Annie Jr.

This weekend was the Roosevelt school play, in the works since December. Charlotte was a member of the stage crew, and Carol spent many hours the past month or so designing and painting all of the sets.

There were three performances of the play. It was outstanding. And Carol, deservedly, received much praise for her work.

Only one more year at the Roosevelt for us. Then we'll have two middle schoolers for a year!

As usual, click on the photo above to see more.

Carol's Birthday

Carol turned 29 in September!

We had a lovely birthday dinner on our screened porch. We re-screened it at the end of last summer and it's now our favorite dining space.

Happy Birthday, Carol!

Fall Photos

Fall Photos

This is a mishmash of photos from the past few months. In chronological order:

• In mid-September we had a fun day apple picking at Russell Orchards in Ipswich. The weather was such this year that the apples ripened 2-3 weeks earlier than usual. So even though we went a week or two earlier than we usually do the apples were already beyond peak. We managed to pick enough for a delicious pie, though. After we had secured our apples we drove to nearby Rockport and had lunch on Bearskin Neck.
• At the end of September Tess brought us a live chipmunk again. Twice. Carol read somewhere that when your cat brings you a dead animal she is paying rent. When she brings you a live animal she is trying to teach you how to hunt. We keep capturing them and letting them go. Tess must think we are very stupid.
• At Roosevelt School third graders can opt to take musical instrument lessons all year long. Audrey chose cello. I haven't had the pleasure of hearing her practice lately - I need a refresher to see what she's learned!
• We visited the Topsfield Fair in October. The fair hosts a contest for largest pumpkin every year and often sees world records set. Last year the winner was about 1600 pounds. This year the record was blown away with a pumpkin coming in a few pounds over a ton!
• We had two batches of leaf raking this year: one after Hurricane Sandy brought down about half the leaves and another the weekend before Thanksgiving when most of the leaves have fallen. Both times I made a big pile for the girls. They spent hours jumping into it and burying themselves. Usually a few neighbor kids join in.
• Charlotte finally lost her first tooth after it was loose forever. Then not long after, she lost the other lower front tooth. It's hard to get a photo of the gap!
• In early November we visited the Ipswich River Audubon Sanctuary. As you know it's our favorite place. It's especially fun in the fall and winter when the birds are eager to eat our of your hand. We keep the car stocked with bird seed now. We visited on a Saturday and stayed for a few hours.

  The girls wanted to return the next day so I took them while Carol did a project at home. I had no agenda and just let the girls lead me. We spent five hours there! We fed birds, of course, and we also wandered the trails and we spent almost an hour just sitting on a bridge playing with sticks in the mud on the pond bottom.

  We had so much fun that weekend that the girls begged us to go back again the next weekend! We spent several hours there again and even branched out to some new trails.

• Friday of Thanksgiving weekend was forecast to be unseasonably warm so we headed to the beach. With a steady wind it wasn't as warm as we hoped but we still had a picnic and flew kites and enjoyed the sunshine and the atmosphere.

Indoor Skydiving

iFly Indoor Skydiving

Back in July while in Seattle we visited iFly Indoor Skydiving. I recently came across the USB stick containing the photos taken by the wind tunnel operator with the built-in camera. They came out a lot better than the ones taken with our phones.

Brace yourself, I finally have a couple hundred photos from July until now organized and they're almost ready to publish.

The Good Mother

I have to point out what a great mom Carol is. We often get into a phase where some aspect of parenting isn't going like we want it to. We'll feel lost for a short bit and Carol's brain will be working the problem (unbeknownst to me). Then Viola! Carol comes up with a simple and elegant solution.

One recent example was our bedtime ritual. It had gotten a little sloppy over the summer, and even before that was taking longer than we wanted it to. Carol came up with a simple idea: an alarm clock that goes off at 8:00 and at that time stories are over and the girls have to be quiet in their beds. The girls know about the alarm, and if they choose to goof off brushing teeth or getting pajamas on then it costs them story time.

It works like a charm. At least for us. The girls often do goof off and sometimes end up with only 5 minutes for stories. Usually they do better than that. But they know and accept the routine.

After about a week we decided to move the alarm time to 7:30 because we wanted them to have the opportunity for more sleep.

Charlotte usually falls asleep around 8:00 now. Audrey, on the other hand, rarely falls asleep before 9:00. She stays quiet in her bed, but she'll look at books or draw pictures on her glow pad for quite a while. She'll sometimes call one of us up for a last hug and kiss. It's actually a favorite time of mine because I get to see the rare "calm Audrey".

Anyway, I just wanted to express my gratitude to Carol for being a wonderful mother. And for devising a system with the bonus of another hour alone with her in the evenings to be grown ups.

