New Shoes!

Posting about the kids' new shoes is a little odd but this is the kind of thing I get asked about a lot. Plus it gave me an excuse to snap a few cute pictures of a couple of my kids for all you grandparents out there.

If you've ever asked yourself, "What does Susan think are the best kid shoes?" wonder no longer. These are Keen Newport H2s. We first got a pair of these handed down to us the summer Margaret was one. I'd had a heck of a time finding summer shoes that were decently supportive and not sporting Dora the Explorer and Margaret was picky about comfort. Given that she was already walking several miles a day sometimes at that age, I was fine with finding her shoes that worked.

There's an endless debate--especially with children's items--about whether to spend extra for "quality." In general we choose the "budget" option whenever it is feasible. But these shoes are a definite exception. They retail regularly for around $50 a pop which is a lot to spend on kids shoes. But a few times a year the price bottoms out at around $35 which is only a bit more than a decent pair of shoes from Target. And these shoes have other benefits that justify the high price.

First, they are built like tanks. The kids log miles and miles of walking in these shoes and they hold up amazingly well. The original handed down pair of purple Keens is in storage and Margaret's pair from last year will join them. They both still look almost new. I have been burned in the past paying more for something thinking it will last well enough to pass down to the next kid but these shoes have renewed my faith in quality.

Second, the design of the shoes lets us replace other pairs we might normally buy. These are closed-toe but have plenty of breathing space. They are waterproof! And they don't stink! For summer these are the only shoes Margaret wears. They pass muster for me as Sunday shoes because they never look dingy and we walk to and from church. They also work during transitional seasons with a pair of socks. So, other than these Keens, the only other shoes I need to buy are a pair of boots for winter and two pairs of "holiday" shoes (one for Christmas, one for Easter) which I usually find for about $10 apiece. That's not too bad for a yearly shoe outlay.

Third, the kids love them. These arrived in the mail yesterday afternoon and William has not removed them except to change his clothes. He slept in them. That was a real treat when he crawled into our bed in the night and we got kicked in the ribs. Keens don't really work for Joseph's feet but William's shoes will definitely be kept for Gregory and we'll continue to save Margaret's in case she ever gets that sister she's praying for.

So there's my little treatise on kids' shoes. Next time someone asks me about this I can just point them here rather than re-typing all of these fascinating thoughts. And if, after reading this, you are ready to run out and buy some for your kids, two warnings: all Keens run small so you might have to size up and some kids hate them. The first two pairs we owned were given to us by a family whose girls refused to wear them. So I would recommend finding a place to try out your first pair. I bought them last year during the semi-annual REI sale and this year found them online (Shoemall.com) for 20% off and then added an 8% Ebates refund on top. Both times I paid $35.

The hinterlands

I have no idea what is wrong with my camera. Anyone want to guess why all my pictures seem slightly blurry and low-resolution? I know I'm not the world's greatest photographer but usually I can manage to keep my hands steady. I'm going to post these anyway because it will give you an idea of what I'm talking about.

The back "mud room" which is in need of some serious organization.

I didn't accomplish anything on my "Little House Projects List" this weekend. Yesterday we headed to a birthday party around noon for both the children of some good friends in our neighborhood. We intended to stay for two hours, tops, and then come back home to get something done. We had such a good time visiting with everyone that we stayed until it was time to come home and put the kids to bed. Perhaps this afternoon I can put a dent in our bedroom which currently looks like a rummage sale exploded all over the place. Eric did manage to cross something off his list by installing a programmable thermostat. I just love these things. Nothing beats rolling out of bed in the early morning to a house that is already nice and warm.

Eric didn't make all those holes--he's actually pretty competent with a drill. We're guessing this is at least the third thermostat in this spot though the last one was pretty old so it doesn't make sense that the old holes weren't patched.

In the meantime, I will entertain you with a little tour of our basement and attic. Our goal, while house hunting, was to find a home with a big enough ground floor for the entire family to live on permanently. And when I say "entire family" that includes having more kids, I hope. But we soon realized that we weren't going to find a city house in our price range with three good-size bedrooms and enough leftover living space to keep us all from driving each other nuts. We continued to rule out single family homes because they tend to have all the bedrooms on the second floor (they also cost just as much, or more, than the two-family homes and make up only about 20% of the housing stock in our neighborhood). So we were left with finding a two-family with a couple main-floor bedrooms and a finished basement.

