Today's biggest news is that Alton's fort has a floor! Yesterday (Tuesday), Andy installed the cross-supports for the floor and laid the floorboards down, and today he got them all spaced and centered and screwed into place.
A close-up of Andy's handiwork, wood shavings and all.
Here is the structure with the slide placed on, not fully installed. You can also see Alton's sandbox peeking out below!
Alton shows you the placement of the sandbox. Andy is putting two corner seats on the sides closest to the slide, and on the rear section there will be a board bench running the width of the structure for playmates or parents to sit on. With his windbreaker, khakis and beach ball, we thought Alton looked very "Cape Cod" in this picture!
Now it's time to test out this floor. Andy hoists Alton up for a look-see...
then joins him on the fort for support.
Minerva looks up longingly; she wants to be on the fort, too.
Andy and Alton demonstrate the strength of the construction by dancing on the floor.
Even Mommy gets to join Alton on it for a photo op. In a few more days, there will be a slide right in front of where we're sitting!
And speaking of rolling right along, today Alton went roller skating! A local skate rink does a "Tiny Tot" skate session on Wednesday mornings for children age 7 and under, and I was eager to try out this activity before the elementary schools let out this week. We met up with another mom from our playgroup and her daughter, who is just 2 weeks older than Alton. We strapped on his skates (I remained in my sneakers) and snapped a few pictures before trying to become upright.
He was so cute! He was not able to stand and balance on his own on the skates--his feet would just shoot out from under him if I wasn't supporting his body and keeping him level--but he let me hold him and roll him in front of me on the rink, straddled my knee as I crouched down and rolled his skates back and forth, and had some fun rolling plastic balls around the floor, too. I considered it a triumph that he kept the skates on for an hour and when we were ready to pack it in, he and his little friend enjoyed some climbing time on the coin rides near the snack bar. Here he is hitching a ride on her chopper.
Too much fun! Minerva is positively dizzy with excitement.
The Confederate States of America? California Scholastic Association? Colombian Students' Alliance? Nope! It's Community-Supported Agriculture! I first heard about CSAs last year from my friend Micki, who is not only a very community-minded individual, but someone who is always on the forefront of the food zeitgeist. Once I ascertained that she wasn't talking about flying the "Stars and Bars," she said that she had joined a CSA, which is where you become a cooperative shareholder in a local farm or agricultural setup, paying money to become a member at the start of the season, and reaping week after week of boxes of delicious fresh produce (and sometimes more--Micki's CSA included meat). You sign up for a specific number of weeks and amount of produce, then each week you go somewhere (a pickup site in town, or sometimes to the farm itself) to collect your bushel 'o goodies. The upside is that you receive the freshest of goods, lovingly tended by farmers right in your area without pesticides or chemicals. The downside is that because of the unpredictability of weather and harvesting times and seasons, you don't know what you are going to get each week!
Another pair of close friends, Alexa and Brian, also joined a CSA last year and enthused about how they appreciated not only the freshness of the produce, but also the fact that they were surprised each week by what they received and it made them step outside of their cuisine comfort zone a bit and prepare things that they had never even eaten before, let alone cooked!
With this in mind, I did some research this spring (If you are living in Oregon, I hope that "this spring" gave you a bit of a laugh.) into local CSAs. There were a lot of factors to consider, but the biggest ones were: 1) How much did it cost; 2) Where would we have to go to pick up our bounty; and 3) What types of food would we receive? And, of course, 4) Were they still taking new clients for this year?! After some careful hunting I found a place that suited our needs. A family-owned farm in the nearby ag-town of Verboort, this was a CSA situation that didn't break the bank, had a weekly pickup station in town that was on Andy's way home from work, and their website listed fruits as well as vegetables in the "Harvest Box" that you received each week. Still accepting applications, too! We were set. We received our first box of produce today, and look at our haul!
