It's Late, but I Didn't Want to Admit It Happened.

Cricket turned one, people. Yes, it was a few weeks ago.

*Lump in throat*

He's not a baby anymore. He walks everywhere, and mostly does. not. want. to. hold. my. hand. He's started whinging. But he also gives the most glorious hugs and kisses. And snuggles in the morning. And sticks his nose out for a kiss when I ask where his nose is. And he loves books. And he shares. Oh, the love fest. For my baby who is no longer a baby.

Happy Birthday, Cricket.

We love you, too.

Still Selling

Today I got very surly as we loaded the Cricket into the car, yet again, for another showing. Why do they always want to see the house when it's his nap time? And just as a matter of reference, this is how desperate we are: the showing today was not for a sale, but for a renter. And we mistakenly put the price for rent about $900 dollars cheaper than we should have. Who wouldn't want to rent our house for the price we listed?

Apparently it doesn't make a difference to the guy who saw the house today since his company would be paying the rent. He's coming back tomorrow to take pictures to send to his wife, who lives in a different hemisphere. I don't want to say more than that. (But I cooked lamb in the house tonight and am considering leaving my Wallabies tee shirt out in the closet, maybe a rugby call on the back deck...) But if they want to rent this house for at least a year, with the option of staying on for a year or two after that, maybe the Michigan market could rebound in that time and instead of selling our house for under appraised value, we might actually sell it for what it's worth.

You know the market in Michigan is bad when even the builder can't make money on her own home.

I get a little frustrated when I read blogs of other Michigan home sellers who are frustrated that their houses aren't selling and they've only been on the market for a few weeks. (Just FYI, I'm not talking about people I actually know.) I want to whine, "Look at me! Our house has been for sale for a year! A year! And now we own TWO houses for sale!" But realistically, I have to look at the house I'm living in. I can't complain. Really. I live in the type of house I thought I'd never live in. We're leaving behind this lifestyle for some time to come, perhaps forever, so maybe I should just enjoy the life of Reilly while I can. Mix up some martinis and sit on the back deck, look out over the backyard. Grill up with friends while we have room to mingle and then some...

The truth is that we're mostly moving because of money at this point. Michigan has the highest unemployment in the nation, and guess what? When people are unemployed, the real estate market tanks, and then guess what? People aren't really building homes either. Since our fates were hitched on the building star, which has now fallen in a blazing glory to earth, we're crushed under its weight.


But the fact of the matter is that we've wanted to change our lifestyle for some time now. We don't feel like we're living very responsibly. Before this point there have been two of us living in 3400 sq ft house. When we started planning the new house, we were going to go smaller, and somehow it ended up 400 sq ft bigger. (Although we were more "green" in our approach there; the geothermal heating and cooling rocks!) But there's no reason we need this much space or need to use as many natural resources as it takes to live in a house like this. And even with Cricket, we still don't need this much space. In fact, I'm positive I'd like less space with him. Less time cleaning/weeding = more time with child.

I also want to teach him different values about work. Right now we have someone mow our lawn, shovel our driveway, mulch our beds, etc. What does that teach him about ownership? I want to do those things as a family. Even though I complained as kid about things like raking, it was actually fun to be out in the yard on a crisp autumn afternoon with dad and a rake, and the delight of finishing a hard job. There was something almost magical going out to shovel the driveway late at night in the middle of a snowstorm. The snow swirling in flakes around your face lit up by the porch light and the muffled silence and scrape of the shovel on the drive and the promise of hot drink that would make your cold hands tingle when you got back inside. Warming up under the blanket was that much sweeter for the work you did.

I also want him to have friends to play with and places to ride his bike. That doesn't exist here. Brother K thinks I'm crazy-- our backyard is sizable and he thinks this is a kid's dream, but it wouldn't have been for me. I suppose I've always been social, but I think having a small yard with a kid next door or down the street is preferable to playing alone in your acre backyard. Yawn. Boooorrrrinnnggg. When I think about what I loved as a kid it was playing with other kids in the neighborhood. And I went everywhere on my bike: the library, the swim club, friends houses, my grandmother's, church, school-- everywhere. It was exciting when a parent would propose an after dinner bike ride to get ice cream. Now we'd be taking our lives into our hands to go bike out on the road next to our house.

