The Bird is the Word

I think it was somewhere around December 26th, as I spent yet another day painting my house, that this remodel stopped being a grand adventure and became a throbbing headache inseparably mixed with 400 lb Back-Monkey (Tm). Living at my mom's place has been great. More than great. She has been unbelievably accommodating and infinitely helpful with the girls. But a temporary residence is just going to always feel temporary. I am really ready to go home, but home is not ready for me and that has finally started to get to me.

And of course having your pet cat of 13 years die on you does not help. Thanks to those of you who sent condolences. Candy and I got Tigre the very first year we moved in together (1995, you know when dinosaurs still roamed the Earth), so her passing adds a sort of coda to the sense that we have moved into a new stage of life, which is more happily represented by the twins. Sadly, deaths do a better job of making one feel old than births do.

But this post is not a chance to wax philosophic about the inevitable march of time. It is instead another opportunity to bitch about my house!


First the good news: The interior painting is just about complete. We hit the final room -- the front living room -- over the holidays (you know, when the adventure stopped). The front shutters still need a coat of paint and touch-ups are needed nearly everywhere, but that is 1-2 days of work at most. I should take this opportunity once again to thank all those who helped out. I think I shamelessly went through our entire list of friends, so the fact that most of you are still speaking to me after your brief period of indentured servitude is good news indeed.



Most of the house is white -- the color is actually Moonrise, so during the full moon I believe my walls will become transparent. Eat that Wonder Woman! -- but we did manage to hit two spots with colors a bit more extreme. One wall of my office is a deep, brick red and one wall of the kitchen is an electric Lime green. I occasionally have my doubts about the green (it makes ones pupils throb), but in the end it really will only cover a very small area. If several raves accidentally break out in our kitchen we can always repaint it in a day. Please note the shadowy form of Candice as she paints in the Room Beyond the Red Wall, coincidentally the title of my future children's book and/or tasteful NC-17 film.



Also completed: the cabinetry and countertops. This delay was at least partially our fault, as it took something like a month to get the damn cabinets ordered. There was way too much back and forth and indecisiveness on our part. Combine that with Home Depot's inefficient cabinetry ordering system and you have a true Witch's Brew (apologies to Elizabeth and Karen) of procrastination and time wasting. I swear that Kitchens Desk at Home Depot is located somewhere in Dante's Inferno. I'm going to go Eighth Circle, 2nd Bolgia. Look it up, it ain't pretty.



So the cabinets were installed in early December. The counters had to wait for the cabinets and the holidays reared their ugly head, so we finally got them in last week. Absolute black granite in the kitchen, Colonial Gold granite in the bathroom. Sadly I do not presently have a picture to show you, so imagine if you will an infinite plane of stone. Now imagine you are told you need to buy a second infinite plane in order to cover the sides of your kitchen island. We still have a minor issue regarding a crack (I have been assured it is fixable), but otherwise put that in the win column. Except for the fact the final bill for the counters was $4500 more than the original budget and $2000 more than our revised budget after getting a firm quote. Argh, please see sidebar fact #2.



The cabinets for the master bath and kid's room were simple single pieces that we bought along the way. The black master bath cabinet, seen near our truly gorgeous tile wall which you can see in its full glory atop this blog entry, was located via Ebay. We did not actually buy it on Ebay, but Candice found one on Ebay that was almost what we wanted. We called them up and they said we could have exactly what we wanted for cheap if I would drive to East Timor to pick it up. In the end it may not have been quite the deal it seemed at the time, as I have not been thrilled with the craftmanship. For instance, one side is lightly warped. The girl's cabinets are IKEA, which have great craftmanship: namely me. This is where I learned I needed a better screwdriver and less IKEA furniture.



We also have all of our new stainless steel appliances, which I have put together into a stunning collage. I call it: Stainless Steel, Stained Soul. Or alternatively:
This is Not A Fan, Stove, Fridge, or Dishwasher.

The deck installation has begun as I type this. Also the final plumbing and electrical should be happening over the next week. So the final piece, the one thing that will keep us from moving home is our giant bookcase wall. This is a two story bookcase that runs upwards next to the stairs, from our bedroom floor to the ceiling of the loft. In addition to its ability to hold books, it keeps you from falling off the loft into the room below, provides a place to anchor a handrail, and comes with a wraparound built-in desk for the loft, which also coincidentally should keep you from falling off the other half of the loft. It is the "not falling" component which is crucial to getting final inspection approved.

ETA for this bookshelf? Still unknown. More details as I know them.



I did achieve one moment of catharsis over the holidays that may just carry me through to the bitter end. Some of my loyal readers may remember that we had some break-in troubles over the summer, with the most notable annoyance being the defacing of my hearth. Having finally gotten to this room I managed to prime over the offending advice to visit the warmth of our southern neighbor. This was highly satisfying. Now if you will bear with me a moment, I will descend to their level in order to deliver the miscreants a final farewell. I'll see the rest of you further below.

