Progress for sure! It certainly goes faster with help. The base block wall is completed, minus the capstones.

The corners are set with Mortar Mix, to ensure they remain stable.

The second level of block terracing is set and beginning to rise.

And the Brian’s started in on the Creek Bed yesterday as well. This has been really exciting to see take shape. The one disappointment thus far has been the size of the rocks. We ordered what is referred to as “one-man’s”, which should have been largish boulders about the size your arms could hug with fingertips touching. These are a wee bit small. Well, some are really small. As in the size of a baseball. And yes, we paid for them. I was really hoping the rocks would look bigger in scale along the walls of the cut-out cove, but what can you do after 9-tons get dumped in your yard?? They still work fine and lucky for us we got the same rock-type as the stacked retaining rockery out front (which was done poorly with rocks that were too big and not keyed correctly), so we can simply use the smaller ones to fill in the large gaps in there.

Mostly, I am amazed how nimbly this huge machine picks up each rock and places it just so atop the others. It was really cool to watch. Araiya was pretty stoked all day to sit in the back window and soak in all the action.

Day 5 should hopefully be equally as productive. The goal is to get the Brian’s part of the work all done and get their machinery out, leaving us to finish up smaller details like the stairs and spreading pea gravel. Saturday we should begin putting the deck back on. I am very eager for that to happen and to be able to begin planting stuff in the garden. I’m impressed how the pace has picked up and it leaves me encouraged to see this project come to fruition.

The wall is slowly rising. What a painstakingly precise and labor intensive process. And Matt has been going at this entirely by himself. Stack Block. Fill holes with gravel. Shovel drain rock backfill. One. Scoop. At. A. Time. Shovel down backfill. Rake. Level. Compact- back and forth. Lay out Geogrid. Next layer. And it looks really darn good.

There is a long way to go. Today he has two guys out there helping him. We need to catch up so we can get the Brian’s back in to excavate the next level of terracing for the second block wall and dig out the creek bed. Hope to report even more progress tomorrow!

Ok, so I’m a conformist.

In the last few weeks, about 5 different people have gushed at how great Amazon Fresh is. How impressed they were with the quality of the produce, freshness of the meat, convenience of having groceries delivered to their house. I started thinking it might be a wise thing to start doing after the baby arrived, it would take a lot of pressure off to make grocery store trips regularly. Yesterday we were nearly totally out of staples. I have put off our usual Costco trip for several weeks now, had stuff for making dinner but was really lacking in lunch and snack items for me and the kids. Matt IM-ed asking what he could pick up at Pikes Place Market on his way home from his Downtown Office. Well, I have a list. A long list. I had just sat down to do meal planning for the next week– A week that included a weekend of having Matt’s Parents, Brother and a friend from High School here at our house starting today. A weekend of work parties for friends helping out with the backyard who will be in need of snacks and lemonade. Hungry kids in need of lunches and snacks for outings with said visitors. A bit more than Matt could conveniently grab at the Market. So why not try Amazon Fresh? And we did.

It was easy. I was impressed. The prices weren’t a whole lot different than what I pay at Safeway and Trader Joe’s, with the exception of usually buying mostly Safeway Club Card items, which do save a lot. Amazon has a lot of the items and brands we usually get too, as well as a large organic and local offering. The one notable oopsie on my part was the sugar I bought. We have been getting a huge Costco-sized bag of Organic Sugar and I tend to be pretty visual, associating size to cost- wow you get that big a package for that much? But don’t do too well associating things like ounces or grams or pounds with how it equates to how large the actual thing is. Combine that with looking at a picture in my browser and thinking, hey, that is the same sugar I get at Costco for the same price! then having an identical, yet much scaled down bag show up on my doorstep at 6am this morning that is about a quarter the amount of sugar as the Costco bag. Whoops. Lesson learned.

Yes, I could get used to this. Waking up and the magic fairies have taken care of all my grocery shopping, which usually rotates between a handful of different stores, all done and neatly packaged in crates on my front doorstep waiting for me. This method is appealing, maybe in part because deep down I am just lazy, looking for a cop-out that walking to the store is just too darn hard. But I like getting out for a walk. Heck, I need to. I like being immersed in the resources and amenities based in our community. And I think overall, I would be spending a bit less with my usual routine. I know I am paying for a convenience which, right now in this season, is probably worth it. I still think we will be visiting the local butcher we like down at the Market and our favorite sausage guy over on Madison. But Amazon is very nice for all the staples and basic bulk items that I would normally take the car to go and do with the exception of very large bulk items (like our usual case of Rice Milk is still far cheaper at Costco as is our 50lb bag of Organic Flour from Madison Market). Like I said, it is very convenient. 

The best perk about this whole endeavor, though, was at about 9:30 last night I thought that it would be really convenient to have Parchment Paper for when I make Char Siu Bao on Friday night. Normally that might have been an extra trip to the store for that one forgotten item, but I simply added it to the Amazon Fresh order, already placed and finalized hours earlier, and it showed up this morning. Now that is convenience.

Day Two was a bit slower. Or at least it seemed that way as there was no amazing transformation like the day before. No, this is the painstakingly precise part- setting the first course of block for the base retaining wall. This wall will be the first of two, running the entire width of the yard and will actually be tucked under the toe of the deck so you can step off the deck into the yard. After the initial excavation Monday, Matt spent the whole day carefully packing down a base layer to place the block on, ensuring it was exactly level. Then each base block was placed- one-by-one, adjusted, re-adjusted, tapped, shifted around until each of them were perfectly even and straight. Next we laid out the Perforated Drain Pipe, which is the main way to ensure all the surface water that used to build up behind the foundation of the house and leaks in gets taken out to the sides of the house. The Perf drain then gets backfilled with Drain Rock and with each additional row of Block being stacked, we will install a product called Geogrid to anchor the block wall back into the hillside. Each Row of block requires stacking, filling in the holes with gravel, installing Geogrid, and then compacting the drain rock and backfill. Layer by Layer- that is the plan for Day 3. It should go faster now that all the essential base work is done.

How I wish we would have thought ahead a little better. But how would we have known we would have three kids in three years? Even so, we knew we were having multiple kids, therefore should have put a bit more forethought on some of our gear purchases. The big one has been Car Seats. At the time Araiya was born, we poured over Consumer Reports and chose a super safe convertible seat, the Evenflo Triumph. It is a great seat, and we have been very happy with it. So when Tallis came along, we simply bought a second. The downside, the one clincher, is the seat flares out at the armrests, so at nearly 22″ wide, two seats along the back bench leaves too little room to utilize the middle seat. Impossible to fit a third car seat.

It isn’t that this is a car issue. Even if we bought a minivan, most require that the safest configuration restricts you to put only a traditional booster in the rear-most seats, not a car seat with a full harness. We purposefully bought a very compact Subaru Wagon for Urban mobility, 4-wheel drive and efficient gas mileage. Our previous car was an Outback Wagon, we were surprised to find our new ‘08 Impreza Wagon has several more inches of useable seat space across the back bench, even though it is a smaller car. Still, we found ourselves in a position where we needed to purchase not just an additional car seat, but THREE entirely new car seats that would work in a configuration to place them all in a row. Most car seats, especially convertible car seats, tend to be really darn big.

It has taken a lot of searching, research and advice to figure out what to do about this dilemma. Friend’s of ours have three kids even more closely spaced than ours will be and also drive a wagon. They told us about Sunshine Kid’s Juvenile Product’s Radian Car Seats. These have turned out to be one of the narrowest and most compact seats we looked at- a mere 17″ wide. They also can be used for an incredibly long time, Birth through 65lbs or 80lbs, depending on the model. We were also impressed by the foldability feature of the seat, which increases the use of this seat for travel, especially on an airplane. I know there are other seats in the 17″-19″ range, including some Britax seats which other friends are having good luck with in the back of their Subaru Forester, so luckily there are other options as well. These were the ones that continue to pop up the most shown as three across the backseat. The seats were very easy to install using both the LATCH system on the side seat and the seatbelt install on the middle seat. Araiya, (who is now almost 3 and is in the middle), can buckle herself in, but because the seats are so narrow, it is very easy for me to reach in to unbuckle her when we get out of the car. The seats are very compact installed in the Impreza, very minimal and low profile off the seat-backs, keeping lots of additional space on the floor in front and visual space out the side windows, something the Evenflo’s infringed on.