September Fun

September Fun

We've been having great luck with the weather for several months now. Seemingly all of our rain has come during the week and the weekends have been very pleasant. So we've been having a lot of fun outdoors.

The third weekend in September was Carol's birthday. On Saturday I took the girls to the Middlesex Fells near home for a few hours to leave Carol alone. We revisited one geocache that we had found previously and also found a new one. If you're not familiar with geocaching, people create "caches" containing a log book and some trinkets, then hide it and publish the coordinates and a description on a geocaching web site. Using a GPS device, one can go looking for them. When you find one, you leave a trinket that you've brought and perhaps take one that you like from the cache and sign the log. It's a great thing to do with kids.

On Sunday, Carol's actual birthday, we served her the traditional breakfast in bed. The girls set the menu: green eggs and ham. I couldn't figure out how to make green ham on the spur of the moment, but the eggs came out great.

At midday we went geocaching again, this time in Breakheart Reservation. We had a very pleasant walk in the forest and found two caches. There was a third that has apparently been "muggled" - taken by the uninitiated.

Sunday afternoon we had a bunch of the neighbors over for Carol's birthday party potluck. Carol had slaved for hours to make her favorite chocolate cake. We had a lot of fun.

For her birthday I got Carol one of her favorite things: a Lego house kit. She spent the next week putting it together with the girls after school. We now have a whole Lego village in our living room. Except Charlotte says we still need a grocery store.

We are more than a month into school now. Audrey is making great progress on reading and math in first grade. And Charlotte greets Carol every afternoon with "I love school!"

Kim Comes to Visit

Kim Comes for a Visit

Carol's best friend is Kim, whom she met in Kindergarten in Richland. Kim lives in Fort Collins, Colorado and they are in daily contact over phone and internet. They have been talking for a while about how and when they might next see each other. Suddenly, an opportunity arose and on a couple of week's notice Kim arrived in Boston for a five day visit.

Carol tried to pack in the Boston experience for Kim while she was here. They walked most of the Freedom Trail and visited Salem. We also took Kim to our favorite local place, Mother's Pizza.

On Friday, my parents arrived and on Saturday they stole our children and took them to the Cape. So Carol, Kim and I headed up the North Shore to Marblehead. Marblehead is one of the most well-preserved historic seaports. The port area is packed with buildings dating back to the 17th and 18th centuries.

After Marblehead we headed to Rockport, another gorgeous and somewhat well-preserved New England fishing port. We wandered around town for a bit and then headed out to the edge of town to The Lobster Pool restaurant for some boiled lobster.

Kim and Carol had a great visit and of course it came to an end too quickly. But Kim swears she's bringing the whole family back for a visit sometime soon.

Charlotte's Preschool

Last week we got Audrey registered for Kindergarten. She got into full-day at Hoover School. It's the farthest Melrose school from our house, but that's still only 1.5 miles away. Next year she'll have equal chance with everyone else to try to get into 1st grade at the Roosevelt School two blocks from home. And you never know, maybe someone will withdraw and she'll still get to go to Roosevelt this year.

But we still hadn't figured out what to do with Charlotte. It turns out the Melrose school district has a very well-regarded early childhood program. Carol went for a visit this morning and they had one spot left for their Mon-Wed-Fri 9:00-12:00 class. All of a sudden our Charlotte school quandary is solved. Both girls have declared that they love their schools (having only seen the buildings).

Now the big question: what will Carol do with 9 hours to herself every week? My suggestion: relax and savor the peace and quiet. I have immense respect for the difficulty of Carol's job and for how fantastically she performs it. This is going to a be a well-earned break.

Carol's 40th Birthday

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Carol attained the Big Four-Oh in mid-September. I was not completely mentally present after my crash and didn't think about a big celebration until her birthday was getting really close, but she had her own ideas for a party anyway. We wanted to have a garden party as a first celebration in our new back yard.

Carol invited her entire family to dinner on Saturday evening. Of course, it poured rain. But we had a very pleasant gathering. Carol's niece and nephews are getting old enough that we can all sit around the table and talk and we really enjoyed their company, as well as that of Carol's brothers and parents of course. Audrey and Charlotte love having their cousins over.

The main gift Carol wanted from me was a garden consultation from a local nursery. The gardener came over for 90 minutes Saturday morning and Carol got a lot of the kind of information she needed: how to organize the garden and which types of plants would go in which areas. Looks like we'll have some huckleberries and blueberries as well as vegetables.

We didn't get our vegetable planters built until mid-July but Carol and the girls threw in some seeds for fun. We got a couple of heads of lettuce, some miniature carrots and now we have three or four small zucchinis.

On Friday night of Carol's birthday weekend my parents took the girls overnight and we had a real date. We had a nice dinner and a movie and, the best part of all, no one waking us up in the morning.

