There is finally sleep :)

It looks like Karl is officially a 'sleep through the night' baby. I can't believe it. I never thought this day would come. It only took one tough night of us soothing him back to sleep without nursing him. The next two nights he woke up once or twice, but since then he has been sleeping from about 10p until between 7a-830a. Amazing! I haven't felt this energized in a while.

I am still nursing Karl quite a bit during the day, but as of last night he doesn't need to nurse before bed. Erik was able to get him down last night. I missed rocking him and nursing, so I don't think Erik putting him to bed will become a regular occurrence.

After Karl gets sleepy rocking with me I put him down on one side of the crib (both ends have pillows). When I put him down he sits up and kind of scuttles to to other end of the crib and grabs the pillow with both arms extended. It's so goofy that I took a picture for you. This is generally how he falls to sleep for both naps and bedtime.

Back to reality

I took the week off work after finishing a big project, because I was feeling burned out. It was a great week, the only thing I missed out on was a bike ride on Friday when it was 70 degrees. Now it's ready to snow outside, and I'm heading back to the mines.

Some questions have popped up as I've been writing about the kayak project. These were different than I expected. I expected "how will you clamp on the cove side without breaking the sharp edges of the cove?" Well, hypothetical-rhetorical reader, I'll tell you. I put a dowel in the cove and clamp away.

The questions I do get are listed in no particular order

• "Where are pictures of the baby?"
• "Do the forms stay in?"
• "Will it float?"
• "Are you an avid kayaker?"
• "Where are you planning to use that?"
• "Can you get it out of the basement?"
• "Claire is letting you do what?"
• "Are you crazy?"

One thing I haven't explained is that after the wood is all glued together, the forms come out, and fiberglass is laid over everything making a shiny, rugged, watertight and lightweight boat. I added some masking tape so the glue doesn't stick to the forms, and I got a special staple remover from office Depot. Ironically, Staples didn't have one.

Also, yes, I can get it out of the basement, I've kayaked before, there's lots of lakes and rivers (and the Atlantic) in this neck of the woods, and Claire thinks it's really cool (there's no real way for a person to evaluate their own sanity, but I think I'm ok). As for Karl, we're pretty much dealing with this kind of thing right here, all the time.

The question I do get that I did expect is "why." And I thought about that a lot this week. Ten years ago today, my dad lost his battle with cancer. I've had a hard time with this ever since because I felt like I missed out on a lot; in particular I always felt disconnected with him. Half the time I knew him he was in his fifties, and other than the significant generational gap he was retired from the career that would be defining for him. He retired as a naval officer when I wasn't yet in kindergarten. I grew up in the part of his life spent in calm suburbia, when a few years before he was conducting missile drills with the crew of a nuclear submarine off the coast of a large, asiatic country. The only hint of this life seemed to be funny plaques, a faded anchor tattoo, and a particular way about stacking the dishwasher.

When I would ask my dad "what do you do," his response was that he was an Engineer, which is about as nebulous as you can get, even if you're old enough to know what the words engineer even means. So I never really knew what he did. I even went to his office a number of times and helped out with paper work on 'take your brat to work day,' but I still have no clue what any of it was about. M. Rosenblatt & Son, his employer was styled as "naval architects and engineers", and I vividly remember a large model of the Arleigh Burke taking up valuable Crystal City office space. If I was cornered I might say that he did things like planning and engineering calculations for destroyers in this class, or talk about how he was helping out with the engineering for repairs to the USS Cole when it was hit.

For hundreds of years now shipbuilding and repair has been the affair of the military industrial complex, and it dawned on me that no one can really call themselves a boatwright or shipwright anymore. They're all part of a larger team, even the people at the yard are just welders or carpenters or crane operators. They probably don't tell their kids that they "build boats" because adults don't see that kids need things to be a little less abstract to understand them, and there's a bit of lost humility for even a welder to say they were a shipwright. I could be wrong.

Anyway I sort of find that building my own sea-going boat is a good way to connect with my dad. Besides, it's cheaper than buying one!

"The sea will grant each man new hope, as sleep brings dreams of home." -Columbus

Stripping the hull

The last two days have been chock full of [boat/wood]-wright learning. I bought a router from the habitat restore last year for 20$, and had never used it before yesterday, so it took some time to get it set up with the router bits I bought to mill my cedar strips. To strip-build a kayak or canoe you start above the water line and fit the strips together with a cove and bead (sort of like tongue and grove) working your way to the keel. The cove side points up and you fill them with glue for the next course, stapling everything to the forms. Here's the last picture I took before I started with the "sheer-strips" (the first course with just a cove milled upwards, the deck of the boat gets stripped right against the sheer line so it will all fit together).

