The Floors Before and After

Bedroom Floor Before

During ...

After (One)

After (Two)

Nursery Before

During ...

After (One)

After (Two)

Also, today I made muffins and they turned out. This is big.

Seriously, We Need Door Knobs

Last night I locked myself in the bedroom by accident. In an effort to keep our tiny furry ones from my cereal and strawberries and milk I pulled the door closed behind me. For the first time ever it closed all the way. I thought "well isn't that great" (since it always stuck before) until I realized there was now no way to get out. I pushed and banged and eventually found the screwdriver in the sewing kit and took off all the metal parts I had access to. Still stuck.

I love old homes (and all their quirks) so much that I've stopped noticing things like missing door knobs. Our bedroom door has no door knob only a hole where once a door knob sat. There's probably a hand full of other doors in the house just like this that I've also never noticed since I've never been locked on one side of them.

R had fallen asleep downstairs watching a documentary about swords (yes swords) and I was pretty sure there was no way to wake him. I tried to call him on Skype (having my laptop) and him being near his computer - no good. I tried stomping a tiny bit but with the floors being so lovely and so new it was hard to make myself make any real ruckus. So I sent him an e-mail hoping he'd see it and rescue me before leaving for work:

SUBJECT: Dude - I am locked in the bedroom ...

BODY: No laughing! I shut the door last night when I went to bed and now it won't open. I tried taking off the metal piece from the inside but nope. I tried pushing really hard and that didn't work either.

Can you get me out before you go to work? Seriously, we need door knobs.

And then I went to bed - hoping and praying that just for tonight the 1am and 3:45am pees would bother someone else. Nope. When I woke up at 1am with a little urge I managed to fall back asleep but only until 2:40am.

New Plan: call my cell phone from the house phone 17 times until R wakes up and thinks "who the eff is calling at this time" and then hoooppefully checks the number and is intrigued by the fact that I am technically calling me. It worked. I tried not to laugh as I explained the situation over our phones. Three minutes later I was out and after a quick hug of immense gratitude and relief I was down the stairs on my way to further relief.

I think door knobs would qualify for the home renovation tax credit, no?

Ex-ercise

I went for a walk today since it is January 27th and 6 degrees outside and this is not only wild but worth celebrating with some extended outsideness. That (six degrees in near-February) is the good news. The bad - my legs hurt by the time I got to the bottom of the hill (yes bottom not top). Eek! Apparently exertion and I have been on a break.

My Summers Sanders Prenatal Workout DVD arrived a few days ago in the mail. I read quite a lot about it online and 26 of its 27 amazon reviews were bustling with affection. Tomorrow morning for sure. I am still tired most evenings so I know there is no point in my planning to voluntarily jump around at 7 o'clock at night. And for the first time in my life (a begrudging 10am riser by nature) I have wisps of energy in the mornings. I had planned this week to start going to the gym in the mornings but (no surprise) that didn't pan out so well. I couldn't sleep Sunday night or Monday night and after getting some much needed coma-like sleep last night I didn't even recognize the sound of my alarm clock when it off. I am still convinced that I can handle exercise in the morning (abnormal sleep patterns notwithstanding). I am less convinced that I can handle a whole bunch of people (gym people) before a shower, coffee, two glasses of apple juice, granola, and some contemplation. DVD = exercise - other exercisers = wicked.

Charlie (Charles) Savino Calabrese

For a boy ...

I can't believe how right it feels

How Do You Say Moo In Italian?

R and I were talking (dreaming) on the weekend of spending a year in Italy with you after you arrive. Maybe a year or two after to give us some time to get the basics (your sleeping and eating) down. It's something we'd love to do. Sure vacations are cool but imagine getting to live somewhere new and imagine the food! We've yet to figure out what we'll do to pay for said food - maybe farm. You haven't met any animals yet but I am sure you will love them. Or maybe teach which would mean living in a really rural (and likely southern but definitely beautiful) part of the county. You keep growing and we'll keep planning.

In other weekend news - this was a super productive one. The first one in which the contents of our upstairs were not puked all over the living room. I think this return of things to their proper floors was a catalyst to getting all those other things done that I had been putting off. For the month of January, it was like "everything is so chaotic why shouldn't I just lie on the bed (in the living room) and watch marathon HGTV? I can't find any clean socks anyways so there's no point thinking about leaving the house".

With clean socks and an eager mind I painted the nursery!

I've learned since learning of you that its best if I now approach things in increments. Whereas in the past I would have cleaned the room, painted the ceilings, taped the ceiling lines and then painted the walls in a single afternoon (thank you quick-drying paint) each of these elements now needs its own day (and each also needs to be preceded or followed by a nap). So Thursday finished cleaning, Friday painted the ceilings and trim, Saturday taped and then painted the walls (first coat) and Sunday second coat on the walls. It's Tuesday now and the tape still needs to come off but otherwise it looks great. So fresh! With new floors, a bright white ceiling and a gardeny green all around its like a whole new room.

I was thinking while painting that my anxiety about the nursery is a bit like my anxiety about being your mom (which I try to push out of my thoughts as much as possible - not being your mom just the anxiety). With both I felt/feel like I have no idea what I am doing - for example - how do you design a nursery and how do I teach you to love all living things and not to eat what you find on the ground? The good news after the weekend is that once I jumped into nursery design I emerged in tact on the other side with a not-so-bad-looking baby abode. Here's hoping that being your mom is a little like that (but maybe with just a tiny bit less green under my fingernails).

