helped cement mine at a young age, too.

 

I can't wait to take my own kids to the circus soon, perhaps even next year. They will love the animals. They're sure to beg for candy or popcorn. They might be spooked by some circus tricks or creatures. And I am guessing that the circus clown car, a staple of any good traveling carneval, will make them all laugh.

 

Right now, we could use a few good laughs in our house. With our ongoing kitchen remodel, it feels like our family is living in a clown car. How many clowns can you cram into a car? How many schedules and disruptions and projects and needs and demands and commitments and what-have-you can we cram into our clown car?

 

Monday and Wednesday (this morning) provide us and you, our readers, with two examples of just how many clowns we have managed to stuff into our clown car. I want to chronicle this for our family's records, so one day we can look back and shake our heads at the whirlwind that was our life in the glorious fall of 2012.

 

Monday morning, October 15th:

7:15-ish--Kids wake up after sleeping through the night. Hallelujah!

 

7:30-8:00--Scramble to get breakfast and get our daughters dressed. I rush out 4 leaf bags, an overflowing bin of recyclables, and our regular trash bin to the curb.

 

8:05--Becky makes Goose's school lunch and helps pack her backpack.

 

8:10--Attorney comes to our home to finalize our mortgage refinance documents. I show her a seat in our drop cloth-draped dining room. Hurrah for a 30-year fixed rate at 3.75%! But who was the moron in our family who scheduled the attorney to come at the absolute worst time of day for our family? That would be me.

 

8:15--The attorney breaks out the paperwork just as our contractor Roy shows up, with all of his noise-making machinery.

 

8:15--Becky takes a break from signing papers to run Goose to the bus stop.

 

8:20--Becky returns, to a snafu in our refinance. We think we come *this* close to the process falling apart. A 10-minute wait on the phone leads to a very brief conversation with a mortgage rep, who assures us that the snafu is thankfully not an issue.

 

8:25--Becky is supposed to bring Mouse and pick up another friend to Joy School, then drive them 15 minutes away to our friend Jenn's home. We are only halfway through the stack of refinance papers.

 

8:30--Roy is officially on the clock, making measurements and waiting for us to help him put in cabinets. I took today off from work.

 

8:30--Becky runs Moose to our friend Loxi's house. She also takes Mouse.

 

8:40--Refinance paperwork is completed, finally! We bid adieu to the nice Armenian lady who did the paperwork and cracked jokes about us having three kids. She has one child. As my brother-in-law Brandon recently said, "One kid isn't a child, it's a pet!"

 

8:45--Our lifesaver friend Michelle arrives to pick up Mouse (instead of Becky picking up Michelle's daughter) to bring them to Joy School. Michelle has saved our butts approximately 30 times over the last week. I might just sign our home over to her and her family as a thank-you. I can't find Becky or Mouse anywhere, so I leave Michelle outside while I run around my house and backyard looking for them. Pure chaos at this point.

 

8:45--Get right into our cabinet installation, all the way until 3:30 p.m. Moose came home for a 2.5 hour long nap. Mouse had an afternoon playdate. Goose had an impromptu playdate after school. We are beat. Still not done installing cabinets.

 

That under-2-hours window from 7:15 to about 8:45 on Monday morning was one of the most frantic windows of time that I can recall going through. But it barely holds a candle to this morning.

 

Wednesday morning, October 17th:

 

6:30 a.m.--Becky's alarm clock goes off. I go downstairs to check ESPN while she showers.

 

6:40 a.m.--Mouse wakes up and ventures downstairs to play PBS Kids on my iPad.

 

7:00 a.m.--Becky gets ready for her 7:20 a.m. dentist appointment.

 

7:10 a.m.--Moose wakes up. Mouse still content with the iPad. Becky leaves.

 

7:15 a.m.--I get Moose out of his crib and try to awaken Goose. No such luck. I bring Moose downstairs to our dining room for breakfast, which he barely eats.

 

7:25 a.m.--Goose wakes up as I am getting breakfast for Mouse and me.

 

7:40 a.m.--Goose comes downstairs for breakfast. Moose still not eating. Mouse taking her sweet old time digging in to her cereal.

 

7:45 a.m.--Instead of making Goose's lunch, I energetically give in to her plea for her to buy lunch at school today. So much easier. Breakfast is done, so I herd cats back upstairs to get Goose and Mouse dressed for school and Joy School.

 

8:00 a.m.--Contractor Roy arrives. His clock is ticking.

