I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what it would be like to not sleep in the same bedroom as Babboo. Would it be weird to wake up in the morning and not have sleeping Babboo be the first thing I see?

I’ve been thinking about what it would be like to have kitchen drawers that aren’t broken. Or how it must feel to have a dishwasher that actually gets your dishes cleaner instead of dirtier.

I wonder what it would be like to have space enough for my child to run and play in. A place where he could set up his train set and leave it set up without fear of his mommy tripping over it and cursing it’s name. I wonder if Babboo would know what to do with this space, or if he’s been forever conditioned to only running in confined spaces, back and forth, back and forth.

I’ve also been thinking about what it must be like to be able to bathe your child in a bathroom where we can both fit in the room without the door being closed. Or maybe just a place to hang all of our towels on the wall. I’ve been thinking about how nice it would be to have a place where we could tuck Babboo’s toys in after he goes to bed. Or a shelf that would hold all of his books.

I wonder what it would be like to have to have a closet where I can keep my shoes. Or a place for extra bars of soap and tubes of toothpaste. Or our winter coats.

Heck, I wonder what it would be like to have a place to keep our stroller.

When we moved into our little one bedroom apartment it seemed perfect for us. Sure, it was much smaller then the three bedroom house we just sold, but it was only The King and I. Plus the apartment would be temporary. We’d only be there a short time. And like my mom always told me, you can live anywhere if you know it’s only temporary.

We knew we’d be bringing home our baby to the apartment. But dude, babies are small. They don’t take up any space. Having a baby in a one bedroom apartment would not cramp our style.

Plus, it’s only temporary. Until the new house is finished.

Can you believe it’s been over two and a half years since we moved into our one bedroom apartment? Our once tiny baby is now two years old. He has no idea what it’s like to have a place to keep his toys and books. He’s never had his own bedroom to go to at night. He’s never eaten a meal at home with his mom and dad at the table. The concept of multiple bathroom is lost on him.

As far as Babboo knows, tiny hallways are synonymous with playrooms. Apartment lobby’s are where you go to play with your bouncy calls. He thinks all houses have elevators and pools and that mommy’s do the laundry in laundry rooms located on different floors. He thinks you get your mail from a slot in the wall and not out of a mailbox on the street.

Babboo also thinks that daddy’s are always working and aren’t usually home for dinner or bath nights. He thinks mommy’s always cook dinner and do the dishes and daddy’s are only home in the morning before taking him to school. He thinks the only day you can stay in bed and snuggle mommy and daddy is on Sundays, when daddy doesn’t have to work.

I’ve been thinking a lot about all of this lately because this week something happened that we’ve all waited a long time for.

We’re giving notice at our apartment.

That’s right, in a few week’s we’ll actually be living in The (New) House The King Built. We’ll wake up, together, every morning and go to bed, together, ever night. And by “together” I mean, all of us in our own rooms. (Well, The King and I will still be rooming together. You know what I mean.)

It looks like it’s finally going to happen. And frankly, I can’t wait. It’s an exciting time for our little family. Big changes are a foot.

People are usually shocked when I tell that that The King and I slept in a twin sized bed for the first two years of our marriage. Really, we did. And not even a real twin sized bed. We had a futon mattress. We also lived in a studio apartment, so we didn’t have any other options.

We moved to the first new house (you know, the one we built before the one we’re building now) and happily got rid of our twin size bed. We upgraded to a full size bed. But alas, we still rocked the futon mattress.

(Hey, futon mattresses are cheap and we were are poor.)

We’ve since sold the first house, as well as most of our furniture. Somehow in all of this we’re still rocking the same full size futon mattress that we bought over six years ago. And let me tell you, it’s not rocking us. Every morning The King and I wake up to find we’ve got another kink in our neck, or our back is all wacky, or we can’t feel our toes.

It was hard to admit it, but we finally did; we needed a change.

We started small. We bought new pillows. The new pillows rocked. We were both happy.

Suddenly the new pillows stopped rocking so hard. We were both back to hurting and sleeping terribly. I even succumbed to digging my old pillow out and using it again.