Can you Hear This, My Faux-Vandal Friends?





No?







Then Let Me Turn It Up!

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Because of sidebar fact #1, I now have quite a backlog of pictures of the girls. Most of these were taken in the last couple of months of 2007, although I think the sleeping in the jogging stroller may have come from a a couple of months earlier.



I think David Bowie said it best, when he famously stated, "Ch- Ch- Cha- Changes." I can only assume he was talking about early childhood development. The girls will be hitting 15 months in just a couple of days, so it may be about time to check the score card. It was at just over a year that we made the big transition from bottle/breast feeding to cow's milk in sippy cups and solid food at every meal. While we still occasionally break out the baby food because it is so handy for carrying around or when we haven't gone shopping yet, we have cut back on that to a trickle also.



Now they eat just about everything. We try to avoid anything sweetened, fried, or over-salted, but otherwise just about anything is fair game. They have consumed and loved quesadillas, thai food, ravioli, and mongolian BBQ. They would eat bananas at every meal if we allowed it and they are also on a constant lookout for Graham crackers, which have clearly replaced Cheerios (which they still like) as the baby crack of choice.



The girls are running, climbing, dancing, and talking up a storm. Most of the talk is still babble, but they are clearly building up their vocabulary. A recent representative sample would be dog, momma, daddy, 'nana (short for banana), neck, book, box, hi, bye, ball, duck, walk, no, yes, meat, up, down... And many more that do not come to mind immediately. And these are just examples of words they use consistently and in proper context. Kayla, in particular, is becoming an impressive mimic so be careful what you say around the girls, as it might just be repeated back at you.



We are still experimenting with television exposure. For the first 6-9 months of their lives we watched any TV we wanted and the babies were 100% oblivious. Then we started noticing the girls paying attention, so we starting monitoring what we watched. No violent or disturbing content on in the background while the twins were playing. As they became more and more aware of the TV as an entity we basically banned it outright.

Ah, but the flesh is weak.

Banning all TV in our home except for the hours of 10pm to falling asleep wasn't going to hold up. I love my babies, but sometimes all of us need a short break from the constant interaction (this is known as solitary play, or some such, time for your child to interact with the world without you constantly approving or disapproving). Plus sometimes you want to hear news, catch the end of a ball game, watch the latest on your famous uncle, etc. So now we have slipped into trying to keep TV to a minimum. We try to never put on TV for the girls to watch (no Sesame Street yet) and we keep an eye on content. In general it is not on more than 30-45 minutes at a time, long enough to catch a Daily Show or House episode and then back off or on to a music only channel (radio channel, not MTV or its ilk). The number one thing the girls love to do is "read" their books, so I think we have not screwed them up yet. Stay tuned.



I'd say the one area that I wish I could do over is putting the babies to bed. Essentially I think we did way too much soothing to sleep and now we are paying for it, as the twins do not go down easily at all. In our defense, our thinking at the time was that putting twins to bed in the same room was trickier, because if one was crying and not sleeping it would keep the other one up. From a series of recent single room experiments in a hotel room (see a soon-to-be posted blog about the Austin trip), I think there is some validity to that sentiment, but we should have worked out a solution (put them down at slightly different times, maybe?) instead of punting.



I know many other parents who get to bedtime, do a short series of bedtime rituals, and then put the baby in the crib and it more or less goes to sleep. Our babies do not do that and it feels like the bedtime ritual length from start to finish has only gotten worse over the past three months. I believe this is because the walking, jiggling, soothing exercises that worked on little babies do not work so well on an older child, who is starting to sleep like an adult (or at least like a kid), who would rightfully be annoyed if you started shaking them while they were trying to sleep. We also deal with a lot of nighttime wake-ups where the baby can not self-soothe. I think this is common at their age, but I suspect we are a bit worse off because the baby is not used to being awake, alone, and in the dark (there is a bright night light) and going to sleep itself.

So if raising a baby involves 3-month plans, the next three months we need to work on (among other things) getting them to bed easier. We have already made a transition to a more gradual bedtime process, where you get them cuddled up with a book, in their blanket, in a rocking chair, and sing to them (Wheels On The Bus is good). While far from always effective, it feels less forced to me, which I think makes it easier on both us and the baby. It is still time consuming, but until we can work out getting the babies to go to sleep in their own beds, alone, I think it will remain a major task. To truly get them to go down in their own beds may involve a series of many screaming nights, so we need to plan and steel our selves for it like we were going to storm Normandy.

So there is a little insight into the mind of a parent of 15 month-olds. Trying to maximize sleep is still a major component I am afraid to say, although nothing like the early days. Still a lot of hard work, but the positive feedback in the form of baby affection (hugs and kisses and yelps of delight) has been steadily increasing. Now if we could all just move home...

Then we could spend all our time wishing we were still living at my mom's house with its built-in babysitter. Damn grass.

Always greener.