The Puzzle Studio

I thought I built a studio for Carol so she could do art projects. But it turns out it's also useful for other relaxing pursuits.

Carol loves jigsaw puzzles. The other night, she decided the studio was the perfect place for it. She can have peace and quiet except for her favorite music playing, and she can leave a partially completed puzzle there and it does not get molested by children.

Spray Painting

Spray Painting

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Last week we got Carol set up with a compressor and spray gun. She has a project due for a charity auction next week, so it was time to get cracking.

I did a fair bit of research to figure out what to get. I also talked to our friend Matt who has an amazing woodworking shop in his garage (3-car garage with room for 0 cars). There is a "new" spray gun technology called HVLP (high volume, low pressure) that produces far less overspray and is therefore more efficient with paint and also less likely to coat the whole workspace in paint mist. But most HVLP guns require a very high capacity (i.e. expensive) compressor.

I finally figured out that there is a special type of HVLP gun called a "conversion gun" that "converts" a normal compressor for its use. A pretty strange terminology since you don't do anything to the compressor. We bought a Wagner HVLP conversion gun and a "normal" compressor. I chose the Makita MAC2400 because it runs at lower RPM than other models so it's quieter and lasts longer. The cooler temperature also means less condensation in the compressed air. And I like the compact shape because it takes up less room in the garage.

When I was trying to get everything set up I went to Fittings Inc. to get air hoses and the fittings I need to plumb for air from the garage to the studio (so Carol won't have to listen to the compressor while working). I thought air fittings were universal, but no. There are apparently 22 different styles of male fittings! It took two trips, but I got there. Fortunately another customer who was waiting there for his order gave me some good advice - use "universal" female fittings everywhere and then it doesn't matter what type of male fitting you use.

For now we've been painting in the garage. The gun is indeed very efficient with paint. It has a 1-quart canister that we would fill halfway. Putting a coat on the entire table and chair set only used half of that. And there is very little overspray.

The past two nights Carol has been working in her studio painting the details on the table and chairs. I wanted to take a photo of her working there but the camera battery is dead. Next time. She's loving the space. It's heated, has good lighting, and I bought Carol an iPod speaker system for her birthday so she has music to work by.

I'll of course post photos of the table and chair project when it's complete.

Carol's 20-year Reunion

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We spent last weekend in Richland attending various events for Carol's 20-year high school reunion. There was a cocktail party Friday night, a tour of her old school Saturday afternoon, a formal dinner Saturday night and a family picnic Sunday afternoon. We had fun at all the events. Carol has much clearer memories of her classmates than I do! We got to spend time with Carol's best friend (and classmate) Kim, in town from Fort Collins with her husband Dan and kids Rachel, Mark and Natalie.

Carol's old school is nearing the end of a 2-year "renovation" (replacement, really, but without ever closing). The cramped, dark old building she went to school in is the last part to be demolished - a few weeks from now. Good timing! The new building is gorgeous: huge roomy science labs; video projectors in every room; wireless networking throughout; very cool photo, video and stagecraft facilities; and a beautiful 20-foot-wide falcon that a local artist painted on the center of the basketball court in the gym.

Charlotte is saying more words all of a sudden. Now she'll say "mama", "ouch" (in two syllables, like E.T.) and "uh oh". She still has the pterodactyl rendition of "mine".

The girls see me in bike clothes every day when I leave for work and when I return home. Fairly often Carol and the girls meet me for lunch at a park near my office. On Friday, when they got to my office and Audrey saw me in street clothes, she said "Daddy's not wearing his work clothes." At the park on the swings (both girls are recently very fond of swings), Audrey indicated she wanted to go higher. Carol confirmed, "You want to go a little bit faster?" Audrey replied, "I want to go a lotta faster so I can see the whole world." We didn't know she was aware of "the whole world".

Last fall someone asked Audrey what she thought her daddy did all day while he was gone at work. She said, "He builds garages with his friends." Which is a good seque into my latest project: drywalling. I've been having trouble finding a drywaller who can do the garage and studio as soon as I'd like, and the one bid I got was at least double what I'd hoped. So yesterday I started doing it myself. It's going well so far. I'll put up some photos in a separate post.

There's news on the work front. A coworker at my job left a couple of weeks ago so Rosetta (Merck) has offerred me that position (I've been contracting, this would be "permanent"). Unfortunately it doesn't look we'll be able to agree on salary, but we'll see. I love the work and the environment, but I can only sacrifice so much financially for that enjoyment: we've got college and retirement to save for. I have a standing offer for another job with less enjoyment but almost 30% more money than the current Rosetta offer, plus another opportunity I'd like to explore. Stay tuned.

