retail joy, spring cleaning, and the goodbye girl
inspired by the creative use of small spaces on our recent trip to tokyo, and some groovy futon chairs we saw on our more-recent trip to oaxaca, we decided to make the closet off of our living room a guest pod/reading room (we had been calling it the office, but in reality it's where we throw things when someone's coming over).
we have two houses, so technically we have four bedrooms on the property and nearly 3000 square feet of living space, but social services frowns on putting your minor-aged children in a different house by themselves, plus (if we ever finish re-doing the floor) we plan to rent the carriage house out again (which we did before we ripped up the carpet), to help pay for us taking leave when milo comes down the chute. so we're basically working with a 1500 sq ft house and two bedrooms, and we need to make every available space count.
since hans died, part of me has been itching to move to a place without the hassle of the carriage house and with three or four bedrooms in one unit, a house where we could start over and get the family thing right. another part of me has wanted to stay in the only home hans ever had, the place where we were shocked to find i was pregnant with him on our first morning in the house. deciding a couple of weeks ago that this is going to be my last pregnancy freed me up from the part of me that has been itching so hard to move. if we're only going to have milo, then we can live in a two bedroom house, as long as we have a creative way to accomodate visiting grandparents...which is where the idea of the guest pod comes in.
we measured the proposed pod and then went looking today for one of those cool futon chairs we saw in mexico, or short of that, a modern daybed that could be our curl-up spot to read and double as a twin bed for milo's nonna or poppo. but what we ended up buying was a new sofa!
the thing is, we bought a new sofa last july.
but there is a plan. really. we're getting a new bed, which doesn't have a high enough headboard to sit up and lean against (which isn't a great idea, anyway, since it's bad for both our backs to recline like that in bed, not to mention that neither of us are fantastic sleepers, and the experts recommend reading or satisfying one's horrifying american idol habit out of bed instead of in it). so we're moving the smaller sofa we bought last summer up to our bedroom to use for reading and idol/idle watching. that sofa is moving into a space that now has two, three-drawer chests - which we will now put on either side of our bed and use the tops as nightstands, since our existing nightstands are scaled to our old, high bed. to make room for those chests to go on either side of the bed, one of our five-drawer chests must go...so it's going downstairs to milo's room, where we are going to wedge it in with the still-unpurchased crib and the twin bed i've had for years as my guest bed, because it has a convenient trundle under it, and which bed will eventually be milo's bed, when he outgrows the phantom crib. the rocker that was justin's great-great-grandmother's and the ottoman we bought today (60% off!) will now go into the room briefly known as the guest pod, which we are now calling the quiet room/feeding room; it can be a reading space or a distraction-free space for feeding milo with a little privacy or getting him to go to sleep. and the new sofa, which is way modern and red(!) microfiber (watch us wash the spitup off with a washcloth!) and folds down into a full-sized bed, will go in the living room, from which the slightly-less-new sofa is about to evacuate.
once we finish moving everything around and the new sofa gets delivered next saturday, we will be able to sleep four extra people that come to visit - two in the living room on the sofa and two in milo's room on the twin beds. if we get more visitors than four, they're on their own. four is enough.
back at home, we are spring cleaning to make room for the rearrangment. we haven't been in this house quite two years, so how did we manage to accumulate so much crap that should not be here? we started in the upstairs bathroom with plans to work our way out and eventually down, but we are still upstairs. we threw away an entire garbage bag of crap just from the bathroom. the quantity of failed hair products and expired medications was astonishing. on the bright side, the giant package of poise pads left over from my last round of post-pregnancy bleeding as well as anything toxic a crawler could potentially get into now fit in the cabinet with doors, and the bathroom may be the cleanest it's been in two years - justin even vaccuumed out the heat register.
we've gotten bogged down in our closet, though. it's great to have a big closet, but for people like us, a tiny closet that forces us to be choosy about what we keep might be a better idea. what really brought the process to a halt was going through the linen chest. inside were the eyelet lace pillows and pink and white striped shams and duvet that i used on the guest twin bed when i was single. besides the amazement that i used to have an entire townhouse decorated in pink and green, what killed me was putting all those girly things in the goodwill pile. i started to bawl, because it made the fact that i am the mother of two boys and no girls whack me in the head like an anvil falling from the sky.
