Grand Adventure: family, house building and travel, Pacific Northwest style
Previous posts: September
Over the last month, the foundation was completed (including radiant floors, plumbing etc) and framing of the basement began. Jack caught one potential mistake related to insulation in the foundation before it happened. We’re lucky be able to visit the site so often.
I came across this delicious new word recently in a novel and it stayed with me because I was once a young vexillologist.
Vexillology: the "scientific study of the history, symbolism and usage of flags or, by extension, any interest in flags in general". The word is a synthesis of the Latin word vexillum ("flag") and the Greek suffix-logia ("study").
I started collecting national flags when I was about eight and my collections, which I believe is my parents’ basement, grew to about 50 flags. My dad made me some holders that we mounted to the wall and they were quite nicely displayed. I had a t-shirt and poster of all the national flags on my wall. I do not, however, have a picture of my collection.
While we’re on the subject of vexillology, let me share two flag related tidbits that I learned in the past few weeks.
One, New Zealand will be voting next year on whether or not they will change their flag to something more representative of their culture. Since their flag is pretty unoriginal, I would support it, though I don’t like the designs that look more like logos than flags.
Two, the Union Jack has directionality to it that I’d never noticed. Flying flags upside down was a nautical distress signal that didn’t work very well for the Brits.
In second grade, in my autobiography, I proudly wrote that I could drive a boat. At that point, driving only meant the act of steering with a tiller so I was telling the truth. However, the more I learn, the more responsibility that falls under the umbrella of “driving,” so I’m still working on it.
Over the past seven months, I sailed out of Shilshole in Ballard quite a bit.
Although I’ve been on sailboats since I was a baby (see picture of my first cruise at 6 months), I learned a lot this year.
I took the ASA 101 and 103 classes. In the 103 class I learned a lot about the engine, docking and dropping anchor. I think most of my apprehension about docking was really a lack of comfort with engines. I feel a lot better now and hope to practice more over the winter. In the 101 class I refreshed my knowledge of the points of sail and rights of way and some terminology.
Racing was a good experience, though we were not very competitive. We had an all women’s boat of 5-7 people and we did noticeably improve our process, if not our results. For your amusement, here’s a list of all the reasons we Did Not Finish races:
To our credit, we did not have any accidental jibes or collisions.
Highlights were some really good starts and spinnaker raises/douses, seeing improvements, a few experienced guest crew members (including my dad once) and the beautiful scenery. I saw many sunsets, some dolphins, and daredevil kite boarder that buzzed the back of several boats. It hardly rained at all.
Next time you are walking in downtown Seattle, I invite you to play a new game I came up with. To play, stand on any sidewalk in the city, where you can see at least two blocks in to the distance (no hiding in alleys). Slowly turn in a circle, looking high and low, and if you can’t see a building under construction or a crane, you get 10 points. That’s it. Get out there and try it! I haven’t scored any points yet, but I’ll keep trying.
Even though I am well aware of how much development is happening, I am still regularly astonished by it. Here’s a snapshot of where large projects are underway in our neighborhood. For a ongoing updates, check this site.
Here are a few recent pictures, from the Yesler Terrace project where they are rebuilding several blocks all at once, and Occidental Park, which will have a big impact on Pioneer Square.
Bus watching is a regular part of our day, living downtown Our record sighting is twelve buses at one time from the windows of our living room, so D’s ongoing bus obsession is totally understandable. We’ve also been singing The Wheels on the Bus, since day one and, of course, they sing it at daycare and even at swim lessons.
D now sings an adorable wanh wanh wanh (to the tune of the first “round and round”) and reminds us with signs and words to sing particular verses. Unsurprisingly the toy bus and the books about buses (and other urban things) are quite popular as well.
Here’s a bonus fire truck picture too!
We broke ground in August, and now the foundation is done. So far, so good.
These openings are little bike garages, accessible from outside the house.
We had a fun birthday (mine) weekend, filled with family, swimming, wading pools, baseball and dogs! D enjoyed the company of seven different dogs and also spent some quality time with Emo.
Just after my previous vocabulary post in mid April (the state of the vocabulary), D went radio silent, except for variations on “baa,” for a whole month while he focused on walking.
We are now in the midst of a language explosion where D demonstrates new words and signs almost every day! I don’t know who is more excited, him or us.
Let me preface this by explaining what qualifies as a word for us. These are words observed a by attentive parents (and a linguist, to boot), with a lot of context. Everything here has been observed at least twice. Verbal words have some of the right sounds, but usually not all of them. These words come and go. Sounds like the /s/ at the end of “bus” have come and gone and come back again over the course of 5-6 months. The signs, like the sounds aren’t quite right, and they are limited by his dexterity. Despite all these qualifications and caveats, I am confident about this list:
In each category, the most commonly used words are at the top.
“More” and “milk” just become spoken words in the last week, after many months of signing.
D recently started signing “Daddy”. He taps his temple with an index finger, rather than making an open hand tapping the forehead with the thumb. If he wasn’t also saying the word, one might think he was indicating his head.
We sign and count as we ride the elevator which is where he gets “two”. He looks at his hand while saying “two” and tries to fold in the extra three fingers, but can’t seem to do it.
I’ve been signing and saying water for months, but it just emerged recently with the pronunciation “wa wa”, which I highly expect is something he heard from another kid or adult at his new daycare. He just signed it today for the first, time although he couldn’t get his fingers in to the “W” shape.
The meanings don’t always line up with adult meanings. For example, he does say “yellow” and “blue” and he often seems to say them in reference to color, he isn’t consistent or accurate in which colors he labels with them.
The story of “big” is one of my favorites. We were hiking in late July and he stood on the trail and spread his arms wide and said “bii” then turned 180 degrees and did it again and again, like he couldn’t get over the size of the forest and the trees. He probably said it 10 times then, and I haven’t heard it since.
He has combined a few signs a few time, like “more food”, “siren truck”, “where daddy” and “done pooping”.
It’s been incredible to watch his comprehension grow too. At times his efforts to learn new words and signs seems very intentional. At this point, he can apparently hear a word only once and produce it months in the future.
It’s been three years since we got serious about building a house and we just passed the major milestone of closing on our construction loan with Washington Federal. Construction will start in August and the house should be inhabitable in the spring!
I checked back on my previous house building timeline post from April 2014, and the new projected completion date is only two months later than we predicted back then. The steps along the way that took the most time weren’t quite what we predicted, but I was pleasantly surprised that the start date wasn’t too far off. Here’s a new timeline and a pre-construction picture of the three of us.
Bizarrely, last time I posted a timeline, there were only two of us!
Some of D’s many interests are reflected in these pictures: books, family, airplane spotting, water play and exploring his new physical strength. I love the one with his grandma and great grandma!
Our long-anticipated 4th of July camping trip was a smashing success. Perhaps it will be the first in a new tradition!
Highlights:
This is D’s fourth camping trip and the second of this season, so we didn’t have to buy any new gear, making for a very cheap getaway. D (and thus Jack and I) slept reasonably well, considering the new environment, and we were the late risers in the group, getting out of the tent at about 7:15.
Over the course of a single week during the hottest Seattle June on record, we received an exceptional amount of help from D’s grandparents and great-grandma. Here’s a run down:
We’re unbelievably fortunate.
Earlier this month we lost Jack’s maternal grandpa, Kirk. He was famously even-tempered, extremely handy and devoted to his family and community. We will miss him.
I get such a kick out of picture sets. And yes, I know that two out of three of these have already been shared in this post. D is currently 26 pounds so we’re fortunate he has such a fit father to carry him around!
