Over just one month, Sara has changed. Today, she sang her first song that I understood. It was Row, Row, Row Your Boat. I didn’t even recognize it though I’ve heard it 30 times today. She emphasized the “merrily, merrily” part and places similar sounding words for the rest. She even sang it while swimming today.
She’s also very interested in conversation. She’s starting asking the ‘why’ question. Thankfully, not in an annoying persistent way, but as an opening for us to talk. Everytime I laugh, she wants to know why. On the street, she’ll contantly ask what people’s names are. She’s gotten good at going up and talking to strangers (for better or for worse). She can say her full name now.
Today, Wayne worked from home. He has a bad cold. It was a gorgeous day, but Sara and I mostly were indoors working on organizing our multitudes of baby clothes. She found my old Barbies and relished in dressing or undressing them (actually getting me to do it). I can see why Barbies are kinda of unappealing. They’re so anemic at one point and yet busty at another. Their body shape almost seems grotesque to me. They are also really hard to dress.
Sara had her second swim lesson today. She is definitely a stubborn child. There are some drills she just won’t do despite prompting and peer pressure. On the other hand, she is gung ho to stay in the water longer than the other kids and just loves playing in the water. She definitely does not like hot tubs. The other kids went in to warm up and she just grimaced.
That’s the end of the Sara update for today.
September 28, 2006
Sing a Song
September 10, 2006
Doors
The past few weekends have been consumed by doors. We are in the act of replacing the side door and the front door of our house. First of all, doors are complicated. I actually managed to rebuild a VW engine in about the same amount of time it has taken me to finish and install 2 new doors. The most complex aspect of wood doors is the finish, I didn’t quite realize what a chore it was to finish exterior doors. The doors are made of a laminate, so they require oil-based finishes — that’s painful. The side door got a coat of oil-based primer, and then three coats of nice exterior oil-based paint. Of course each coat takes 8 to 12 hours to dry in this climate, so that took awhile. However the front door, which has a nice cherry stain on it, took 24 hours for the stain to dry and then required SEVEN coats of teak-oil. Of course each coat takes 24 hours to dry with the last coat taking 48 hours. Then there is all the hardware to install. The side door was too wide, the front door too narrow. After a lot of sanding, the side door closes very “snuggly”. However when a door is too narrow, it becomes a major project to “fix it up”. I managed to get a piece of molding that made up the difference, but the problem with that is the door “jiggles” in the frame if the deadbolt isn’t engaged. It took 3 tries (1 hour each) of fiddling with the deadbolt hardware to get the front door to seal without jiggling. (When the wind blows up here in the winter, it would be really annoying to have the front door moving about in it’s frame).
I am finally seeing the light at the end of this long corridor (someone had to have left the door open). The doors look great, the hardware works, and they don’t let in cold drafts and rain. Given that the old doors did all of the above, I think it is a great improvement.