Progress!!

Since my last post we have made progress on not one, but two fronts. First, if you have been following this blog for any amount of time, you may remember posts about Nathan and the Great Haircut Terror. Christmas 2006 was the last time he had had a professional, scissors and trimmer, sitting-in-the-barber's-chair haircut. Since then, he has either been held down screaming while his hair was buzzed off with the clippers, or I have cut it (some times better than others) at home. The last time I cut it was about 3 weeks ago, and I managed to not only jack up the front, but I also snipped his skin with the scissors. As I attempted to calm him, I explained that Mommy went to school to take care of sick people, not to cut hair, and if he wanted to not get injured during haircuts, he should let my stylist cut it. He tearfully (and shockingly) agreed to this plan. I knew we had an appointment coming up, so I continued to remind him about the plan to have a professional do the cutting, and he continued to tell me he didn't like haircuts. However, I decided that I was going to be firm and insist that this was something that he, as a Big Boy, could do, and I kept reassuring him that Ms. Jennifer knew what she was doing and had never hurt me during a cut, and after all, she has been trained to do this!! She went to school for it!! So, last Thursday, we headed to the salon, and he walked right in and announced that he was gonna get a haircut. Jennifer almost fell over, but she said she would certainly be glad to cut it for him. He made me and Amy go first, and then he hopped up on my lap and let her get started. At first, he didn't want anything to do with the trimmers, but I reminded him that she uses them on me and they don't hurt, so he let her trim the back and his sideburns. Then, I took a chance and asked him if it would be OK if she used the clippers to cut the back and sides, that it would be faster than the scissors, and would cut closer so he wouldn't have to get another haircut next time Amy and I came. To my surprise, he agreed! He even giggled when she was running the clippers through his hair, saying they were tickling him. I cannot begin to tell you how proud I was of him--this has been SUCH a long time coming. One more fear checked off. And here is the result:So Handsome!!! I am soooooo relieved to have this fear behind us. Not only does he look better, but he feels better for conquering this thing he has been afraid of for so long.


The other progress we have made this week is in the yard. We have finally had about a week of dry weather, and so the workers have been able to come out several days in a row. They have moved all of the mudpile away, and are now able to continue grading and sloping. They are having to dig out a few more trenches which lead to the main creek (I hate calling it a ditch), which now will run all the way from the middle of our back fence, angling across the yard, and then out to the street, and will also remain uncovered and will be filled with gravel and flat rock like the "creek" on the side of the house. The head honcho feels that if we cover or bury it, the draining water won't flow as freely and we may end up with areas that are stagnant under the grass. Since we are not going through all this effort and money to have areas of stagnation, we reluctantly agreed to the "open-creek plan." I asked her on Friday, barring any further heavy rain, how much longer did she see this taking to complete, and she said if the weather cooperates, they should be able to finish in about a week. I have my doubts about that, but nevertheless, I am praying for dry weather and dirt that cooperates with what they are trying to do with it. Also, I'm not sure if she was talking about only finishing the dirt work and grading, or if she meant completely finished--dirt, sod, and cleanup. They still have a few French drains and trenches to construct, so who knows? It seems that they are going to have to re-sod our ENTIRE yard. There is the obvious in the back, but also both side yards are covered with dirt, mud, and gravel, our front yard has numerous ruts from the truck and dump trailer situation we had going on last weekend, and the driveway is totally caked with mud. It's going to take some heavy work with a pressure washer to get all that mess cleaned up. But, I do see progress now. And there is only a slight chance of rain over the next few days, so maybe God is trying to help us out and let us get this FINISHED!! Here are the latest photos:


These are the piles of various things that have been dumped in our side yard since this all started. We have red clay, topsoil, and pea gravel, and these piles are only the current amounts. There have been other piles of these same things.



Here we have our brand-new wheel ruts across the front yards. I'm not sure what will be done about these. It's probably going to be our responsiblity to fix them, or we could pay the landscapers some MORE.



This is the other side yard, which had been untouched until we had to take the fence down and bring a tractor and dump trailer up there to move the Stinky Mudpile (it smelled like manure). Now, there is just as much dirt on this side as on the other side. The grass can't possibly survive.



Ahhh! Here we have our Stinky Mudpile-Free backyard. There is a remnant of stench, but I'm sure it will be gone before too long. Not sure what remains to be done over here.

This is the view from where Stinky Mudpile used to be. I like the view of the swingset much better than the view of Stinky Mudpile.

And here we have the next problem spot to be addressed. You can kind of see where they extended the creek out to the back fence this afternoon. They have also begun to dig a trench across the back fence, running parallel with it. Head Landscape Chick thinks that some of our problem stems from water running down off the pasture behind us, and if we can get that water to flow into a trench, then we can direct it to the creek and out to the street. Whatever. It's still really soggy back there, so I will be interested to see how this pans out. We will probably end up having to bring in 5 more truckloads of topsoil to put on top of that. And then we will have to re-sod that whole area too. At this point, we might as well have them regrade the front yard (to fix all the ruts) and re-sod that too.

I have to ask myself, if we had known it was going to turn into THIS, would we have still done it?