It's sort of a shame to cover this up, it looks pretty cool in it's own right. You can also see that in order to do the hull first, it gets flipped upside down once the forms are all set up.

There are some big challenges with this which I'm feeling a lot better about now that I've made all the major mistakes the book talks about, and fixed them. The strip method of building is very forgiving of mistakes since there's very little you can screw up that fundamentally ruins the whole thing.

The first challenge is scarfing pieces together with a diagonal cut, which is trickier than it sounds. The other tricky bit is the bow and stern, which have some severe angles for the wood to bend along.

In addition to the staples, I needed to drive a couple of finish nails hold things together with some clamps. Below is the stern section, You can see in these pictures that I'm using a "finger joint" to weave together alternating pieces so they'll make a nice edge.

I'm finding that a handful of tools are all you really need (other than my router and saws and stuff). The block plane does a larger part of the work than I'd expected, and other than that I'm mostly reaching for my staple-gun, glue and clamps. I'm really impressed with the people online I've seen that don't use staples. As the book says, yes, they'll leave tiny spots in the finish, but only if you look really close, but who cares? Just staple it and get on with life. It will still look amazing. I'm down with that philosophy.

I'm pleased to have the first two courses done on either side tonight. Hopefully I'll get through a lot more of the hull tomorrow, the second course went a lot faster after I figured out a lot with the first course of sheer-strips.

Bow and Stern

Today Claire gave me the gift of time. In other words, I got out of all kinds of baby duties, and all kinds of diapers. It's nice to be home though where I can hang out with them whenever I like.

I have completed boat forms to show for my time, which means the next step is to start laying out the hull. I'm really looking forward to this, because to finally be doing that is to make this dream a reality. Now the real work can start.

Attaching the forms to the strongback was tricky work at first, since I had to figure out through some hard knocks that I needed a tighter grain for the "cleats" in order to prevent cracking from driving screws. You can see them in this picture; I used drywall screws to attach them.

As you can see from above, I flipped the forms around for the stern of the boat, because the paper has reference lines on it used to sight along for alignment. Here's the bow, which shows off the job I did tapering the bow.

Both the bow and stern have a taper, and there's no fence, jig, form or line to follow with a saw or anything. First I used a chamfer bit on my router and cut both sides, then I used my block plane and rasp plane to clean the angle, an finally a bit of sanding brought it to a point. Many thanks to Marc and Cyn for the awesome plane, it really works great.

The tiny forms at the ends are attached with hot glue, which worked like a charm. Here's the completed stern:

In order to take a picture of the whole thing I had to stand way back.

This 14' boat is about 7 feet less than the width of our townhouse. The black panel in the background is where our double french doors are, so you can see better how I'll be able to get this out.

Forms!

Today was a father-son day, which meant this morning Claire left Karl and I to hang out till after lunch time. He's a happy baby so he played on the main floor of the house while I worked in the garage (with the door open of course). By "play" I mean he went back and forth from reading books and watching what I was doing. I felt a little bit like Silas Marner, except I didn't tie him up with a ribbon.

After lunchtime I got to sit in rush hour traffic since I had to deliver the papasan chair we sold yesterday. I don't know how you people that have to commute do it without going nuts.

During Claire's voice lessons, we were supposed to have a babysitter, but she was a no-show, so I got to hang out with my little buddy some more, so there was very little progress today. I still have something to show for it tho: here are the completed main forms in a dry fit!

I still have 6 forms to do, the end forms are small and tapered a lot so it's finer work. It'll probably take all day tomorrow to get the forms all finished and attached.

Since I finally have all the forms spaced out, I knew where I could connect to my supports without hitting any of them, so I started to make dowel pins like this one below.
I found a lot of problems with this. First, it's way more work than zipping in a screw. It also makes a big mess to bore out a 1/2 inch hole. Finding the exact center of a 2x4 with a drill bit is not super easy, since they aren't exactly 3.5 inches, and this needs to be able to flip over. So this was the only one I made.

Lofting

So far, Claire is neither sick of me, nor my crazy project. I think she's pumped that we're clearing out our basement; it's a step towards the eventual renovation. Lots of old furniture is going for free, but believe it or not, the ancient papasan chair is going for 50$ (with delivery).

