Eliza at 11 Months

Eliza modeling her new skirt and ladybug onesie.

Eliza will turn eleven months old tomorrow! Her little personality just spills out, and she seems to change every day. The stats:

Height: 30 inches (85the percentile)

Weight: 24 pounds (90th percentile)

Clothing Size: 18 months

Foods: Soy formula, about 16 oz. per day, plus lots of "people" food. Her favorites are bananas, peaches, cherries, chicken and noodles, cheerios, baby "puffs," avacados..and on and on! Pretty much the only thing she doesn't like is peas, and that's only if they're served solo. Mix 'em up with baby cereal and some other things, and she'll scarf them down. She is now eating three (large) meals a day, without snacks. Clearly, this seems to be sustaining her!

Activities: Eating, crawling around and eating things off the floor (paper, fuzz, food bits from under the kitchen rugs, etc.), playing peek-a-boo, looking at books, shredding magazines/books (note the baby gate over the bookshelf in picture above), emptying baskets/bags/boxes, laughing at Jonah or anyone else who acts silly, napping and bouncing in her bouncer until she poops out.

How we spend a lot of our time! Laundry Basket Emptied, Check. Big Girl Lunch - Peaches and O's Big Helper Jonah

Mashing Buttons and Bopping to the Music

Laughs At: Jonah, and kids in general. She thinks people acting silly or strangely is hilarious, even if it's when they are injured. At Jonah's orthodontist appointment last week, she cracked up when the technician was  wrenching the wires around in Jonah's mouth. He was not so amused!  She still loves to play chase with Jonah, whether we're carrying her or she's crawling after him. Recent "Firsts": Real crawling started last month. She started eating finger foods in June. This month she  started pulling up to her knees on the dishwasher (so she can "help" with the silverware) and other furniture,  usually so she can grab things or see what we're doing. She also likes to bounce to music now, will wave hi  and bye, and shakes her head when you say "no." Sounds: Lots and lots of babbling. She still says "Dada" and "Mama" -- and occasionally "Obama" -- but I don't think she knows what she's saying yet. She will do the baby sign for "all done" and sometimes for "milk."

Ups and Downs

Two whole months have passed since my last post. Ack! In my defense, we have been busy. I'm sad to report that no further progress has been made on the kitchen. It looks exactly as it did in that last photo, awful faux-brass light fixtures and all. I could give a bunch of excuses here, most mostly I just need to get my butt back in gear!

First, I will recap our adventures over the last eight weeks:

End of May: Jonah finished up first grade at his Montessori school. He brought home a ton of excellent art work, writing, science papers and math works. The school had a fun "End of Year Celebration" concert at the swanky Edgeworth Club here in Sewickley, where Jonah sang "Back in the U.S.S.R." while dressed as a Sri Lanka-themed nesting doll. I use the term "dressed" lightly. It was really more akin to sticking one's face through a painted wooden cutout at the fair, only the cutout was made of styrofoam insulation so it could be easily carried. I have to say, they did a nice job of mixing all things Asian in one concert (their focus of study for the year was on Asia).

There was also the end of year school picnic at a great local park. It features the Little Sewickley Creek, which is fairly wide but quite shallow. Perfect for kids to tromp through and find critters. Of course, Jonah and his friends hiked quite a ways from the picnic area to find the one area deep enough to jump into (feet first), and made good use of this little spot before coming back to let their parents know where they'd been. "Show me," I said, when he showed up, sopping wet. We all traipsed back to the spot for a demonstration. You can see how they cycled in and out, over and over:

The picnic also gave us an excuse to make some fun cupcakes, which Jonah and I designed. We both drew kitty faces on paper. I then traced over the pencil lines in melted chocolate onto a piece of wax paper. Once that cooled, I covered the whole head with different-colored melted white chocolate. After layer cooled, they could be peeled off the paper and placed upside-down on top to the cupcakes. I just love Jonah's sad kitties!

Beginning of June: Jonah finished up his first season of Little League. It's amazing how much a bunch of  6-to-8-year-olds can improve over two months of play. The last few games were genuinely exciting to watch. Jonah says he wants to play baseball "forever." We're just happy he had a great time.

The kids and I took a trip to Kentucky the first weekend in June, just for a visit. They loved swimming and playing with their cousins and visiting with the family.

Jonah went to a week of Eco-Explorers camp, ending with an overnight campout at his teacher Mrs. Edson's house. He managed to make it through the whole night in the tent, though three of his tent-mates went home. "I stayed up 'til one a.m.!" he proudly told me the next morning. They were up by 5 a.m. for pancakes and playing. The chaperones were looking pretty bedraggled by 8 a.m. By 9 a.m. Jonah was asleep in his bed, for a 4-hour nap.

End of June: Another great week at Kiawah Island, SC with Ben's family. They've been going there about every other year since Ben was a kid, but lately we've been going every year. It's a great wide, uncrowded beach, and the house has a screened-in porch with a perfect view of the ocean.

Sleepy Passenger on the Morning Walk

Castle Thursday Builders

Hat Popper, Wave Jumper

Mommy Mattress on the Beach

Jonah spent the week after with Nina and Papaw, while Ben, Eliza and I flew home. We did some house projects--well, I did and Ben spent some quality time with his daughter. We did take a day trip through scenic western PA, past the site of Falling Water, to Ohiopyle State Park, with its own rapids and falls.