Thank You Freecycle Sharon

Last night, after a long day and a long (but good) board meeting, I took a drive outside the "city" to pick up three lovingly packed bags of children's books. A few days ago there had been a post about them on Freecycle and I became their lucky new owner. I got them home and spread them across the kitchen table and proceeded to check in on the recent adventures of Ernie and Elmo and the Berenstain Bears. The thirty or so books were a perfect blend of reading levels from preschool to pre-teen.

R read out loud from a big book called Early Man (circa 1961) searching ever so carefully for inaccuracies or theories which had since been proven false. Much to our surprise (other than the assumption that man = human) there were none. This almost inspired us to pen the publisher a little note of congratulations - especially for their (liberal for the time) treatment of different ethnicities.

Tonight I'll add them to Frankie's room along with the sweet little boots my mom picked up from the outdoor market, the coming-home-from-the-hospital sweater she knit, and the CD of local lullabies from R's parents. I will try not to get too lost imaging little Frankie feet in those little Frankie boots but I'm not making any promises.

That's 30 Square Feet A Day

Our floors are finished. 480 square feet in 16 days (which really worked out to seven flooring days including New Years). They are more beautiful than I had imagined.

When we moved in the floors in the two bedrooms were plank wood. Which sounds nice except all the planks were different sizes, spaced differently and had been painted many times. They were impossible to keep clean (since everything you swept and the mop water just got stuck between the boards) and a new colour was revealed every time something was dragged across them. The previous owners hadn't even bothered to move their bed or dresser for the most recent painting hence the two shades of brown and our very strategically place rugs. Oh and the nails that refused to stay nailed in which was death to our socks.

I told R a few months ago that we should redo them and he talked me out of it since we don't plan to stay in this house for too long but keep it to rent it out to tenants (we already rent out an apartment on the first floor). Given that we wouldn't be staying in it and wouldn't be selling it we'd never really recoup the cost of new flooring. I was convinced (but mostly by the promise that when we had our real house I could line the floors with as much refurbished barn wood as I wanted).

Mmm ...

Then I headed home for Christmas and R rescinded. I think my initial "but how is Frankie Moon supposed to crawl across the floors without getting all cut up on poky rusty nails" had an effect.

Nine trips to Home Depot later and with the entire contents of the upstairs piled precariously around the living room we became flooring masters. We'll not so much we. More like R and his very handy and sweet dad and brother. I wasn't to lift too much or hammer too hard or breath in anything noxious. I was half happy to oblige, as I finished up knitting projects in the dust-free downstairs, and half felt like a big old pile of lazy. But I'm a Gemini so this makes fine sense.

They are done and so beautiful and I am so proud of R. His love of tools and handimaness has grown exponentially since we bought this house (like from zero to a thousand). And he is good at it all - a perfectionist just like his dad (which he would NEVER admit). Is there anything more attractive than a someone who can make things with his hands? Really now.

Next - the painting of the nursery. I've picked the colour after much Home Depot anguish and doubt, but am still really nervous. I don't feel like I have a finished idea at all of what this room should look like.

I know it should be filled with all the people who already love little Frankie Moon so I've gathered pictures of the soon-to-be aunts and uncles and gramas and grampas and can't wait to tell of the stories and smiles captured in each shot. I don't feel like I ever really knew anything about my grandparents. They were around but it was like everyone just assumed I wouldn't find their lives very interesting.

And nature - so important - birdies and trees and cliffs and ocean. And maybe a huge world map. I'd like an old one, an antique one, but fear it might set Frankie back a few years in school - what do you mean there's no USSR? So maybe just an old looking new one. I want it to be filled with all of the beautiful things in the world - all those things that I have always imagined showing to tiny eyes - bugs and animals and distant places and love, love, love.

Little Frankie Moon

So this is my third or maybe fourth blog. I'll keep this one up ... I swear.

This blog is for me and Frankie Moon and a others who stumble across it - possibly before or possibly after Frankie arrives. I'm not settled on Frankie Moon but it works for boys and for girls and is better than "it". And we've run out of cute and vivid vegetable comparisons (like olive and lime and eggplant) in the online pregnancy calendars. When I checked for the 22-week update it was "your baby now measures the size of a cereal box". Hmm.

We've talked about a long list of names and forgot half of them. I do think R likes Frankie Moon - he keeps trying to pitch it as having relevance to both our families: his great-uncle was named Frankie and my Dad's middle names is Francis. I think it's a bit of a stretch and that he likes its rock star qualities.

Deciding not to find how Frankie will pee has made choosing names a bit more tricky - or made committing to one harder anyways. Its like there's always an unknown and we have to have at least two names picked so why not have ten picked and just decide later when we really have to. I hate committing to things.

R and I live on a beautiful island. It's not tropical but it is vast and breathtaking and steeped in so many interesting histories. I think its the perfect place 95% of the time. I miss my other places when I see pictures of people in dresses with tans - both of which are rare here.

I think after Frankie's born we'll explore this place together - see a new place each week. I didn't grow up here but R did and I still feel (after being here for a bit more than a year) that I have so much to see. I was lucky (in most respects) to have found work soon after arriving and then we bought a house and then there was the news about Frankie and then and then. I've seen some things and seen the most majestic twice - especially when friends and family are here from distant parts. But I'd like to see it all. And show it all to Frankie who I know, after seeing it, will never ever wonder why we moved here.

Back to work of which there is very much today.

E