At the same time, I had been querying local friends online for a farm-fresh egg source. With Alton eating an egg every morning for breakfast, they were a constant item on our shopping list, so we quickly merged from purchasing an 18ct of eggs at the grocery store to picking up a 24-egg carton at Costco with each trip. The more my hands were cracking those eggs, the more I started to realize that eggs were an important part of our family diet, and the paper-thin shells of the Costco eggs had me wondering whether we would be better off with the thicker-shelled, high-quality eggs from free-range chickens. But oh, the price tag! Gulp! No organic, free-range eggs available at Costco, the Farmer's Market was such an exorbitant price that I would have had to rent Alton out for birthday parties to cover it, and the organic eggs at the supermarket were still pretty steep. I was put in touch with a friend of a friend who has a small property with chickens and who sells eggs right from her back porch. The price seemed right and we were very interested to test this out, so we arranged a time to pick up a dozen farm-fresh eggs and got those yesterday. The woman assured Andy that the eggs were ones that had been laid that day and the day before--and yes, two of them are green!
Both Alton and I ate eggs for breakfast this morning and they were delicious. Weighty, yolky, and Alton's scrambled eggs looked downright orange, even before I put cheddar cheese on top. He loved them. It will definitely take some debating to see whether we continue with the farm-fresh eggs. The only deterrent is the distance! The farm is north of Andy's work, so it's not on his way home, and the winding country roads add minutes to otherwise short mileage. We'll see....
But back to the "Harvest Box"! For this evening's meal I had planned a pasta salad, intending to add ingredients from our surprise collection acquired this afternoon from the CSA pickup site. (After Andy brought the box home, I noticed that the weekly farm newsletter I had received the day before actually told me what was going to be in the box, so I could have had a day's notice if I'd paid closer attention to my email!) In case you didn't recognize everything in the photo above, we received rhubarb, a potted calendula flower (the petals are actually edible), cabbage, beets, red-leaf lettuce, strawberries, popping-corn ears, and dried pinto beans.
I elected to focus on the cabbage for today, knowing that its bright, satisfying crunch would be delicious in a cold pasta salad with other mouthwatering veggies. Andy was outside working on the playset with Alton frolicking around him, but it was on and off pouring rain (It's. June. It's June?!) so when Alton decided he wanted to come inside, I needed an incentive to keep him indoors so that we didn't play the "I want to go in, now I want to go out" game. When I asked him if he wanted to help me cook, that turned out to be just the ticket! We donned our matching aprons, washed hands, and I dragged a dining table chair into the kitchen to prop him up to counter height. I got down to his level and insisted that while normally the rule is that we don't stand on the chairs, it's okay to do it right now, and only right now, because he is helping Mommy cook and Mommy said it's okay. He nodded solemnly, and every few minutes I would hear him mutter under his breath, "I can always stand on the chairs." I would stop what I was doing, turn to him and reiterate that this was a special case, and that every other time he'd have to sit on the chairs, and the next time I got absorbed in a task he would quietly insist to himself once again that standing on the chairs was an always thing. It was like a bad toddler version of Abbott and Costello.
The ingredients I had assembled for the pasta salad, besides pasta and cabbage, included feta cheese, tomatoes, artichoke hearts, and (turkey) pepperoni. I popped out the package of pepperoni and got the little guy started on a counting task: counting out 10 pepperoni into a bowl. He did really well all the way up to seven, then considered 8-9-10 to be good after he liberated a whole fistful of spicy meat rounds from the baggie.
I stopped in my picture-taking to help him re-count and add a few more (The serving size of pepperoni is weirdly 17, but I didn't think I'd have much luck with Alton on that number because things are still a little hazy for him after 12. We need to measure proper servings because of Weight Watchers.), then got him set up with the next task, which was "slicing" the pepperoni. I pulled out a small cutting board and one of the dull kiddie knives that comes in Alton's toddler silverware sets, then showed him how I use the knife to cut a piece of pepperoni in half. He is an awesome chef! He used the knife to saw and mangle two pepperoni, then ate five of them, including the abused ones.
Meanwhile, I chopped and washed cabbage and cooked the pasta, then took over on pepperoni duty to cut them with a sharp knife and toss them into the salad bowl. Next up was the crumbled feta, which Alton helped me to spoon from the container into a small bowl for measuring, an action greatly appreciated by Minerva when she came into the kitchen later and commenced a licking frenzy on the floor covered with feta bits.
