First night of Hanukkah

For the first night of Hanukkah, we had some of our favorite friends over for dinner. I made tasty latkes and served them with crock-pot applesauce, greek yogurt, smoked salmon, and salad. Jessica and Jules brought donuts for dessert. Sara and Jon brought an activity for the kids, which was a candle-making kit: you roll sheets of beeswax around a wick, and voila. The result was so delightful we lit one whole full menorah of them even though it is just the first night. The other menorah was more proper. Here are the children imitating the candles.

It's fun looking back at past Hanukkahs (2008-1, 2008-2, 2009, 2010). And I think our life here just keeps getting better and better.

Chore chart

The boys requested that we have a chore chart, and who am I to say no to that? They thought up the chores that they feel need doing. (Their choices were clearly guided by what they hear us complaining about.) I made a fun sign for the fridge, which I think helps us all be more invested in the system. They go about their tasks cheerfully and vigorously, almost every day.

School photo

Our seven-year-old. I love it.

Not for the squeamish

Dale happened to be downstairs, and one of the children flushed the toilet, and water went on Dale's head. Ew. He checked it out and found a big hole in the toilet waste pipe, as in, you could poke three fingers in there. Except that you would not do that.

It's a plastic pipe. The hole looks to me like a rat hole. It also looks like it's been there a long time, because there is a lot of sediment around the opening. Did I say ew?

Dale ductaped it. That's a start. When the sewer guy comes back to address our very own sinkhole in the backyard, we'll have him examine this as well.

Our basement has always been a little stinky around the laundry machines. Lots of people have stinky washing machines; we wondered if maybe the former owners washed a lot of cloth diapers, or something. It wasn't usually that bad. Now that the major sewer work outdoors has been done, the basement is noticeably less stinky. Our neighbors initiated the sewer work because of sewer gas coming into their basement...maybe we had it too and didn't realize. Ew. And maybe we have poop-pipe gas too.

Violations

1.

Aaron threw a shovel at a friend at school on Thursday, giving the other kid a good whack to the head. The injured party was very cheerful about the whole thing, declaring "I know it was an accident, Aaron! I still want to be your friend!" But there has been a certain disregard for safety lately so we felt a need for followup. As part of making reparations Aaron wrote a letter of apology ("Dear Evan, I am sorry for throwing a shovel at you. Love, Aaron.") and made a lego airplane for his friend as a gift. At school the next day, Dale supervised a short ceremony in which the two kids sat in opposite chairs and the card and gift were presented. The event attracted a small crowd of other children. Evan was delighted with the whole thing, especially the lego airplane. The other kids said, "Aaron, if you hit me on the head with a shovel will you make me a lego airplane too?"

2.

I was giving Jordan and his friend Watson a ride home after basketball last night. I told Jordan that Grandma would by joining us for dinner, and Jordan cheered. Then:

Watson: Why do you like your grandma so much?
Jordan: Because she's really nice. She does fun things. And when we go to her house she has a Wii. And she makes yummy dinners.
Watson: Oh. Sounds good.
Jordan: We get to have sleepovers and it's really fun. In her apartment she sleeps in the upstairs part and Aaron and I sleep in the downstairs part. She goes to sleep and Aaron goes to sleep and I am still awake. I wiggle Aaron and I say "Aaron!" and he doesn't wake up. So I get up, and I go silently into the kitchen, and I steal a cookie. It's so easy.

Kitchen done

The kitchen is done! Looks like the painters did a great job. Beyond that, they were prompt, friendly, communicated well, cleaned up perfectly, and got done early. It's looking great in there.

Hmm, hmms

Rachel: What are those circles over your head?
Aaron: Those are my hmm, hmms.
Rachel: Your thoughts?
Aaron: That's right.

Painting prep

The kitchen is all cleaned out in preparation for painting tomorrow. It's like we're just moving in.

I left out a few things for breakfast (the toaster, the butter, the honey), and the bread machine is still doing its thing.

Cleaning a room out for painting feels intimate to me. I spend a lot of time in the kitchen, and it felt good to clean off every single surface and get into every little corner. (But not inside the drawers or cabinets, for now, except for the freestanding cabinet, which they will have to move. Ugh.) Tomorrow afternoon the kitchen will be the same color, but without the white splotches left there from two years ago when we had the new lights installed, and greatly freshened up all around.

