Welcome to our House

Welcome to our house! Let me show you around. If you haven't been over to our apartment before, you'll have to be careful on our welcome mat, where there are several sets of snowy shoes outside the door. We only left the house once today, when James and I went up the courtyard to visit the office and then to say hello to the carwash down past the business park. (I carried him back screaming and crying, because the onset of hypothermia is not a sufficient reason to leave his carwash-observations snowbank.)

If you step into the foyer area, you'll see that two toolboxes are out and and open. Were we conducting major repairs? No, we were looking for a box-cutter and duct tape to construct a hot wheels ramp out of the remnants of a cardboard box. Don't worry, that will all get picked up for bedtime.

There is leftover pizza out in the kitchen. Friday night is pizza night at our house, and tonight we had a delicious homemade pizza courtesy of Mom. There are three wineglasses out drying, because we accidentally broke the fourth today. Oh, well. This set made it almost a whole month before the first casualty. It was a pretty scary experience. Not the breaking of the glass, mind you, but vacuuming up the shards afterwards. Whenever the real vacuum comes out, someone has to hold a two year old who is positively quaking with fear.

Off of the kitchen you can see our pantry, which is conspicuously devoid of mop, hand-broom, dustpan, and ironing board. We need all of these items out in the living room for the reading and acting out of various books. We require the mop to read "Curious George and the Carwash," in which George constructs a homemade car wash for his toy cars. It is the best book ever. The hand broom is used for "Curious George Gets a Medal" because it looks like a paint brush, and George does some painting in that one. I think the dustpan is just for fun, and the ironing board is out for use as a second hot wheels ramp.

If you come into the living room, you'll see piles and piles of books on the floor, and not all of them belong to James. But lots of them do. We went to the library yesterday and got a new Thomas book, a new George book, and three books about car washes. James got so worked up about car washes by lunchtime today that we tapped into the secret reserve of never opened Christmas presents that we hid in his closet. We decided that today, the day in which we weren't going to go anywhere or do anything, would be an ideal time to get out his mega-blocks. James took to them instantly, and requested that we build a model car wash. Once that was finished, he disappeared into his room for a minute, then came out with an unopened puzzle from the no-longer-secret stash of never opened Christmas presents that we hid in his closet.

Back in James' room you'll see an enormous cardboard box that doubles as a fort and a hot wheels garage, as well as a bookcase full of books not currently involved in the living room rotation and a falling apart photo album that he likes to look through. The most striking new feature of his room, however, is the converted toddler bed that used to be his crib. He has mostly stayed in it when he needs to, although yesterday he wandered out halfway through his nap time with a binky in his mouth and a book under his arm, saw that I was playing Madden on the Wii, and promptly began humming the CBS football theme.

Our room is currently a jungle. Literally, actually. There are zebra-striped bed sheets and two six-foot inflatable glowing palm trees, plus colored cut outs of jungle animals and a layer of construction paper grass. It's the middle of February in Rochester, and there are several feet off snow outside. The air is cold, and you can't go anywhere without getting your feet soaked. But in our apartment, we have a little tropical paradise, complete with its very own monkey. A monkey who loves car washes.