Time for a Construction Update!

I’m attaching some pictures of the ‘struction that continues to march on as the weather holds out and apparently, work remains.  I shall provide this update in a series of Pro’s and Con’s related to Phase 3.5 of The 418: 

Treva and Parker sitting in Treva's new walk-in closet

• Pro:  Team Totten has formally adopted Jordan, Brother Ryan, and Chad, all of whom have spent more time in my backyard this summer than Treva and I combined. 
• Con:  They are early risers – the relatives that won’t sleep in….

Facing North - you can see the staircase straight ahead

• Pro:  We’re going to get all new siding on the North and West sides of our house!
• Con:  We paid for all new siding just twelve months ago on the North and West sides of our house.

The back of our house - sweet sheeting....

• Pro:  There are so many support beams and straps being put in, this house wouldn’t be damaged in a Tsunami.
• Con:  The “time and materials” required to Tsunami-proof the house most definitely costs more than any insurance policy covering the damage that a Tsunami in Queen Anne could actually inflict.  Fact.

The view from McGraw - again...sweet sheeting....

• Pro:  My “rugged” deck, as so described by Chief Construction Officer Chris Schedler, has held up marvelously well under the weight of lumber, nails, and roofing materials.
• Con:  The entire yard appears “rugged” now, stacked high with waste and the results of weekly demolition projects.

Olive plays "King of Mountain" in the backyard

• Pro:  We’re going to get all new gutters for the house this fall!
• Con:  We got all new gutters for the house last fall!

  

  The view out front of our bedroom, big windows!

• Pro:  We were able to add insulation to some key outer walls that apparently, for the past 100 years, didn’t have insulation.
• Con:  We had to rip off several walls to get to where insulation should be placed…and the question naturally arises:  who in the world didn’t put any insulation in these walls for the past 100 years?!





Standing in our bedroom, looking at the bathroom



• Pro:  I’m still married.
• Con:  The project is not complete yet….

dwt.

Back in town, back to posting!!

I’m so sorry it has taken me so long to get an entry in – my commitment to excellence remains the same, and I shall blog every day for the next 20 days to make up for my almost two week hiatus.  I cannot vouch for the quality of the posts, but The People deserve more Tiny Tots and I shall deliver. 

Now, onto the goods.  Some quick updates since the last post:

• We have officially graduated from a Size NB diaper to Size 1.  Kind of a big deal.  Seeing much less spillage when the man “takes his talents to South Beach.”  Kind of a laundry saver.  Kind of a happier parental set as a result. 
• Parker has not figured out how to use the internet yet.  That I know about anyway. 
• 4 Sounders games are under his belt and we have determined he’s more of a lucky charm than a curse.  Two of the games have been afternoon sunners, so the man gets a little cranky in his pouch with the heat.  That’s easy enough to fix – take him out and get some breeze on him.  What’s not easy to fix?  The lack of any Sounder to reliably finish a freaking Penalty Kick.  I talk about this so frequently at Sounders games in fact, Parker has asked we give him sound cancelling head phones at the games….
• Parker’s cries are becoming more distinct now – we can tell the ones where he’s just flirting with his vocal cords vs. when he’s legitimately interested in punching somebody or something in the face.  We are seeing more of the former than the latter for the first time since we began deciphering the two, which is pretty neat. 
• Tiny Tots said his first word – it’s “Hi.”
• Olive the Beagle said her first word this week as well – it was “please ask the small noisemaker to leave my house at his earliest convenience.”

I was out of town for three days this week, my first trip since Parker was born.  It was very hard to be away, I suppose not surprising given how darned good looking the kid is, right?  Treva had her hands full the entire week but she carried on heroically and obviously continues to retain the belt as Parker’s “favorite.”  I’m coming on fast and furious though.  Today, I let Parker fall asleep on me not once, but twice (rules be damned) AND we watched a solid 30 minutes of the Charlie Sheen Roast.  I’ve got “the cool one” written all over me at this point – still can’t breastfeed though.  The laws of life are against me…

dwt.

