The past two weeks

Here are some random facts about the past two weeks of renovation and transition into the new kitchen (which is nearing completion).

1. We went for 5 days with no hot water, and 2 days (during the day time) with no water at all.

2. Before the “team” came to work, I tried to cook as much as possible and put things in the freezer…even in a rather destroyed and evacuated kitchen. I made chicken pot pie one night and had to use two forks as a pastry blender and my hands as a rolling pin. Yes, I know stores sell these things…. The night before Stan’s dad and neighbor came, I think I had three burners going as well as a slow cooker on an end table in the living room. The next day I lost the sink. I still don’t have it back…which means…

3. For now, I am washing dishes in the bathtub. Not fun. The worst part is finding an acceptable place to put a clean dish in a bathroom while you wash the rest. I usually shuttle the clean ones to the kitchen and then continue. I should get a sink back on Friday.

4. I am wondering how I ever did laundry once a week in NY when we didn’t have a washer and dryer. I had to go for a week before they were hooked back up…..and I washed 5 loads on Friday. For someone who doesn’t like a basket of dirty clothes to accumulate, this was a marathon.

5. We began hosting a small group for our church on Thursday night. I spent the day trying to get this place back in order…it took all day. I’ve never mopped so much (which I do with a rag and bucket because I think it gets things cleaner than a mop.)

photos to follow….

 

Update

Things are progressing around here. Stan’s dad and neighbor arrived yesterday and hit the ground running….they’ve been working tirelessly. They spent the first day finishing the demo (which took quite a while) and today started replacing sheet rock and putting down backboard in preparation for laying tile.

Here’s a photo from this morning. Taking the cabinets down and everything out explains why this kitchen was so dirty! Look at these walls!

The kids and I stayed away as much as possible today to protect Jamey’s lungs. He wanted to be in the middle of the work so badly. He got in the kitchen for a few minutes to give Stan some screws.

Here are the walls with new sheet rock….worlds better!

It is incredible for Stan to have some great help!

 

Jamey

After almost two years of on and off breathing troubles, Jamey’s doctor is finally calling this phenomenon “asthma.” We’ve had a rough week together….Sunday night he started having really labored breathing. We were up giving breathing treatments and hearing him cough most of the night. We took him to the doctor the next morning, and she gave him a couple of different treatments in the office while listening to his lungs between them. She sent us home with orders to administer SIX treatments a day. We were reminded that the albuterol we have had to give him in the past only dilates his bronchioles but does nothing to reduce the inflammation that is causing his problems. So we are now also giving a steroid treatment to help reduce the inflammation.

The poor little guy gets up in the morning putting on his mask and trying to turn on his machine. He is getting better…but we are looking forward to better breathing in (hopefully) a few days so that we can wean him off the meds. They are making him crazy! I knew albuterol could cause him to be hyper (which it does), but it also makes him get MUCH more upset that usual about little things…and it is making him rather aggressive. Not like Jamey at all…. This afternoon he got desperately upset about the route I chose to take him on a bike ride. I had to stop and sit down on the side walk next to him while he was sitting on his bike screaming for about 10-15 minutes, talking quietly to him to get him to calm down. Thankfully, Ginna was patient with him today!

I’ll have to post some photos…he gave his doll a treatment yesterday!!! He was sure to make sure the mask stayed over the doll’s nose.

 

Update

Things are progressing around here. We tore out more of the kitchen, including part of the wall and most of the cabinets and floor. We left the sink so we can still pseudo-operate for a few more days. I never imagined the repercussions of taking down a wall in an older house….removing plaster has resulted in what seems to be about 300 pounds of sandy, gravely mess to shovel out in buckets.

Here’s a photo that shows one part of the process of taking down plaster. Behind the plaster was a metal mesh (pictured) that we had to cut through and take down.

Here is a photo of the floor after taking down a small piece of wall. Imagine this much stuff to clean up times 50….from the wall and floor demo, I think that would be about accurate.

Here is the current state of the kitchen.

Here is the new doorway between the kitchen and dining room framed (the new opening is twice as wide as the old one). We’re now in the process of patching and sanding.