 

8:10 a.m.--Get all 3 kids out the door to walk to Goose's bus stop. It is freezing. Moose is still in his pajamas, as am I. We are a hot sight, let me tell you! Moose wants to wave at and get inside any car or truck he sees.

 

8:20 a.m.--Bus arrives late, driven by the fourth different bus driver since the school year began. A few seconds earlier, Becky drove past the bus stop and has now joined us on the sidewalk. Goose gets off to school.

 

8:30 a.m.--Everyone back home, but not for long. Moose goes off to our neighbor's. Becky again has to lean on Michelle to bring Mouse to Joy School. Mouse is playing with most of Roy's tools in our kitchen as he, Becky, and I plan our morning. I have taken a half-day off from work to put in our last 5 cabinets.

 

8:45 a.m.--Michelle arrives to get Mouse. I contemplate just adding Michelle to my retirement accounts and giving her family my baseball card collection as repayment for all of her help.

 

8:45--9:30 a.m.--We map out our remaining cabinet plans. Becky realizes she needs to drive a half-hour back to the cabinet store for additional cabinet stuff, leaving me and Roy to mount cabinets on the floor (which isn't nearly as physically demanding as mounting cabinets on the wall, which we did all day Saturday).

 

10:30 a.m.--Moose's Early Intervention speech specialist arrives, totally catching me off-guard. I had no idea she was coming over this morning. Moose is at a friend's house. Becky is a half-hour away from home. Ellie, our interventionist, talks with Becky on the phone after I called Becky and they agree to cancel this morning's appointment, totally last-minute.

 

10:45 a.m.--Becky arrives back home with materials and a plan to finish the kitchen cabinet installation. Hallelujah! We get 3 of the remaining 5 cabinets installed.

 

 

These are the days never to be forgotten. 

The promise and the failure of a Pillow Pet

This is My Little Pal, our beautiful little girl who recently turned 4:

 

 

This is the bedroom she currently shares (the bottom bunk belongs to her) with her big sister (on the top bunk) and their little brother (in the white crib on the left):

 

This is the Pillow Pet which we gave her for her 4th birthday:

 



 

We bought this cute ball of pinkness for her birthday because we thought it would help with her now-nightly sleep intrusions. Mouse gets up and out of bed once a night, most nights a week. Sometimes she has bad dreams. Sometimes, she genuinely needs to use the bathoom and wants someone in the loo with her.  On occasion, her crying will wake up her little brother, bringing about further nocturnal calamities that we would prefer to avoid. Maybe the Pillow Pet would help her in the middle of the night to be less afraid.  

 

Nice wishes, right?

 

Well, the Pillow Pet would be potentially a whole lot more effective...if Mouse did not insist that the Pillow Pet take up residence under her bunk bed. I know, huh? Go figure.

 

She does not see it as a helpful nighttime aide. Instead, she sees it as a toy that, when left unattended beside her bed night and day, might soon be broken in 100 pieces by her little brother. It is now collecting dust under her bed, instead of shining a little nightlight in the physical dimness of her bedroom and in the psychological recesses of her 4-year-old mind.

 

But fear not, Pillow Pet: Mouse told us on Friday that your full purpose in life will, one day, be realized. According to your 4-year-old owner, you will shine your light in the nightly darkness of our children's bedroom...

 

...once Mouse's little brother turns 5!   

Mr. Moo and machines

Our Mighty Moose loves machines (or, as in the second photo, anything that resembles a machine). Almost every late afternoon when I get home, he greets me at the back door and begs to go outside, where he will guide me to either my car (which I just parked and left after my commute home) or our Blue Bomber minivan. He has comfortably spent more than an hour playing around inside our cars on at least two occasions this fall, and most car playtimes last at least a half-hour. If this kid does not become a mechanic, it will be that industry's loss.

It's not like that line of work hasn't had many setbacks over the last few years anyhow...

He was ecstatic when a garbage truck blared its horn as he waved at it one brisk, sunny Monday morning three weeks ago as I walked Moose and his big sister to her bus stop. On Monday of this week, he was absolutely enthralled watching the green tractor crumbled heaps of garbage at an apple orchard. Mr. Moo frequently shouts "Voom voom!" whenever a big truck or a fast car goes past him. He loves to watch fire trucks, ambulances, and heavy equipment trucks like cement mixers.

As a man and a dad, I am finding his love of manly things amusing and cute. I really do try to round out each of our child's interests so that their activities and interests are not so heavily gender-specific. I don't know exactly why, but I feel it's important. But Moose's enthusiastic embrace of all things with power on wheels makes me unabashedly happy.  

The Mouse turns 4!