For this special inaugural CSA dish, I decided to make the salad dressing rather than use bottled from the fridge, just to give it that extra-fresh taste, so I stepped out to the back patio to pick a few leaves of basil from the bitty plants that Alton and Charlie started as seeds back in April! Alton's next job was to use a towel to dry the basil after I'd washed it, and I took his busyness as an opportunity to dice artichoke hearts and tomatoes to pour into the nearly-full salad bowl. I chopped the little basil leaves and gave them to Alton to put in the salad dressing bowl while I minced some garlic (Alton insisted on tasting everything, including the basil and garlic. He popped a basil leaf into his mouth and seemed to like it, then when I gave him a tiny piece of fresh garlic he put it in his mouth, chewed it, and immediately said, "Water bottle.") to add to the dressing. A little olive oil, balsamic vinegar and seasonings, plus whisking from Alton and me, and we had our fresh Basil-Balsamic Vinaigrette! Salad was tossed, Daddy came in from his playset work, and the two proud chefs displayed their handiwork.
Smile, Alton!
We served up the salad and brought it to the table to scarf down! Although we couldn't get Alton to eat ALL of his salad, he downed some of it and supplemented with some other items. Delicious!
And here's the progress at the end of Monday night: we have "walls"!
Here's Andy's progress as of Sunday night!
These are actually two separate units, what are basically making up the north and south ends of the play structure. The midpoint is the height of the "deck" for the little fort, the two tallest points are the supports for the overhead tent canopy, and the long arm sticking out will have the little trapeze on it. These things are huge! Ten feet tall. Andy said that after he bolted the boards together on the ground, leaning them up against the fence felt like a barn raising. (Not that we've ever attended a barn raising. We're not that Amish.)
If you've been following us from the beginning, you'll know that we've spent a lot of long-term brainstorming followed by tons of DIY manpower (and some money, that helps) trying to maximize our backyard, both for the most efficient use of its small size, and for our own habits, hobbies and preferences.
When we first moved in to this house, it looked like this:
Tiny strip of a balding lawn surrounded by enormous (useless) beds of bark chips and low-maintenance plants. The Dr. Frankenstein's Guide to Patios with random (rusting) pavers in two sizes sandwiched next to the contractor's original concrete slab, plus a barbecue area that Karen aptly described as a raised garden bed that someone got tired of, then bricked over. Square stepping stones provide a break in the sea of bark chips by creating a path from the back gate to...the barbecue? Just in case you wanted to come home from work, enter through the back gate, and head straight for the grill to eat manly meat with your bare hands? Oookay!
I know I'm snarky, and the truth is that the yard was move-in ready, just not that infant or dog-friendly, and an inefficient use of a small space. We are lucky that our neighbors to the rear live on a cul-de-sac so that their house and yard are perpendicular to ours rather than a mirror image; our backyard shares backyard fences with the neighbors to the left and right of us, but is actually a side yard fence to the people behind us, so we never see or hear them, at all. I don't know about you, but WE decided that it was time to strip the yard down to bare dirt, remove the patio patchwork, open things up for playing and entertaining, and make sure that Minerva was factored in to all our plans. Got it? Ready!
Here's a vague timeline of how things progressed:
May/June 2009 - Total yard demo. Andy, with the help of his dad Charlie and my cousin Matt, cuts out all the sod, jackhammers out the old patio, removes all wooden bed borders and bark dust, and eventually installs one expansive paver patio in variegated "harvest" hues, complete with channel drain down the middle to prevent pooling and standing water during our (long, long) rainy season.
July 2009 - Finishing up the paver patio by removing all the old lower (rotting) crossboards from the fence and installing new ones, plus creating a decorative and safe wooden cage to go around the A/C unit.
September 2009 - Extending the fences on the two side yards of the house. Previously the side fence and backyard gate were right at the backyard, with no side yards on the sides of the house at all. Andy was able to extend the fence on one side to around 40 feet to give Minerva a dog run (and hopefully keep her "deposits" from infesting the rest of the yard) and extend the other side of the house around 12 feet to give us some breathing space and a new backyard entry gate.
April 2010 - Andy creates a miniature paver patio on our smaller side yard using bricks left over from the original patio project. Charlie and Alton sow seeds in pots, the first of our backyard cadre of plants.
May 2010 - The grass project as told in posts one, two, and three. Exactly one year (Memorial Day '09 to '10) after he started, Handy Andy finishes up all the major landscaping for our diminutive but beautiful yard. Now it looks like this:
What a difference a year (countless hours of labor, thousands of dollars, a plethora of pieces of paper for planning, hundreds of trips to Home Depot, and our own fabulous landscape-design abilities) makes! Andy even took three small bricks leftover from our paver patio to create some masonry art.