The original consideration was to purchase 3 of the Radian 65’s, but the more we measured and deliberated, we realized in our compact car, the back of the seat is really darn high for it to be rear facing. We feared it would create a bad blind spot in the backseat window and interfere with the function of where one of the front seats could be. Placing it in the middle would have lost our access to the other two kids if they needed anything while we were driving. Our kids are on the small side, so we knew that whatever rear-facing seat we got for baby g.3 would be in that position for more than a year until she reaches 20lbs. Araiya is not heavy enough to go into a real booster seat either, and it is just far safer to keep her in a 5-point harness as long as we can. Considering this, we went ahead and purchased a used Infant Seat (or Baby Bucket, as I call them) for baby g.3 because they are more compact than a convertible seat rear-facing and in about 15 months time Araiya will have turned 4 and we can then safely purchase her a booster-type seat, extending the longevity of our car seat system. We have never had a Baby Bucket before, I always thought it was kind of silly to haul a huge piece of plastic around that weighs more than the baby does. Not to mention the notion that an infant spending long periods of time in a semi-reclined position can impact spinal development. Car Seats are intended for use in a car, so I suspect our new Baby Bucket will reside permanently in it’s base. 

The infant seat is a Peg Perego Primo Viaggio Infant Car Seat that is less than a year old. Since I have never used one, we were a little concerned during the installation when we couldn’t tighten the seat down nearly as securely as the other convertible seats, the base rotates up around the belt towards the seat back. Apparently this is something called Rebounding. I know it is designed to help protect neck whiplash in an infant, but it is still a little concerning that the seat moves around so much. Regardless, it is still a very safe seat and offers some of the best side-impact protection, which tends to be the majority of car crashes anyways. We installed it on the right window seat, as that is also the least likely place to get hit (that is why Subaru places the gas tank on that side too). It also allows me to access that seat directly, rather than reaching over a seat to get her buckled in the middle. Currently with the infant seat out of the car, we retain an entire seat-space for an additional passenger, something that has become a bit of a foreign concept in the last year.

And now we are set. Three seats that fit in such a way that is functional and safe in our little Wagon:

Of course, one of the biggest factors here is cost. We have already put out several hundred dollars on Car Seats, so that is my biggest regret in not thinking ahead in figuring this out when we made those purchases. Because of the original seats we chose, we had no choice to replace them at a projected cost of around $600. Ouch. With the exception of this, the third kid would be really cheap since we already have everything we need. A little time and effort helped cut that down though. The infant seat we bought used, primarily because Baby Buckets are used for such a short period of time, often far less time than they are designed for (we purchased it off a family who’s little boy exceeded the weight and hight in less than 6 months so they had to buy a rear-facing convertible) and they don’t retain their value long. We knew this would be our filler purchase, something to get us through baby g.3’s first year. Then we did a ton of scouring the digital marketplace and found an online store with a 20% off coupon (found via Retail-Me-Not) in addition to No Tax and Free Shipping. That reduced the price of the two Radian’s from $198 each to $314 total and delivered to our door. Adding in the used Peg Perego we stayed under $400. We do expect to in a little more than a year be needing to get a booster for the oldest, but at least this way we can spread out the outgoing capitol of this large expense.

I am not a car seat expert and I know there are other solutions out there, but this is what will be working for us. I wish three years ago someone would have spurred us to really think through the future of what are car travel would look like, it would have saved us a lot of headache over the last few months as we had to hash this out.

I went down to Madrona around 7pm tonight, because Matt had a meeting and I wanted to get the girls out of the house in order to take up time before they went down for bed. So we took a little girl’s night to play at the park and go to Cupcake Royal for dessert. Guess what? This one needs to stay low, ok?

They have a ‘Happy Hour Special’ — buy Three Cupcakes and get Three Free. At least that is what the girl behind the counter offered me tonight. Yup, half a dozen for $7.50 was just too darn tempting for me to pass up. So the girls shared one at the park and I got my very own. And we have four left for Daddy to have one when he gets home and to share as dessert for the next few nights. Or maybe save them for Mommy and Daddy to have a late night at-home date to watch Batman Begins on iTunes (which Matt has never seen and he wants to take me out to see the latest, greatest Batman release, the Dark Knight, before the baby comes and yes, I am a huge Batman fan- Adam West, anyone??). Now, I don’t know if this is a regular ongoing thing or what. So, Shhh… keep this one quiet, we don’t want everyone stealing up my discount cupcakes the next time I get a bad summer evening dessert craving.

