Sean and Katie's Place, Take Two

First family selfie in the new yard.

When I first started writing this blog, the tag line was "A blog about our first house, our first baby, and our adventures along the way." I'm really glad I documented some of this stuff--especially the stories about Millie---because I don't remember any of it. Apparently, my brain is like "I'm just going to block out any memories involving xylophone music, cool?" And I'm like, "No brain! I want to remember this stuff." And my brain is like "I NEED THIS, OK."Consequently, Millie's early years are just one slobbery, screamy, cuddly blur to me. Five years later, we seem to have circled back around.  New house. New Baby. New Sean and Katie. (Again.) This time, I know how important it will be for me to write it all down.

We welcomed our son, Ben in July, and moved out of our beautiful first home in Oberlin, Ohio a month and a half later.  After crashing with friends in NC and renting a truly tiny apartment, we've finally settled into our new house.  IT'S A GOOD ONE. We found a place in the country, with a super big wooded lot. Like-- ten acres big.  We've got a creek in the back where we can sit and drink beer in the summer, and by "summer" I mean "in March" because we live in North Carolina now, and it's delightfully mild here. According to my neighbors, there is even a white deer that lives in our woods. Obviously I've been freaking out about that because A WHITE DEER IS BASICALLY A UNICORN. And then, they told me that the horse farm down the street raises peacocks and sometimes they escape and run wild through the woods, and now I'm like "THE WORLD I LIVE IN IS MAGIC, AND ALSO HOW DO I BUILD A PEACOCK TRAP?"I know at this point you have a lot of questions.  Have you started building trails into your forest? (Yes.) Has Millie started her wilderness skills survival training yet? (Yes.) What are you going to name your peacock? (Reginald.) Is it pretentious for you to refer to your grounds as "Pemberley?" (Try and stop me.)

Anyways to update you all, I'm including some photos of the new house. I also have a before and after to show off of our guest room because I know how much you like makeover magic!

Cricket surveys her new kingdom, on the alert for any rogue peacocks.

Look at this flippin deck!!!

The guest room when we first moved in. This carpet smelled like funky mouse balls.

The guest room after Sean finished with it. #seanwillyoumakeoutwithme?

The white deer living in our woods. *visual approximation

All in all, things are going well for us.  Of course I'm going crazy trying to take care of a new baby and an almost 5 year old through all these moves, but that's a different blog post. Now, if you;ll excuse me, I need to go to home depot-- Millie and I are going to build a peacock trap.

#reginald
#tryandstopme

Our House Makeover and the DIY network

When I first starting writing in this blog, the tag line was: "A blog about our first house, our new baby, and our adventures along the way." Four years later, this tag line is quickly becoming outdated.  We're expecting the arrival of a new tiny vomit machine baby any day now, and there is a For Sale sign in our front yard.

Before long, we will be moving from our first house, leaving our amazing neighbors, and headed back home to North Carolina.  Part of this move is job related.  Since President Trump has apparently chosen to ignore my top secret advice about renewable energy despite my promises that he could see Kate Middleton's boobs, it looks like all the progress on the "preserving a livable planet" front is going to be in the private sector.  So, Sean got an awesome new job with Solar company in NC, and we are selling our house.

As such, I've been reflecting a lot about the changes we've made to this place.

When we moved in things were a little *ahem*-- unkempt. From the front, our house looked a bit like a crazy old witch lived here. These days, our house is looking like a totally cute babe. If Cher, from the movie Clueless could see our house, she would describe her as a "total Betty." Look at those flipping window boxes!  Breathe in the trendy adorableness of our board-and-batten shutters!

All women love a good makeover montage, and I'm no exception.  Actually, I think men like makeovers too, which is why the DIY network has captured such a brilliant market. It repackages the makeover into something vaguely masculine by disguising it with power tools, then rakes in a fortune by advertising back-splash products to its hypnotized unisex masses.

We didn't invest in any backsplashes while we lived here, but we did watch a lot of DIY network, and I think one thing is for certain: If Mike Holmes were to come to our house when we first bought it, he would have been concerned.  He'd be all like "what kind of a contractor would build such wobbly deck railings for the sweet old witch lady who is living here?"  Personally, I'm more like Cher from Clueless. I saw an opportunity for a makeover montage, and I went for it.

The photographer is coming soon to take photos of the interior of our house.  When those come in, I'll update this post with some "before" and "after" movie magic.  In the meantime, I'll be cleaning frantically for our upcoming open house, and maybe watching the DIY network.

Lake Shiticaca and the Mastodon Titites

This weekend Sean went out of town for a boys weekend/fishing trip on the coast of North Carolina, and I'm happy to report that everything went smoothly without him here!

I'm joking of course.  Sean's plane wasn't even off the ground before our lives began to spiral out of control.  In a way, both of the disasters that occurred were related to our plumbing.

