The other day, Nora was in my office chastising me for something in her gibberish language, so I got out the video camera. While I was taping, her mother called her into the living room to put on some sunscreen in preparation for an afternoon trip to the beach, so I walked with her, with a slight detour into the kitchen. The result is a sort of Nora’s-eye-view of our front hallway, kitchen and living room.
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The volume of space in our house defined by the phrase “out of reach of children” is shrinking quickly. While still a couple months from walking on her own, I believe, Nora has greatly improved her in-walker mobility. She can now move forward, backward, and turn with ease. The result is that she can get to just about anywhere where we don’t have a rug, and reach most things in the bottom ninety centimeters of the house. This includes many drawers and cabinets. Yesterday she was with me in the kitchen as I was doing the dishes. She watched intently as I opened a drawer to put a utensil in. Two seconds later she had her hand on the handle and was opening the drawer, pulling things out. We need to install some safety latches, stat! We bought drawer latches the other day, and the woman who sold them to us told us that it was absolutely paramount that the child never sees how to operate the latch, otherwise they’re useless.
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Some years ago, Thelma, a friend of my mother’s, was traveling somewhere in the Midwestern United States and spotted this blanket. It was clearly made to celebrate or advertise a company specializing in bulldozers, backhoes, and other heavy machinery. A quick Google search would lead me to believe that it is probably for Rasmussen Equipment Company. Anyway, Thelma bought it for my mother because it had her last name on it. At some point the blanket was given to me, and I have had it in my possession for many years now. Since we moved into our house, it has been on our sofa, often pulled down on top of the sofa’s occupant(s) on chilly evenings.
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Not counting my office, our house has two bedrooms, one large, and the other freakin’ enormous. Ever since moving in, we’ve been sleeping in the smaller of the two for several reasons, the main ones being the gorgeous view and the fact that it’s exterior, with no neighbors’ balconies nearby. When it became clear that we’d be having a third resident in our house, our irrational greed took over and we both agreed that, “There’s no way we’re giving the baby the biggest room in the house! Over our dead bodies!” Actually the whole house would be hers since she’s the sole heir. So we moved into the bigger bedroom, set up the crib in there with the intention of banishing her to the smaller bedroom when the time came, and we lived like this for eight months. Until…
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Someone broke into our house today when no one was home. The intruder climbed perilously over a wall (six stories up!) separating our balcony from the neighbors’, smashed through the glass of our balcony door, cutting his hand in the process, and climbed into our house. We found glass all over the kitchen floor.
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Nora, my dear, we’ve finally got your bed ready for you when you decide it’s time to enter this bright and chilly world. While you’re in there becoming a Kung Fu master (seriously, I wouldn’t be surprised if you emerged with a ninja mask on), your mother and I are out here getting things as ready as we can for your arrival.
The first blanket you will sleep under in this house was a gift from your Abuela, Marce. It’s got three little bears and some balloons and is suitably adorable and infantile. And soft! I don’t recall things being so soft in my childhood. Science has really come a long way in the field of fabric softness in my lifetime.
Your first crib ornament is a giraffe that clips onto the side of your crib wall. It was a gift from your great aunt, Marga. There’s no doubt that she will be your favorite great aunt, as she seems incapable of curbing her addiction of buying you gifts. I doubt that, later in life, you will be able to recall a visit from her from your childhood when she didn’t have a present for you.
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The first time I heard the phrase "IKEA nesting instinct" was in Edward Norton’s narration of Fight Club. I’d never heard of IKEA, despite living in Scandinavia at the time. When we bought our house in England, almost all the new furniture we bought was from IKEA. Our first load of new flat pack furniture required the use of a rental van. We went to IKEA once or twice when we first moved to Spain, and we haven’t gone back or made any domestic layout changes for years.
So this time I saw IKEA with somewhat fresh eyes. What amazed me the first time, and amazed me again this time, is the sheer efficiency of the whole store. The entire retail is as well designed and consumer-driven as their furniture. Presumably they’ve made some iterative modifications to The IKEA Process over the lifespan of the company, because they’ve really perfected the process of maximizing sales of cheap, not-at-all-ugly furniture in bulk. I’m very impressed. (more…)
Our Christmas tree looks extra lovely this year, in my opinion. I think it’s because I took extra time to separate each branch as much as possible. In past years there was too much haste involved. Growing up in the carpet-dominated United States, I never knew the joy of Christmas tree floor reflections. It’s like having two trees in one!
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I surprised and impressed myself this weekend. September 20th was the three year anniversary of when we bought our house, making this the house Marga and I have lived in together longest. The biggest reparation that our house has needed since well before we bought it is to sand and varnish the outside window frames. All new houses built around here are built with either PVC or aluminum windows, but our house still has the older wooden windows. Several months ago, we replaced our three worst windows with new aluminum ones, but we decided we couldn’t wait any longer to give the remaining wooden windows more protection against the elements. We should have taken before and after pictures, but I didn’t think to do so. The difference is amazing.
I wouldn’t say that I have a fear of heights. I rather enjoyed looking down from the Empire State Building, for example. But I have had several nightmares that involve precipitous ledges. Not falling, necessarily, but being in a very dangerous place. Part of what make humans such good survivors is the ability to imagine, very vividly, the consequences of actions before deciding which to take. I have a very, very vivid idea of what it would be like to fall from my seventh floor apartment window. I can feel the terror, the wind rushing through my hair, and the realization that these are the last sensations I will ever have. Frankly, it freaks me the hell out. When I lean out the window, I’m always very aware that my center of gravity and a good portion of my mass is clearly inside the house. As soon as there is any doubt, I’m all the way back in.
So when it came time to paint the panels above the window frames this weekend, it really sucked being the tallest family member. (more…)