Everything that is normally on the countertops, on the walls, or hanging from baskets or the pot rack is now in the basement. 

These shelves are normally my pantry, but not normally so full.

Thumb art

How do you help kids not suck their thumbs at night? Over the past two years (sigh) we have had a series of increasingly elaborate rituals. (Only Jordan sucks his thumb, but Aaron is included in everything, just because it's easier all around.) The first attempt was the nasty nail polish, painted onto thumbs at night. Then we moved to nasty nail polish painted onto a band-aid on each thumb, so that it could be removed in the morning. Then we moved to wearing gloves at night, with a red X drawn on each thumb in washable marker so that we can tell if the gloves were removed. One night I drew hearts instead of X's, and since then, it's been four miniature artworks in washable marker every night. They tell me what to draw and I do my best.

For ten days in a row Aaron has requested (1) a potato and (2) a rotten pineapple. I can't explain why these are so satisfying to him.

Jordan thinks up something new every night: a tree, a cheetah, a car, a musical note, a bull. Tonight he asked for an eyeball and the word "me."

Theoretically they get points for showing their thumb-pictures in the morning, and the points can be traded in for legos. We are not all that consistent about this... we let them record their points, and occasionally we buy them some legos, but the economy is not a well-defined one. This keeps it from becoming a chore.

Not what he would call it

Aaron was at the table drawing, and I asked him to help clean up the living room. No response. When I eventually gained his attention:

Me: Aaron,  I think you were ignoring me.

Aaron: I was not ignoring you.

Me: Oh. What would you call it?

Aaron: Taking liberty.

Sewer work begins

We came home last night to a very large dirt pile.

It's somewhere in the 8-10 foot range. Here are some children for scale.

As you can see, we also have our very own digger.

Right now, the work is on the neighbor's house and on the shared line between our houses. I think we got the dirt pile because they have more trees in their yard. Here is the trench leaving the neighbors' house, complete with busy workers, trying to get as much done as possible before the rain starts again. 

Here's the view between the houses, first from the backyard and then from the front.

Zooming in on the busted-up pieces of excavated pipe, they seem to be full of gravel.

Self-portraits

Report from Aaron's class. What amazing drawings! As always, click to enlarge.

Sewer line investigation

Less than one hour after the door job was complete, our new neighbor to the east came over with a somewhat unfortunate neighbor matter to discuss. They are having bad sewer-line problems over there -- water coming in where it shouldn't, and now sewer gas entering the house. Mostly this has nothing to do with us; the last owner of their house did some weirdo things with the plumbing, etc. But part of the problem is on the shared part of the sewer line. They're going to have to do some fairly invasive work very soon. The reason to talk to us is that part of the problem is along the 23 feet of sewer line that is shared between our houses. Not only is it going to impact our property - they'll have to remove the fence, dig a big ditch, that kind of thing - but also it's our sewer line too. We have consented to the disruption and agreed to share the expense.

We decided that while we're waiting for that work to start, we would invest in having our own sewer lines inspected, in case there's work we should be doing while everything is all torn up (and maybe also to establish the state of the system before it's disrupted). We had a guy out this morning who inspected our sewer line with the underground camera thingy. We got a DVD of what the camera saw -- and popcorn! We haven't watched it yet.

Perhaps not surprisingly, there is bad news: He couldn't get very far before the pipe was obstructed by gravel. There is an erosion hole in the concrete pipe, and after that point, the pipe is full of rocks. They can poke their camera through a fair amount of gravel, and he did so, getting around this bend and that bend, but finally the gravel was just so wedged in there he couldn't get any further even using all his tricks. There's a flag marking the spot he got to; it's in the raised bed nearest the house. There's another 10-20 feet to go before it meets the shared line (I'm not sure where the shared line picks up exactly) so that part has not been inspected but it's probably full of gravel.