Happy 4th birthday to Our Little Mouse! She turned 4 years old today, at 5 p.m. precisely. We had a fun pancake breakfast and hit the road to a nearby apple orchard farm with some of her Joy School friends, other friends, and their families. She loved jumping around the bales of hay, eating cider donuts, running with friends, and getting presents of course. Little Mouse was in fine spirits all day, even as moments of chaos reigned around her (her big sister getting stung by a bee right as we handed out cider donuts, her little brother being pushed through his 3-hour afternoon nap, and her dad's patience getting shoved near to the breaking point by a 1-hour-long wait for a pony ride).

On Saturday, she and I had a few hours alone to play while Becky took children #1 and #3 shopping. I love asking questions of my kids. I asked Mouse, "What do you love about being three years old?" Her answers were on the morbid side. "That we are not dead" was her first response, followed by, "That we are still alive." Well, if you wake up still alive, everything else is gravy, right?

Mouse is a source of balance and positivity in our lives. She always wakes up happy. She often will try to console her siblings with hushes and pats on their backs when they are sad. She is very quick to give hugs and kisses. Lately, she has been on a middle-of-the-night or early-morning kick to come into our bedroom and ask me to sleep in her bed with her. I often oblige (this happens once or twice a week, so we're not too alarmed about setting a pattern yet), because I think, "How many times will I or Becky get this chance?" Okay, that's not always the end of my thought process. The thought, "This will be easier than fighting to get her back to bed and sleeping on her own" also comes to my mind.

Oh, and that torturous wait for the pony ride? She and her friends ran off to another attraction while I held their spot in line with my friend Andrus. Mouse got three rides on a miniature pony instead of the two that every other kid got.

Tonight, Mouse told me that the pony ride was her most favorite part of her birthday.

So that hour was well worth the wait!

 

Happy birthday, My Little Pal!

Crazy is spelled...

"home repair."

 

The backing vocals to this post are supplied by any rock 'n roll song of the last 60 years that has even a hint of the word "crazy" in the title. Examples include U2's "I'll Go Crazy if I Don't Go Crazy Tonight," with its soaring chords, or Prince's "Let's Go Crazy." Heck, I might venture in some unchartered musical waters for me by name-dropping Patsy Cline's country hit "Crazy."

Because, folks, that's what this kitchen remodel is making all five of us in our family, in one way or another. Let's start with me: I was in a great running kick this summer and into September. I was feeling better health-wise and eating better. Now? No exercising, and I am eating cookies or ice cream as a form of self-medication to deal with the stress of this project and its associated myriad disruptions to our routine. Example: I would sneak one or two cookies from a bag about a month ago. Last weekend, I devoured 8 cookies out of a package of a dozen that I had purchased that very morning. I chalked it up to busting my back for about 8 hours on the demolition job, but to what did I really do more damage--our floor, or that bag of chocolate chip cookies?

Becky, the remodel general contractor, is in the same rut as me. But, she looks better than I do and that's what really matters, right? Her eating resolve is amazing. I am completely in awe of how she has juggled being a full-time, stay-at-home mom to three kids with finding and lining up a plumber, an electrician, a carpenter, a plasterer, ordering a dumpster, Joy School, teaching Sunday School, getting kids ready for the day, etc.

Now, the next few items might be more stretches than reality. They may not necessarily be related to the disruption of eating in a cramped dining room with assorted kitchen-based appliances all around us, enclosed by those plastic sheets you see above. But we have noticed some recent twists in our kids' routine, concurrent with the demolition and all of the contractors in and out of our house.

Mr. Moo, the youngest, insists from the moment he wakes up to leave the house. He b-lines it for our back door on the way to my car or the Blue Bomber minivan. He can spend well over an hour playing in our cars. He did so today. At bedtime, he tries to get back downstairs to go outside. Could be totally unrelated to the chaos in our kitchen and dining room, but I tend to think not.

Mouse, our beautiful middle child, is on a sweet fibbing fit. I don't see this as directly correlated to the home project as Mr. Moo's antics, but you never know. Lying could be her way of dealing with confusion and disruption on an almost-daily basis--a way for her to make sense of and have more control of her life right now.

Goose, our oldest...She is the one exhibiting positive behavioral adjustments to the kitchen remodel. She has shown, again and again, that she wants to help us at mealtime and other times during the day. Finding her siblings' shoes, setting the table, calmly playing teacher and laughingly reading us books at the dinner table almost every night. It's a wonderful thing to behold, and her Kindergarten role-play breaks the stress a bit while also giving us a better insight into her day.  

