Proudly welcoming our new nephew: Name-still-to-be-decided!!!

He is perfection!  All cheeks and juicy lips with just the perfect amount of hair and the silkiest softest skin in town.  Here are the details:

July 30, 2011 at 8:33pm

8lb. 12oz and 21" long

Tyler and Erica are doing fabulous!  Happy, healthy, and completely pooped, but totally smitten.

Everything worked out amazing and I was able to make it there for the labor and delivery and am still in awe of how beautiful and smoothly everything went.

UGH! I could kiss those chunky little cheeks and lips all day long!

July. What gives?

I'm in bed with a head cold.  Drinking hot tea.  Writing a beast of a paper and studying for a Pharmacology test.  I've definitely seen better days.

Plugging Along

Our kitchen is coming right along.  A huge amount of time in the last two weeks has gone towards sanding the multiple layers of lead paint off the bead board that is going into our kitchen.  Much time has been spent at the drawing board (which is any piece of plywood or extra 2x4 nearby - most commonly this plywood hung in the kitchen is used:)

We stand and discuss all of our options and Vinnie draws us lots of pictures of all the ideas he has in his head so we can try and figure the best options out.  We got the layout for the kitchen finalized and a peninsula designed after much discussion.  Vinnie threw this together for us two days ago so we could see what he was thinking:

This is a rough idea of what the peninsula/bar/whatever-you-wanna-call-it will look like:

View from the front as you walk in from front door ↑ and the view as you walk 

around it into the kitchen ↓

View from standing in the kitchen looking towards front door ↓

Now, of course you have to use your imagination a little. It will be closed in from the front (so you don't see those studs in the first two pictures) and the cabinets will of course be out of their boxes in the end. As you may notice, there are three different levels - bar height in front where we will be putting a few bar stools, the counter height coming around from the rest of the kitchen, and then the appendage that sticks out in the back is table height so we can eat/hang out/work on stuff comfortably there. We love it and are so excited with what Vinnie came up with.  

Also, you may notice that there is plywood hung on the walls in the kitchen - at this time we are ready to hang/install the cabinets directly to that. Vinnie likes to put them onto plywood as it is stronger, due to the fact that you are sure to hit wood, no matter where you screw a cabinet into the wall. We're going to wait to hang them though until after the dry wall is up, so they don't get damaged during any of that and aren't in the way as we finish other things.

All of our siding has now been replaced on three sides of the house - we will deal with the front eventually, but for now it's not necessary.  Here's the left side of the house all re-sided:

Since March, the back of the house/yard has gone from looking like this:

   To this: 

I guess the house looks better - the yard certainly does not though.  Looks like we'll be needing another dumpster soon... We're still needing to paint the exterior and that back porch will have to be replaced as well - it's all about priorities though, and for now those are cosmetic things, which rank last on the list.

We've gotten bids on the sheet rock this week and hope to be able to get that started by the beginning of August.  We still have lots of little details to get finished up before then so we're trying to get the tedious stuff out of the way as quickly as possible to move on.