Parker Jackson Totten...

...best kid EVER.  That's all, blog post concluded.

dwt.

To Camas we go!!



Home is where you feel the most comfortable....

A trip to Camas is always exciting - when it bookends a mid-week getaway to the Oregon Coast, it becomes exponentially more enjoyable.  This was our first trip down to Camas since Parker was born and frankly, we had no idea what to expect.  From the 2 hour and 35 minute journey, some things I learned:

• Olive did not seem comfortable sharing the backseat.  She was a combination of what I can only describe as beleaguered and cautious.  She has a face for both of those, it’s hard to explain.  Needless to say, she didn’t understand why Tiny Tots got a blanket and she didn’t.  
• Feedings every three hours means that by the time we get everything packed up, the kid has some awake time here in Seattle, we get on the road and gassed up….I’m forced, per the feeding schedule, to drive slightly over the speed limit down I-5.  This is the first time I have ever breached (okay…admitted to breaching) the holy limits recorded on the attractive and common black and white speed notifications posted along the corridor.  I did not feel good about it – but, I will sacrifice for my child.  The feeding schedule demands it, my child shall not starve. 
• Lots of stuff.  I’ve erased that last sentence and re-written it four times now.  Previous popular entries:  “lots of crap”….”too much crap”…”where did all this stuff come from”….”seriously, should I buy a van??”
• As soon as we made it...and we wanted to celebrate in the arms of loved ones...it's another feeding.  We're getting used to shorter salutations these days.

Clearly we made it, and Camas is still cool.  We stayed at Matt and Sarah's, and got to see what Parker will resemble in circa 18 months via his beautiful cousin Philip - or as I call him, "Bam-Bam."  We stayed in the nursery with Parker, which was a bad idea - the sleep was horrible, he did not have a good night.  It wasn't exactly a good omen for the rest of the trip.  The good news is, when he's not fussy and making all kinds of weird "I'm pissed off that nobody is holding me" noises....he's ridiculously cute.  You take the bad with the good, I'm told. 

First night we got in, headed over to Grandma Connie and Grandpa Bob's house for a good old fashioned family BBQ.  Lois Arlene was giving tours of her new palace, and she did better managing my taunts to finish her meal.  Bob built a pickle ball court - Matt and Stephen dominated the proceedings.  I'm positive that Matt does steroids...and Stephen, well, he lettered in pickle-ball in high school, so we knew what we were getting into there.  Old Man Terry was my partner - let's just say we're better at landscaping "sports" than pickle ball. 

Both Grandma's got to hold the baby boy, which is always fun - for him and for us.  It's neat to have everybody together on a random Monday night, very relaxing and fulfilling to have so many friendly faces and helping hands around.  It's great to see how Philip reacted to Parker, and particularly how he reacted when Sarah or Matt held Parker.  Whenever he gets his little brother / sister, he'll need to get used to that sight!  Also neat to just play with Philip - he's bigger than Parker, and you can letimately have a conversation with him.  Yes, there's a lot of grunting and pointing involved (from me), but he gets the "Go Do's" nicely.  What a fun way to start the vacation off!! 

Total relaxation, both of them...

Aunt Sarah not only helps Philip learn to read...she instructs him to smile at all times when reading.  good rule. 

dwt.

Six Weeks Old!

Six weeks down, only 17 years and 46 weeks left before the little guy flies the coup, if all goes according to the books I'm reading anyway.  We notice him changing all the time now, gaining weight and filling out this body of his, and he's getting stronger lungs as well...yikes.  Treva made the comment this morning that his cheeks are so big, his shoulders have to support most of the weight - it's true, see for yourself below...

Parker's gambling problem...

