merry Christmas!

 

We’ve put up our first tree and had our first snow so now we are ready for our first Christmas in our house. 

Making cookies and visiting the market were some of the fledging traditions we celebrated this year.  One that we are opting out of is the Santa Claus myth.  We hope we won’t be ostracized for making other parents have to lie more creatively when D says “Santa’s not real….”

Since college, the holidays have been a fairly stressful time for me and this is the most excited I’ve been about this time of year as an adult.  Is it having a two and half year old?  Is it being somewhat settled in to the house?  Is it living close to family?  Is it not nursing anymore and being able to relax more about D’s sleep schedule?  Yes to all.

watching the paint dry

 

Across the alley from our front door, which is actually our one and only door, there is graffiti.  I don’t really mind it.  It’s changed over the years, but I hadn’t paid much attention to it until recently.  Sunday morning, I stepped outside and was confident that there was new paint.  I was elated that who ever did it did NOT vandalize our house.  The only prior picture I could find was from September 2015.  The addition from this weekend is the orange part, so clearly several other parts were added in the last year.

holiday concert

 

Here’s a picture of D’s toddler class at their holiday concert last week.  Last year he was too sick to go so we were really looking forward to this one.  The cuteness more than made up for the lack of musicality.  Look at those Christmas dresses and D’s clapping and swaying.  He even strummed his ukelele while they sang “I’ve been working on the railroad,” which was one of our household fall favorite songs.

commissioner Jack

Last night Jack was elected commissioner of his division in the Puget Sound Senior Baseball League.  Yes, there was no competition, but I’m still sure he was a good pick for the job, plus he gets his fees paid plus a little extra cash.  My baby needs a fifth pair of cleats!

Here’s a look at his impressively variable stats over the last five years: https://pssbl.com/players/3068/jack-bader

Mount Saint Helens is so impressive!

 

Daycare was closed for Veteran’s day so we headed out for some yurt camping at Seaquest State Park, near Mount Saint Helens.  I last visited in 1999 and Jack went sometime before that.  There are less waves of downed trees than I remember from last time but the landscape is still otherworldly.  Staying close by allowed us to do some short hikes and the weather was great most of the time.

The yurt, which had a heater, was quite comfortable.  It’s a great way to enjoy more winter camping

On the way home we stopped by my cousins’ farm and D rode a large pony.  We learned that horses, or at least some horses, aren’t down with soiled diapers!

I *heart* buy nothing

 

For the past few years we’ve participated in the Buy Nothing Project.  BNP is an network of local facebook groups that “offer people a way to give and receive, share, lend, and express gratitude through a worldwide network of hyper-local gift economies in which the true wealth is the web of connections formed between people who are real-life neighbors.”

In the last few months I have, among other things,:

• borrowed a weed whacker
• lent out a suitcase
• given kids’ pajamas
• received a fitbit charger
• received a laundry basket
• received a kids workbench with tools
• given cat food
• received some rubber stamps
• received an awesome toy construction crane
• given some sweaters
• received some toddler clothes
• given a shower caddy
• received a coffee table
• given hot peppers from our CSA

Every now and then there’s a wildly popular item given away, like a roomba, which will have 50+ people interested in it.  The giver chooses the recipient in any way they choose, ranging from their response to a funny question or just randomly.

Sometimes things are picked up from a porch without contact, but often there is a little bit of conversation, which is a pleasant way to meet people.  Our group has 1600 people, but a lot of activity if from a small set of people and so even online you get to know a bit about each other. 

The groups really are hyper local, so we’re in a different group now than we were in our apartment downtown.  Not all groups are as successful as ours is.  In the south downtown group, people complained that most activity was from people moving out and needing to unload a bunch of stuff at once, which didn’t build community from people that were sticking around.  There were also a couple of homeless people participating and while the project doesn’t elevate needing something over wanting it, it changed the tenor of the group.  On the flip side, I’ve heard that in some wealthier neighborhoods, no one is interested in the gives.   I like that in our group people accept small things like meals when someone cooked too much, or food that needs to be used while someone goes on vacation. 

