Under construction

Our home looks like a construction zone. When Brian told a friend he has a big project to do, his friend asked what it was. Brian's reply was: nesting. I did notice that he had no qualms about moving all the stuff out of the front room and thus getting creative in our organizing all the stuff we've somehow accumulated since getting a house. In a way it's good not to have too much storage space, because you have to keep posessions to a minimum. On the other hand, when you need to make room, it can get frustrating. But Brian's totally in the groove now. When I told him we had to make room and empty both closets for the nursery, a couple of years ago, he wanted to know why a baby needed both the closet spaces in the small room!!! Now, Ivan seems to have more stuff than us, certainly more clothes, but then we don't grow out of ours every few months! The good news is that not only has everything found a new place, we are more organized and my least favorite room is now more homey and pleasant. I'm hoping it will be a place of much enjoyment.

We had been storing lawn and garden stuff, pet stuff, stuff that needed to be thrown away and tools in the laundry area, now it's an art studio! OK, maybe studio is a bit too fancy a word for it! The best part is that we redid a cabinet where I now have all our art supplies as well as Brian's power tools- not a likely combination, but maybe we'll call it the creative building cabinet. Before, I had the supplies in crates under the table, so when I needed something, I had to crawl and dig, not to mention the added challenge since Ivan has gotten bigger of keeping him out of the supplies that were all too enticing at ground level.

Meanwhile, Brian moved and rearranged, scraped the accoustic tile off the ceiling, cleaned the walls as best as possible and has it all taped off and ready to paint. I'm not supposed to paint, so I'm letting him do all but the decorative stuff which I'll do wearing a mask and trying to vent the room well.

Ivan of course wanted to be in the middle of it all. We had a good laugh when we noticed how he had put back all the tools in the toolbox after playing with it. He had the tray empty and upside down over a heap of tools. Brian is very methodogical and there is only enough room in the box if everything is placed just so. Ivan didn't get that down quite right. For this picture, he did at least put the top tray the right side up, so I guess he'll get the hang of it too eventually.

I had an audio post up, but the recording was so poor, I deleted it. I have to figure out a system to do that. To post them, I have to do it over the phone, but Ivan won't babble into the phone, at best, he will say "hi... uh... oh... hum" imitating what we do when actually having a two way conversation. The camera records well, but when I pull it out, he won't talk, he wants to take pictures with it or look at the pictures on it. He is babbling away all the time though and I'd love to share it with you, so we'll keep trying to find a workable system. Some day, I'm sure he'll talk into the phone and tell the world all about his day. That could get interesting!