Even if I leave Rosetta, I hope to still finish the Bioinformatics certificate course I started in May. I was pretty unsatisfied with the quality of the course materials (it's all online). But then I got a 4.0 GPA for the first semester so somehow I feel better about it now. There are two more semesters to go.

Carol Furniture: Planes, Trains & Automobiles

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We've mentioned before that Carol was considering starting a business painting custom children's furniture. This was her first commission. Another mom from Co-op Preschool ordered a table and chairs for her two little boys Graham and Spencer. She left it up to Carol to decide on the theme and all the details.

Carol kept close track of her labor this time. She ended up spending more them than she estimated but she learned a lot. And she came up with plenty of ideas for how to do it more efficiently. For example, I'll now build in plumbing to pipe compressed air from a compressor in the garage to her studio (so she won't have to listen to the compressor). If she uses a sprayer for the primer and base coat it'll save a lot of time.

Carol's first customer was very pleased. She teared up when Carol delivered the furniture.

Carol's Auction Furniture

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For the third year in row, Carol hand painted children's furniture as the contribution for Audrey's class to the Phinney Neighborhood Center/Phinney Neighborhood Co-op Preschool annual fundraising auction. The first year she painted a table and chairs and last year she painted Adirondack chairs. This year it was a table and chairs again, with an "art" theme.

After the auction, Carol got several inquiries about doing commissioned work for people. Carol is considering starting a business doing this and is pondering thing like how much to charge and how to save some of the labor time. We'll see.

The interior isn't finished yet, but Carol got to use her studio in the new garage for the project. There is progress on that front: the plumbing is now roughed in and gets inspected tomorrow. Once that passes, we're ready for the final framing inspection, then insulation and drywall. We might finish the garage, yet!

Fall Arrives

Fall Arrives

We have had a fantastically gorgeous summer. Even our fall is still quite nice. We had one week of showers, but the past two weeks have been mostly sunny and in the 70s. Now October is here, which means the rains will come soon.

The girls are both doing great. Charlotte is expressing a lot more personality. She's eating as much "solid" food as we'll give her. She especially loves a highchair tray full of Cheerios that she can either devour or throw around and onto the floor. She's slowly learning to sleep through the night. These days she typically gets fed about 4am, but otherwise mostly sleeps from 10pm until 6:30am. The later sunrise is helping both girls sleep later. Charlotte has been "cruising" furniture (or our legs) almost full time. We can see her thinking very seriously about taking a step, but she hasn't done it yet. Her balance is getting a lot better, though. She'll stand on her own without holding onto anything for 10 or 20 seconds now. She's also gotten a lot more verbal and will mimic sounds we make. And she has discovered how to play peekaboo on her own, pulling a blanket up over her face and then quickly exposing her face and giggling. It's slightly cute.

Audrey is quickly approaching 3 years old (four months away). One interesting thing is that she has developed a respect for gravity. She used to be a fearless climber. She still likes to climb, but she now has an understanding of the consequences and gets scared when she realizes she could fall. She has never had a serious fall, so I'm not quite sure how that knowledge comes about. Perhaps she just extrapolates from minor falls.

Audrey has also started playing much more imaginatively. She'll have two toy characters in her hands (usually Dora and Diego) and she'll make up lengthy interactions between them, and between them and herself. She also can finally follow the spoken instruction on her Leap Frog Little Touch toy, and she plays with it for hours during "quiet time" (ostensibly "nap" time).

Audrey gets her hair washed once a week whether she needs it or not. It had gotten to be where if you walked by our house while we were washing Audrey's hair you would think we were murdering her. But we did a little research on the net and Carol tried some other strategies and the last three or four weeks it's been a much more peaceful experience. Most of it seems to be related to the fact that toddlers really dislike having water run over their faces. So if we figure out ways to rinse her hair that don't involve water running over her face or eyes, Audrey is much more amenable. It also helps to make it a game.

Carol is adjusting to a new routine for the kids. Audrey's co-op preschool is two days a week this year: Tuesdays and Thursdays in the morning. Carol works with Audrey's class on Tuesday and has Thursday "off" (although she still has Charlotte). Charlotte has been spending Tuesday mornings with Grandma and Grandpa Methot. But in three weeks they'll be flying south for the winter - we really miss all the grandparents when they're gone!

I gave Carol a Visa gift card for her birthday that came with at least two weekend afternoon shopping trips all on her own (i.e. I'd babysit). But she deserves much more than that. Maybe now that the garage is nearing completion I'll be able to give her more time off. She works so hard during the week I feel badly that she doesn't get more breaks. As I've said before, I have a ton of respect for Carol's job and I don't think I would have the patience to do it full time like she does.

Thursday was my last day at the federal government contract job I've been in for almost a year. October 9th I start at Rosetta Inpharmatics. I'm very excited about it. It's going to be really fun being immersed in complicated science every day.