I like that it’s easier to get rid of things I don’t need when I’m giving them to someone, rather than just giving to goodwill.  The opportunity to lend and borrow is also great.  Lastly, there has been some really touching generosity and gratitude, like the person who offered her airbnb space for people with family visiting for the holidays, or the person who wanted to treat a single mom to a back-to-school shopping trip, or the person who had surgery while estranged from family and was enormously grateful for the support of the group.

volleyball at the Y

 

It’s been almost six months now that we’ve been playing volleyball at the Y, once a week.  We went to a one-time event called “healthy happy hour” where we played and Jack got inspired, so we collected email addresses and drummed up support for more volleyball time.  Now he’s the volunteer coordinator for it, which means that we set up and take down the net and shoo away the basketball players who sometimes try to shoot hoops on the side of our game.  It also means we have to show up every week.

Especially during the stress of this summer and early fall, I found that every single week I did not want to go, but then every single time I enjoyed myself.  I suppose there’s a lesson there.

I think Jack would like to play more in a more competitive place, and I would enjoy that too, but for now, this has been a convenient, inexpensive way to return to team sports and to do something fun together.

We usually have about 10-12 people show up and every single week there is a new person.  The level of play varies considerably, but the inclusive spirit of the YMCA is definitely part of what I like about it.  We have some regulars who are pretty good but some of the better people who came at the beginning stopped showing up, presumably because they didn’t want to risk playing with people that were considerably less skilled.  We’ve had a good run the last few weeks, with some thrillingly long volleys.  Last week I even dove for the ball successfully and a wild hit actually made a basket.

In these Trumped out days, the diversity of the players is also quite welcome.  Superficially, the group and the revolving cast of new players is racially, ethnically and linguistically diverse, but I also have the sense that we are economically diverse.  Part of the advantage of volleyball is that you play in close proximity (without physical contact, ideally) so you can joke a bit, but in the loud, reverberant gym, there is no pressure to actually converse.  I know most regular players’ names, but only one person other than Jack’s job.  It’s simply about playing and being a good sport.

 

Starting today we get an extra half hour of court time!

a Shelton visit

Taking the ferry from downtown to Bremerton, on our way to Shelton, has become our new routine for visits to Jack’s grandma.  We leave early and eat breakfast on the boat while we enjoy the time not being in the car.  Last weekend Jack’s mom and stepdad visited at the same time and we had a nice time, including the ritual of helping with online accounts and passwords.

(Edited to add St Seattle w/ halo pic -JB)

Halloween 2016

This year, with Halloween on a rainy Monday, D wore his costume a few times, but we didn’t actually go out trick-or-treating.

Brooklyn sans bébé

 

We left D in Seattle for five days in early October while we traveled to New York for the wedding of a CMU friend.  It felt luxurious to uber to and from the airport and pass on major tourist activities in favor of a low key Brooklyn weekend with friends, confident in the knowledge that this wasn’t our first or last trip to New York.

The wedding was held at the roller skating rink in beautiful Prospect park.  After a slightly wet ceremony we retreated to the covered, open air rink for skating, dancing and dinner.  Skating uses muscles in the shins and feet I apparently never use, so it was surprisingly hard.  Luckily the groom was quite comfortable on roller blades, zooming among the guests.  There were 13 former CMU architecture students in attendance, so it was quite the reunion.

Traveling without a kid, or actually traveling at all, since we’ve mostly stayed close to home during these house-building years, was heady stuff.  The plane ride was un-interupted reading time.  Arriving in New York late at night is no problem and we had a delicious meal in a bar at midnight, which we were awake for, thanks to the time change.

We walked a lot, as one does, and followed our friends to local favorites like Gorilla Coffee, Betty Bakery and the Brooklyn Cat Cafe.  The smallest kittens were in a sort of terrarium.

We also enjoyed walking the high line (the old elevated train line reclaimed as a park http://www.thehighline.org/about) with the newlyweds and visiting an underground (in the literal, not legal sense) ping pong bar.  I bested Jack in a close set!