Recovering from the Ickies

Scott's on the mend.  Slowly, but surely.
We came to the conclusion that his problems were directly caused by him swinging from extreme hypothyroidism to being quite hyperthyroid within a little over two weeks.  After some reading and talking with his doctors we realized there were three reasons for this:
1) He was very hypothyroid so his Endocrinologist raised his dose of Synthroid, by a fairly significant amount.
2) He started being much more strict about food intake around the time of taking his medicine and stopped even drinking coffee with it.  The synthroid loves to be a greedy medicine and absorbs best when it is taken on a completely empty stomach.
3) He's been taking the medicine at bedtime.  Scott always takes his synthroid in the morning.  He's been working nights for the last few weeks and therefore takes the medicine immediately before going to sleep.  We discovered that synthroid has a much higher rate of absorption if you're sleeping when it starts being metabolized.
So, after over 9 hours straight of continuous palpitations on Thursday morning, and then several hours of them again that evening, along with just feeling terrible, they rearranged things at work again that night and Scott was able to stay home.  We had a phone conference with his Endocrinologist (thankfully she's awesome and didn't make us come in) first thing Friday morning, she lowered him meds again and discussed what we're going to do from here.  He slept the day away again on Friday and got up that evening (basically his first time out of bed in over 30 hours) and went to work that night.
You would think with him being hyperthyroid he would have been running around like a crazed, productive maniac, but apparently when you get really hyperthyroid you also get really tired.  And can't focus.  He decided the nurses must have hated him Friday night, because he could not think of aaanything and was a bumbling mess.  (Sorry ER nurses at University - thank you for putting up with him!)
Fortunately, he had last night off and has finally started feeling like he's among the living again.  He's lost over 13lbs in less than three weeks (I'm slightly jealous) and has had a headache for the last two days.  He's still having palpitations, but they subside within about 15 minutes now and are not as continuous anymore.  Because of the long acting time of Synthroid, it's going to take a couple days still for him to feel good again.  Thanks for the prayers if you sent them up for us.  Hopefully we can get somewhat regulated soon, because this is no fun.

The Ickies

Scott is feeling awful and we're a little worried.  They sent him home from work early last night (which NEVER happens as a resident) after doing an EKG and a load of labs on him.  He's been having intermittent palpitations over the last few weeks but usually it will just be one or two here and there.  

He started having them last night around 1am though and they wouldn't stop.  His pulse is completely irregular and he is feeling really just out of it and awful.  If you've ever had a palpitation you know they are uncomfortable - it almost takes your breath away and feels like your heart is flipping in your chest.  

After the palpitations continued for over two hours they did the EKG and ran labs.  The EKG showed that he's throwing PAC's (usually harmless but he shouldn't be having this many of them for such a long period of time).  His labs were normal except he has gone from super hypothyroid to very HYPERthyroid within about three weeks.  Now, this is not a steady level (it takes about 6 weeks to reach that), but his thyroid levels are definitely way off, which could be the primary contributing factor as to why he feels like crap.  He's finally asleep now after a very restless morning with a very irregular pulse still and I'm hoping he can sleep the rest of the day and feel better.  It's a little unnerving.

We'll be consulting our Endocrinologist about what to do, but are hoping we can get this fixed ASAP.  Please say a few prayers for him.  He's scheduled to work again tonight and I'm hoping he's feeling better - at least well enough to focus and get through eight hours.

The Siding, Part II

It's only Tuesday and already lots has been done to the house this week.

About two months ago, when we re-did the siding on the right side of the house, we had the company install two new windows as well, to replace two that were not doing well in the back of the house.  One on either side.  However, after all that we decided we wanted a second window in the room that will be the laundry room to look out at the back yard.  We also thought maybe something more artistic and different would look better in the master bathroom.  SO, we moved the window that was there to the laundry room instead.  We also got a back door installed.  

And it locks.  

Ammmaaazing!  Now we don't have to screw a piece of plywood over the opening every night.  It's the little things that are really exciting when doing a project like this.

Vinnie went hunting last weekend and found us a window for our bathroom.  At first when we saw it I thought it would be waaaay too big for the bathroom.  However, Vinnie totally has an eye for this and could picture it in his mind the whole time.  Here it is: our eight-paned window with Florentine glass. 

Yesterday Carl (our firefighter that works for us on his "off" days during the week) and Vinnie framed it in.  While they were working on that we had two other guys we hired for the day rip ALL the siding off the left side of the house.  Originally we thought we could just patch that side and use most of the old cypress that was already there.  However, after looking at it for the last few weeks we decided to completely re-do it.  It would be pointless to go to all the work of tearing parts off and repairing them and hoping that next year once the house is all nice and finished it didn't spring another leak and ruin our new sheet rock or something.  Also, the area towards the back on that side was so poorly done originally, that there was a lot of rot from water leaking in and attracting termites.  This way we can say the whole house has new siding (as we are also re-doing the back) that was done at the same time.  