I feel so incredibly lucky to not only have a husband who can dream up this stuff with me, but can also execute it, and do that very well. I think that many "do-it-yourselfers" have either the ability but not the stamina and patience to do the job properly, or they have the perfectionist streak but not the tools and know-how to work on the project themselves. Andy thankfully has the work ethic and the skills to do just about anything we can dream up! (You haven't even seen his pictures yet of the killer custom workbench he built in the garage this year during his winter yard hiatus.)
And yes, I do some work, too. Most of my job is taking care of Alton when all the major power toolage and heavy shoveling and dirt flinging is going on, but I also make suggestions for project and time management in between pushing a wheelbarrow from here to there and holding a ruler steady and the like. We are so happy with the way that the yard has turned out thus far! And to answer a few more of the frequently asked questions about the "fake" grass:
1. It does feel pretty real. It's very cushy, like a well-tended corporate lawn that isn't walked on much, and it has long thin blades sticking up everywhere, so it is nothing like scratchy mini-golf astro-turf.
2. It doesn't get too hot. The nylon fibers are actually specially made to be cool in order to appeal to customers in water-hungry places like Arizona and New Mexico. Minerva includes it in a regular black dog outdoor temperature rotation of patio in the sun, then grass, then patio in the shade. Repeat.
3. When Minerva "does her business" on it, you simply pick up any solids and hose the grass down. In our case, Minerva's dog run will generally be a dedicated space for her to relieve, so we don't need to worry as much about disinfecting the grass every time, because Alton won't be running around on it. But if we wanted to take over her spot for, say, a rockin' bocce ball tournament, we could make sure the glass is free of doggy debris, hose it down, and further cleanse it with something antibacterial but safe, like white vinegar. All the water/liquids drain down through holes in the base fiber of the grass.
4. It should last us 10-15 years, at least.
5. Yes, the downside is that all the cost is in the "up-front." But after this, we don't have to worry about watering, weeding, re-seeding, fertilizer, chemicals, pesticides, brown spots from dog pee, bare spots from use, mud from rain, allergies, and most important of all, MOWING. Whenever we want to, we can just step outside and enjoy our maintenance-free yard all the year round. Of course synthetic turf isn't everyone's cup of tea, but right now we really couldn't be happier!
The next big thing that Andy is tackling (that I've mentioned coming on a dozen times now) is Alton's play structure. After purchasing the blueprints online (from THE online do-it-yourself backyard swingset guy, Jack's Backyard) and determining how to scale them to our yard, Andy purchased all the lumber and spent many hours in the garage cutting boards, routing (in this case, rounding off) all the edges, pre-drilling holes for all the bolts, sanding them smooth, and finally last night, beginning to stain them.
You see that we have selected a really warm red-brown hue for the stain. It's a little intense in the picture above because it is wet, but once dry the wood should take on a beautiful, slightly retro redwood/Lincoln Log sort of look. We love it, and Alton is dancing with joy!
Thanks to everyone who has helped us out with labor (Charlie Rhyne & Matt Groener), babysitting (all the grandparents), borrowing things (Zach & Karen), and for all of you readers for making it through another marathon post and letting us share our lives with you. We love hearing from you and all your comments and compliments, and keep 'em coming!
And on that final note, I'll share some pictures of my two sweet guys from earlier today. Andy had some touch-ups to do in Minerva's section and it was HOT (80 degrees--when did it go from winter to summer? Did I miss spring? Ah, it was on a Tuesday this year. Gotcha.) today, so Andy took his shirt off while he worked. Alton elected to do the same, as you can see from the cute round belly below.
They smiled together, but Alton was doing some finger-sucking at the time....
So I asked him to take his hand out of his mouth and wave to me, which he did, but not before he had found something interesting on the ground to look at. So this last picture is distraction, not his impression of Cameron Diaz evading the paparazzi.