Stan was very happy to have me involved in the process this weekend moreso than in the past. More photos to come…..

 

Demolition

Have you ever remodeled while living in the house being remodeled? How about an 1100 sq ft house…having to relocate appliances and all kitchen related items in that space? How about with a 1 year old and 3 year old??? It is CRAZY around here! And now Jamey’s daily aspiration is to find a tool and try to destroy something with it. I keep telling him that eventually, rebuilding will start. Then we will build rather than tear down. But for now DEMO is the word. Here are some photos. What is the plan? All new windows, a new room (office/library), and a new kitchen/utility area. As in, we are ripping out the entire kitchen.

This was last weekend…removing the ugly paneled walls from the patio. This has served as a useful playroom, but has been an eyesore….Stan has wanted to tear it down since the day we moved in but I objected. We’ve spent a LOT of time on the patio enjoying the openness to the backyard this week!

This photo doesn’t really show how bad these cabinets are. They are very old, don’t close, have nasty paint and dust inside that can’t be removed by cleaning….really. I can’t wait to remove a pan from a cabinet and not have to wash it before using it.

Here is the existing laundry area. We will add a door to shut this off from the kitchen.

Here is the beginning of the kitchen demo.

Here are the kids trying to pitch in.

Here is one of four loads Stan hauled home…..IKEA cabinets to assemble!

 

Miramar Air Show

Yesterday, we went to the Miramar Marine Corps Air Station to attend an air show. It was amazing. The kids had a great time (and so did we) watching the planes, parachutes, etc….and going in helicopters and planes. Here are some photos.

 

The Pervasiveness of Song is Noticed….

Songs pervade my parenting…we sing to learn, to communicate, to pray…we sing in play, we create songs to illustrate make-believe stories and to relive lived stories. Recent manifestations of this have been the following: 1) Ginna and I pray in song together at night. We take turns leading in lines, and the other repeats the line. This seems to keep her involved in the prayer. At bedtime, I tell a story (sometimes in song), we pray, and then I sing her 3 songs. So bedtime and song go hand in hand. Two nights ago, I was putting her to bed, and she asked to lead in the prayer song. Her first 3 lines were as follows: “Thank you God for this mommy. Thank you God for this singing girl. Thank you God for my windows.” I guess she appreciates the pervasiveness of song! 2) Jamey and I have recently started reliving our day together in song at night. I sing all of the things we did together…snuggling in the morning, going on walks, building with blocks, learning new words, reading books about animals and cars, etc…. On Thursday our song was particularly lively because Ginna had been at preschool that morning and we had some time alone to explore new activities. I remember once when Ginna was close to his age, my mom set up an activity for her to use a small ladle to spoon dried beans into muffins tins. I let him do this, and he loved it! He also drew pictures on the easel that morning. Sometimes when I come to the end of my song, and he will say heartily, “MORE!”

Singing with my kids is a way to add levity and light-hearted instruction to our interactions.

 

Perspectives on Family Ministry

Stan and I ordered a book months ago and it finally came yesterday: Perspectives on Family Ministry; 3 Views. I have been very anxious to read this book, as I’ve spent some time lately thinking about the role of churches in supporting and equipping parents for discipling their children. The book presents three ways churches do family ministry: the family-integrated model, the family-based model (separated contexts), and the family-equipping model. I’m just in the introductory chapters but have a few quotes to share:

There is a quote about churches building structures to support segregation…..churches will “build buildings to support segregation–and they will do it with excellence. They will not build for racial segregation, but to support age segregation…Both the natural appeal of such buildings and the programming centered there will guarantee [that] teenages will only experience church life with people almost precisely their own age. Adults will find no ways to bless children, much less even see them. Young people will be cut off from the richness of almost all adult relationships. And, most importantly, they will not see members of their own families until it is time to meet at their cars to go home.” -Richard Ross

The authors also state that “the ministry models that many ministers have studied in seminaries and inherited in local churches are fundamentally flawed. As a result, well-intended ministers have attempted to pursue tasks in the sole context of the church that God designed to occur first and foremost in another context. That other context is the family.”

