If these walls could talk…

Our house was originally built in 1951 as a 2 bedroom, 1 bathroom with two garages; one attached and one not.  I like old things.  I have a 1968 Volvo wagon and I have a 1951 house that is made out of lava rock.  It’s awesome.  The attached garage was converted into a bedroom/laundry room a while ago and a family room and second bathroom were added on about ten years ago.  We converted the family room into a master suite and it’s nice having a giant bedroom.  I like our house.  It’s one story with low ceilings, but we got a great deal on it in a neighborhood that I really like. 

The down side to buying a house that old is the forty plus years people spent smoking indoors.  The house doesn’t smell like cigarettes or anything, but the walls are kinda gross.  We were so excited to move in that we didn’t paint before we moved everything and, well, here we are over a year later and the only rooms that have been painted are the nursery and the main bath.

When we tore up the carpet in the nursery and chose our paint color, the guy at Lowe’s told us we didn’t need a primer.  Even though we thought we did since I had washed the walls in that room three times and grossness kept leaking through, we listened to the paint expert.  It has been several months since we painted the room, and the grossness still leaked through.  So, we are off to Lowe’s again this weekend to get some primer and some paint and we are going to do things right this time.  Yes, primer has more VOCs, but once the floor has the clear coat put on it, it will take 90 days to cure, so we probably won’t put Hamburglar in there until he’s two anyway.  Because that’s when the floor will be done and the walls will be painted.  Probably.

I guess, what I’m trying to say is that if these walls could talk, they would likely need a voice box.  Because throat cancer.

McCloud is now 12 weeks old. He met his first baby the other day because my brother and sister-in-law (SIL) showed up at my house with some 8 month old baby.  I guess it belongs to some 17 year old girl my SIL babysits for sometimes.  I don’t know.  What I DO know is that baby was LOUD.  And he liked getting into stuff.  So it was nice to get a peek into what life will be like once my favorite baby starts crawling.  It was really interesting watching him with someone close to his age.  He smiled at the other baby and was doing typical social niceties, until the other baby got all loud.  Then Hamburglar started scowling.  It was pretty funny.  But now I want to see him with other babies closer to his age.  I think I may set up a coffee date with Dog Park Girl and her baby.

Hamburglar is at the point now where he is getting frustrated that he can’t use his hands well.  He is starting to grab things on purpose, like the elephant on his bouncy chair.  He gets this super intense look of concentration on his face.  But he also grabs things like my hair.  And he gets his tiny baby fingers all woven into it and he cannot let go.  Last night I told him he needed to learn to let go.  Then I realized that is something many people struggle with throughout their lives.  And I was like, “Whoa.  That’s deep.”  And maybe some things are worthy of getting your little fingers all tangled up in, but sometimes you have to untangle them and set them free.  Or something.  I don’t know. 

His laugh is changing, too.  It’s getting cuter.  And Mr. Adventure says our favorite baby looks like me, but I see him in there, too.  Mostly in the facial expressions.  Hamburglar has his father’s scowl.  Although, I have been scowling a lot lately.  I’m trying to stop because I don’t want to get Botox between my eyebrows, but I also don’t want angry wrinkles.

You know how I have a new favorite blog/website pretty much on a weekly basis?  I came across this post on howtobeadad.com and it’s funny, so I read it to Mr. Adventure.  That got us talking.

Mr. Adventure is an only child and the only living relative he has is his mother.  I come from a pretty big family, but none of my brothers have biological children so far, and my brothers with bonus kids all have kids that are way older.  I’ve always kind of had a Highlander mentality when it comes to kids (you know, “There can be only one” and all that jazz), but I was visiting a friend of mine who echoed something Mr. Adventure had said and that is: when your parents are dead and you are an only child, you are all alone.  And at the end of this post on How to Be a Dad, the author says the same thing,

“But there is one thought that keeps me up at night.  It’s a bit morbid but I feel like it comes from a truthful place inside.  It’s the thought that one day, when Avara and I are dead and gone, my son will be alone.  Sure he’ll have cousins and uncles and people who cherish him but he won’t have someone of his own blood who knows him as only a sister or brother could.”

So, there’s that consideration.  I’m hoping we will decide by the time our favorite baby is about a year old, because if we do have a second child, I would like them to be close in age.  And I still plan on getting my breast lift when I’m 35, so I would like to be done breastfeeding before then.  Mr. Adventure says if we go again, it would be nice to have a girl.  I told him I don’t really care, but I think it would be nice to have another boy.  I think that mostly stems from the terrible relationship I have with my own mother, though.  But two kids in diapers sounds horrible.  So I don’t know.  Plus, my pregnancy was so smooth, I worry if I get pregnant again then all the horrible things that didn’t happen the first time around will happen the second.  Like, one of my friends has pregnancy induced carpal tunnel and super bad edema.  I don’t want that.

Then there’s picking a name again.  Mr. Adventure hates the name Clyde, even though it is the best name ever.  Plus Clyde is a great name for a boy or girl.

Just kidding.