Loft bed

I've changed Lily's room...AGAIN.

This time, there's a loft bed involved.

See photos here:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=202282&id=659342526&l=46bab63edf

Streamlining

The house has been needing some tackling: removal of junk we don't use and general washing of surfaces. Today I went at the family room and Lily's bedroom, hotbeds of straggling superfulous toys and craft materials. Surfaces were wiped, un- or mis-used things were recycled or binned. Furniture was rearranged. The end result was a much cooler room for Lil, I think.

Yesterday, before the cleaning began, Lily and I strung up some string and used mini wooden clips to hang some first-word flashcards all around her room. I stole this idea from Simon Hartrich's bedroom in the Kedzie apartment, where, if I remember correctly, the alphabet was strung around the room.


Anyway, it has taken away some of the bareness caused by the high ceiling in a room filled with small-person furniture.

Other new features include:

A revised kitchen area, that now has a baby's bed on the kitchen counter. Not sure about how that works, but....it does. Note the string with clips for Lily to hang artwork. That moon is her symbol at nursery school.


Bedside trinkets - IKEA lamp, souvenirs Georgia and Mircea brought Lily back from China, a Mentink original stencil, and a plant recovering from our time away at the holidays.


A closeup of the Mentink.


Fun hangy things: A felt mobile from IKEA and a wooden spinner found in a shop in the old section of town. Two faithful friends, Elmer the Elephant and Bouncy Black Sheep top the bookshelf. They're waiting for the right tallish lamp to come along to sit behind them.


A cleaned up Marmite jar to hold the marbles and bouncy balls that populate the corners of our home.


I quite like the boudoir I've created. Oli found that little chest of drawers in the street on his way home one evening. The mirror was left by the girls who lived in our apartment over the summer, the musical jewellery box came from Santa, and the dreamcatcher was purchased for one euro today in Barcelona. All-in-all, a good space for a Lil to get herself in order.



My favorite part of the room: the bookshelf flanked by a reading chair and baskets of bags, baby clothes, aprons, ballet slippers and tutus. Ask yourself why you don't currently have these things in your bedroom. Consider the improvement they might make.

Somewhere a place for us

Until a week ago, Angela and I were set on an apartment in the nice leafy neighbourhood that is Oak Park. Enough even to make an offer and sign a contract, pending an inspection. It was a gorgeous 3-bedroom apartment with loads of ‘vintage charm’, a cosy little window-enclosed, sun-drenched den and good-sized bedrooms. The area has excellent schools, a mixed ethnicity, many nearby parks and is served extremely well by public transport. We would have been close to our friends, to employment opportunities, to leisure activities and of course all the other benefits and opportunities that arise from city living. In a word, it was perfect.

We had 5 business days to complete the inspection and after our previous encounter with mould, gas leaks and wood-eating-insects at a previous property we were in no doubt of the importance of this process. We chose to employ a man who we have come to call the Safety Man. Self-proclaimed father figure and security zealot, this man misses nothing, not even tap knobs being on the wrong taps:

“This’ll need a professional plumber, Oliver. There’s no telling what could happen here”.
“Couldn’t I just reverse the knobs and then they’d read right, no?”.
“A potential death-trap, Oliver”.

So, we did an inspection and it looks like the property will require enough improvements to cost an arm and a leg and we don't really have any of those to spare. It's a bit too late now to start looking all over again so our options for the immediate future include renting, staying with family members, moving to England temporarily or giving up entirely and selling the baby online for stem cell research.

Family members here in the USA believe we would be most happy and secure in the suburbs where we could afford a single-family home in a nice new subdivision in the entrails of oblivion, perhaps named something like Bedlam Heights. They are right that for a relatively low cost we could secure a large new property that would guarantee us a financial return in the next few years and be free of the types of problems that have thwarted our attempts at city living so far, such as mould, structural weakness and out-of-date plumbing and electricity. Unfortunately, however, it is not possible to live in the suburbs. Sure, you can eat & sleep within the four walls of the house but beyond that you are utterly dependent on a car to access anything resembling civilisation, which, even then, is in effect a massive car park with mall-like structures stretching endlessly in all directions. There is no community here. Nothing. We would be unhappy.

What next? We'll see. We’re currently looking for places to rent in Logan Square, but seceretly dreaming of living on the beach in Castelldefels, Barcelona. Ultimately, however, and most importantly, at the day's end when curled up in bed we know that we have the most important things already: each other and our forthcoming baby.

OliBear