Sean was scheduled to leave for the airport at 2:30 pm, so naturally the main plumbing line to our house became plugged at exactly two o'clock. For those of you without a background in plumbing, something I learned this weekend is that, when someone says "the main line for the house" that's code for "even the toilets."  I made this discovery when I went downstairs to switch over a load of cloth diapers, and I noticed a large and foul smelling lake had formed on our basement floor.  I called Sean, who instantly said "it sounds like it's the main," and began the process of selecting a plumber that would work with our home warranty company, on a Friday evening, without price gouging us.  Meanwhile, I began the equally important task of selecting hilarious names for our newly formed basement estuary. Sean settled on "Mr. Rooter." I settled on "Lake Shiticaca."

Did you know that plumbers will come to your house at 7:00 pm on a Friday? I didn't either, but Mike from Mr. Rooter-- wherever you are-- I want you to know that, without you, I would have had to sail across lake Shiticaca all weekend just to do my laundry. I think you are as brave and heroic as any of our nation's Naval Officers, and if I ever see you again, I will make you a plate of cookies. Thank you for the service you provided to myself, my daughter, and my mother-in-law who was visiting for the weekend.  Without you, everything would have turned out to be a complete disaster, and even though it did anyways, that wasn't your fault.

Actually it was Millie's fault.  Or mine, or my boobs-- or something like that, because the second disaster that happened this weekend was that I developed Mastitis.  This is a condition that occurs in nursing mothers when their milk ducts become blocked.   The word Mastitis comes from the root Mast or Mastadon, because it feels like a Mastadon is trampling on your titty.  At one point this weekend, the thermometer read 103.3-- which isn't a scary number when applied to--for instance--radio stations, but is pretty dangerous when applied to fevers.  This is even scarier when the person who has this fever is responsible for keeping a tiny human alive. My symptoms involved uncontrollable shivering, fatigue, and headache (in addition to the mastodon trampled ta-tas described above.)

For you breastfeeding moms out there, if you are shivering uncontrollably and you think it's because your husband is on a fishing trip and is not in bed cuddling with you, and that's why you are so cold, and in unrelated news one of your titties is now the size of a high altitude weather ballon, and it's really starting to hurt, but it's probably no big deal, and the worst that can happen is that your husband will catch a Spanish Mackerel bigger than yours, then this is for you: SLAP. Wake up idiot.  You have Mastitis and are running a dangerous fever! Get your sorry ass out of bed and take your temperature!  Then, go to the doctor and hope to god that your mother-in-law is in town to hold your screaming baby in the waiting room.

Now that Tuesday has arrived I can look back on the events of our first weekend without Sean and laugh at them, because I survived Lake Shiticaca and the Mastodon Titties.  I feel totally fine, and there is not a single turd floating around my basement floor. It's all thanks to two people. I wish there were a radio station called "103.3, The Fever," so I could express my gratitude by calling in song dedications to them. For Mike at Mr. Rooter, the song I would dedicate would be "That Smell," by Lynyrd Skynyrd, and for my Mother-in-Law Deb, I would dedicate "Jungle Fever," or perhaps "Cry Baby Cry" by the Beatles.

Millie's White Tree Mural

We wanted to paint a mural in the baby's room.  Actually, I wanted to paint a mural and Sean humored/enabled me. I was envisioning something simple and relatively monochromatic, and I thought white birch trees on a gray background wouldn't show baby vomit would look nice. The trick was, getting the design right, and choosing the right color gray.

This was one of those projects that we finished, and then we went "Oh Dammit! We should have taken pictures before we started."  Alas. We won't have any sweet "before and after" pictures, but I can still describe the room we started with. It was just a normal room.  The walls were white, and it was in ok shape, although scratched and banged up in a few places.  The floor was a disaster and still is, because we figured there is no reason to refinish any floor on which finger painting may occur in the next 5 years.

After extensively gathering, comparing, and obsessing about color swatches on my end, and extensively feigning interest while actually watching college football on Sean's end, we settled on a great color: Dolphin Fin, by BEHR.  I can't say enough good things about this color gray. First of all-- it has the word "dolphin" in the name, and I think we can all agree that dolphins are adorable. Secondly, it comes in a low VOC option, which was important to me, as I did not want our baby to grow any weird extra appendages. Thirdly, it's a nice true gray-- not too purple or too blue, but just right. 

The white color we used was matched from a color that the previous home-owners had used on the floor-boards and window trim (because we are lazy and didn't want to repaint those things. ) It is a great looking white---not exactly off-white, but definitely rich and creamy, and it provided the perfect amount of contrast with the gray--- enough to "pop," but not so much that the design overpowers the room. 

We masked, taped, and then painted the ceiling and walls. We used two coats of the dolphin fin on the walls (we chose the semi gloss option so it would be easier to clean and wipe when she inevitably draws on it with crayons--or worse!) Then, we waited and let everything dry.

