dyer [not so] diy: kitchen edition

after five years of dreaming, planning, and also procrastinating, we officially said goodbye to the original 78th street kitchen on august 12th. and a very, very, very long four months later, we finally have a working kitchen again!

as someone who is not great at making decisions and loves to overanalyze everything, a kitchen remodel that we plan to enjoy long term was quite a daunting task. throw in the fact that i'm kind of a perfectionist with impossibly high standards and it's borderline impossible. after the literal years we spent designing the layout and choosing the finishes, the final hurdle was finding a contractor to do the actual work. this was another lengthy step in the process, but in the end we found robert and he was delightful.

it was interesting timing to be without a kitchen when jack was starting solid foods. we did have a refrigerator and microwave, but no running water on the main level of the house. generally our eating habits weren't stellar to begin with, but the no kitchen situation brought them to a new low. thankfully i discovered microwaveable pot stickers, which became a staple of my diet, and a friend lent us her kitchen for some crock pot meal prep, so we muddled through.

the transformation is pretty stunning in both appearance and function. it's very surreal, but we're thrilled with the final result.

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jack's first flight

the original plan was to take jack's first flight as a family for our mostly annual trip with the pullens to visit the taltons in north carolina. unfortunately ku had other plans and scheduled the opening of their new freestanding psych unit on the same weekend. so long story short, donald had to stay home. never one to pass up an adventure, i decided i was up for tackling the flight with jack solo.

we arrived at kci as prepared as we could be and hoping for the best. i was already slightly concerned about getting through the dallas airport and making our connecting flight with a pretty short layover, then our flight out of kc was delayed due to a bird strike. that was a new one for me. it ultimately ended up that everything was delayed out of dfw as well, so it all worked out in the end. on our first flight we unexpectedly ran into the parents of some college friends, which was a fun surprise. and we also completed our first in-flight airplane bathroom diaper change, so i imagine my merit badge should be arriving soon.

jack was a great little traveler and made a lot of new friends [i haven't interacted with this many strangers in an airport since i flew with the harry potter books]. our long weekend in nc was delightful as usual. lots of good conversation, london broil, low country boil, and of course more than a few games of wizard. jacob and i also kicked it old school with an impromptu audio adrenaline sing-a-long, which is now officially one of the highlights of our friendship.

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life with jack

after a few months in survival mode and an insane amount of pumping and supplemental bottles [which in hindsight were probably largely unnecessary] we've settled into a good routine. jack typically wakes up for first breakfast after sleeping eight or nine hours, a feat which mom and dad are both incredibly thankful for. soon after he and i both head back to bed for a bit because the love of sleep is one of our core family values. jack does his sleeping in a bassinet by our bed partly because he is "supposed to" and partly because his room isn't ready, but he's a pretty great roommate so we don't mind one bit.

our days mostly consist of a repetitive cycle of eating, playing, and sleeping, along with a healthy dose of spitting up, which seems to be jack's favorite activity. we have dyer dinner every thursday and church and lakeland lunch on sunday. we do our best to get out of the house a few other times each week and get ourselves to a pool as often as possible.

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