Fortunately D didn’t mind the separation much and had a good time sleeping over with a PEPs friend and staying at our house with Grandma Lori.

hygge elements of our house

During the design phase, I worried that our modern house would feel cold and uninviting.  I’m happy to report that my fears were misplaced.  There are many ways to feel cozy, and not all of them are craftsman.  I was reminded  of this article I read last year [Nordic hygge] about the Danish word, hygge, which in a difficult-to-translate way refers to the cultural pursuit of taking pleasure from the presence of gentle soothing things.

Though Seattle’s climate is far milder than Denmark's, the long dark winter provides plenty of motivation for hygge, as I imagine early Nordic settlers to Seattle knew.  

Since our tall modern house has no eaves and has plentiful south and west windows exposed to the wind, the rain makes an impressively loud pitter patter and water pours down the outside of the windows, blurring the view of the lights outside.  I think the distant views and the water on the windows emphasizes the distinction between the cozy inside and the busy, hectic outside world.  Having space for guests and a kitchen table, however small, is also deliciously hygge.

One of the luxuries of our kitchen is the multitude of drawers making this delightful tea setup possible, vastly increasing my enjoyment and frequency of drinking tea.

Oh and I’m pretty sure having heated floors and lots of natural light during the short winter days is hygge too.

house = home

For the past four weeks we’ve been living in the house and today the first regular mortgage payment was withdrawn so it’s official.   I have lots to say and pictures I want to share but no time at the moment, so I’ll be brief.

A few things that are great are the kitchen, the view and the master bathroom.  The third floor, where the kitchen is, feels almost like a treehouse and if you’re sitting on the floor, as one does when there’s no couch, almost all you see out the windows is the beautiful sky.

On the other end of my opinion spectrum, meaning things I don’t like, are not having had the time to put things away and organize and the fact that the water we worked so hard to get is undrinkable.  We installed new PEX pipes, as almost all new plumbing uses these days, and the water smells and tastes like gasoline.  It’s disappated a bit, but according to the internet it could take up to two months to go away.  That means we are halfway, but I’d say I have a strong sense of smell so it might take longer.  We have a Britta now, but I find that I am often thirsty and going up a couple of floors for a drink isn’t fun.

We got some nice houseplants as gifts.  Some even came in the mail!

buses in the CD

 

The buses in our new neighborhood are better than we realized, with the significant exception of getting to Jack’s office.   Multiple bues run to the Mount Baker light rail station, which is great for getting to our parents’ neighborhoods.

Portland 2016

 

In July we visited friends down in Portland.  We ate outside, played a game and went to the zoo!

experiencing the details

Now that we are living in our house we are up close and personal with all the design decisions we've made over the last several years. Mentally I separate these into three different categories as follows:

1) visions made into a satisfying reality

2) design mistakes
3) construction mistakes 

Considering the massive amount of decisions we made I'm happy to say that most fit in to category one.

Category two is relatively small. The biggest are probably one window that is way too low and needs a safety fix and for me (but not Jack) a lot of other windows which meet code but feel low when open.   There are also two faucets out of seven which aren't really working for the sinks they are in. 

Category three, on the other hand, consists of the kind of things that are easy to fixate on and I'm trying to let them go.  Examples are the height of some custom bookshelves in the kitchen and the overhang of the kitchen counters on one side which requires opening a drawer in order to wipe the counter into your hand. The planned blocking in our closet is also not where it was meticulously planned out to be. The tile colors in our bathroom weren't done right either, though some have been corrected.

99.9% isn't bad though

sailing success

On Sunday my dad and I carved out time for a two-handed (Jack and Jill) race out of Shilshole.  This involved a three hour motor up from Des Moines starting at 7 am on Sunday and my mom helping with the return voyage while I went back to work.  Jack spent a somewhat taxing day on his own in our disheveled house with D.  What a great family I have.

It was my fist two handed race, which actually means having four hands, funnily enough.  We did not finish last.

To elaborate, we were 31 of 37 overall and 5th of 6 in our class.  We had a good finish, a start with very light wind and a period without any wind mid race as the weather shifted from a south to a north wind.  The main strategic discussion centered on going close to shore where the tide was helping us versus heading way out the center of the channel where the wind might have been better.

After we crossed the line we kept the spinnaker up and breezed into Elliot Bay Marina, past a parade of departing cruise ships.