Finally. Finally, finally FINALLY!

We have digging. Commencement. Our incredibly long overdue backyard project, which has gone through innumerable phases of redesign, budget constraining, hang-ups, project managing, material selection, ordering, prep-work, phasing, scheming and planning- officially starts Today. The process overall has made the project stronger and far more refined. It is a much better and more effective plan than our first few stabs. In the end, Matt has ended up project managing the entire thing, from coordination to materials, in addition to the normal work he is doing. It’s been a lot on our plate, but I can say worth it as by the end of this week, we will be putting the deck back on and the finishing touches on the major infrastructure work. Fast execution for a very drawn out journey to get here.

The kids are plastered to the dining room window, perched on the bench behind the table watching our excavators work as I type. Brian Sr. and Brian Jr. are out there cutting away, pulling our huge cliff face back, recreating our outdoor space with such skilled ease as they maneuver these large machines in an intricate dance around our constrained backyard. And they had to bring everything in through our back-yard neighbor’s yard down his driveway from the street above ours. Already I see such change as the simple act of moving dirt results in such a transformation. It is one thing to envision the outcome in my head, which as a designer I have had brewing up there for months and months. And another to plan it out on paper and in our digital model, adding to the visual decision making process. But entirely another to see the actual physical being carved out, to know so intimately every detail which has been mulled over, worked out and emerging into true reality.

Granted, the model is rough, mostly utilized to do take-offs for ordering materials and dimensioning. There are elements which will be worked out as we go, such as our intrinsic garden mounds and the finished shape and size of the creek bed play area. But the ideas are there, worked out and solidified. They are really going to happen to the point we will be using this space by next week. It will be so exciting to see this project come to fruition. For me it means a usable extension of our house that will be integral to how we live out the next few months after the baby comes, providing a place for the older girls to go play in and enjoy as we stick close to home for a while.

Yesterday ended up having an unplanned lime green theme. Can’t really explain why this happens, it’s not the first time (or second or even third). Whatever it was that contributed to this undercurrent made for an interesting day, which was a very good thing. The original plan was to go to the beach, but man I am bad at picking beach days- two out of three planned beach days have been canceled because the morning weather randomly turns far too cold and overcast to go frolic at the lake. Due to this pattern maybe I need to learn not to announce the night before we are going to the beach in the morning. Araiya complained all day , repeatedly begging to go to the beach. So we improvised. Sorta. We made little sailboats which we floated around in a few inches of water inside the very bright lime green TubTrug.

This was a fun little craft I stole from my friend, Karin. Very age appropriate for Araiya, but a bit beyond Tallis still, as she simply wanted to take the lid on and off the glue and chew on the corks. Regardless, they were both entertained for the majority of the morning making and sailing their boats. I would caution, however, the synthetic corks are far harder to cut in half with a steak knife and I came very close to slicing off the fleshy pad of a finger. [quick how-to: cut wine corks in half, stab toothpick into center of cut top, draw an equilateral triangle on paper, have kids color in their 'sails', cut out and fold in half, gluing onto toothpick, float in water] The only downside is when the paper gets wet, but good excuse to color new sails and keep craft-time going.

During naptime came Adult Craft time. I made another Kimono Wrap top for baby g.3, this one a very lightweight soft white cotton edged in a small patterned lime. This was a really quick and easy sew, the pattern tutorial came from HERE. It was nice to take a small departure from the usual Ottobre fare to try out something new. This was the 0-6mo size and surely it would be fitting Tallis now, so perhaps I will go back and modify the pattern smaller in anticipation of my typically itty-bitty girls. Beyond this lime green theme, I also have realized I have fallen into a small pattern theme as this green fabric is very akin to the purple I have been using for baby g.3. I dig the small, simple, clean. This green just fits that.

The Tutu’s are multiplying. Just like Pringle’s (or is it Lay’s?) Potato Chips, you can’t have just one. Especially when you have multiple girls. And their friends.

Thank you Joann’s Fabrics (despite my love-hate relationship with the store) for your $0.49 per yard tulle in such an array of vibrant colors and additional 10% the entire purchase coupon. So far we have Three: Red, Orange and Purple. Six yards of Blue sits in the guest bedroom awaiting to be made into number Four. Perfect for hosting a play date where three toddlers spend the morning dancing in the living room to KEXP streaming through iTunes.