Watch out; someone's nesting
Dan will assure you, thought I will be the first to admit it, that this pregnancy has temporarily transformed me into a different person — someone who is insane. Well, I'm always a little bit insane anyway, but now I'm insane about HOME DECORATING. Things that I never noticed before, things that haven't bothered me about our house in the past eight years are suddenly MONUMENTAL PROBLEMS that need to be remedied RIGHT NOW. Like the color of the upstairs hallway? DISGUSTING! How could we even LIVE in a house with such an uninviting hallway? How can we bring a BABY into a house like this? Nevermind that I'm already raising two children here who could not possibly give a shit about a the color of the wall at the top of the stairs.
The upstairs hallway, for the record, bore the only interior walls that were completely white. Not a nice clean "I trust my surgeon that I'm in good hands" sort of white, but a dirty yellow-and-green tinged white that seems to say, "Oh, you're coming up the stairs? Why don't you go fuck yourself?"
So on Thursday evening amidst terrible traffic on Great Road I forced my entire family to accompany me to the hardware store to choose a new paint color. Because it was TERRIBLY IMPORTANT to my sanity.
I had in mind an earthy shade of pink, having been inspired by a trip to the Lexington Waldorf school where every wall is some version of soothing pastel. Dan used his superior design skills to help me pick out a color that wasn't too dark, or "institutional" as he put it. Once I had the paint in hand I could think of nothing else. Despite two days packed with social engagements I managed to paint a first coat over the entire hallway this weekend.
You wanna feel real productive about your weekend? Go paint something! Then even if the rest of the house is dirty, some part of your house is A DIFFERENT COLOR!
The look of the upstairs is already much improved. Now as you come up the stairs a bright cheery pink wall greets you as if to say, "Hello darling! Would you like to play fairies? Would you care for a massage after visiting our native american sweat lodge?"
Of course, there's still a second coat to do, and new outlet covers to pick out, and hanging some vinyl decals I bought on Etsy. Is $100 too much to spend on a hallway? Wait, don't tell me.
the boys and books
Last week at church I was reading to the boys and as I started the second book someone asked how many books we read to them a week. "A week?" I answered. "How about a day!" Then of course I had to come up with a number for that, so off hand I said, "oh, twenty or thirty."
I don't think it's actually that many; not anymore, at least. Maybe back in the baby book days, but now that each book takes at least five minutes that would put us at well over an hour of reading a day, which we don't always reach. But sometimes we do! I think a more realistic number for books read is between ten and twenty. A lot, anyways.
Harvey especially is a voracious consumer of stories. When I'm talking with other parents about their children's taste in literature, I tell them that Harvey would listen to the phone book read aloud if we were enjoying it, because it would mean more reading time. Not that he doesn't have taste in the sort of stories that he wants to read, of course—there are certainly some books and types of books he likes more than others. But the act of listening to someone read to him is on its own a pretty big draw. Zion isn't quite as omnivorous in his taste, but he's still pretty patient for a two-year-old when it comes to listening to the written word.
I don't know what we win for this, but I will say that I'm very impressed with both boys' ability to make connections with the text we read, something that I'm always trying to drag out of second- and third-grade students. They get text-to-text, text-to-self: they're fully involved in processing the story on all sorts of levels. However impressed I might be, though, I would still prefer they kept those connections to themselves at bedtime instead of shouting out whatever occurs to them and disturbing the carefully curated atmosphere of calm and quite peace that I work so hard to create. At least one of them can actually fall asleep while listening to a story, if circumstances allow; and when I think of it even Harvey occasionally drifts off before I finish a chapter. As a parent I'm delighted when that happens, and as an educator I trust they're still processing the story in their dreams.