The inspector was a little mystified about the source of the rocks; he thought maybe there used to be a storm drain on the back of the house that they removed when the put in the kitchen addition, or something? Then when we went outside together, he found our Mystery Hole. We have this odd hole next to the house that keeps re-opening itself anytime we fill it. We figured it is some animal. Our guy said "AHA!" Quite likely, what we have there is a hole that goes right down to our sewer line. The gravel falls in and the water washes the gravel down the line. So far, it has washed through enough that we're not "under duress," as they say. But we really ought to get that taken care of. Among other things, the erosion is right under the side of the foundation of the kitchen addition, and if the ground washes away there it can cause other problems.

When I said the neighbors are in a big hurry due to their own acute problems and had already lined up a contractor, he said we would definitely be doing well to get in on that; it'll be a lot less work to do it all on the same job. He asked what contractor they were using, and when I told him, he said "Oh that guy is super. You're going to want to have him over for a barbecue when it's all done. He's just a great contractor, does great work, very fair, very easy to communicate with. They picked a good one." That was nice to hear. The other thing that was reassuring to hear is about the disruption to our household -- Dale and I had started having nightmares about what we would do during 5-10 days of no sewer line. Our guy said no no no, the actual time during which your line is off is just short bits here and there, maybe half an hour to a couple of hours at a time. "That's just the part where they say 'Please don't start the laundry while I'm standing in this trench in my boots replacing the pipe,' " he explained. Most of the time is spent moving the dirt. People who have sewer line horror stories are the ones whose line stops working, and then they have to spend all that dirt-moving time with no operative plumbing.

I spoke to the contractor that our neighbors have lined up today, and he'll be glad to include us in the job. The work will start a week from today. Dad will be here visiting so he will get to see the excitement. Thank goodness the service disruptions will be short... we like to be able to offer our guests a flushing toilet at least.

The boys are pretty jazzed about our yard being a worksite. What could be better than diggers in your own yard, digging a trench so deep that if Daddy stood in it it would be over his head? They will have a great view from their bedroom windows. It happens that Jordan is studying the water-permeability of soils in science right now, so the whole question of what blocks water from flowing through pipes is right up his alley. He wants to discuss it with the workers. And of course when I explained that the water going through those pipes is poop water, they couldn't get enough. It's boy heaven over here.

Soccer and swimming

Saturdays we have soccer lessons first thing in the morning, and then swimming lessons in the afternoon. Soccer is at Lil' Kickers at Magnuson Park, indoors thank goodness. Jordan is crazy about soccer and has gained quite a bit of skill. Here he is during drills with his current class and his coach, Aubrey.

Class is a little less than an hour, about half drills and half scrimmage. Jordan's is the first level where they actually play something a lot like soccer, and Jordan could not be more proud. The atmosphere is very friendly, with a big emphasis on being a good teammate and having fun. The field Jordan plays on is one of about twelve in the same giant hall, each one-quarter of a full soccer field. The hall is a converted airplane hangar - Magnuson used to be a military base. Other buildings host mountaineering clubs, theater groups, and kayaking organizations. Talk about beating the swords into ploughshares. 

Aaron tried a soccer class for a while, but he was never really on board. He prefers to doodle around with whatever he can find. 

There's a break in the middle of the day (today we had a painter over to check out the kitchen), and then in the afternoon, we have swimming. This is over at the Mercer Island JCC, where Jordan goes to summer camp. We have to be members anyway as long as Aaron is in JCC preschool, so we may as well use the pool. It's never crowded.

Swimming lessons are with the magical Melissa, recommended to us by friends whose kids were similarly cautious in the water. Jordan has absolutely thrived with her. He is now crawls several strokes and is learning side breathing. He also delights in horsing around underwater, which is a huge change for him. He found out today that it's almost impossible for him to swim down to the bottom of the pool, even where it's only three feet deep, because he's just too buoyant. He found this out by trying about a hundred times.

Here are a couple little movies of him trying to 1. crawl with giant arm strokes, 2. keep his arms pointed out in front of him between strokes, 3. keep his head down in the water with his chin tucked, and 5. after three strokes, turn on his side to breathe. It's a lot to coordinate.

Swimming is incredibly symbolic for Jordan. He was terrified of it, and now he can do it. It means to him that things that are terrifying might actually be not only possible, but awesome. He also recognizes that part of what had been getting in the way before was his own anxiety. He says, "I realized that when something is scary and I can't do it, sometimes if I can relax, I can do it." Is that a life lesson or what?