Terrible Sunglasses at the Falls

On the way home, we wanted to continue on the scenic the route, so we told the GPS to avoid toll roads (it wanted to take us to the Pa Turnpike). What happened from there defies all logic, unless the people at Garmin were trying to punish us for avoiding payment of tolls. The GPS directed us only an increasingly narrow and windy road, which eventually became a one-lane gravel road. It went up and down steep hills, through the forest, sometimes with a steep drop-off on one side and huge hill on the other. We did not meet any other cars, thankfully. We thought about turning around at one point, but by then we were already as close to the end (we hoped) as we were to the beginning. After a somewhat terrifying 5-mile trek (with free-flowing curses), we returned to asphalt (hoorah!) and quickly realized that we had travelled in one giant loop! Damn you Garmin! Thankfully, Eliza snoozed through the whole adventure.

Beginning of July: We headed back to Kentucky for the 4th of July weekend and to retrieve our sorely missed Jonah. Fun times with the family, including a family reunion with Mom's family (featuring a visit from Uncle Johnny Hawaii):

  fireworks and fishing on the Ferguson farm (highlighted by Jamie flipping the canoe in the lake),

and swimming and cooking out at the Comptons'.

And now back to regular summer life and working on the house. More on that soon.

Kitchen Update

We've been in the new house a whole week now, and parts of it are starting to resemble a real home. We even cooked out for dinner tonight, despite temperatures in the 50's. It's been raining for weeks I think, but this afternoon was upgraded to merely gray and overcast. Things are good. Messy, disorganized and full of endless to-do lists, but I recognize that these are good problems to have.

So, without further ado, I will tell the story of the kitchen's journey toward awesomeness. It is far from complete, but I am thrilled with the results so far.

To begin with, we had this:

 Step one was making Jamie come be our "contractor." Day one: Remove the upper cabinets and the bulkhead.

Day Two: Buy new cabinets that are 9" taller than the old ones.

Day Three: Fix the plumbing and electrical issues that were previously hidden in the bulkhead. What we (he) couldn't do anything about was the large waste water pipe going all the way across the the wall over the window. There was also a good deal of cursing and wrestling with pipes in the fixable sections.

Day Four: Hang the new upper cabinets. Make cut outs where needed to fit the pipe inside along the window wall.

Day Five: Return the microwave to it's old position. Fill in the space above the cabinets with 2x4's, trim and crown molding. Rebuild a smaller bulkhead over the sink, and install a "new" salvaged light fixture from our house in Lexington. Mom and Dad arrive to help install the new pantry cabinet next to the refrigerator. The carpets are cleaned upstairs and in the basement on this day also, so Mom starts her painting tasks by painting Jonah's new bunk bed.

Day Six-Eight: Install shelves, cabinet doors and new butcher block counters. Celebrate Jamie's birthday and Mother's Day. Finish packing at the old house. Paint the kids rooms and the guest room (Eliza's yellow room took four coats including primer--thanks Mom!).

 Day Nine: Move-in day. Keep telling yourself that it's going to be great...eventually. Jamie goes home.

Days 10-16: Unbury the house from boxes and packing paper...Well, the downstairs anyway. I predict  that my sewing room will probably unpacked sometime before Christmas.  Mom and Dad stayed until the morning after the move, so progress has slowed considerably since then. I did manage to get a couple of coats of polyurethane on the counter tops, so they are ready for cooking. The exception is the new top for the island, which Dad took home to work on in his shop. We saved money by using pre-cut butcher block from Ikea, but they only had it in 25-inch wide pieces--just a few inches too narrow for the island. Luckily Dad has planers and biscuit-cutters and giant clamps to join two sections perfectly together.

Day 17, today. The last cabinet door, which was out of stock last week, is now available. So, after another multi-hour trip to Ikea, and then about an hour of installing, unistalling, stripping out screws, drilling,  groaning, searching for replacement screws, and reinstalling, we have this: 

Still to do: replace the brass light fixtures over the island and table, paint the lower cabinets, replace the island counter top, order and install the tile back splash, paint the crown molding and toe-kick on the pantry cabinet, touch up the wall paint.

I think I can, I think I can...When are the Pike family remodelers coming back again? Hopefully soon!

Closure, A Whole New Can of Worms

We closed on the PA house this morning, with only a few minor glitches. Bottom line: we are now the proud owners of a big ol' house!

Ben had to go to work afterward, but Eliza and I went over to measure and plan. Unfortunately my happiness balloon was almost immediately deflated when I knocked a hole in the previously-mentioned soffit, only to find this:

Inside the dreaded soffit

I believe this is a "waste water" pipe coming from the two toilets upstairs. According to my handy-man sources, it probably cannot be moved, at least not without a LOT of hassle. Phooey! Maybe we will just have cabinets with a giant pipe running through the tops on this wall?

The next section of soffit revealed yet another pipe, but this one was much smaller. I think this one could be moved fairly easily. Alas, it was very close to the opening and didn't make it into the pictures. The third section of soffit, which goes over the refrigerator, is hiding even more plumbing:

Way at the back on the right, you can see what I think is the cold water line going to the refrigerator. Again, this should be pretty easy to move (I hope). I put a call into the plumber to see what he can do. Fingers crossed for good news!