While they were tearing the siding off, Scott worked on fixing all the areas of rot.  Sistering in new boards and completely rebuilding the frames around a few windows.  Vinnie and Carl helped him with areas in between framing the bathroom window in and re-building that wall (as it was the area with the worste rot/termite damage).

View from inside the master bathroom to outside.  

(I'll have to post a picture tomorrow of what that wall/new window now look like.)

There were a few more areas of concern than we expected throughout the wall.  It was frustrating in the moment - but also reassures us that we made the right decision for the long-term.  

Here's the house with the siding off.

Today our siding guys came and got all the plywood up to cover that side of the house.  Tomorrow they will weatherproof it and start on the actual hardy board siding.  

That's how far they were at lunch time.  Just two guys.  

They had all the plywood up by 6pm before they went home for the night.  It's impressive how fast they are.

Decisions...

Well, the time I've been a little anxious about has come.  We're starting to make decisions regarding design - not just, "Should this go here? Or right there?" but more specifically regarding colors and stains which will lead to decorations.  This stresses me out.  I know that most girls would say this is their favorite part, but I feel lost.  Quite lost indeed, and it overwhelms me.

The first decision came today.  What to do with the bead board in the kitchen?

      

Vinnie quietly went the extra mile (which is why we love him) and took a few pieces of it home to make examples for me to get better ideas so I could see things he's done with bead board in other houses before.  Today he surprised me with them.  We have several options as seen below. (The wood behind these three boards is a panel from our cabinets - to get a better idea of what it will look like up against the natural stain that they have.)

\

(Going from left to right)

1) He sanded all the old layers of lead paint off the top and put a coat of polyurethane on it to bring out the texture and the slightest bit of green left in the grain of the wood.  The bottom of that piece is what it would look like if we just polyurethane over the bead board as it is now.

2) He very lightly sanded the top layer or two of paint off to reveal the original green they painted it, and added a coat of polyurethane.

3) He added a gold/yellow paint over the board as it is, gently wiped it down with a wet rag and then added polyurethane.  (This is something we could do with any color we like)

I tried to take a picture without the flash and that was NOT going to work so I'm bummed it kind of changes the appearance.  However, after much discussion and a nice spike in my blood pressure at my perceived stress over this silly decision, we decided to go with the top part of option 1.  We immediately decided option 3 was out as it was just waaaay too yellow next to those cabinets.  Option 2 was somewhat overwhelmingly green to me and although I love green and really liked how vibrant it was, I've never been in a green kitchen (that wasn't straight out of the '70's) and just couldn't picture it.  Truthfully, I think I just wasn't ready to pick ANY color for the kitchen and the classic wood-look seemed the easiest for now.  That way I can accent with any other colors I please, and it really brings out the beauty of that old wood I think. 

We'll just have to see how it turns out!  Anyone want to come and be my interior designer from this point forward????

Letting the light in

The windows above our kitchen are in!  Vinnie had these beautiful matching stained glass windows laying around and dreamt this whole project up when we asked him to do our kitchen.  (This whole project being opening up the ceiling, cutting the 24 foot long beams going across the house here and sistering them together to expose them so we have the vaulted ceiling with extra light)  He framed them in and got them up yesterday and started on the bead board.  Today he finished all the bead board - it looks cool now and is going to look even more awesome once we get it all painted and some cabinets & sheet rock in our kitchen.  Oh, and a sink and appliances might help as well.

View as it will look from standing in the center of the soon-to-be kitchen

I know it's hard to get the idea of, but this is the view from standing in the living room looking towards the kitchen/back of the house

In other, also exciting news, our floor guys came today and ripped a bunch of boards out and installed our new/old flooring over where the stairs were.  I was shocked they got it all done in one day and will have to post an after-picture tomorrow.