And I hate that if I want to go for a walk with Cricket, I have to load him in the car seat from hell, drive to a neighborhood or downtown, unload him, and then stroll. I tried walking him on our cul de sac; it was like watching paint dry. It would be so much fun to just go out the door with him and, voila! Sidewalks and neighbors-- what fun, oh my! When we walk through the neighborhoods I covet, I love to look at the kids toys out in front of houses, sidewalk chalk drawings, strollers parked in driveways, and imagine our lives in such a place. Once when we were taking an evening walk I overheard another child leaving a friend's house. "Goodnight, Henry-who-has-to-sleep-soon!" he called out. Other children were busy spraying each other with a hose. I want those memories for Cricket, not playing alone in his big backyard.

The logistics of our downsizing are something to consider though. In all likelihood we'll rent while I'm in school. Even we don't rent, we're planning on moving from a 3400 sq ft house, not including the basement in that footage, and a three car garage to something probably around 800 to 1200 sq ft. (IKEA here we come!) We won't have a formal dining room and kitchen nook, so what do we do with two tables? No more four bedrooms, so two there's two extra beds to contend with. It highlights the excess we've been living with, and it's a hideous addiction. Even in the quest to downsize, do you see how I call for even more consumption? (The IKEA reference.) I don't need to buy more stuff to downsize, but it's so how we get used to living. It's time to break the cycle.

So rent my house. Buy my house. It's horrible and sad and scary and exciting and liberating and new all the same time. I think I'm ready.

Turn-Turn-Turn

Yesterday Cricket and I went out shopping. As we headed into the first grocery store, a man stopped us in the parking lot and commented on Cricket. Yes, he's that cute. He looked at everything in the grocery store. He was awake and alert at the second store too. He loves Trader Joes, but I know that there'll be hell to pay later after all that over stimulation. He didn't let me down. But think about this: he's looking around at everything. Everything.

As we drove home with the windows open and I heard his little peeps from the backseat, I just started crying. And crying. And crying. The thing is, Cricket at (almost) three months is just so different from newborn Cricket. I'm so pleased he's growing and getting so much stronger. I want to have a sturdy boy, but oh my God. My newborn is not a newborn anymore. He looks more like a little boy every day.

And he's growing up. Why does this make me cry all over again? My little pup. One of our favorite things to do is take a bath. He loves the bath. And I love taking the bath with him. Someday it will be inappropriate for me to be in the bath with him, but I'll still supervise. And then someday after that, it won't be right for me to be there at all when he cleans himself. And all the little parts I take such care with now, cleaning him, massaging his lovely chubby legs-- I won't even see those parts. They won't be mine to see. How can my little boy ever get that big?

Sometimes I think we live so in the moment of parenting, we forget the aim. We obsess about getting him to sleep. Cleaning the laundry. Going to the doctor. Packing the diaper bag. Did we read enough to him today? Did he get adequate tummy time? Why is he crying? Should we get him out for a walk? Is it too cold? Too hot? Why (oh why oh why) won't he nap? And all those questions we ask ourselves, we forget about the larger meaning behind them. Why do I want to read to him? Why is it important he gets tummy time? I want to make all those neural connections and get him strong so he'll keep growing into a strapping little lad, and then into a well built man. It's the goal, per se, of motherhood and the fact that he's growing means we're doing our job.

The motherhood lark is a new type of job, eh? Because I desperately want to do a good job, but I'm so sad at the same time I'm happy to see it being done. I look forward to all the things we have in front of us, and there's so much. But then I think of the pile of clothes stacked upstairs in the bedroom. I try to put an outfit on him "one last time" before it retires. I can remember when these same clothes didn't fit him and he was swimming in them. It seemed he'd never fill out the smallest of onsies. And now he's bursting out of them. Pant legs that were once too long now only come to his knees. We might, with the help of God, have another child to wear some of these clothes once more, but Cricket will never again wear them. And while it's always happy to see the season turn, there's a certain sadness as we turn into the sun knowing the turning will continue until the day Cricket walks off on his into that same sun. And then I'm sure we'll watch with pride just as I'm sure as our tears fall.