A temporary home

We moved!
Into an apartment!

Its a teeny tiny bit crazy. I never in a million years thought that I would live in an apartment again.  But here we are! Its all part of this lovely little journey we are on.

 

master bathroom

 master closet (hooray!)

master bedroom (we have a door! Double hooray!)

 The boys' room (yes, they are sharing, but so far so good!)

 boys bathroom

hallway. Fun for running in if you are 2 or under.

kitchen (really its at least twice the size of our old kitchen)

 

 Living Room (you can see the kitchen to the left)

 Dining and play space

 

View from the play corner

kitchen from the other side

another view of the living room

from the kitchen to the dining room

Really though, the apartment living thing isn't as bad as I thought it would be, you know, if you disregard the poorly behaved dog that howls and barks whenever we leave him alone in the apartment, making me cringe and cross my fingers that the neighbors don't report us. Or the smallness of the whole place, with no where for the kids to really go, except for in their room or a tiny corner of the main living space (or inappropriately running up and down the halls like hooligans). Or the lack of direct access to a car without going up and down the elevator, two flights of stairs and through a few locked doors (ugh). Or the uber hotness of living on the 2nd floor, even with the heat set as low as it will go (45 degrees or something) its always nearly 78 in here.

But there are fun silver linings too. The kitchen is at least 3 times bigger than the one in our house (which speaks to the major need for a renovation), the electric bill is about 1/15 of what it is at the house. The floor plan is open so its easy to see what the boys are doing all the time. The boys room is pretty big, so no one is squished. The boys have their own bathroom and when we shower in our bathroom we don't have to worry about waking them at all because its not directly under them.

Anyhow, the journey has started. We've been living here a few weeks and we're starting to get the hang of it. The kids love the elevator, pushing the buttons and going up and down. They think its fun to drive their toy cars in circles across the floors, dance to music all morning and make tons of loud noise to disturb the people who live below us, like dropping things on the floor (or in Owen's case, throwing sippy cups on the floor), jumping off furniture (Collin: Momma! Look how far I can jump from your cedar chest {said with pride} as I cringe and remind him for the 500th time that we can't jump because people live below us).

While we are here, Drew's been spending nearly every night doing pre-demo on the house- selling appliances on craigslist, taking out fixtures we'll keep (fans, light fixtures etc.), pulling out toilets and carpets that we'll save and packing the final few things that are waiting for his attention before the more formal demo (read Excavator and sledgehammer) begins.

The house itself though, is pretty empty. I didn't think that I would be so attached to it, but as it turns out, I am. I actually get a little verklempt when I am there. It feels like being homesick without the home. I'm homesick for what belongs there, and as much as I know logically that it doesn't matter where our family is to keep those memories, it doesn't make it any easier to let go of the house. Its hard for me to reconcile the old memories in that house with what it will become. My emotional attachment is strangely sad and comforting all at once.  I desperately look forward to the new house, but at the same time its hard not to be attached emotionally to the spaces that meant so much to me: Collin and Owen's first steps, bringing them both home from the hospital, our first night back in Minnesota after we were married, moving into the house way back in 2005, the day we found out we were pregnant with Collin, the list goes on. My dissonance is overwhelming enough that I try to actually stay away from the house now- out of sight of out mind seems to be working for me at the present moment.

So, to distract me from wrestling with the feelings associated with our transition between old and new, here's some photos of our temporary life. There aren't many because its not terribly large, but we'll make do for the next 6 months and then it will all be worth it.
Thats what I keep telling myself anyway, as I try to find my way out of the old house.