The dudes' abode

K / @TwoAdults shared a really fun tour of her house and I've been enjoying the other posts following the same idea. I'm crazy-nosey and love peeking into internet folks' houses so I figured I'd give you a peek into mine in turn.

This is our house, or was our house when we bought it in February 2008:

This is our house now, more or less…I took the photo two(?) summers ago after the roof was re-shingled but it looks about the same now. We had it stripped and repainted and replaced all the windows during the summer of 2009 while I was pregnant with Nico.

I don't know what the style is called…Colonial Revival, maybe? It was built in 1940. The exterior of our house had to grow on me, honestly. I'm a bungalow or old farmhouse girl through and through, but after looking at 30 houses this was really the only option. We had grand plans of redecorating the entire place, but there was a surprising lack of money once we moved in, and then we started having kids which turned out to be a little bit expensive. Who knew?

I mostly love our house. If I could go back in time, I might try to hold out for a four-bedroom, but at the time we were certain we only wanted two kids so we settled for a three-bedroom. We aren't 100% sure we'll go for a third kid, but we've decided not to shut the door entirely, so that's something I kind of wish I'd seen coming. Anyway, let's get on with the tour. We almost never use the front door since the garage is around back.

If you walk in our back door (which is actually on the side of our house, not the back), you come into a very small landing. The kitchen is in front of you, up two steps. The door to the basement is to the right and the half bath is on the left.

I love this little bathroom. As far as I can tell it's original to the house and it makes me feel a bit sad for how sharp the rest of the house probably looked before it was redecorated questionably in the 70s. Once we pay off the baby, I'd like to de-wallpaper and paint the walls in here. I also need to figure out if it's feasible in some way for me to strip the paint off the door and doorframe. Tips are welcome!

Welcome to our orange kitchen. It's offensively orange! The wallpaper is a cartoony Holly Hobby type quilt print. The linoleum is cheap and was installed in the most half-assed fashion imaginable (Instead of cutting it to size, they stuffed the rolled up edges under the cabinets). Someone on facebook asked incredulously how I can stand to look at this every day. The answer is that (A) one becomes desensitized after a while and (B) the price of a full kitchen remodel is even harder to look at, so I carry on bravely. My only real complaint about the setup is that it would be a huge pain in the ass to replace the non-working dishwasher that came with the house, so we probably won't be able to get one until we fork out for a full overhaul. Which will probably be never. If you're standing where I was when I took this picture, the fridge is to your right and then the pantry; the stove is to the left and then the breakfast nook.

Awesome 1963 stove with double oven. If this thing ever dies I will probably cry.

Breakfast nook, which we use as a mudroom / storage room. When we were house shopping we knew we wanted a big dog, so in every house we looked for a spot to put a really big crate. This was a clear winner in that regard. In an alternate universe where we have all kinds of money to burn, we're going to build a deck onto the back of the house and put French doors in here leading out to it. In this universe the dog is worried about me taking a photo of him while he eats. This is not the little side addition visible from the front of the house…we'll get to that later.

Fridge, the only appliance we had to buy when we moved. Pantry door with apropos sign since we use the back door.

Our house is kind of laid out in a big open square, so if you're in the kitchen with your back to the side door, the doorway to the dining room is in front of you and the door to the foyer is to your right. Here's the foyer off the front door / stairs to the second floor:

Anytime someone knocks on the front door and Nico is home, he runs over and peeks out the mail slot to see who's outside. A photographer acquaintance recently captured this and it's one of my favorite pictures ever:

Here's the living room looking in from the foyer. Behold our collection of ginormous baby containment apparatuses! We're also using the ottoman that matched Nico's long-defunct nursery glider because we haven't bought nice ottomans for the living room yet. I blame MB, who stalled on buying some nice matching brown ones at Target until they were sold out. (Sorry, dear. It's true.) The curtains came with the house and we kind of hate them, but we haven't gotten around to shelling out for new ones. The doorway off in the upper left leads into Nico's playroom. The dining room is back and to the left.