We definitely have mixed feelings about the usefulness of a finished basement. Joseph can't get down there so we don't want to use it on a regular basis for much of anything but as our family grows, something will have to give and we'll need the space. We're still working out the details of all that. For now, our main apartment is about 1200 square feet with two bedrooms and we're all fine with the space that gives us for now.

That ledge makes a nice little pantry overflow space. Lots of tomatoes! We found them for fifty cents a can and stocked up.

As you head down the back stairs from the kitchen you come into a pretty nice, well-lit room. It's messy! But it's a basement and we're still unpacking. This room currently houses our laundry and chest freezer and storage items that we need to access more frequently: tools, bulk food items, etc.

There is an "L" off to the back with some built-in closet space and we have some plans to organize that entire nook to hold everything that will live in this room permanently. Then we both feel like this room could be nice enough for a bedroom for us, for one of the kids, for guests. This room can be closed off completely from the rest of the basement which as you'll see boasts a second kitchen:

This is also "L" shaped and is big enough for one or two to "eat in". There is a nice large room beyond it.

It's a bit spartan at the moment but we have successfully hosted a couple sets of guests down here already. Margaret spends her rest time down here each day. When she isn't sleeping she likes to dance in front of the big, mirrored closet.

There is also a basement entrance from the front hall and that comes into this rather large entry-way space and you can see there is a second full bath off to the right there.

We hope the basement space might be a nice way to be hospitable to people needing a place to stay. Eric's department has a few new hires coming through this summer. It would be easy-enough to give someone a little studio apartment and still close off the laundry room for our family's use. But we may just keep the space all for ourselves. Once we are fully unpacked we'll have a better idea. We've also looked into converting one of the stairwells into a residential elevator which would allow us to have a much bigger house available to every member of the family.

And if that's not enough space, we've got an attic! The stairs in our entryway lead up to the second floor apartment (for which we have tenants lined up to arrive in the summer) and also to the attic entrance which is a separate, locking door off the landing. The attic is a huge, well-lit space. Currently we have long-term storage up here (outgrown kids' clothes, Christmas decorations) and Eric set up a desk with a few storage bins and a spare door. It's not fancy but he loves having a "home" office two floors away from the family. He can actually get work done from home now which is a huge boon for an academic with an irregular schedule.

With some new flooring and a coat of paint the attic could be quite lovely. It's set up for heat though we haven't been able to make it work yet (we knew about that problem before we bought it). The ceiling isn't very high but the various "rooms" are all large and there are lots of them. We are toying with the idea of making this Margaret's room in a few years.

These pictures really don't show how big this space is. It's a bit more than we know what to do with!

Out the back you can see our brand-spanking new roof, just put on yesterday. Nothing says "I'm a homeowner" like forking over thousands of dollars for a new roof. Fortunately we knew that we'd be replacing this flat section before long and got the sellers to kick in for it even though they swore it had never leaked (and we believe them). But we had a terrible wind/rain storm our second weekend here and ended up with a puddle on the floor of the second floor kitchen. So now we have a new roof. And though you can't tell from this terrible picture, we have a view of the Manhattan skyline from this roof. There might even be a chance of putting in a little deck up here down the road, though that's certainly pretty far down the list.

This isn't the prettiest view of our immediate neighborhood which is actually quite lovely. There are some luxury condos going into a vacant lot next to us at some point in the not-too-distant future.

So there you have the far reaches of our new home. It's an enormous amount of living space if we can figure out how to best use it. Fortunately, we have plenty of time to figure that out.

The little guy

Gregory has been busy outgrowing his clothes and generally charming our socks off lately. He's a little smile factory and the flock of surrogate grandmothers at our church all know they can get a big grin out of him if they run over after (or during) Mass.

He has his moments, of course, but I would say he's our most easy-going baby so far. Maybe I'm just getting better at being a mom. He sleeps for nice long stretches day and night. He mostly puts up with his violently affectionate older brother. He lets Margaret over care for him. Joseph has developed a real knack for entertaining babies lately and he's been trying his tricks on Gregory. We're all pretty smitten with him, even Robyn:

Who can hold Gregory while teaching my children anatomy:

In the top picture you might notice two items of interest. The first is that, yes, that's my baby in a basket of (clean) laundry. What can I say? We're baby furniture minimalists. All of my children so far have hated those little infant seats after the first three minutes or so. Plus those rocking seats are just too tempting for two-year olds. So I don't choose to take up valuable square footage with something that is mildly entertaining at best and life-threatening at worst. But I was really sick last week and needed to get some work done on the computer while home alone with Gregory. On a whim, I plopped him in the laundry basket and he played there happily for about thirty minutes.