First official college football Saturday and not only did YOUR Washington State University Cougars absolutely dominate in their first game of the year, but Parker picked the spread correctly in four out of five other games.  Only Oregon let him down, which he only selected because his favorite tenny-runners are Air Jordan's.  His father, hates Oregon.  Minor family riff, I think lessons were learned (by the little man primarily).

In any case, after such a successful debut Parker has requested that instead of creating a college fund for him, we send checks addressed to "cash" every week to some trailer in Nevada owned by a guy named Big Dolla Danny.  The best part of football being back is that Treva gets to watch more sports.  And we can already tell that Parker is going to be a gigantic sports fan, so now it's two against one in the Totten household for the the remote control. 

Equally as fun and exciting as Parker helping me with one of my fantasy football drafts, we had a major update just this morning:  Parker couldn't fit into some newborn pajamas!  That is crazy!  We went from him not being able to fill out newborn diapers to now actually growing out of some newborn clothes!  The kid continues to grow - I put him at 11 lb's as of this morning, which is only four ounces less than I weighed when I was born.

A pretty fun week at the 418 - Grandma Totten came up to flirt with the little man for a day, Treva had her second PEPS group meeting, and I worked from home more than the office.  As a result of the latter, Parker contributed to his first Microsoft conference call, inadvertently of course.  But let the record show, the Totten men both firmly believe that the call to action for customer's to upgrade their SQL software to the latest version is lacking a compelling incentive.  My apologies to my colleagues who felt that his feedback specifically sounded too  "child-like" and a little "whiny"...

The house is coming along nicely, I will post some construction updates shortly.  The roof is on, and Treva had her first verbal altercation with the roofers, who did not seem to understand the request of "please try not to throw stuff from the roof onto every ounce of our neighbor's property."  We feel pretty bad for our neighbors - the house that basically overlooks our backyard has been on construction duty for awhile now as well, so we're definitely not alone.  Still, the neighbors on each immediate side, I'm guessing, have to be almost as tired of the pounding as we are...any ideas to make them feel our compassion, please tell me!  More pictures later on the progress.

Much love, have a fantastic Labor Day!
 

Who needs sleep?!

We call this one "Sleep" - one of us wants it,
the other is supposed to be doing it....

Parker Tots is stepping his sleep game up - sort of.  He still maintains he has a fundamental right to be awake when he wants to be awake, even if that's at 2am.  The past few nights have been good though - he loses his cool around 8-9pm and cannot be convinced to slumber...but after that, he's a rockstar through the night.  Waking once around 3am to feed and then again to start the day. 

The mornings are always a lot of fun, well once he convinces us to wake up ourselves.  I've come to realize he wants to start eating before the construction begins - he wants to make sure our roof-building crew doesn't try and sneak any of his breakfast, kind of like "first dibs" or something.  After his breakfast, he's pretty alert, gazing around and making baby faces.  Pretty fun time to hang out with him.  Until The Man calls and I have to go to lame city (AKA, work).  Which is so overrated...

Any wagers on if this pose is a daytime or nighttime position?!

Treva's been trying to keep him up a bit more during the day as well, longer wake times.  That works - sometimes.  It is indeed amazing how significant the struggle can be to keep the little man awake during some feeding sessions, but as soon as he's done and we're changing his diaper, he's wide awake.  Treva swears to me she's still breastfeeding - with that said, I continually check for empty cans of Red Bull in the recycling bin with Parker's fingertips on them....




A few other loose ends / updates to comment on:

• Still TBD on who he looks like - definitely has my nose and Grandpa Totten's chin dimple (from Grandma Totten's perspective especially).  He's got my clown shoe feet, and has some of the goopy stuff I used to get in my eyes in his right eye - so maybe more me than Treva at this point...
• He hasn't grown any chest hair yet - stay tuned.
• Fitting into his newborn clothes like a full-weighted newborn now!  Socks?  Too small!!  Diapers?  FILL THEM UP! 
• His favorite food is still milk, his favorite color is magenta. 

That's all for now - be happy, be healthy dear friends and family!

dwt.