On another positive note, something else keeping us more sane/less crazy are the wonderful meals that many friends in our church and outside of church have made for us. It's a huge weight off of our shoulders to not worry about making dinner most nights of the week so far. Of course, we could survive on microwaved stuff and cereal for weeks on end, but just knowing that people care is a comforting feeling. They have dropped off meals and stopped to chat for a minute, had us to their home, or just stopped by to check in (like the Niemans this morning). I will mention them all by name in a later post.

We will always remember people's kindness during this time of physical renovation and mental hammering.  

Say it with me now: Each day gets us closer to having this project done!

It's On!

Our kitchen remodel has finally begun! We started demo'ing the old kitchen last Saturday, with the help of our friends Dave and Hugh. They were just two of about a half-dozen people from Saturday alone that we owe big-time. Those guys worked for 6+ hours, with no pay, for a measly free lunch when they deserved a feast, and never once complained or slacked on the job. We could not have hammered out the old cabinets, ripped up the old floor, or cut out the old countertop without their help and expertise.

Dave and me. We ripped the old wall and baseboard cabinets out in about 40 minutes. I was impressed. It felt awesome to toss out the old through an open kitchen window and hear the thuds and clangs as the wood and particle boards hit our walkway at 9:30 a.m. on Saturday morning.  Not sure any neighbors nearby had the same reaction I did, though.

The speed at which we worked made me momentarily giddy--I thought, "We could get all of the demolition done by 2 p.m. and have a few hours to unwind." 

My prediction was only off by 4.5 hours.

Rookie mistake. 

Other people who helped just on Saturday included my parents (who took our girls to Nana Camp from Friday night to Sunday morning) and our friend Loxi, who watched Mr. Moo from 9 a.m. until almost 7 p.m. (aside from his 3-hour afternoon nap, which he somehow got in despite all of the hammering and the clanging of old wooden planks).

By the time this project is finally over (New guess: November 20th), the list of friends and family we will need to thank will stretch as high as those old planks of wood stacked up below on Saturday.

Dave, Hugh, and I started ripping out the old wooden planks around 1 p.m. We didn't finish until almost 4 p.m. Dave is a very skilled woodworker and asked that we not go so fast as to chip or snap all of the floor planks. He wanted to keep them in as good a condition as possible, because he wants to build a table out of the old, 100% real wood (unlike most "wood" floors made today).

Looks fun, doesn't it?! My back, knees, and ankles ached as Dave and I began hammering out the old planks of wood. It was slow going at first, but we made good progress. Then, our friend Hugh arrived. He worked like a super-charged machine. No gloves. No mask. Just pure adrenaline and a stone walled determination to break stuff!

Dave's wife Jessica and their daughter came over for lunch and to check on the progress. Jessica, another person who helped us--she was ready to watch all three of our kids Saturday.

Cabinets annihilated.

Floor tossed asunder.

Hundreds of old nails, which were under our top kitchen floor, yanked out.

No one injured. Hallelujah!

Fingers and backs and knees rendered sore. It reminded me of a line in one of my favorite songs ever, Queen's "Somebody to Love": I work hard (he works hard) every day of my life, I work till I ache my bones.

We also widened the entry door from our back porch into our kitchen, which will let in more sunlight from our porch. It will also make it easier for us to navigate walking into our kitchen and around an island, which will go roughly where, in the photo above, the top of the stack of wood rests.

It's ON! Becky and I were able to get out some of the mounds of stress that we have internally built up over the last few weeks by demolishing stuff. It felt great to get all of the demo'ing done in one day, and to really see the kitchen remodel begin.

From here on out, we are leaving most of the rest of the work to the pro's--a plasterer, a plumber, an electrician, a framer, a tiler. And my rock star wife, who has been serving as the unpaid general contractor since April!

Recipe for Disaster

You take one child (just for example, the one on the left) who is the strictest 3-year-old adherent to the slow eating movement. Add in another child (merely for illustrative purposes of course) on the right who most definitely belongs in a high chair but is instead sitting in a regular chair without being strapped in or eating off of a customary plastic counter top.

Multiple this second in time by, oh...what the heck...let's say 60 seconds. Then multiple that by how many mornings this happens in the example's home.

Since I don't have Becky handy to tally up the numbers, let's just say it's a recipe for disaster at times. Sometimes, Moose climbs up on the table to get at his sister's unfinished/untouched food. Sometimes, those efforts end with him spilling the sought-after contents on the floor or the table or himself. Many times, Mouse does not mind her brother's plundering of her breakfast.  

And neither child cries about it. No, never.