Much love, Katie
The little guy got a shiner yesterday when he fell down. Most of the time his skin is pretty scab-free, because his falls are soft landings, but yesterday he decided to follow me into the garage with items in both hands--no balance! I was two steps away from the door reaching for a package of toilet paper on a high utility shelf, and the words "Stay right there, Alton" had just left my mouth when he tried to step down with his burdened little hands and took a tumble. So in case you catch a glimpse of his skinned forehead in future pics on the blog, you know how he got it! Aww..JPG)
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Once in a while you wake up on the wrong side of the bed, and that's just what happened to me yesterday. One of the few sunny days this week, I was looking forward to a bike ride to the gym with Alton so that we could go swimming, some berry-picking in the afternoon, and our weekly Tuesday night dinner of pizza. But I got stuck in a funk and it seemed like every little blip just dragged me down more. Alton was in an argumentative mood for most of the day and was just not paying attention to me or doing the things I asked him to do. I checked my email and found that the swimsuit I'd ordered online was not even going to be shipped until after we had already departed for our beach vacation. Alton told me that he didn't want to ride the bike (And in an attempt to ascertain why, I asked him, "Do you get too cold on the bike?" "Yes." Suspicious, I continued my line of questioning: "Do you get too hot on the bike?" "Yes." Aaah. Problem solved.) and I had to promise a muffin reward once we got to the gym to ensure that I got my workout in by biking there instead of driving. The swim went very well, but Alton wanted to trot around the shower afterward and when I told him to stop so that he didn't fall, he cried. No Diet Coke in the fridge at lunchtime. He went down for his nap, but woke up sobbing as if from a nightmare after only an hour and a half of sleep. (He usually sleeps for two-and-a-half or three hours. Yes, I know I'm lucky, but that sure didn't help pull me out of my foul mood!) We went to pick strawberries and the field was muddy and the berries were mushy. When Alton fell on his bottom in the mud, he cried (are we seeing a pattern here?). The takeout pizza burned in the oven and set off our smoke alarm. Andy came home and started cleaning the garage to make sure that I wasn't abandoned for the evening with Mr. Whineypants while his Daddy worked on bigger projects. We had our dinner (and some red wine for Mommy) and we were all exhausted.
After a very good night's sleep (Alton inexplicably let me sleep in today--I'm not sure if he was sleeping himself, or just very very quiet all morning.), I woke up in a better mood today and so far things have been great. We went to the roller rink this morning, excited to try out their "Tiny Tot" skate hour, but they were closed for a school party. Undaunted, we invited the two friends who were joining us to come over to our house to play instead. Upon arrival, one of the other moms exclaimed at how nice our house looked, and how she could never invite people over on a whim because her house is always such a disaster. It's a fact that the cleanliness and orderliness of the house is always a tender point with me, so the sincerity of her compliment really made me glow. The three kids played well together and upon their departure, UPS was pulling up to deliver a new computer desk that we'd ordered. Alton and I eagerly ripped into the boxes and while I was reading the assembly instructions, Alton did what any small child would do:
Inside the box.
Messing with little Styrofoam bits.
This is the back of a computer cabinet, with a hole for cords...or is it?
Alton thinks the hole is a home to something else.
A monster truck, naturally.
I jubilantly sent Andy an email to let him know our packages had arrived. Hours went by with no response, and I glanced at our shared online calendar to see what he had on his plate--I can view where he is blocked off, but not the titles of his work events. Andy's schedule for today looks like this:
8a.m.-9a.m. Meeting
9a.m.-10a.m. Meeting
10a.m.-10:30a.m. Meeting
10:30a.m.-11:30a.m. Meeting
11:30a.m.-1p.m. Meeting
1p.m.-2p.m. Meeting
2p.m.-3p.m. Meeting
3p.m.-3:30p.m. Meeting
Wow. I sure hope one of those included lunch! Looks like poor Daddy is the one who's going to need the red wine tonight.
The rain started coming down last night and continues today and tomorrow. We are working on an estimated schedule for giving Andy time to complete Alton's playset. So far he's finished with all the cutting, routing, and pre-drilling of the wood, and will move on there to sanding, staining, and...assembling! We elected to purchase blueprints for a playset online, because it allowed the builder (Andy) to modify the plans according to how much space was available. While the set can include a side arm with spots for one, two, or three swings, ours will be a simpler fort with rock climbing wall and slide, plus a small trapeze on one side for swinging and room for Alton's sandbox underneath. The rainy weather can't get us down too much, because the sooner it starts to get sunny, the sooner we are going to want to blast through this project and have it up and running! For now, we'll relish those wet days to spend hours inside painstakingly applying stain to the lumber. (Okay, Andy will be. I will be wrestling with this new desk and wrestling the user of the playset.)
