Hallelujah and Settling In

Well, if I was feeling down yesterday, today certainly was the very definition of a new day.  Nora and I had a great time with two of our friends and their daughters this evening planning island events for World Breastfeeding Week.  There’s nothing like planning all kinds of exciting breastfeeding promotion and support events to make me feel like I’m able to make a difference.

Oh yeah, and there’s this:

Yes, Chris and one weekend full of a particularly large amount of dishes finally convinced me to loosen up the purse strings and buy a dishwasher.  And I’m glad I did.  Obviously since it’s small it can’t do everything, but by being able to put our place settings in here, I only need to do one sink full of dishes instead of two.  I don’t have to spend time drying and putting away in the middle of washing because we have more than our dish rack can handle; and I now have somewhat of a hope to have the dishes washed when Mr. T’s mama comes to pick him up instead of a sink and counter full of the day’s dirty dishes.  It’s wonderful.

But this really means more than just having an easier time washing dishes.  In deciding to spend the money, we made the commitment to living in this house for several more years.

When we first moved here, I thought this house was just going to be a stopping place until we could find something better.  It felt tiny and cramped, and despite having a great location for walking everywhere it had quite a few annoying quirks that really stopped me from thinking it was home.  It only felt like the best we could get on our shoestring budget and with the shortest two days to choose a house; I thought for sure that we would find something better by the time our lease was up.

For the past year, I’ve been religiously watching the classified for year-round rentals, and continually disappointed by the incredibly high costs.  With no yearly increase for Chris and most two-bedrooms above $1700 per month (ours is less because it’s technically only one bedroom), I’ve slowly realized that a quick move somewhere better wasn’t going to happen.  I did my best to decorate and make this house feel like a home, but it was hard to really settle in when I thought we might be moving again soon; I didn’t want to spend the money to fix the things that I hate about the house (like the laughably horrible paint job).

Chris and I spent time debating the length of time we could live here as part of the dishwasher discussion.  I didn’t want to spend that kind of money if we were going to move somewhere else (which would likely have a built in dishwasher) in a year.  The biggest obstacle to committing to this house longer-term was whether or not we thought we could have a second child in this (less than 800 square feet) house.  When we first moved in, I would have said no, but now I think we could definitely have two kids, maybe even two kids and an infant.  We measured Nora’s room and discovered that it is indeed big enough for a twin bed along with her amoire and dresser, and if you can have a twin bed, you can have bunk beds.

And since we cosleep for at least the first 9 months or so, that even allows for the possibility of a third child through infancy.  (No, we are not ready to have number two, but these are the crazy things I think about…I’m a Scrooge and I want to get my money’s worth!)  Now, I know that some of you may think a family of four or five living in less than 800 square feet is crazy, but I know it’s do-able…just Google “tiny house”.  And it’s totally inline with our commitment to living simply without extra rooms and things we aren’t using.

Plus, when you live somewhere like thisand thisand thiswho cares how small your house is?

So we did it.  We committed.  I planted a garden. We bought a dishwasher.  I might even paint.  It’s about time this place started feeling like a home.