In Which We Have A Good Day

We had a good day today! Once Connor was off to school, I drove by the house to work on the ivy. It was raining, and freezing, but I got a lot of good work done! I uncovered two tree stumps in the front yard that I had no idea were there. One of them was covered in shelf mushrooms that had grown and hardened around ivy strands, so you could pull out the ivy and they had hollow tunnels through the mushrooms. That was pretty cool. I've also discovered that underneath the ivy I'm working on is a 40 square foot or so patch of salal interspersed with blackberries. This is not quite so cool. I mean, I like salal, but not 40 square feet of it. And while I like to eat blackberries, the ones I have growing in my yard are not the nice well-behaved native blackberries, they are the horrible invasive noxious weed variety. These have been in a while; the main canes on the plants range from being as thick as my thumb to nearly as thick as my wrist. Joy of joys.

Becky stopped by the house to see how things were coming along, and we got the chance to talk about a few of the exciting renovations that are going on. She's going to give me a list of everyone who's helping out on the project and volunteering or discounting labor or materials because we want to acknowledge everyone who is being so generous and help make our home functional and beautiful!

The house is constantly evolving and will have many little or not-so-little luxuries that will contribute to making it a home that we're never going to want to leave. I mean that literally-- we could probably get grocery deliveries and just never set foot outside the door again, because pretty much everything we'll need will be right there. Connor will have his therapy and play area, I'll have my library and my wonderful kitchen, and Jer will have his corner fireplace and his shower, which will be the curbless roll-in type with an installed spa system that will have a grand total of six shower heads-- all donated. After four months worth of sponge baths, he may simply forgo the rest of the house and spend every waking moment in the bathroom. Can't say I'd blame him even if we ended up spending all of our disposable income on the water bill.

It will also, thank God, have a toilet that he can transfer to and use on his own. I believe there are plans being made to take the bedside commode out behind a barn after we move in and put an end to its miserable existence. While I am unclear on the details, the words "baseball bat," "flamethrower," and "explosives" have all been mentioned. Currently the commode resides in our bedroom, about three feet from where my head is at night when I have my sleeping mat out on the floor. I will not be sorry to see it go.

It doesn't exactly add any romance to our bedroom decor, if you know what I mean.

Right. Anyway, after working a couple good hours I picked Connor up and we spent the afternoon quietly at home before heading off to a birthday party in the early evening. It was interesting to see how Connor interacted with the other kids. He wanted to be where he could see them, but he didn't really want to interact with them; he just wanted to watch them. Also he got agitated when he couldn't see his Daddy-- he actually ended up spending most of the evening on Jeremy's lap. There he is at the party in the picture looking slightly anxious.

Or maybe I just caught him in the middle of signing something. That's a really weird face.

Anyway, I think it was a little overwhelming for him-- lots of six and seven year old boys means lots of noise-- but overall he had a pretty good time. I hope as he gets older he'll feel more comfortable interacting with people in a group; currently he does much better with one-on-one time. It may be that he has a hard time hearing people in a crowd, or it may be his sensory issues, or a combination of the two. Given his amazing improvement over the last few months, we'll just have to see what he's doing in a year or two!

~Jess