More than one person has commented that they're concerned I might not be able to get my kayak out of the basement. Rest assured I've measured the space provided and can get it out through the double french doors I installed in the fall. I think Gibbs from NCIS is responsible planting this idea. As several people have pointed out, he's hell bent on building boats in his basement with no clear escape plan. I guess they just accumulate. No, I plan to enjoy the result of this project, and I'm looking forward to building the "little auk" for Karl, and another boat for Claire. But that's for another day (or year!).

Here's a picture of the lovely Claire happily working away behind my freshly built stands. I used the wood from the truck frame to build them and rabbited slots for what's known as the strongback, a 12 foot board used to hold the forms. I'm going to put dowels through these rabbits in order to hold it all together.

My kayak book included the dimensions for these stands, and they work out perfectly; very easy to build. I had them done around lunchtime. The cool thing about them is that they can function as perpendicular stands after the hull is stripped.

After lunch with the fam, I cruised up to the Depot and sifted through dozens of boards to find the perfect strongback. I'm getting some weird looks and questions given some of the idiosyncrasies of this project. Looking for a perfect 12 foot 2x4 in the middle of a Tuesday is unusual enough on its own to draw a few questions.

Skipping ahead, here's a picture of the bow forms dry-fit onto the strongback.

The savior of the day is loctite spray adhesive. I had rough cut my forms based on a trace of the paper cut-outs (lofting!), but glueing them to the wood helped me to get the shapes perfect with nothing but my dad's decades old jig-saw, no band saw needed. This was cool because I can recall him showing me how to use it when I was 8 or so.

Here's a sneak peak of the stern forms. By tomorrow night I hope to have it all ready so I can start stripping the hull on Thursday.

This project is super fun, interesting, and easier than you think, and when it's over, you get a boat you can take fishing, exploring, get exercise etc... If you've got an inkling to try it, I highly recommend it.

Day 2

Claire helped me make some great progress on the basement today, and we've got a place cleared out in the basement for me to start building. Our basement has enough room that the forms will sit off to the side and not take up much space. Also I picked up my cedar strips today, which was very exciting. The owner of the mill told me that it was more than he'd sold in 2 years; it's really rare for people to want long pieces of clear (free of knots) cedar. I'm really glad I built a frame to hold the strips, they are so light they would've blown away, and the longer ones needed to go into the cab of my truck so they didn't flop out the back of my 6 foot bed.

Believe it or not, this isn't the first time I've done something like this with my trusty old ranger. That dashboard is on there real good. It's a bit nerve wracking when you accelerate uphill though.

Oddly enough, Claire agreed to let me keep this in our upstairs hallway, which is exactly 14' long (the house smells nicely like cedar now). I think maybe it's because I surprised her with V-day gifts, like a massage-abacus thing that Karl helped me pick out, and a piece of red velvet cheese-cake. If you know Claire, you're nodding right now. (She just hit me and pointed out that she's lost 6 pounds! :)

Here's Karl helping us clean up the basement. After making sure every marker was on the floor instead of the box, he decided to run around making a REAL mess. You can also see my plywood forms in this picture, and the 12 foot 2x4 I'm going to use as the "strongback" where the forms are mounted.

Karl wanted everyone to see the present he helped me pick out and wish you a happy valentine's day.

The Great Auk

As far south as new england, there used to be a penguin sort of animal called the Great Auk. Some people say there might have been a sighting in 1852, but as far as we know, the last of these birds was strangled 3 July 1844 by some jerks named Jon and Sigorour or some such. Their good buddy Ketill stomped out the eggs they'd laid. I'm not sure why someone would have done that since apparently the eggs were insanely valuable; the wikipedia page claims that they would go for 11 times a years' wage for a skilled worker. In today's money we're probably talking about million dollar items.

I'd never heard of this animal until last year. For some reason (unknown even to myself), I decided I wanted to build a boat- a kayak specifically. Some research online led me to realize that such a project was within my reach, and I ordered plans for a 14 foot boat called the Great Auk, after the bird that used it's wings for swimming instead of flying. This is a strip built kayak, with a 24.5 inch beam (that's width), and a 4 inch draft. Even though it's only 14 feet, I should be able to make 5 knots without much effort. The shape of the hull will allow for 45 degrees of heel before it wants to capsize, which is great for a boat like this. The only thing it won't do really well is racing, for that I'd want a 19 foot boat. The longer a boat is, the faster you can go because you can make a longer wave in the water and go faster before you make more than one wave per boat-length.

