you might ask, why is your one and a half year old up three times before 10:15 at night, and i will tell you, this is just how our kids are. this is how william did things too. i don't know exactly when he began mostly sleeping through the night, but it was probably not before age two. if memory serves and if history is to repeat itself, i'm pretty sure we have some exciting nights ahead of us before our house starts looking like the second half of an ambien commercial. i'm okay with this. i'm sure we could have done things differently. learned from our experience with william. but honestly, i probably wouldn't change anything if we had a third child. and that is why we're not.
house news: i bought more vinegar and more rags at the grocery store today. i didn't tell you in the last post, but greg painted most of the big room plus two kitchen walls yesterday. it's already a nice improvement.
i cleaned the 'dining room' today. aside from a large grease stain on the wood floor, which i have no idea how to fix other than by throwing a rug over it, it cleaned up alright, and tomorrow hopefully, it will be painted.
and the brass candelabra chandelier taken down...
as i was washing down the walls today, somewhere around the third panel of drywall, something happened... a feeling of goodwill toward the house. maybe it was the spiders hanging out on that section of the wall. maybe it was just the settling in to the fact that i will probably be cleaning, and thereby, getting to know, every inch of this house before i'm satisfied to live in it. i don't know what exactly, but i sort of started to like the place. like seeing past the runny nose of a kid (someone else's) to whatever it is that makes that kid lovable.
grease stains, stray wires, 1970 summer cottage smell, council of white plastic lawn chairs out back...
yep... that's our lovable, snot-nosed house. officially, today.
5 comments:
Wonderful, wonderful post.I got all emotional reading it. Great grab at the reader!
As to kids -- well now. Two? You got through the night without issues at age two? And I suppose you don't sit at the side of the bed and sing the same song over and over to effectuate sleep when one wakes up? All I can say is that I did things worse, or at least with poorer parent friendly outcomes. Try five (yrs., not kids).
Five. Oy! For us, not bedside singing, no. To get William to sleep-- sometimes, yes. Last night, yes. Verse after verse of 'Rockabye Baby' with some key changes he's made, to turn it into a 'big boy' song. He will wake up about 50% of nights and Greg will go in and snuggle with him and he'll go right back to sleep 98% of the time. Henry is up 100% of nights and in our bed once we're asleep. Before that, it's walking with him or nursing him back to sleep.
I am following your house rehab and cleaning, and it occurs to me you are in just the right place to find a solution (no pun) to your grease/oil on a wood floor. I have some friends here in Madison who have used Woodcare Denmark, or WOCA Denmark, on their wood floors. I am hoping to use it next spring to clean and refinish my pine floors. It is a Danish product, available here in Minnesota and by mail, and there is a good FAQ at www.woca.dk. They make a pretty good cleaner, their agent here tells me, and maybe you can get a small amount.
And the table on your veranda looks interesting. Good luck with getting little boys to sleep. I made the mistake of playing a harmonica one night to get one to doze off . . .
Maybe I shouldn't say this without consulting Christie first, but - every time we've moved, the 'new' place has never felt like ours until we've given it a thorough cleaning. There's just something about removing the last bit of the old tenant that helps you settle in and really take ownership of the place.
~giraffrey
George H.-- your and Nina's comment about getting kiddos to sleep is a good reminder that probably most parents go through what we're going through now. And the harmonica is just an illustration of some of the hopeless things we'll try. The table-- yes, it almost seems like you should be able to cook your food in the center of it, but if that's true, we haven't figured out how to open up the grate in the middle.
Giraffrey-- can't you guys come over here and do some cleaning for us? We'll watch Alligator for you!
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