Hallelujah! We have our certificate of occupancy.

With four business days between us and a $28,000 bank penalty, we have our Certificate of Occupancy.  What a relief!

construction: month twelve

The last month has been bonkers.  Jack has been up at the house most evenings after work, we’ve worked most weekends and taken a couple days off work as well.  Last Monday when we were finishing up electrical, there were about a dozen people working at one time on various things.
We finally got our sewer and water hooked up by paying more money to bore under our neighbor’s yard, leaving it undisturbed.  The stairs and railings and countertops were installed.  We put up light fixtures and troubleshot electrical problems and did outdoor work getting the soil ready.  Last week we passed the electrical and plumbing inspections.  The elevator is still not installed so all of the appliances came up the stairs and are now installed.
Until developments grow up, we can see the top of Mount Rainier to the south.



Tonight it was cleaned, showing us the windows and the floors without the protective coverings!

Though we thought we could put if off a few months, it turned out we did have to cover the ground in “the boite” (fenced in area) so last weekend we scrambled to get the right kind of gravel delivered on a weekend and we bought and installed turf, which game in one big 400 pound roll.  Jack had his heart set on turf because it will be less maintenance and will never get muddy.  I’m glad to say that it’s come a long way and the filler is sand now, instead of annoying rubber pellets.

The biggest remaining tasks are the sewer test and inspection, touch up painting and color painting.  Then the city will walk through for an overall safety inspection and the bank appraiser will check that everything is as we said it would be. Even though we’ve passed electrical, there are some issues to figure out, like the bizzare combination of lights on L2 that trip the breaker.  We’re moving out of our apartment this month and I REALLY want the painting to be done so we can safely stow our posessions in the house, even if we can’t quite live there.  There are nine days until all of our stuff has to be in the house!

August weekend

 

This post is just an excuse to share some pictures I like of things other than our house!  Last weekend we got to spend some time with my sister and we also had a great time at Jack’s [g]uncles’ pool party.

Becky clearly said something funny at brunch.  Wish I remembered what it was.

Pool volleyball is a blast and the floaty toys were unexpectedly perfect for these toddler cousins.

nursing notes

 

August is breastfeeding month in the United States and it’s a topic that is close to my heart. Pun intended. 

Thanks to decades of public health outreach and promotion, nursing is once again is a routine practice this country.  However, I absolutely believe it needs all of the organized and legal and social support it can get, because although it is the most natural thing in the world, it is at odds with a lot of values and practices in our culture, including our paradoxical modesty and the demands of the workforce.  That said, the word that it is good for babies and moms is out, so I’ll step off my soapbox for the rest of this post and share some of the most fascinating things I have learned about nursing.

• Nursing makes kids’ teeth align better.  Okay, so the studies mentioned here [http://news.health.com/2015/06/15/breast-feeding-may-have-dental-benefits-study-suggests/, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/4017283.stm] show significant correlation, not actual causation, but it makes a lot of sense.  The belief is that because the latch on a breast is different than on a bottle, the jaw and palate develop differently.
• Breast milk contains stem cells with “variable expression of pluripotency genes normally found in human embryonic stem cells” unlike other stem cells found in adults.   This kind of makes me wish I hadn’t thrown out the leftover frozen milk I had in the freezer in case I someday get cancer.
• From the abstract of http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22865647 - These findings provide evidence that breast milk represents a novel and noninvasive source of patient-specific stem cells with multilineage potential and establish a method for expansion of these cells in culture. They also highlight the potential of these cells to be used as novel models to understand adult stem cell plasticity and breast cancer, with potential use in bioengineering and tissue regeneration.
• The immune benefits are fascinating but tricky to study.  There is evidence and speculation [https://www.sciencenews.org/blog/growth-curve/backwash-nursing-babies-may-trigger-infection-fighters] that nursing babies’ saliva is backwashed and absorbed by the mother so that her immune system can create leukocytes to combat specific infections.  Inhabiting the same germy environment also contributes, of course.
• In fact, all of the purported benefits are complicated to study.  This article [http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/everybody-calm-down-about-breastfeeding/] on a statics blog Jack and I read really set me off.  It legitimately, but glibly, highlights just how difficult it is to study breastfeeding in real populations where it is unethical to assign mothers to groups and all kinds of factors affect how a particular baby is fed.  It upset me that this review assumes that breast milk and formula are equal until proven otherwise.  The assumption should be the reverse.  I believe it is healthier, even if we haven’t been able to rigorously prove it. 

I estimate that I spent over 2500 hours (10*90+4*270+2*300+1*60) nursing or pumping over the course of D’s first two years.  It was a wonderful, convenient, inconvenient, pleasant, painful and irreplaceable series of experiences that gave me a lot of time to read and reflect on the subject.   In fact, those of you who read all the way to this point should consider congratulating me on keeping this post so brief.