Build and build again...

This weekend's projects were a stab at making life just a little bit less intense.

Our first attempt was at a baby gate for the weird little area we have with the ship's ladder to upstairs. This project was inspired by the munchkin man getting, I kid you not, 4 rungs up in the 45 seconds I had my back turned.

He was trying to follow Iain up the stairs. Iain went up grabbed a book off the bed and there was little man, so, so very proud of himself!

"Uh, Mom!" Several objects flying through the air (I was arranging a shelf at the time) and one crazy woman jumping wildly over furniture with a preschooler hot on her trail, found us all suddenly halfway up the stairs....oh giggles and glee...at least for everyone too young to have just been scared out of their whits...

And that is how this Friday found me spotting the bitty-boy as he made his way up, yes, all ten steps. Please bare in mind here that I have known several full-grown adults that can't seem to navigate these steps, yet here was my little guy, giddy with his own success... Much excitement was the call to daddy, at his office, from the boys...much solemness were the comments from me: "Time to build a gate. First thing tomorrow."

Sadly, this great experiment went not at all well. We ended up with a rather rickety sort of thing that doesn't open far enough and is slowly splitting. huh.

Sunday's project was more successful in a been there, undone that, apparently doing that again, kind of way.... In the original house design and framing the door to the bathroom faced the west. Then we decided that we were going to try to fit in an oven and a refrigerator and the only way we could possibly see to do that was to move the door to the north wall. So we knocked down the north wall and put cross pieces across the door frame in the west wall. And that's the way it stayed...for months. There were just too many other projects taking precedence. This weekend though we decided we were going to at least put up some sheet rock and give ourselves some addition wall space to hang things on.

Having long since abandoned the notion that we could ever possibly fit any kind of standard sized applience in here, I sat looking at the sheet rock leaning where it was soon to be secured... and obscuring all of the light coming from the bathroom window. In a house in the woods with a grand total of five windows, let me tell you, one gets a little particular about where one's sunlight goes. Hmmm....The doorway is already framed out on the west side and I had good reasons for putting it there to begin with...also the kids area could go back to the way I originally planned and I really don't want to have to frame it out again...and then there is the light thing... Uhm...honey??? and thus the northward wall was built again.

Steve pulled the cross-pieces out the the westward wall and we hung up the one piece of sheet rock that we had on hand. It covers most of the wall and is the closest thing to a bit of privacy that we've had in a bathroom thus far. So, while it may have been a step back, at least it was a step in the right direction at the same time...oh and Steve is going shopping for a baby gate on his way home from work tomorrow...