Little Sponges.

Email exchange between Will's speech therapist and me, earlier this week.


Anne: He was fine today! Showed me his belaying technique with his bungee cable and his bed frame and various drawer handles (!). Where had he seen where to belay...hysterical!!!!

Me: We had a tree guy at the house on Saturday morning....took down a dead pine in 'Spider Man' style, complete with tying off a safety line on another tree. Funny thing, I didn't get WHAT he was trying to do with the bungee cord until I read this email. Such a creative, funny little man we have. Guess I need to be even more 'in the moment' than I already thought I was. :-)

Anne: Well, that also explains why he greeted me at the door with his saw attached to the bungee cord and saying how he was g oing to go cut down the tree. He mimicked safety locking the bungee cord to his clothes, climbing (5 inches up his bedframe) and mimicked climbing down slowly and releasing the bungee hook from his clothes complete with a sigh of relief from all the hard work...!!!

Hilarious little dude. And yes, I'm aware that we're already in serious trouble with our little engineer. Haven't had a chance to go through the THIRD birthday photos, but will post soon.

I Believe in Santa Claus

Merry Christmas from the Cronbachs!!

I was planning to write a note with all our fun stuff this year, but something happened yesterday that I thought was much more important.

Because Eli was working Christmas Eve, Monika (Will's au pair from Norway) and I planned to take Will to San Francisco to see the decorations. Unbeknownst to me, I woke up to frozen pipes and after taking a quick shower we had no water. Ugh. When I went to get Will up, he was talking a mile a minute about his day. 'Go see Santa?' 'Go find Santa?' This caught me off guard - as far as I knew, no one had talked much about Santa to him this year. If this is the first Cronbach post you're reading in 2011, I should point out that Will is autistic. While very high functioning, there are still concepts that are familiar to his peers that he just doesn't get yet. Santa is one of those concepts - I had even decided not to worry about a Santa picture this year because the entire process was likely to take more effort than it was worth. Crowded malls, long waits for pictures, sitting on a strangers lap....not things likely to make for a lifetime memory. We simply sat back and enjoyed watching him get the concept of presents this year - too freakin' cute for words.

So there I was, with a little man asking to see and/or find Santa. 'Sure, we can go look for Santa in San Francisco,' I said. 'Franfisco?' 'Yep, San Francisco.' We went to Yerba Buena Gardens and then to Union Square - first carousel ride was a huge hit. A half a dozen times during the morning, Will piped up and said 'Go see SANta!' Monika and I compared notes and we couldn't figure out where he'd picked up the idea, but we decided if it wasn't too crowded, we'd go find Santa.

After lunch, we went to 'Santaland' in Macy's and saw there were only two families in line. Hmm, that's doable I thought. Even if he doesn't want to wait, we can just wave at Santa and say that we found him. The line was fast, the Santa was amazing and Will was really excited to show Santa his tractor that he carried with him. Climbed right up on Santa's lap and hung out like they'd known each other forever.

I might be the only person my age who believes in Santa Claus, but what a sweet Christmas memory he gave me this year.

Phase One Photos

Forever House, Phase One.

Since Will is working on a long nap, I thought I'd take a moment to catch up on our move to Napa. Didn't we move just three years ago? Yes....we did. For anyone in California, you know that the housing market has been NUTS for the past several years. When we bought our house in Vallejo, the market in Napa was still too strong for us to afford something we really wanted, so we bought the Vallejo house as a short term investment instead. What a difference three years makes......

The market in Napa softened quite a bit and we would periodically look online and torture ourselves with the 'what if' scenarios. In the mean time, our son Will was diagnosed with Autism and we discovered ourselves in need of public school services, something that we'd never planned to access in Vallejo. Things reached critical mass earlier this year and we decided to turn 'what if' into 'when'. 'When' turned out to be one acre out in the country, with a 1500ish square foot house built in the late 60's. NEVER remodeled. With the exception of some kitchen appliances, I do mean never. Craigslist post advertising 'house for rent' in Hiddenbrooke? Check. Tenants moved in October 1? Check.

Match the list of things accomplished by Cronbach Construction before moving in with the pictures I'm about to post.....

1. New support beam in the garage (sagging roof).
2. New roof.
3. New guest (and Monika's bathroom) - including sub floor.
4. Removal of cottage cheese from four rooms.
5. Demo the non conforming and smelly 'cat pee' room.

Things are still a work in progress (furnace guy is supposed to show up tomorrow), but we are thrilled to be here. I'm not sure who is happier - Eli has a detached shop, Will has a 'dirt' box for his growing collection of Tonka trucks, Chilly is now an indoor AND outdoor cat and I love looking out my kitchen window and designing gardens in my head. All of us are thrilled with the original point of the move, which was better support services for Will. Monika (Will's au pair) arrived from Norway the day before we put the offer in on this house and she's been a great sport about moving from a 2600+ square foot house with her own private bathroom into a smaller house with one bathroom shared by the three of us. There is a master bath, but its a work in progress and I'll save those photos for the Phase Two (or maybe Three) post. Thank you to all our friends and family who have helped us demo, paint, haul trash, move and otherwise offered your support. Eli's calling in all his markers on this house, so if you don't have a voice mail from him yet, you probably will soon. :-)

We do take breaks and because we have room for all the toys, we have a 'guest house' aka toy hauler on the property. Enjoy the first photos and stay tuned for updates!

Cronbach and Son Cronstruction

Preview of our latest project.....all it took was one Curious George episode with safety goggles.

Down on the Farm.

Will and I have visited a local farm several times over the past few months. Super friendly people, they're very tolerant of a little engineer climbing all over their tractors and greet him by name whenever we visit. This weekend, we collected some of our friends and adopted pumpkins. Get a numbered stake, pick our your pumpkin, stake it out and come back to pick it in October. Great idea and lots of fun for the little munchkins. Sorry to have been off the grid lately, the Cronbachs have embarked on a new adventure that I will save for another blog post. It involves power tools, nails, paint and lots of Ibuprofin.....

Yard Work With Daddy.

To get the full effect, enlarge the photo from the front yard. Pure little man bliss.