Cackle.
Because “progress” is a generous term when home renovations are concerned. Especially the zero budget kind done in the presence of 4 helpers who still sleep in Pull Ups.
So be gentle with the following photographic evidence, eh?
Without further ado, I give you Uebbing house smash 2016, phase 1.
First off we have our entryway/living/dining room combo. We put all our bang and most of our bucks here, because a friend who has been through the reno wringer (hi, Rebecca!) convinced me of the wisdom of “finishing” one room first, so that you’d have somewhere to retreat to during the ensuing chaos. I chose the front room because we need a sizable space to entertain our minions, and because it’s the first thing we see upon entering the house. A few coats of paint and a lot of torn up carpet and we are well on our way from this:
To this:
And a couple differing angles. The paneling, now with another coat of paint, (1 coat of oil-based Kilz original + 2 coats of Sherwin Williams Marshmallow. Opposite walls are Sherwin Williams Passive.) looks amazing, honestly. #verticalshiplap
Dave is currently laying down floors (we went with this engineered hardwood) and thinks he can do them in a single day, so I’m camped out at my mom and dad’s with the kids until I get the green light to return.
We packed pajamas. (Not that I don’t trust his estimation.)
Last night we had back to school night, which involved me rummaging through boxes like a drunk raccoon and showing up at school with a torn grocery bag stuffed with 58% of the supply list. Which means either I gave up halfway through my parental responsibilities or that I’ve already lost everything. I tried to justify it to myself when arranging poor Joey’s paltry spread on his kindergarten! (sob) desk! by mentally chanting “tax dollars, tax dollars” before remembering that it’s Catholic school and there are no tax dollars. So I’ll be returning to the store.
While I stood in the stuffy cafeteria shooting the breeze with one of our beloved preschool teachers who, incidentally, will have one of my children every year for the next 3-5 years, I found myself choking back unexpected tears over my kindie-to-be. The wise and experienced Miss D put her arm on my shoulder and said “it’s always hardest on the parents” at which point I made an ugly choking noise through my nose and started snotting on her. Just for a moment.
I feel torn between the exuberance of a new stage (remember, I’m a mother sea turtle) and the sorrow of passing definitively out of babydom, with my precious first born now in the charge of another adult for more waking hours than not. Granted, I love and trust our teachers, so that makes it a little easier, but I’m still kinda weepy about the whole deal. I just weaned him from his pacifier, and I just got him to start sleeping through the night, and suddenly he’s all long legs and skinny arms and a new crew cut and a Spiderman lunchbox.
Oh gosh.
I’m going to stop before the snorting/choking thing starts again.
Veteran back to school mamas, tell me, does it hurt this much at every stage? I often find myself caught between waves of melancholy over the loss of what was and impatience over the future not yet realized. I need to learn to dwell in the present, and to accept the hard days and the good days all as par for the parenting course. I guess I’m just not that well adjusted yet.
Well, happy hour is almost upon us. I’ll be drinking mediocre red wine on the patio in my parent’s woods, looking out at my still-little-but-not-as-little-as-before guys playing “deer and hunter” in the same stand of pine trees that I used to roam through.
It’s a pretty beautiful life.
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