Plodding along on the house

After getting Matt's mom moved in just over a year ago, and getting the living room livable by last Christmas, all work on finishing the addition has really slowed to a crawl. But now that we're back in the school routine, and some of Matt's deadlines have eased up a bit, we're moving again (slowly) over the last few weeks.

We now have a (nearly - missing some face nails on the two end boards) finished exterior deck entrance at the door in and out of the addition near Matt's office.

This photo's from back in July. I tell you, there's nothing that warms the heart like looking out the door and seeing your husband hard at work digging a DEEP hole for the footing for the deck that's been waiting for a long time to be built!

Then, after living with just a big hold outside of that door for months, and then weeks with just the deck frame, we finally had a day in September to put on the deck boards. Love how Reuben is helping. iPad at the ready and thumb in mouth. Sometimes we just do what we have to do to keep him safely occupied while we get the work done!

Getting closer - the metal grate provides a place for people to scrape their shoes off before getting to the door.

There! Done! And doesn't it look nice, too, to have the underside of the flat roof and the few battens around the door painted? (Thanks to my mom who did that in the days before Matt and I went away for our anniversary trip.)

It's kind of funny what a destination that little bit of deck has become. Play food gets cooked out there, home school work gets done out there - it's the place to be!

 Matt and I have also gotten back into our wall-building routine from the spring - when both of the little boys are at school is a good time for him and me to get some time to work together without constant interruptions. With that, we now have the limestone walls all the way done. (Ha - as I was skimming over past posts I realized I've done a very poor job of keeping updated photos of that on the blog! I'll have to find a few to share here...)

May 2015: we decided the wall was going to be higher than we wanted, especially on the east end, so are making it two-tiered, so it's safer for kids who fall over it, as well as allowing more light to make it down into the lower level play room.

July 2015: a beautiful day to be outside - Krassi's in the wagon, Barb's out pulling weeds out of the grass, the girls are playing house, and Reuben's been in and out with matchbox cars. (Owen's most likely putting miles on his bike or soccer ball at this moment!)

That particular day ended up being the day we got all of the wall on the south side of the house completed. It wraps around to the west, but until we were able to get the entry deck in, we couldn't fully finish the wall.

We also just this week were able to go out behind the addition and finish the small bit of limestone wall we put in behind the berm created by the excavation for the addition and our vegetable garden. We had started this WAY back in the spring to get a feel for how the wall-building worked before starting on the real ones in front of the house, and now that those are done, it was time to get back to that one and get it finished up.

Real men can build limestone walls single-handed with a little pink girly in the other arm!

Hey, cutie!

By the end of the morning, Evania was helping, too, taking her little shim of rock in and out of the chinks in between the bigger rocks.

School

This won't be long, but I figured I had to get *something* up before September was over! Plenty has been going on around here - enough that once again the posts in my head way outnumber the ones that I have the time to write. But here's a little glimpse into where we're at...

School has started once again. Because we have children in both the public school system and home schooled, we tend to follow the public school's schedule as an easy way to organize our year. However, my home schooled kids started one week early to give us one week completely free from school in mid-January when we'll be occupied with other more important things. :) (And, yes, I know I'll need more than a week to get back into the normal routine of things after Baby arrives, but Owen and Leah are both self-sufficient enough with most of their school work that *they* can get back to work even if I don't!

We have been so pleased so far with the willingness our school district has to work with our desires for our family and our boys as far as home schooling goes. Although we greatly value the hands-on expertise that Krassimir and Reuben get when they're at school, we also don't want them (or our other kids) to feel that they have to go off to school while the rest of us get to all be home together. Having Daddy work from home makes this even more significant than just the home schooling is! Last year, and now this year again, both boys are in the public school setting three days a week, and home with us two days a week. On the days that they're home we spend the morning at their private therapy center (which I can't say enough good things about!) and then are all home in the afternoon.

Now that Krassimir has his wheelchair with all the appropriate tie-downs for the chair and straps/buckles for him, he can take the bus!

Our curving, rather steep, gravel driveway is going to make regular trips up and down in a wheelchair...interesting. We are mulling over a few different options to make the terrain more navigable without losing the qualities that we love about the gravel driveway. (For one, there's nothing that makes you feel like you're out of the city even when you live in a first ring suburb of a major metropolitan area, like a gravel driveway!)

Reuben's excited to go on his first day! He's sitting next to his buddy from last year - a sweet little girl who's also in his special ed classroom and both this year and last they've been in the same mainstream classroom. She was excited to see him when they pulled up to the bus stop, and they always end up sitting next to each other. I don't know her well, but she appears to be ahead of Reuben both verbally and in her fine motor skills, as we've seen in a few pictures she's drawn for Reuben over the last year.

Krassi gets to ride up the cool lift every day!

There goes my boy! He always seems happy to get on the bus...but also has big smiles for us when we pick him up at the end of the day.

One big challenge that we face this year for Krassi that was not an issue last year when he was only at school for a few hours is that of eating. After his weight gain in the spring, and our backing off slightly on how far we pushed him to eat, resulting in a slight weight loss come mid-summer, we're back to making sure every meal counts and every calorie counts. Krassi has never eaten well in settings other than home, and we weren't sure how school would go. He and I went in the week before classes started to go through a mini-meal with his teacher, OT, and one of the paras who works closely with him. For his first day we sent a typical meal for him (whatever sort of soup or casserole we've had lately, mildly pureed, and beefed up with oil and dry milk powder) as well as his pediasure/yogurt/dry milk smoothy that's his favorite around here. Our hope was that even if he wouldn't eat anything, he would at least take down his drink.

Day one? Nothing. He ate one bite of lunch and refused to drink. He'd had an applesauce cup not long before at snack time, so thinking maybe that had something to do with it, his teacher and we decided he would skip snack on his next day.

Day two? Nothing. Didn't have a snack, and wouldn't touch his lunch. Yikes! When every meal matters, it's simply not okay to be skipping entire meals!

Day three - we opted for easy-peasy, and sent him a banana mashed with applesauce - no oils, nothing to beef it up - just a simple, simple food that's our go-to when we need something to help him move down the "real" stuff here at home, with our hope being that at least he would be eating something. And...nothing. He didn't eat AGAIN!!

So then I start wondering, are we doing the right thing sending him to school? Do Matt or I need to drive over there every day and feed him? What are we going to do for this boy?

Day four - he finally ate a few bites of his lunch (a repeat of day three's easy-peasy)!

Day five - the whole banana/applesauce mix is gone, but none of the drink yet.

That's as far as we are into the school year at this point. Tomorrow we're going to go for the easy route one more time, hoping they'll also have some success with his drink, and if that's also good, we may try branching out a bit for Friday.

But I think we're moving in the right direction!