The King and I weren’t sure if our bodies were in pain because of the stress in our lives. I mean, maybe we were tensing up at night, thus resulting in a crappy nights sleep. Or maybe The King’s body was hurting because he’s building a house with his own hands. (I hear manual labor is hard. I hope I never find out if that’s true.)

Or maybe, just maybe it was the crappy futon mattress that we loved so many years ago.

Last week we came to a conclusion, we had to get rid of the futon. We had to suck it up and get a mattress made for the grown-ups we had become. We owed it to ourselves.

(Thankfully Macy’s was having an awesome One Day Sale! They practically paid us to take the mattress off their hands. Seriously.)

The night of January 19th will be spent sleeping on our new queen size real-life-mattress. And believe you me, I’ve got it marked on the calendar.

It’s going to be a joyous day.

So tell me, do you think a queen size will be big enough? Or should we have splurged for a California king? Dude, beds things are huge.

I don’t know how I expected Babboo to react to Christmas. I didn’t really have any expectations. But dude, the kid woke up on Christmas morning and just wanted to eat his breakfast while sitting on the presents.

Oh yes, it was very exciting.

After a little prodding we got him to open some toys. But after he started to play with them, he was d-o-n-e opening gifts. The King and I opened our gifts and then tried to get Babboo to open some more of his.

“Babboo, why don’t you open this present from Grandma?”

“No. No, no, no. No!”

“But it might be another toy to play with.”

“NOOOOOO! No.”

“Okay dude. Sorry I asked.”

We spent the rest of Christmas day at The King’s parents house, begging and pleading with Babboo to open the million more gifts from them.

“Look what Mimi got you. Why don’t you open it Babboo?”

“No!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

“Never mind.”

Thankfully there was snow falling outside to watch through the windows and tons and tons of junk food to eat.

And thankfully Babboo woke up this morning and was very excited to get to play with all the toys he wasn’t that interested in yesterday.

All in all, I’d say we had a pretty good Christmas at our house.

So tell me, how was your Christmas?

I know it’s not even that far into December, but already I’ve noticed that I’m just not feeling the Christmas spirit. Sure I’ve done my fair share of Christmas shopping. I’ve begun my gift making process. I’ve mailed gifts to far away family and friends. I’ve ordered gifts online. I’ve wrapped presents. Heck, I even put up a tiny pink tree in our tiny apartment.

While it may be hard to tell in this picture, this cute pink tree is uber tiny. It’s so tiny that I can’t find lights to use on it. Do you know what a hot pink Christmas tree is without twinkle lights? It’s merely a plain old tree. No good can come from a Christmas tree with no lights.

End of story.

I needed a new tree. I needed something that twinkled and sparkled in the dark, something to help get me excited for the upcoming holiday. Last night while picking up a few things at Target, I fought exactly what I was looking for:

And it only cost $2.50. (The previous tree was $8.00 at Urban Outfitters. Boo!) It’s big enough for pretty lights, came with it’s own (pink) stand, and fits perfectly on Babboo’s chest of drawers. Putting the little tree together was our Monday night family activity. Believe it or not, this little tree lifted my spirits.

You know else lifted my spirits yesterday? My new glasses:

You may, like The King, think they look suspiciously like my old glasses. If you think this, you would be wrong. These glasses are brown, to match my hair. And the sides are thicker.

Dude, it only took me nine months to finally get my butt in gear and get the new glasses I talked about back in March. I’m happy with them. Not only are they fun and new…but um yeah, they help me see better.

And that is always a good thing.

When I was younger, and by younger I mean anytime before I was twenty five and moved to Seattle, I used to love it when I would go to The Big City with my brothers and sisters and my parents. Anytime we would go there, if time permitted, my parents would drive us around and show us all the places they lived before each of us were born. And while we were driving around to the next place, they would tell us the same stories we had heard before.

