It's not the heat - it's the lack of A.C,

It's kind of warm here. I own an older house (1909) with a hot water heating system. Unless I want to try to run mini-ducts through the walls and ceilings, we won't be having central air anytime soon. Fortunately, we have found ways to deal with it. We have two window units upstairs on opposite ends of the house. One is in the master bedroom which is expected to cool (i.e. keep below 85 degrees) the front three rooms of our house. The other unit is located in the bedroom at the back of the house that Nicholas is sleeping in (otherwise known as the back bedroom or my room since it contains sewing equipment, fabric, and yarn). This unit is turned off multiple times during the day because Nicholas seems to be kept awake by it. Since we don't spend much time upstairs (other than sleeping - though a cooler room does make it easier to sleep) we find other ways to keep cool. We have an inflatable pool that takes up most of the yard between the deck and the garage. On Monday we used our Children's Museum membership for multiple hours of cool play. Today, Andrew went to the church that regular preschool is held at for their summer camp. This is kind of like a vacation bible school, but it is spread out over the summer by having camp from 10-2 most Tuesdays. Andrew had a blast, I got a few things done and some quiet while Nick was sleeping, so he benefited from their air conditioning - as well as the great program and a chance to see some friends from preschool. Tomorrow, we head to a movie theater to see Happy Feet. AMC (as well as a couple other theater chains) have a kids movie camp. The tickets I picked up today were free, so I don't feel bad if Nicholas is cranky/noisy during the movie. Plus, do you really expect a theater full of kids to be quiet.

We realized today that Nicholas was 9 months yesterday. He has grown so fast. He still takes 2-3 naps a day, which amazes me since I was lucky if Andrew took one nap with out me sleeping next to him. He is working on tooth number eight and has decided that being spoon fed is bad (unless it is yogurt). Tonight he had teriyaki chicken, rice, red peppers and strawberry yogurt. He pulled himself up on a bench at the Children's Museum yesterday and stood there for a minute while I was on the other side of the bench. Yesterday was also the first time he was interested in checking out the exhibits. He also wants to be down pretty much all the time. If I am holding him he will make a nose dive for the floor - this is not all that helpful when shopping for groceries. He has also gotten over some of his fear of other people. At least, he is pretty happy with most of the people we see lately and if he isn't, he can go down to the floor and play and then is okay.

Terry and Jessica were by this evening. They are starting to look into buying a house up here and stopped by after meeting with a loan officer. They had the chance to meet one of our neighbors - who offered me salmon he had caught this morning - while we were across the street talking about a house for sale there. Of course, I took the salmon. I will stop by tomorrow with some raspberries for him from our yard. Yesterday I picked raspberries before we ate dinner, and after eating our dinner we polished a cereal bowl full of raspberries (yes, Nick helped).

On a knitting note --

I should post my knitting goals on the blog more often. Monday evening, when I thought back to the goals written Sunday evening, I realized that the only thing I hadn't accomplished was the swatch for Mystery Stole 3.

Sock Heel

Check

Yoke of Sweater



Check - I am even knitting the second shoulder strap now. Just sleeves and a neck band after this

I also wound some merino/silk singles into balls for plying. Maybe I can do some spinning before the week is done.




This was the sky our our bedroom window this evening. Fair weather tomorrow? (Tim looked at me funny when he saw me taking this picture. I told him the sky was pretty. He said it was grey. Then Andrew walked in, saw the sky and proclaimed it beautiful. Then Tim realized I wasn't crazy taking pictures. Must have something to do with Tim's colorblindness.)