Nico's playroom is one of my favorite spaces in the house. This is the little side-addition space you can see when you look at the house from the front. It used to be a side porch that the previous owners had enclosed and connected to the HVAC system. We originally intended to use it as an office and space for our evil cat, but we never used the office since we had laptops. Then it became the catch-all hoardy junk room of shame. Then we got rid of the cat. Then I cleaned it out and turned it into a playroom. It's not very big, but every time I go in there it makes me happy.

Here's the dining room, taken from just outside the playroom. The piano never gets played but I have great intentions of one day getting back to it. My mom bought it for the house I grew up in, and it's the piano I played as a child.

I like the buffet a lot…not sure it qualifies as a built-in since it obviously was added after the house was built, but it's nice for storage. Unfortunately it's also an unmitigated Crap Magnet (™ Temerity Jane). I also like the light fixture pretty well, but it puts off roughly the same amount of heat as the surface of the Sun.

Close-up of the wallpaper. When we moved in, this was my least favorite wallpaper in the house and that is saying something. It grew on me surprisingly quickly. I'm not sure if this is original 1940s paper or a later addition, but in the far distant future when we have stripped every scrap of wallpaper out of the rest of the house, burned it, and danced upon its ashes, I think this will still be on the walls. It does remind me of the plants that shoot spiky balls in the underwater levels of Super Mario Brothers, though.

If you turn and look back into the living room, this is what you see. We used to have a second bookcase in that open space where the lamp is, but our new couch is so ridiculously large that there wasn't room for it.

We're not going down to the basement. There's a very cheaply "finished" section that really barely counts as finished. In that imaginary money-having world, we're going to get it waterproofed and remodeled into a family room. In this world, it's full of stuff and it's really ugly. We do have a separate laundry area and storage space, so that's nice. There are lots of spider webs. Let's head upstairs instead, shall we?

The wallpaper pièce de résistance, plus the affectionately-nicknamed Kermit carpet:

May I magnify your horror by informing you that the entire first floor used to be outfitted with that green carpet? We never saw it, but shreds remain caught in the baseboards here and there. At least once a month I consider ripping out the carpet, but then I think it probably will provide a decent cushion if one of the kids falls down the stairs and I leave it. Looking up the stairs, there's a small built-in cabinet at the top which I love, and a lower door to a laundry chute that we don't use because I'm afraid our clothes would get stuck in the walls somewhere. That doorway you can barely see leads to the full bathroom.

Bathroom. Neither ugly nor particularly attractive. Has inherited mildew in the shower that we can't kill. Gives me daydreams of ripping it all out and installing a big soaker tub.

If you go down the hall past the bathroom, there's a cool built-in linen cabinet on the left and Nico's bedroom is straight ahead. Cabinet, Nico's doorway:

All of our furniture is kind of a hodgepodge. The bed in here is half of a bunk set my parents bought used when I was a kid. The other half is in Elliott's room. I don't love them but they were free. My favorite piece in Nico's room is his dresser, which I picked out at Goodwill in college and used until we moved into the house. I loved it so much that I literally sat on it while my dad went up front and paid for it so that no one else could buy it. MB has always disliked it, so I sent it to be the baby dresser and started using another one for myself when we moved.

Our room is next to Nico's. The master bedroom is stupidly huge. We have a queen bed and a giant crib in there and still have space for a half-court basketball game. I actually wish the builder had given some of the space to the third bedroom because poor Elliott's room is disproportionately small. When we have all that money to spend, I'm going to see if I can find a creative contractor who can move the wall two or three feet in and give E a bit more space. The ceiling is wallpapered. (So was Elliott's ceiling and so are the ceilings in the kitchen and half bath. Former owners LOVED wallpaper.) And don't you love our classy top sheet? The dog sleeps on the bed all day and I don't want his hair getting all over the bedding. The brown dresser in the room is mine. It belonged to one of my great aunts. I might have to add a photo of my nightstand. It's the same light green as Nico's dresser (which is why I loved Nico's dresser on sight) and it was the first piece of furniture I ever picked out for myself. My parents took me to the furniture store when I was about four years old and I can remember seeing the little chest on a dolly being wheeled out to my dad's truck. If we ever buy nice matching nightstands for our bedroom I'm keeping my green one, too.

Finally we come to Elliott's room. MB has vowed never again to paint a two-toned room. We decided to leave the twin bed set up when we converted this from the guest room to the nursery. Good thing, too, because I slept in there with Elliott for his first ten weeks and still sometimes end up in there. My favorite thing in the room is his custom nursery art above the dresser, made by a girl I used to work with…you can't really tell, but it's actually hand-painted pieces assembled together in a sort of collage on a watercolor background. It's exactly what I wanted as soon as I found out I was having another boy. (She is available for commission work, so let me know if you'd like her info. She's crazy talented and super nice!)

So that's our house! It definitely has some challenges but overall I really like it. It's a solid place that has some character and charm without being a total fixer-upper. It may end up being the only home we ever own since we opted not to do the starter home thing. Time will tell, I guess!

Slide

The weather was amazing on Sunday and we were all a little cabin-fevery, so I walked the kids down the street to the little playground on the corner. I parked the baby in the shade in his stroller and pushed Nico in the swing for a little while, then retreated to the shade myself. Nico had brought along his lovey, the blankie formerly known as Bee and now usually called Tiny. "Tiny loves to slide!" he informed me, and then he climbed right up the little slide and went right down. Like hey, no big thing, just going down a slide as if I haven't been too nervous to try it until this very moment! And then I offered to go on the bigger slide with him and he went ahead of me and right on down. I think he meant to wait for me at the top and slid down by accident, but once that happened he was set. I didn't put this on a summer goal checklist or anything, but it's pretty rad. As I've said before, Nico is not a physically daring child, so any new display of playground bravery is kind of a big deal.

And then we got home and I turned around to find that the baby had hilariously thuggified his little ball cap all by himself. Oh, kids. Bringing the awesome, one step at a time.

Reconnect

I had some errands to run today and even though I kind of wanted to go by myself for speed's sake, I offered to take one or both kids with me. MB said he'd keep one and I could take one, and he wasn't picky about which. It turned out Elliott was asleep when I started to get ready to go, so we offered Nico the chance to go with me. That ended up being the best thing that could've possibly happened. I realized somewhere along the way that other than his ill-fated swimming lessons, Nico and I haven't really hung out, just the two of us, in a very long time. I won't say he's neglected and he has taken the transition from only to oldest child in stride quite well, but hanging out, just me and my little dude without baby brother along, that's a rarity these days. We started at Old Navy because I had a coupon and wanted to buy a few baby gifts. I made Nico's day by buying him a pair of orange socks and he made mine by chilling patiently in his stroller while I shopped, by agreeing to wear the new sun hat I picked out for him, and by actually trying on two pairs of pants. The cashiers were handing out balloons on sticks and Nico proudly carried his yellow balloon out of the store. "I'm making you yellow, Mommy!" he announced, peering at me through the balloon once we were back in the car.

We had lunch at Panera, probably Nico's favorite restaurant, and he behaved beautifully and ate his whole lunch, even though I didn't bring a kid-sized fork or a sippy cup for him to use. We stopped at Target to buy diapers and Nico did not throw a fit when I explained that it wasn't a buying day for toys. He asked to see the toys, but accepted that we were just going to look at them in the aisle and not take one home. We ended our errands at the grocery store, where he helped push the cart and insisted on putting items into it for me. "What happens if I give Daddy his food when we get home?" he asked. "Will that make him happy? Will that make him smile if I give him his food?" I told him yes, of course.

It's true that three and a half is frustrating, maddening, challenging. But it's also inquisitive, funny, and downright wonderful. It was so nice to be reminded.

And so it goes

So, hey! Summer! I can't go into great detail, obviously, but my supervisor at work quit right before our first of three summer camps started. The leaving wasn't entirely unexpected, but the timing was and I suddenly found myself on the hook for planning and running three weeks of day camp instead of one. Two are done (and went really well) and one is planned out and starting tomorrow. One more week! Let's do this thing! Anyhoodle, it's gone about as well as possible considering the complete lack of lead time, but it has seriously eaten my brain. Then after work there's the kids and whatever needs to be done at the house and washing at least half of this by hand (or all of it every other day)...so by the end of all that, I'm just done.

I've also been reading actual books again, which I didn't realize I missed so much until I started doing it again. I've read and enjoyed Cinder by Marissa Meyer, A Curse as Dark as Gold by Elizabeth C Bunce, Hidden America by Jeanne Marie Laskas, The Book of a Thousand Days by Shannon Hale, and The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman. There might've been another one in there somewhere. I also went to Nashville on July 10 and saw Neil Gaiman on his book tour. It was seriously incredible. You wouldn't really read his books and think of him as a funny guy, but he is so funny. He read from the new book (which I had already read and really liked), answered pre-collected questions from the audience, read from another new book, and then signed for all 1700 people in attendance. The signing was kind of the least cool part of the whole thing just because there were so many people that he literally just had to sign the books and move on, but I am glad we stayed. We were only allowed to have one thing signed other than the new book so I had him sign my copy of Odd and the Frost Giants to both Nico and Elliott. I guess they'll have to fight over it one day. If I could do it all over again, I'd stay overnight in Nashville instead of making the drive back afterward so late at night, but otherwise, no complaints. It was a fantastically cool experience. Here's part of the reading that someone posted online:



The boys are awesome, awesome. Elliott charted in the 90th percentile for weight at his three-month well baby visit and was off the chart for height (17 lbs 11 oz and 28" tall). He's SO big, basically the size of some people's one-year-olds. He's still the happiest and most sunshiney baby on Earth. He can roll back to front and then eventually gets mad that he's stuck on his tummy. He's grabbing toys with purpose and putting them into his mouth. He has also figured out how to bounce his own bouncy chair and will do so with great enthusiasm.





Nico seems to have shot up several inches just in the past few weeks. His ankles catch serious breeze in pajamas that have fit him forever and (sadly) in his very favorite bright orange pants. The other day MB let him wear his orange long-sleeved car shirt, the one he wore on his first day of preschool in January, and the sleeves were a good two to three inches too short. He still constantly asks me "what happens if" and the scenarios are getting more complex and more fun to hear. The other day he asked me, "What happens if I was the grownup and you were the kid? What happens if I put you in the car and buckle you in and then I buckle me in and I start the engine?" He has finally started building with Duplo blocks and is really good at assembling cars from the pictures in a kids' K'Nex set he got for his birthday. He's still stubborn and resistant to change and I'm still feeling a little sulky over the swimming lesson debacle, but for the most part Nico is pretty great.

I took both boys to a reptile encounter yesterday and then to the children's museum. It was the first time Elliott has shown any interest in the goings-on, and when I put him on my lap in front of the Duplo table he was very keen on getting his hands on the blocks. Nico was very sweet and brought him a little pile to play with before turning his attention to building and embellishing his own car. (This reminds me of the other day when he built a very elaborate vehicle with very obvious and deliberate wings. "Oh, look! You built a plane!" one of us exclaimed. Witheringly, Nico said, "It's not a plane. It's a flying truck." OBVIOUSLY, geez.) Eventually Elliott fell asleep, exhausted by the intense workout of flailing excitedly at blocks, and Nico and I puttered the rest of the afternoon away. I didn't get a single thing done at the house, and I don't regret it one bit.

This happened the other night and it made my heart hurt with happiness:

And look! Look! Finally a photo proving that my bald baby does actually have a tiny bit of hair growing in...I'm not sure how I feel about how much he looks like a non-baby kid in this one, though.

I hope everyone is having a nice summer...hopefully it won't be autumn before I'm back here again.



Reading:  Stuff: Compulsive Hoarding and the Meaning of Things by Randy O Frost and Gail Steketee

Playing:  the Brave soundtrack

This must be immortalized

My day did not start out fantastically. I woke up at 8:00 to Nico standing by the bed and had to haul ass to pump, get us all dressed, and make it to the pediatrician's office by 9:00. And then the nurse looked at us and said, "You realize you're an hour early, right?" Best of all, I called and confirmed this appointment last week AND had it in my phone calendar at 10:00. Once the appointment was over we rushed to Nico's community playgroup, only to walk in just as they were singing the goodbye song. We did receive an invitation for a play date via text before arriving at playgroup, so that helped redeem Nico's day a little bit.

Toward the end of the playdate Nico was being bratty and refusing to eat the yogurt he had requested over and over. I told him fine, I'll eat it. When he saw me take a bite, he ran over to his chair and somewhat frantically demanded I stop eating his yogurt.

"What happens if I take the yogurt away from you?" he asked earnestly. "What happens if I take the yogurt out of your mouth and I put it in my mouth and it goes down to my tummy?" I couldn't help it, I said, "Then I win." (He ate the rest of the yogurt, so I won anyway.)

Despite this episode of slight toddler assholery, Nico was pretty good overall today and magnificent at dinner tonight. We needed to go grocery shopping and didn't want to shop hungry, so we took the kids and went out to eat. Both children were nothing short of stellar, so if you need any ponies they'll all be in my backyard.

Elliott only fussed a little and that was after he spit up and soaked the front of his shirt. Nico nearly ate his entire grilled cheese sandwich as well as his applesauce. Best of all, he was well-behaved and polite through the whole meal. Few things make me want to high-five MB and do a victory dance more than when Nico says please and thank you in proper context with no prompting from an adult. And at one point he looked at me and said, "Mommy, how is your food?" Like a real little person or something!

I'm sure by admitting all this in public I'm dooming myself to a day of disastrous tantrums tomorrow, but I'm taking the risk. And oh, you guys...Elliott had to get three shots at his well baby visit this morning and Nico held his hand. Today being a parent was awesome.


(Yesterday at the zoo. I finally let him ride the tram and he was SO happy.)

three and a half

Nico is coming up on three and a half and it may be the death of me. He's still sweet and sunny most of the time but he's SO strong-willed. I suspect it'll serve him well later in life, but for now he's mostly just busting my balls all day long. His potty-training is going pretty great, except for when he flat-out refuses to go. We've got him in swimming lessons yet again and he's messing around at every lesson, refusing to practice skills that he has been working on for months, goofing off, splashing around and telling the teacher no when she asks him to try things. It's so bad that I texted MB from the pool Tuesday night and told him that unless Nico drastically improves in the next two lessons, I'm going to skip signing him up for the next session. Otherwise I might as well start lighting $10 bills on fire, because he'll learn about as much from that as he is at the pool right now.

Everything I ask him to do (or not do) turns into a string of whys or the what-happens game. Example:

Me:  Please put your toys away.

Nico:  What happens if I don't?

Me:  If you don't pick them up, I'll put them in time-out.

Nico:  What happens if I get them out of time-out?

Me:  I'll take them away from you.

Nico:  What happens if I take them away from you and then I run away? What happens if I run away and I go in my playroom and you can't find me?

And so on, on just about any topic you can imagine. It's kind of awesome that he's thinking so much about stuff, that he's working stuff out, but damn, kid. Sometimes I just want you to pick up your toys.

I also hope it's normal for kids his age to not stop moving or talking, ever, unless they're asleep. Yesterday evening he trotted around the living room / dining room / kitchen / foyer circle for ten minutes straight saying "Baby! Baby! Baby!" Over and over. For ten minutes. When I finally cracked and demanded that he stop, he paused momentarily, then resumed his laps while chanting, "Mommy's holding the baby. Mommy's holding the baby."

But after I put the baby down on the couch, Nico climbed up beside him to visit. I don't think he actually ever stopped talking. "Look at this baby. I love this baby! He's so little. He's covered in little. He's little all over. Why is he little? Hi! Hi, Elliott! I think he said hi back to me. Hi, baby baby baby. Hi, baby!"

He's also reciting in their entirety two storybooks we've read to him fewer than a dozen times. He seems to be enjoying his five-week Kindermusik class. He constantly negotiates to get coins to put in his piggy bank. He asks me how old I am and then says, "Mama, you're so pretty!" Last night I put Elliott on the glider chair with his little stuffed fox to take his four month photo and Nico kept bringing more animals to set beside the baby. "Now you won't be scared while you're sleeping!" he told his brother. "You won't be scared when the dream ends because you'll have all your friends."

So in a year when I come here to post about how four and a half is killing me (just like I did for two and a half), maybe this post will give me hope that he'll be pretty awesome even while he's utterly exhausting.

By the numbers

Butts, by the numbers

2: hours it took from starting my sandwich to sitting down and eating it, due to interruptions from my children and their butts

2: baby outfits changed due to blowouts

1: bed changed due to toddler nap accident

3: children who screamed through butt-related bathing (Nico cried through his own shower and then hollered through Elliott's bath because he wanted me to cut the tag out of the pajamas he's worn a dozen times with no complaints.)

3: loads of laundry due to spread-out timing of butt activity

$140: amount we spent on fabric treatment and warranties for the couch we bought yesterday. Well spent, I'm guessing.

1: CDP I'm going to open tonight. I feel that I'm exercising remarkable restraint.


They are pretty cute, though.

Big

My Nico has always been a bit of a cautious child, resistant to change. He gets a lot of it from me, I'm sure, and I've always tried to be patient with him because I remember how upsetting it can be to be asked to deviate from routine. And when he does try something new or step outside his comfort zone, it's all the sweeter for knowing it was hard but he did it anyway. I suspect other parents probably think I'm crazy or a coddler if they notice things like me praising Nico for trying out a toddler slide so small that his feet nearly touched the ground from the top, but maybe not. Maybe they see the pride in his face at these moments and realize that some of these small things are a big deal.




Nico has had two different pairs of little girl buddies for over a year now. We get together about once a month for a playdate, and the girls have been playing together for at least most of the year. Nico usually plays beside the girls, or across the room from the girls, but only very recently has started to play with the girls. I always worry a little bit about him as a somewhat cautious only child who doesn't go to daycare, so seeing him actually play with other kids is very encouraging. We had several friends with kids at our Memorial Day cookout and toward the end of the evening, three of the girl buddies were playing a game with our little wading pool. They'd run to the pool, jump into it, sit quietly for about 30 seconds, then leap out and run away. At some point I noticed Nico nearby, watching them intently. Then he very carefully removed his crocs and peeled off his socks. After that he had to work up the nerve to walk across the grass barefoot. Once he made it poolside, the girls tried and tried to convince him to get in, but he wasn't sure. Finally, finally, he stepped into the water.



When I was pregnant with Elliott, we gently tried suggesting to Nico that he'd be a big boy now, a big brother. He emphatically informed us he didn't want to be a big boy. One day he shouted "I don't want to be a big brother! No!" When I asked him why not, he said, "I'm not big! I'm little!" So we let him be the little boy and told him the baby was the baby boy. When he resisted potty training and wearing big boy underpants, we tried really hard to be patient. Then he went to preschool and he slowly blossomed. He gained confidence and started playing with other kids. He tried new things. He went back to Grandma's last week and is now wearing underpants at least part of every day. He insists upon bringing me the baby's bottle when he needs to eat and working the finger puppet in the baby's bedtime story book. And the other day when I absentmindedly told him, "Come on, baby," he told me, "I'm not a baby. I'm a big boy." I won't tell him he's still kind of my baby, because he is a big boy. He is, and I'm so proud.





Reading:  Hidden America by Jeanne Marie Laskas

Playing:  Babel by Mumford & Sons