On Wednesday, the 3rd, I took a rain break from working on the yard and played with Alton for a large majority of the day. Katie was working very hard at getting our house ready for our guests (my parents!). Alton spent some time in his play room, digging through his box of instruments. He found two egg shakers and a drum, which he decided to combine into one instrument. You'll notice that the string for the drum is around his neck so he can egg-shake with both hands. This was his idea from the start - what a genius!!!
Enjoy!
I'm not actually sure if we can call this "Phase 1" as I did in the title of this blog post, because there were so many steps to get us to this point. Expect more words later, but for now, with the help of Charlie Rhyne (manual labor) and Jennifer Rhyne (babysitting), the SynLawn is installed fully in the yard! It's done, including withstanding the torrential downpour that we received for most of the day here yesterday--the grass didn't even look wet. Many of you have been asking us how well it drains, and the answer is: perfectly! Just as well as regular grass, and possibly better because of all the crushed rock underneath for drainage instead of hard-packed clay & dirt. So here are the photos of the yard now that it's in place. After our last post about seeing the grass rolled out in the most basic way, Andy took a day of rain (last Wednesday) away from the grass to stay in the garage and begin cutting lumber for Alton's playset, gather supplies from Home Depot and Lowe's (conveniently and weirdly next door to each other about a mile away from our house), and then hit the ground running last Thursday when his parents arrived in town. He and his dad trimmed around all the sides of the grass "carpet" to fit in the yard perfectly, lined up the seams, nailed it down, and then took care of the 40 ft dog run on the side of the house. It's hard to get a totally accurate view of the turf in photos because you can't see the individual tufts and it comes across a little extra-shiny, but you get the idea!
Minerva is apoplectic with happiness at having grass to run around and relieve on, but before our four-legged friend was even allowed to sniff and explore her new section, it was christened by four other feet.
Today, Andy picked up the grass and brought it home. We had some sprinkles that were a light but steady fixture for the rest of the afternoon and evening, so today's accomplishment was simply to retrieve our order, bring it home, wrestle it into the backyard, sit down and breathe deeply, unroll it, spend an hour tugging it into place as precisely as we can, make a few cuts around some of the obstructions in the yard, and then leave it all nice and rolled out while this mass of clouds passes.
The roll of grass, ready to go.
First, Andy unrolled it and let it drape where it might.
A proud Andy.
Next he took some time to carefully measure and make cuts around our A/C unit. Remember when he made that awesome cage to go around it?
The cut out piece, discarded.
A little bit more tugging into place (I helped!), and Andy was done for the day.
Andy left the house to return his brother's truck, which he had borrowed for some of the heavier hauling he had to do, and later on Alton woke up from his nap. He was eager to explore the new grass and did not mind the sprinkling rain, but his first edict when we stepped outside was to inform me that he needed a hat!
His head covered, he proceeded to run and skip across the lawn like the opening credits to Little House on the Prairie.
He paused briefly next to our shrub-to-be (now so tiny!), lifting his arms above his head and cheerfully telling me: "Tree!"
And one final shot to give you a good peek at the grass, sort of in place.
It has some lines across it, inadvertently giving it a "freshly mown" look, which will settle out as more people walk across it (or gallop across, as it were). The next step is to carefully center it in the space of the yard, trim all of the edges (you can see where the grass overlaps the patio in that shaded line across the bottom of the last picture), and begin to stake it down all around with 6-inch deck screws. Alton is ecstatic to have this springy green expanse in place, though he could not be persuaded to turn somersaults across it like Daddy, and Minerva is doing her part to remove any packing creases from the grass fibers by scampering around it like a demon. Andy will wait for the worst of the weather to pass us, then commence with the heavy hammering, and will be joined on Thursday by his father when Grammy and Grandpa fly into town (Happy Birthday today, Jennifer!). After this grass is done, they will still have the same project to complete, on a smaller scale, in Minerva's dog run along the side of the house. Then Andy finally gets to start on his new pride and joy: a play structure for Alton! Stay tuned.
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