I’m sure there will be other things coming on this as I read the book.

 

Photo Update

It has been quite a while since I have uploaded photos…so here are some!

We went to have Jamey’s cast removed after 3 weeks of it being on….and they decided to leave it on for two more weeks. Thankfully, it has since been removed!! I took these photos in the cast room on the day we thought it was coming off. In the last of these three photos, you see Ginna and Jamey sitting together. This has been a hobby of theirs lately…find little places to sit and squeeze in together. You’ll see other examples below.

Near the end of August, the kids and I took a trip to San Diego to see my college roommate, Rachel. She was there celebrating her 30th birthday. We spent the night with her in the historic US Grant hotel….and Ginna called it the G hotel since there were G’s on the doors and bed pillows. This was exciting for her!

The kids got Rachel into all sorts of crazy games!!

We took them to the science museum…there was a toddler room that they loved.

Ginna filled the grocery carts with food; Jamey filled with blocks.

Together, they devised a system for Jamey to drop food from the black window onto the conveyor belt (you can’t see him, but he is inside the structure), and Ginna would catch it and put it into the cart.

Museums like this are great. There were even reminders on the walls about child development….it can be helpful to remember that young children do not naturally think from the perspective of anyone but themselves (well, neither do many adults). There were tips for encouraging healthy play and interaction.

Here is another photo of them sitting together. Ginna comes up with all kinds of make-believe schemes and gets Jamey involved. They were driving a car last week with their babies sitting in their bike helmets. She told me they were in their car seats.

They love their daddy!

Ginna started back to preschool two weeks ago. She is going three mornings a week and loves it.

LOL!!

Jamey lives in the backyard these days. He is usually digging in a designated digging zone. Some mornings, he brings a shovel to me and asks me to come dig with him.

And there is the photo update!

 

Genesis and Gender

I mentioned over the summer that I am working on a study of Genesis by Tim Keller. I also think I mentioned he makes a number of comments on gender. In the first few lessons, his commentary on the roles of males and females on “subduing the earth” (involvement in society and culture) and on males and females in marriage are so different than other teachings I have heard on these subjects.

Here are a few excerpts:

“Not only do we learn that work itself has great dignity, but we also learn that all kinds of work have dignity. If your world-view does not grasp the goodness of material creation, then ‘manual labor’—labor which is more physical and which involves more contact with the ‘stuff’ of natural world—will be seen as lower and beneath us. Greek philosophy was one source of this view of work, but the current era of global capitalism has given us new resources for despising work like farming or teaching or caring for children. ‘Information’ work now pays far better than manufacturing, etc. Also, although feminism has been rightly seeking to open up the public-work world for women, it has unfortunately demeaned child-rearing and domestic work because it is non-paying.”

“Genesis 1:26 confirms the equal dignity of male and female. Both are said to be created in the image of God from the beginning. Both genders, not just males, are given “dominion” over the earth in Genesis 1:28. [God blessed them and said…, fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over….].It means that only as males and females together in full participation can we carry out our mandate to build civilization and culture. This is in contrast to the traditional view that “woman’s place is in the home.”

“Besides this explicit statement of equality, these verses also hint that the sexes are complementary. Immediately after making us male and female (v. 27), God says: “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth…” (v. 28).”

(He goes on to say this is something we cannot do alone.)

“Thus, male and female are equal in dignity but different in many traits and functions. We are equal but not inter-changeable or equivalent. There is a tendency for the ‘liberal’ mindset to emphasize the first of these truths and a tendency of the ‘conservative’ mindset to emphasize the second of these truths. But they must be both believed together.”

Another noteworthy point Keller makes is that the word used for “helper” (as in, females were created as helpers (ezer in Hebrew) to males) is used almost every other time in the Bible to describe God Himself. Therefore, it cannot denote inferiority. The Biblical concept of a helper, then, is one who helps out of strength in a supportive way.

Sifting one’s way through modern culture’s views on gender and marriage is challenging. I am thankful for these teachings.