The other thing you might notice now or in future pictures of Gregory is the big red spot on his chin. That's a hemangioma (sometimes called a "strawberry" or "stork bite"). These spots are fairly common but more often seen on the scalp or back of the neck. Joseph and William both had them on the backs of their necks. Gregory's is a bit worse and in a more concerning spot. Very rarely, they can grow large enough to interfere with feeding. Our pediatrician sent us for an ultrasound which we had today and it doesn't look like we have anything serious to worry about. But the spot could get quite large and red over the next year or so. Typically the spots fade and completely disappear by age five. So, now you know that that is and you don't have to wonder if Gregory's taking it on the chin from his older siblings on a regular basis.

I hope to have more fun house pics this weekend. I have a slew of exciting projects including Unpacking the Bedroom! Installing Hooks in the Entryway! Hanging Lamps for the Kids! And all sorts of other excitement. Stay tuned.

We need some color in this place

Painting the front two rooms is definitely not a necessary project. The current paint is in great shape. When we moved in, the plan was to keep it for quite awhile. But the more I live with the eggnog colored semi-gloss in every room of the house the more I dislike it. And I definitely want to show off our new curtains against some darker wall color.

Don't these look so much nicer ironed?

We also have a lot--a lot--of orangey wood in this house. We are definitely fans of wood and two of our rental houses over the years have had gorgeous dark wood trim that we wouldn't dream of touching with a paint brush. But in this house we have thin, orangey wood trim that is not pretty. It is not even installed very well. It doesn't even match throughout the house. We are planning to replace all the trim and add some crown molding at some point down the road and in the meantime I plan to feel not the least bit guilty painting all the trim. Also the last person to paint did a really sloppy job and a lot of the trim is splattered in eggnog semi-gloss anyway. We'll still have plenty of natural wood in our floors, the pocket doors and much of our furniture.

Since we don't plan to hire someone to paint for us and we have limited time for projects that require emptying whole rooms, I'm also planning to be okay with adding paint color in stages so I wanted to spend some time coming up with a color scheme we liked. One of the things requiring paint is a large piece of furniture which is fairly easy to haul out to the back patio some weekend:

This was the last thing I built last fall before a series of unfortunate events put a halt to all furniture work. I had to assemble it in our kitchen, in fact, and didn't want to paint or stain it indoors while pregnant so it has remained unfinished for months. This was built for a very specific spot in our old apartment and I'm so glad it fit nicely somewhere here. I loved building this. Every step came together just beautifully until I got to the drawers. Plans came from my favorite Alaska mom and it turns out that 1 x 12 stock is a different size in Alaska than the Lower 48. But I think if I paint it I can fix the drawers with plywood and the whole thing will look nicer.

Anyway, here's our current thinking on paint color:

The red is for the side table in the dining room. And I might give our red bookcase a new paint job as well. It's a color pretty close to this now but is very beat up. The greens are for the walls. We're thinking that the darkest green will go behind the bay windows, the next darkest in the dining room/library, and the lightest on the other living room walls. Then I'm thinking about white trim throughout. I like these greens--they come across as more gray depending on the light but since they're actually green it should feel warmer than gray would (gray is quickly becoming my favorite color. Is that depressing?).

I feel pretty settled on those painting choices but I'm not sure about the ceilings. Ceiling white? Or one of the greens? Something else? And I'm also not sure what to do with these louvered closet doors (there's another set behind the other end of the sofa). Paint them the same as the trim? Or one of the greens? We want to get rid of these closets someday but that's a big project and we have to live with them in the meantime. I would be hesitant to add a third color to the room because we have a good amount of color going on already. But I'm certainly no design expert.

Feel free to weigh in. My rule for giving advice, solicited or otherwise, is that you are free to give it and I'm free to ignore it :)

After breakfast

Joseph can't stop reading.

And the other two are close on his heels.