Home improvements

Two wonderful home improvements lately. The most delicious so far is the gas fireplace. It makes the living room incredibly cozy! And we care, because it has gotten chilly all of a sudden.

There was a wood fireplace there before, which we had never used. 

Then, just today, we got a new back door. We use the back door as much as the front, and the old one was drafty and hard to open - I was always leaning hard and kicking it to get in. Now we have a smoothly operating, well-built, weathertight door with a window that opens. (Not that we are opening the window currently.)

Now I suppose we need some paint. (The patches on the walls are from when we had lighting installed in, um, 2009? Time flies when you're not noticing the paint.)

More bubble Q&A

Aaron and Jordan were in the bathtub again and asked me to record their conversation as I did before.

J: How is a lego thing built?
A: You just make it.
J: How is a real lego brick built?
A: I don’t know.
J: How do you say a brick is blue?
A: It just is it. How do you say a brick is black?
J: A brick is black. A brick is black.
A: How do you get a cheetah furball?
J: Where’s the petunia?
A: In Colorado.
J: How does it get that far on feet?
A: I don’t know.
J: I don’t think it actually uses its feet. I think it uses its roots.

The vacillation between serious sensemaking and total absurdity is typical around here.

Class photo

Loving this class photo. Aaron's buddy Clementine is above him in the pink kimono top, soccer buddy Halsey is above her in the fabulous eyewear, and Emanuel is in the front in the Superman shirt. My favorite, besides Aaron's sidelong look, is Finn on the upper left. What a puss. And Bennett next to him. I love it.

Oxbow Farm

A week or so ago we took a little drive out to "our" farm, the one that has provided a box of vegetables every week all summer.  It's a 20-acre farm about 35 minutes east of there, called Oxbow Farm because it includes an oxbow lake.  We went because we needed something to do on Sunday afternoon, and thought we might as well get a pumpkin.

It was very much the kind of farm where you chat with the farmers.  We learned about all the different kinds of squashes and gourds.

 

Here is the warm greenhouse full of tomatoes and something, some kind of sunflower, maybe sunchokes.

Apparently this way of growing tomatoes -- as vertical vines, with the bottom branches pinched off -- is crazy productive.  But it was a short summer for tomatoes.

Jordan saw this fabulous tiny house and said, "Look at the little sukkah!"  If you look closely you can see that it has an itty bitty chair, table, teapot, and teacup.

Outdoors, the "living playground" was in an autumn mode, but still fun.  There was a "sorghum spiral" (a very small corn maze), a gourd tunnel, and a "creepy teepee" made of scarlet runner beans, containing some display worm bins.  This is a different tunnel, not sure what, maybe grapes.

A sitting area was decorated with these beautiful little gourds. We bought a big bag of them to dry and pain for next year's sukkah.

Gourds also decorated the tractor.

We decided this guy is the tractor driver.

And last but not least, here is the pumpkin we brought home. Jordan drew the design, and I did the cutting.

BTW all of these photos were taken with my new phone. How do they look?

Halloween

We have Halloweened and are now hiding out in the darkened house with the door locked.  Jordan wore his costume to school today.  No glasses, because "that would look dumb."  Here is the ninja with his super stylish friend Audrey.  Audrey is a pirate (her hat is in her bag), but she looks ready for the runway to me.  

Sydney is a werewolf.  I told her she was not very scary, and she said, "Well if you could see under my coat, you would know that I am covered in brown fur."

I love how Marieke's lunchbox matches her costume.

Theo is an owl; he didn't have his mask on when I ran into him.

I grabbed a picture of the ninja team on the way out for trick-or-treating.  Dale is the ninja master.  We had a fine time out on the town.  Aaron had to go back to the ninja fortress early, due to things like fog machines and creepy hands in the candy bowls, but a few M&Ms cheered him right up.

Bubble Q&A

Jordan and Aaron are in the bathtub having bubble-question-and-answer.  One of them asks a question under water, by blowing bubbles, then asks it again out of the water.