My dad would tell us how the red brick apartment building used to be a duplex and that he and my mom lived there before my older brother was born. My brothers and sister and I would sit in the back of the car and roll our eyes acting like we didn’t care. And maybe they didn’t, but I loved the stories. I loved to sit there, with my old, boring parents, and try to imagine what they must have been like back then. Back before none of us were born. Back when they were young and in love. Somehow seeing the actual places they lived made it seem more real.

Since we’ve been living in our apartment the closest grocery store is the one across the street from the apartment The King and I lived in when we first got married. Before now there was no need for us to ever drive by the old place. I probably hadn’t seen it for over a year before I started shopping at the grocery store across the street. And then we had did see it, I never gave it much thought. Now that Babboo is here the old apartment somehow has a deeper meaning to me.

I went to the grocery store last night with Babboo and as we drove out of the parking lot I saw the old apartment. Again I was reminded how that silly little studio apartment, with its twin size bed, was where our little family started.

This was the shabby little place I moved into once our Vegas honeymoon was over. This is the apartment that forced us to learn how to share a closet. This is the home we brought Preston, the cat, home to.

This is where The King and I first learned the basics of married life.

As I drove out of the grocery store parking lot I stopped to take a picture of the apartment and pointed it out to Babboo. He was busy in the car seat eating his string cheese. He could have cared less.

And I wonder if one day, when he’s older, he’ll ask us to drive by our old apartment and tell him the story of what we were like before he was born.

And I wonder, will he like our stories as much as I liked my parents?

I hope so.

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Don’t forget to check out the New Thing Babboo and I did yesterday.

Need more places to read and talk about TV? Then check out my other blog devoted to TV. With the new fall season there is much to talk about!

Friday night, before heading out to have dinner with friends, Babboo and I stopped over at our new house to check on the latest going-ons.

Behold, we have a concrete driveway:

While this may seem rather boring and not really blog worthy, it is, in fact, very exciting. Of course it doesn’t mean we’ll be moving into the house anytime soon. But it does mean that when we do move in we’ll be able to park in our garage.

And that, my friends, is what we call progress. And progress is good.

I’m constantly getting asked, “when do you think the new house will be finished?” To which I reply, “I’m not sure. The King is working as fast as he can.” It’s true, he is. The poor man could not work any harder or faster then he is. The next question is “what do you left to finish?” My reply? “The drywall is completely done and one bathroom has been painted (deep, deep purple). What’s left is everything else in the entire house; flooring, cabinets, appliances. Everything.”

Today we signed a new lease on our one-bedroom apartment. We’ve got five more months before we have to resign another lease, and pay an ever higher rent, or move into our new house.

Come the first of the year it looks like there will be a lot of new things for my little family. Screw the Holidays, we’ll be moving. Now that’s something to look forward to.

Even though we’re not looking to rent moving vans quite yet, Janet is. I will live vicariously through her and her awesome new house in DC with it’s beautiful colors and big plans.

Enough house talk, let’s talk about what a fun weekend we had.

As I mentioned at the start of this post, we met some friends for dinner on Friday night. We took them to the restaurant where The King and I had our first date. It had been quite a few months since we’d been there, but the food was just as good as we’d remembered and the parking was even worse.

(Note to The King: next time, let’s take the bus.)

We almost got beat up by the couple sitting next to us in the restaurant. Apparently they wanted to enjoy a lovely evening out and not have rice thrown at them by Babboo. While he may be cute, he’s not cute enough to get away with rice throwing in a restaurant.

Thanks to Vesper for giving us the heads up on (FREE!) Museum Day on Saturday. Babboo and I took advantage of not having to pay to hang out in a museum that we’ve already been to. We even took the bus, and you can read all about that over at my other blog.

Babboo liked the museum enough. He thought it was fun to pretend to fly the planes and helicopters. He didn’t think having older (and bigger) kids bully him out of his turn on the helicopter was much fun. I swear every picture I have our of trip looks like this one, Babboo just sitting there while some other kid has a grand time.

And since I haven’t given you enough links with this post, here is one more link for you to click on. Remember how Carrisa and I had that little blog about our love for Veronica Mars and then it got canceled and we didn’t know what to do with the little blog?

Um yeah, we figured out what to do with it.