More than you ever cared to know about my curtains

The vast majority of the planned projects for our house are purely cosmetic and, for the most part, they are all on the back burner while we tackle a leaky roof, a wheelchair ramp, and investigate a couple of upgrades to the rental unit upstairs (two Ph.Ds are arriving this summer--it'll be a regular nerdery around here). Fortunately, most of the windows in our house look out at absolutely nothing so investing in curtains is not a high priority. In the bedrooms we've just re-hung the light blocking curtains on tension rods that I made a couple years ago. But the bay windows have that public view right out to the street. Sellers are required, I think, to provide window coverings with the house and these windows were equipped with snazzy roller shades. We just didn't want to live any longer than necessary with something that took six tries per window to fully lower each evening.

The first problem was how to hang curtains on bay windows. Ours have three sections but then the wall turns again to come straight out rather than just keeping its angle. Does that make sense? And the windows run right up to that turn with hardly any space between each window. Normally you want to mount the rod bracket at least two inches beyond the window frame and I would have gone even further so as not to lose any of the natural light coming in. We picked up some rods and figured out how to hang them by removing the finials on the center window. This at least allowed us to maximize every centimeter we had. Then we settled on dark wood blinds and sage-green linen curtains. We figured the blinds would be light-blocking and insulating and the linen curtains would be sheer and breezy enough to not obstruct too much light. We could have just mounted decorative panels on the side walls but I wanted slightly sheer curtains that work for blocking the afternoon sun in the summertime.

Definitely should have bought an ironing board while I was at IKEA.

The first glitch was with the wood blinds. I'd seen them at Home Depot for only $20 each. For real wood! But when I went and double checked our window measurement I found we needed blinds just eight inches longer and--get this--that added $38 to the price tag for each blind. No way. We decided that curtains alone would probably be fine and I went off to Ikea to pick up our sage-green linen drapes.

Second glitch: the sage green drapes were definitely more "lime" green in the store. They were pretty cool but they didn't exactly go with the traditional/classic/folk vibe we're going for eventually. There were no other colored curtains that would have let in any light and, of course, Eric wasn't with me so I was flying solo on curtain selection with a hard deadline to get these up before Gregory's baptism party. I reluctantly decided to select a white or off-white curtain which is actually what Eric had wanted in the first place. But I wanted contrast between the walls and curtain. I didn't want to buy any synthetic fabric and I didn't want to dole out the money for linen curtains that matched my walls. Just as I was about to give up I spied the Birgit curtains. Mostly white, yes, but 100% cotton, plenty sheer, and with a really cool folk-art motif in the center that actually match cushions I've wanted to buy for ages for our leather chairs.

Even so, the thing that really decided it for me (other than the embarrassing amount of time I'd already spent pacing the curtain department) was the much lower price. I figured I'd feel less bad about replacing them down the road if they were inexpensive to begin with.

I got them home and we hung them up and--as I feared--I hated them against the cream walls. And then I had a startling epiphany: I own those walls! I can paint the walls! As soon as I realized that, I fell in love with the curtains and Eric and I even managed to more or less plan out the entire color scheme for the living and dining room based on the colors in the flower motif.

They look awesome pulled back to the side and equally great left hanging--they let in a great amount of light all day long. And we've done a few outdoor evening checks and Eric is pretty sure we have nothing to worry about as far as privacy goes.

I got even more giddy when I realized that I could paint just around the bay windows for now to make the curtains pop. In order to paint the entire room we'd need to move the piano and I have a feeling that even if I could convince Eric to do that, we'd have a hard time recruiting even one or two friends to help. The plan is to make that alcove a super-dark green to match the stem of the flower (think a "gray-green" rather than "forest green").

Quick Poll

I promise that I have a real post coming soon! Part of the delay has been that I was trying to rig up a "two blogs in one" approach so that I could post on the main page about what's up with the kids and in a separate tab on what's up with the house. But I can't do that as easily as I'd hoped.

We love our new house but our list of projects for it is already miles long. That mostly makes me pretty happy and I'm excited to tackle things as we find the time, energy, and money. And I will definitely want to post updates here. I know some of you would like nothing more than to read my endless thoughts on choosing curtains and paint colors. And I know that others of you would rather eat tacks than hear one more person go on and on about home improvement projects.

So, a quick poll. Please take a second to answer via e-mail or by leaving a comment here or on Facebook.

Which of the following statements best describes you?

A. I don't care what you write about! I'll read anything you post!

B. I really just log on for pictures of the kids and I would be very annoyed to open a post about your curtains.

C. As much as I would enjoy reading a dissertation on paint color, it offends my organizational sensibilities to find such things on a blog that is, ostensibly, about your kids. Please start a new blog and send me the address.

Thanks for the feedback!