where did this feeling come from? when did having a daughter matter to me? apparently i have not been paying attention.
justin tried to get me to keep them. you don't know we won't have a daughter some day, he said. unless milo's winkie falls off, we won't be having one anytime soon, and we don't have the room to store this stuff for someone who won't be joining us for a long time, i told him, and even if we do adopt a girl down the road, she almost certainly will not want this ruffly crap. hey, we're not sexist people, justin said; milo can use this pink stuff. but we already have a complete other set of bedding for the twin beds that is more appropriate for a boy and for our un-frilly house; we'll never use it for milo.
so he just held me while i sobbed. i really thought milo was a girl. i thought hans was a girl, too, but i don't think i felt it so keenly. i don't want milo to be a girl; he is who he is, and i love him already. i think overall there are more girls up for adoption than boys, so in another five years, when we've either connected our two houses or added on to the front house and have more than two bedrooms, there could well be a daughter for us. it's a long time off, though. too long to justify holding on to all those old bridesmaid dresses i was saving for dress-up games.
it's time to get back to the giant straw beach bags i haven't used in ten years and the four-inch heels i refuse to ever wear again.
we have two houses, so technically we have four bedrooms on the property and nearly 3000 square feet of living space, but social services frowns on putting your minor-aged children in a different house by themselves, plus (if we ever finish re-doing the floor) we plan to rent the carriage house out again (which we did before we ripped up the carpet), to help pay for us taking leave when milo comes down the chute. so we're basically working with a 1500 sq ft house and two bedrooms, and we need to make every available space count.
since hans died, part of me has been itching to move to a place without the hassle of the carriage house and with three or four bedrooms in one unit, a house where we could start over and get the family thing right. another part of me has wanted to stay in the only home hans ever had, the place where we were shocked to find i was pregnant with him on our first morning in the house. deciding a couple of weeks ago that this is going to be my last pregnancy freed me up from the part of me that has been itching so hard to move. if we're only going to have milo, then we can live in a two bedroom house, as long as we have a creative way to accomodate visiting grandparents...which is where the idea of the guest pod comes in.
we measured the proposed pod and then went looking today for one of those cool futon chairs we saw in mexico, or short of that, a modern daybed that could be our curl-up spot to read and double as a twin bed for milo's nonna or poppo. but what we ended up buying was a new sofa!
the thing is, we bought a new sofa last july.
but there is a plan. really. we're getting a new bed, which doesn't have a high enough headboard to sit up and lean against (which isn't a great idea, anyway, since it's bad for both our backs to recline like that in bed, not to mention that neither of us are fantastic sleepers, and the experts recommend reading or satisfying one's horrifying american idol habit out of bed instead of in it). so we're moving the smaller sofa we bought last summer up to our bedroom to use for reading and idol/idle watching. that sofa is moving into a space that now has two, three-drawer chests - which we will now put on either side of our bed and use the tops as nightstands, since our existing nightstands are scaled to our old, high bed. to make room for those chests to go on either side of the bed, one of our five-drawer chests must go...so it's going downstairs to milo's room, where we are going to wedge it in with the still-unpurchased crib and the twin bed i've had for years as my guest bed, because it has a convenient trundle under it, and which bed will eventually be milo's bed, when he outgrows the phantom crib. the rocker that was justin's great-great-grandmother's and the ottoman we bought today (60% off!) will now go into the room briefly known as the guest pod, which we are now calling the quiet room/feeding room; it can be a reading space or a distraction-free space for feeding milo with a little privacy or getting him to go to sleep. and the new sofa, which is way modern and red(!) microfiber (watch us wash the spitup off with a washcloth!) and folds down into a full-sized bed, will go in the living room, from which the slightly-less-new sofa is about to evacuate.
once we finish moving everything around and the new sofa gets delivered next saturday, we will be able to sleep four extra people that come to visit - two in the living room on the sofa and two in milo's room on the twin beds. if we get more visitors than four, they're on their own. four is enough.
back at home, we are spring cleaning to make room for the rearrangment. we haven't been in this house quite two years, so how did we manage to accumulate so much crap that should not be here? we started in the upstairs bathroom with plans to work our way out and eventually down, but we are still upstairs. we threw away an entire garbage bag of crap just from the bathroom. the quantity of failed hair products and expired medications was astonishing. on the bright side, the giant package of poise pads left over from my last round of post-pregnancy bleeding as well as anything toxic a crawler could potentially get into now fit in the cabinet with doors, and the bathroom may be the cleanest it's been in two years - justin even vaccuumed out the heat register.