Here's a guy on flickr who built his own great auk.

Here's step one: buying the lumber. Since I found a mill with 14' planks of spanish cedar, I built a stand for my truck so I could support the strips through the window of my truck. I got a call yesterday that they'd milled my strips, so I'm off to pick it up tomorrow. Here's a picture of the build so far.

We also made good progress on step 2 today, in which I get an area of the basement to work on this project. I started to do this in the garage when I got it cleaned out last summer, but after the accumulation of tools and such from the deck project, there's just not enough room in there. We'll see if Claire tolerates this takeover of the basement!

Karl @ 16 months

Karl is growing like a weed. Erik came home last night and exclaimed that he was much bigger than when he left in the morning. Maybe not quite that extreme, but Karl is now able to grab things off of countertops and table tops.

Let's say you decide that you'll outsmart him. You'll put your important thing in the MIDDLE of the table. Wrong. Karl is a climber. All bets are off.

He has figured out how to climb up on our bed, climb into his highchair, climb onto the couch, and climb up a dining room chair onto our table. Last night he was having a great time sitting in the middle of the table. This morning I took a picture of him standing on it. Our kid is fearless. (Please ignore his little hiding place under our table for his toys)

Sleep training has started. I am always reluctant to talk about sleep on our blog because there is such a stigma attached to co-sleepers or children not sleeping through the night at 6 months. We have had no problems letting Karl nurse through the night and join us in our bed after his initial wake up. However, as my previous post relays...I am TIRED! I think this is exacerbated by Karl's nighttime nursing. Even when we cosleep he still wakes up quite frequently- about every 90 minutes- to switch sides, nurse, and go back to sleep. I haven't slept more than 5 hours in a row since October 10th, 2009. This takes quite a toll on ones body, if you can imagine.

Last night it took quite a bit of convincing to get Karl to sleep. Finally he was out. Two hours later, like normal, he woke up expecting to be nursed and brought to a bed. Sorry, little guy! Not tonight. I tried my best to get him back to sleep without nursing, but he associates me so much with night nursing that it was impossible. Erik went in there said "hush, hush, it's bed time" and 20 seconds later Karl was out. Same deal an hour later. I asked him "do you want Daddy?" and he signed 'yes'. Heart broken, I returned to bed and sent Erik in. 30 seconds later there was no more crying. He slept another 3 hours. Same thing. But then, he slept for 5 hours until 9. I couldn't believe it.

We've got another few hard nights in front of us, but I think it's for the best. I don't want Karl to get much older before I night wean him as it will just continue to get harder. I also don't want to keep up this pattern of not sleeping. I might feel differently if he were a completely baby today, but he is just as happy and sweet as usual.

Here is out sweet boy waking up from naptime

Karl also has quite a strange sense of humor. He laughs at the weirdest things. Last night we heard him playing his xylophone and then laughing. Not too weird, right? Then we looked down and saw what he was playing it with. His head. He was whacking his head with the xylophone and giggling. I took some pictures.

What a weirdo.

Karl still isn't talking much, but is signing fairly often. His favorite sign is still 'grandpa'. I am looking forward to hearing new words besides Dada and Doggy.

Here is Karl signing 'grandpa'.

Here are a few more pictures where I think he looks so much like a little boy holding on to the top of his pants. What happened to my little baby?

Time to blame my Father

I think in every life there comes a time when you look at where you are in life and say "well, this is clearly my mother's/father's/parent's fault". Today, I have come to realize that my penchant for being overly social and active is my father's fault. Sorry, Dad. Never did my parents truly push me to do a myriad of activities, but by example I followed suit.

Dad has always been busy. Even now that he should be 'retired' (we'll use that word lightly) he works 40+ hours a week raising funds to restore a theatre in the town where they live. Not only that but he is always doing something for various committees or editing plays or going to a meeting, or working on the house. Generally speaking, he is just a busy bee.

I, too, have always been busy. In high school I joined the choir, joined the tennis team, joined the soccer team, was in a community orchestra, took cello lessons, joined the swim team, joined the track team, was part of the musicals, babysat, etc...

Now, as a stay at home mom I feel busier than I did when I had a full time job! It has just hit me in the past two weeks that I am doing TOO much. However, I like every thing that I do. How do you decide what is most important?

I guess there is only one answer to that: