Virtual Tour of the Renovated House

Are you ready for a virtual tour of our newly renovated house? You are?!

This is the view of the living room from the front door. We used the couch to split the living room in half so that Q can have a play area and so S can have an alcove for his computer and camera stuff.

Here is his alcove:

The rest of the upstairs is unchanged, so you won't see it in the post. But as we look downstairs, you'll notice that the stairs are now linoleum instead of carpet. YAY, because I HATE vacuuming stairs. In fact, there is now no more carpet in this house. It makes things louder, but also easier to clean.

On the stair landing, you glance back and see the mud room, which also got new flooring (while it wasn't directly affected by the flood, its floor got contaminated and scuffed up by all the workmen going back and forth while they were tearing out the insides of the basement).

And here is the view of the rest of the stairs (before and after):

Now we come to an exceedingly blurry picture of our brand new storage space. We didn't know this storage space existed until they tore out the drywall and found it. The previous owners (who renovated the house right before we bought it) did a sort of slap-together job. They had thrown a bunch of trash in this space--hangers, old pictures and manuals, an ancient stereo--and just drywalled over it. So we had our guys fix it up so it was actually usable.

 

You can't really tell from this picture, but it goes pretty far back. And it's slightly spooky. (Before and after.)

Here is the laundry room, complete with a new washer and dryer (before and after):

And here is our bedroom, with an unmade bed and a fat cat. The window has been made taller so that the basement isn't a death trap in the case of a fire. It also lets in quite a bit more light and makes the whole room feel less gloomy. I'm not going to show you the whole bedroom because it's slightly disorganized. (Before and after.)

 And here is the downstairs bathroom! We still need to get an actual mirror installed (we're waiting for the insurance on that one), but we have lovely new floors and a lovely new vanity. (Before and after--in the before picture, the bathroom is on the right.)

Oh, and we have a toilet now instead of a shower! Because having a bathroom with a sink and shower is exceedingly stupid! That bit of unfinished floor is where our new sewer trap is (paid for by the city), and it can be closed in the event of a flood to prevent sewer backup. We're gonna get a little door or something put over it. 

So there you have it! We're waiting on the reno company to come back with another quote for the last bit of work to be done (they seem to have forgotten that we exist, though), and then it's another battle with the insurance to pay for it. But we're 99% of the way there! And so far, we really love all the changes that have been made.

Settling In

We've been back in our house for a few weeks now, and we have settled into a comfortable routine. The cats are beyond ecstatic to be in the company of humans again and have taken to sleeping on our bed constantly and causing me terrible allergies at night. I have sufficiently baby-proofed the upstairs against the tiny marauder who now terrorizes its halls on two legs.

The house has a few details that I have yet to iron out--such as there being a bunch of empty picture frames on the wall in the kitchen and the fact that there is not one working clock in the whole place. I'm half-hoping that people will just chalk up these trivialities to me being "quirky," so that I won't actually have to attend to them.

But not everything has been sunshine and unicorns. I've been struggling with some heavy anxiety for about a month now. My anxiety comes and goes, occasionally, but it has been years since it has stuck around with such longevity. There's no obvious cause for it, but of course I worry that it's a symptom of some terrible physical malady that I have not yet discovered. I try not to think about it, but I keep getting the nagging feeling that my body is falling apart before I even hit 30. Juvenile diabetes, hypothyroidism, anxiety, and bad knees... in my 20s? What possibly awaits me at age 50? Will I even get there? Whenever I have a symptom, I find myself scurrying around trying to figure out which of my illnesses to attribute it to. Today I thought I was about to have a panic attack, only to discover that I had low blood sugar that was causing me to shake and feel jittery.

For this reason, my mood has been a little unpredictable. On good days, I marvel at the resourcefulness of the human body and of modern medicine that has granted me this extra time I wouldn't have otherwise had. I feel that I can struggle on and maintain good blood sugars and eat healthily and model healthy behavior and lead a productive life. I think that I can conquer my anxiety on my own--by altering my thought processes or by deep breathing or by exercising, cutting down my caffeine, and drinking water. But on bad days, I struggle to leave the house because I feel disoriented when I drive around town--I would almost compare it to slight vertigo, except that I've never actually experienced vertigo. I panic that I am killing myself with my unhappy habits and despair that even if I put hours upon hours into my diabetes and maintain perfect blood sugars, that will ONLY put me up to square one, where everyone else is already starting automatically with no effort at all. It's disheartening how easily my outlook switches back and forth, these days.

And now, because this entry has taken sort of a self-pitying turn, I'll switch things back to positive. And of course positive is going to involve Q. She seems to have briefly set aside her whiny, defiant phase and is now soaking up all the words she can, largely through books. And I totally don't take the books I'm tired of and hide them from her, because that would be terrible. The other day at Nanners' and Grumpers', she pointed to the TV and said, "Hockey!" just as a news story about a hockey game came on the screen. I didn't even know she knew that word. I have taken advantage of her propensity to repeat everything in order to teach her that the fox says, "Hotty ho." She's also been learning a little bit about cleaning up, and I plan to get her a toy broom soon because as soon as I bust out the regular broom, she runs up holding out her hands saying, "Baby! Baby!" because she wants to sweep.

Sometimes I see the adventures of my peers on Facebook--usually single people--off in foreign countries, attending concerts, and seeing the world. And I wonder maybe if my life is less fulfilling because I stay in one place and do mostly the same things. But honestly, I really love it. Being a wife and mother has been the ultimate adventure.

Baby Essentials and Non-essentials

There's a mango ripening on the kitchen windowsill. The floor is newly mopped, the laundry is overflowing in the hamper, and this place feels like home. It also feels a little bit like I'm living in my own home for the first time. The cats are reclining on every comfortable piece of furniture they can find, remarking it with tufts of fur like symbolic cat flags stuck in the moon. Q runs back and forth down the hallway and climbs up on the kitchen table, climbs up on the ottoman to dig into her toy box, and climbs over the back of the couch to get to Daddy's computer alcove. There's a massive dark blue Rubbermaid box sitting at the top of the stairs that is filled with all the things that I'm saving from Q's first year of life.

That got me thinking about the trial and error of baby paraphernalia acquisition. I bought a LOT of things to cope with having a baby, and a large number of them ended up being fairly useless. Some of the ones that I expected not to be used very much, however, became essential. And so, as I like to do, I started making a mental list. I would like to share this list with you (please note, this is only what worked for us--everyone's list is probably a little different).


Essentials:

1. Changing table. I heard a lot of people say to skip the changing table. I had a free one at my disposal, so I ignored that advice and set up shop. And it's great. My knees aged about 50 years during my pregnancy and subsequent delivery, so changing Q on the floor wasn't really an option. I could've changed her on the bed, but when I think of how often she peed and pooped on her changing pad those first few months, I dismiss that idea. Plus, it doubles as a shelf to hold tons of other baby stuff!

2. Velcro swaddling blanket. I wish I'd found these earlier in her life. I wrestled her into swaddling blankets for several months before I discovered these gems. You just velcro them in, and voila! No escape! It's basically a straightjacket for babies. And babies are batcrap crazy, so they certainly need straightjackets.

3. Lots and lots of receiving blankets. I mean dozens. That kid spit up with an alarming frequency. We went through several receiving blankets per day. I washed all her laundry with vinegar so that it wouldn't smell sour.

4. A sense of humor. Having a little baby wasn't really my cup of tea. I loved her, but caring for a tiny, fragile, crying human being wouldn't be listed in my personal résumé under "skills". I don't like holding sleeping babies because my arms and back get tired and sore and I become incurably bored. Between her being a semi-difficult baby and my own health problems and resulting mood swings, a sense of humor became imperative for me to make it through day-to-day.


Non-essentials:

1. Baby swing. Man, she hated that thing. I think some babies love them, but I quickly abandoned the baby swing. But I didn't abandon it with the baby IN it, because that would be wrong.

2. Nursing cover. I used these occasionally, but they are really rather unwieldy things. I felt that I drew more attention to myself fumbling under the cover and trying to see to get her latched than if I had just nursed without one. I was able to nurse discreetly by wearing a loose tank-top under my shirt so that I could pull my shirt up and tank-top down, exposing the smallest possible amount of boob. Yes, I said boob. Does that offend you? Boob.

3. Baby shoes. DO NOT GET BABY SHOES. I DON'T CARE HOW ADORABLE THEY ARE. Babies do NOT keep shoes on. Nor do they need shoes, because they don't walk. Socks. Buy lots of warm, fuzzy socks. When I think of all the money wasted on baby shoes that I could've been wasting on baby dresses, I weep bitterly.

4. Anything hippie. We tried all manner of cloth diapers, and they all leaked (yes, I washed them properly and didn't use dryer sheets!). I made her baby food for a while until I realized, "You know, I can just open jars of this stuff in about 1/100th of the time." I was an adamant baby-wearer for about 10 seconds until my back started to kill me. Some mamas aren't meant to be hippie mamas. And that mama is me. I still hold onto a sliver of hippieness by keeping Q in a rear-facing car seat, rarely feeding her sweets, and not allowing her to watch any TV. I had to figure out which things I believed would truly make a difference in her long-term development, and cloth diapers and homemade baby food weren't among them.

So there you have it! My list of essentials and non-essentials. Seriously, though, everyone's lists are different. I know some moms who swear by their baby swings.