Now comes the fun part--the mural. I had done a lot of google image searches for "white tree mural" as I was brainstorming this project.  If you are planning on painting a mural soon, I'd recommend doing some googling for inspiration. Although I didn't find any examples of the mural I had in mind, I found a few that were close.  I discovered that adding a few birds flying through the trees gives the design an ornate touch.  I also learned that, while my initial insticts were to go with a much darker color gray, I actually found those designs to be overpowering, especially for a baby's room.

When the walls were dry, I took a piece of chalk and started to sketch out my design. If you don't trust your artistic abilities, you could always use a projector and trace an image you like onto the wall. Not to brag or anything, but I've been drawing some pretty kick-ass trees since the 5th grade, so I felt confident in my ability to do it free-handed. Once I was happy with my sketch, I took a small paintbrush, and filled in my chalk outlines with white paint.   BLAMO!  End of Mural.  All told it took about 3 hours from start to finish to draw and paint the mural.

Now Millie has a bedroom full of white trees. She loves to stare at them, drooling and making high pitched baby noises which I interpret to mean, "Mommy, I love my mural, thank you!" but, which probably actually means, " Mommy, one day I will smear my own poop on these walls!"

Here is the mural "in progress," by which I mean that I haven't removed the masking tape from the trim yet.

Here is the mural being inspected by our resident art critic, Cricket. 

Grandpa Jay's Window Seat

We have a new item on furniture in our house that I need to brag blog about. This beautiful custom window seat was made for Millie by her Grandpa Jay, who (as you can see) is a very fine woodworker.

Before the baby was born, Jay asked Sean and I what he could build for the baby.  We told him the baby really needed a custom bar top for her home-brew equipment.  He didn't go for it, so we had him build this window seat for the baby's room instead.

What I love about this seat is the built in storage underneath.  Babies come standard with between 200-400 brightly colored baby toys. Millie is too young for most of them, but one day, I can see how she will really enjoy shoving them into her mouth.   In the meantime, I need a way to hide them from the public, since her room is already generally a tornado zone of dirty diapers, puke covered onesies, and cardboard Dr. Suess books. The built in storage is really going to help with that.

Now take a look at the top of the seat. What does that look like to you? That's right, Assholes. It's a single slab of sustainably harvested walnut with live edging! It's what rich people make dining room tables out of, and we are so decadent we just sit around on ours! If a rich person came to our house and saw it they may say, "oh, what a beautiful piece of walnut, are you going to make a dining room table out of that?" And we'll say, "no, we're just going to sit around on our asses on it, but we may change a diaper on it later." BAM. BLAM. BLAMMO. Gosh it's fun living in high society.

So thanks Grandpa Jay, for the beautiful new window seat.  We'll make sure Millie doesn't use it as a dining room table, because, after all, that's where people's asses have been.

New House, New Baby, New Sean & Katie

Sean and I used to talk about the future in the following order: job, house, baby.  By some miracle, we actually ended up sticking to that plan, but just barely.  We didn't know what to expect when we left our home in the NC mountains for a job opportunity in the flattest part of Ohio-- but we landed on our feet in a great community.  Then, things started changing FAST! We put in an offer on our house and less than week later, we found out that I was pregnant.  Now we are officially adults. We have mortgage, a lawnmower, and a tiny person that screams all the time.  We even have built-in-bookshelves and a food processor, but we don't let it go to our heads.

Our first night in the new house was exciting, in the same way that watching a 70 pound terrier chasing mice around a living room is exciting. Surprise! Congratulations Home-Owners! All this belongs to you!---And to the ten-thousand mice that live in your floorboards! Oh, and also the dishwasher is broken!  

Luckily, I am married to Sean.  For those of you who've never met my husband, he's just like MacGuyver, only dreamier and with a better beard. The point is, Sean can fix things, and I'm not just talking about your standard change-the oil and kill-the-spiders type of fixes. I'm talking about the type of fixes that involve taking a soldering gun to the bowels of your high-def  TV, and making your own fuel out of repurposed vegetable oil. 

Sean's ability to fix things is rivaled only by my craftiness. I am the craftiest lady you ever met.  I can take a pile of discarded and worthless junk, and--using only my creativity and vision--transform it into a pile a discarded and worthless junk WITH GLITTER. If Martha Stewart married your middle school Shop teacher, and then they had a baby, and then that baby was allowed to run feral in the woods of Appalachia and taught all the major cuss words, then that baby would be a lot like me. 

So, as you can imagine, Sean and I are pretty much the best team imaginable to tackle the perils of home-ownership, and create a safe, beautiful environment for our little one to destroy every bit of grow up in.  In this blog, I will attempt to document our adventures in parenting, DIY projects, and adulthood in general.