we've gotten bogged down in our closet, though. it's great to have a big closet, but for people like us, a tiny closet that forces us to be choosy about what we keep might be a better idea. what really brought the process to a halt was going through the linen chest. inside were the eyelet lace pillows and pink and white striped shams and duvet that i used on the guest twin bed when i was single. besides the amazement that i used to have an entire townhouse decorated in pink and green, what killed me was putting all those girly things in the goodwill pile. i started to bawl, because it made the fact that i am the mother of two boys and no girls whack me in the head like an anvil falling from the sky.
where did this feeling come from? when did having a daughter matter to me? apparently i have not been paying attention.
justin tried to get me to keep them. you don't know we won't have a daughter some day, he said. unless milo's winkie falls off, we won't be having one anytime soon, and we don't have the room to store this stuff for someone who won't be joining us for a long time, i told him, and even if we do adopt a girl down the road, she almost certainly will not want this ruffly crap. hey, we're not sexist people, justin said; milo can use this pink stuff. but we already have a complete other set of bedding for the twin beds that is more appropriate for a boy and for our un-frilly house; we'll never use it for milo.
so he just held me while i sobbed. i really thought milo was a girl. i thought hans was a girl, too, but i don't think i felt it so keenly. i don't want milo to be a girl; he is who he is, and i love him already. i think overall there are more girls up for adoption than boys, so in another five years, when we've either connected our two houses or added on to the front house and have more than two bedrooms, there could well be a daughter for us. it's a long time off, though. too long to justify holding on to all those old bridesmaid dresses i was saving for dress-up games.
it's time to get back to the giant straw beach bags i haven't used in ten years and the four-inch heels i refuse to ever wear again.
posted by laura at 5:54 PM
5 Comments:
I was really convinced that I would have a girl. I always thought I would. I am an only child and my mother is an only child. It seemed sort of fated. And yet I have been pregnant with two boys. Apparently it was not so fated.
I find that it doesn't matter now. Theoretically it didn't matter to me when I was pregnant with Gideon, but I do remember being at the ultrasound when we found out and feeling a little drop in my heart. But I was so happy for Marc because I knew he would be happy. And if Gideon had not been a boy, there would always be those thoughts of how things would have been so different.
But now lately when I look at Gideon is practically doesn't matter. He couldn't have been anybody but who he is.
Still, of course there are things that I think might make any woman sad when she thinks she might not have a daughter. Mostly--that I think you sort of have to let your son go in a way that you don't ever have to let a daughter go. Women don't want a mama's boy and I wouldn't want to inflict one on any future daughter in law. (But if Gideon turns out to be gay that's okay by me...then I really gain a son in law!!!!!!)
You are more than entitled to your feelings.
It's ok to mourn the loss of a dream of a daughter - but remember, the loss of the dream of a daughter, for now, has given birth to a little boy named Milo.
I guess I know what you mean with the whole gender thing. It would have been really lovely to have experienced having a boy in our house. It would have been such a different dynamic. And even now, after really having more than I could ever hope for and really not liking the idea of being pregnant again, I could never say never. There will always be a little boy flaoting about the universe waiting on his time. Who knows if it will ever come?
You have inspired me to do some major decluttering over the next few weeks too:)
Somewhere I got my heart set on having a girl. J and his sister are boy-girl order, and SIL's kids are also boy-girl, so part of me is afraid that if I had a boy first their family would be like, 'Oh, it's a pattern!' Which would be over my dead body, because both girls are hellions. If I had a girl first, however, it would be iconoclastic and drive SIL's daughter nuts because she would no longer be so 'special' (two girls, one boy).
I will always believe my first was a girl. Not sure about the second, but we have a name picked out for a girl that we MUST use. No such firm feelings for a boy. Which means, of course, that if I were to have a living child, it would be a boy, because things never go the way we want them to be...
But it would be cool to have a girl who would grow up to date Milo or something. (Already I adore him.)
either your daughter, eve, or vixanne's son. ;)
Post a Comment
<< Home