A: How do you get a house?
J: It costs lots of money so it costs all the money that you can do.
A: How do you get bricks?
J: You make them out of rock.
A: How do you get your ear balls?
J: There’s no such thing as ear balls.
A: It’s your eyeballs and ears mixed together.  That makes earballs.  How do you get your neck?
J: It’s made out of bones and skin and you can move it around like a wiggly bobble.  You don’t actually move your head, Aaron, you move your neck, did you know that?  ...What’s a cheetah?
A: It’s an animal.
J: That’s not what I’m talking about.  I’m talking about what is it made of.
A: Fur.
J: How can it be made of fur it couldn’t even run.  It would just be a furball.  It would blow away.

I wish I could have transcribed the more ridiculous parts of the conversation, in which they were cracking each other up with their absurd bathroom humor.  Perhaps another day.

Siri

Yes, I got an iPhone 4S, and it's wonderful in all kinds of little ways.  But the big way is Siri.  Wow.  Yesterday evening I looked at my children and thought hmm, they need haircuts.  Pulled my phone out of my pocket and said "Remind me to call Kids Club in the morning."  Siri said, "What time would you like me to remind you?"  I said 9am.  She created a reminder and said, "Is this right?"  It was.  At 9am, of course I had forgotten all about it and Siri reminded me.  I picked up my phone and said, "Call Kids Club."  She did.  I discussed the haircuts with them, made an appointment, hung up, said "Make an appointment for haircuts tomorrow at 4pm."  She said, "Here is your appointment.  Were you aware that you have two other appointments at that time?"  Wow.  (They were nothing, but they were on my calendar.)

I said, "Remind me to bring Aaron's snacks to school on Monday morning at 8:30."  She created the reminder, and then I realized that 8:30 was too late, so I said, "Change that to 8am."  Done.  I was cooking and said, "Set the timer for fifteen minutes."  Done.  I asked her, "Is there traffic on I-5?" and she said, "Here's the traffic," and opened the Map app to I-5 near my location.  She can remind me to do something when I arrive at a certain location, or leave a location -- as in, remind me to sign that permission slip when I get to Aaron's school, or get gas when I leave work.

I asked her, "What's the tallest building in the world?"  and she gave me an extraordinary, glamorous WolframAlpha answer, with the pertinent information right up top and everything else I might possibly be wondering about that building or various other tall buildings in a beautiful, accessible layout.  

She doesn't hear perfectly; in the car with the radio on and the kids yammering in the back, I wasn't getting anywhere.  But most of the time she hears just what I said and responds with astonishing helpfulness.  I think the whole system is actually better than advertised.  

What is a grad student?

At dinner, Dale and I were talking about a grad student in his lab, and Jordan asked what a grad student is.

R: A grad student is someone who has finished high school, and finished college, and decides they want to do more special research.
J: I bet you have to pay a lot of money to be a grad student.
D: Actually, the hard part is to get a school to let you in.  Once they decide that you can be a grad student, they usually help you get a job at the school, and do other things so that it is paid for.
R: To get the school to let you in, you have to show that you know a lot, and that you know how to work very hard.
A: I don't think I could be a grad student.
R: Why not?
A: Because I know a lot, but I don't know how to work very hard.

Sukkah building

We had wonderful weather for sukkah-building yesterday.  Let's just hope we get some favorable weather for Sukkot itself!  We've always done our best to include the boys in the construction; this year, they were actually genuinely helpful.  Possibly they did more work than I did.  Here they are lugging the boards out of the carport.

There are a lot of screws to put in.  The boys' job was to get all the screws started in their holes (which are still there from last year); they would put each screw in a turn or two, and Dale would follow up with the electric drill.  Their help made this stage go a lot faster.  At first, Aaron did not recognize that the screws need to go in predetermined places:

Jordan was a wonderful teacher.  Here he is demonstrating what to do.

Then he held the screw and let Aaron turn the screwdriver.

After that they set to work independently.

Part of the job was to fetch the proper size screws.  There were small, medium, and large ones, and this part of the job required the medium ones.

Jordan had the bright idea to fetch everyone a glass of water, just as Dale was realizing he was thirsty.

Once the frame had been raised, they brought Dale the screws he needed for the roof beams.

The roof beams require the small screws.

Here's the complete structure.  It's not a sukkah until it has a roof made of natural materials, dense enough to be shady but loose enough to see the stars.  The holiday doesn't start until Wednesday, and it's raining a lot this week, so we haven't done the foliage part yet.  Meanwhile, it makes an entertaining soccer goal.