Home Stretch

Well I broke down and brought the little play kitchen out of hiding. Most of the toys have been in our garage in storage since we started working on the basement, and it's really saved my sanity. But Nora loves to be in the kitchen with me while I'm cooking, and so I thought I'd sacrifice some personal comfort and allow her little kitchen to take over a small corner of our almost-as-small-kitchen. She's in love.

 The basement is coming right along. We have our contractor busy down there every day now, and he should finish up next week. See that area under the stairs? That will be a reading nook. And the color swatches on the post are some colors we were considering. We decided to go with the lighter one on the bottom.

 And we'll probably leave this longer area free of furniture (except maybe some rugs?) for now to allow the kids to run laps. It's amazing how much warmer it is already down there with some insulation and drywall.

The area behind that reading nook will become our little storage closet. I'm loving this new layout. Everything is much more accessible and open and practical. I think we're going to get a lot of use out of our new basement.

And this is completely unrelated, but I wanted to share Nora's first little -ism here (I'm not sure she needs her own column yet). Paul was reading her that Richard Scarry story where Charlie Chipmunk is feeding Big Hilda Hippo her alphabet. He asked Nora if she would prefer eating an apple or an automobile. Nora chose "Apple."

"A bed or a banana?"

"Banana." 

"A clock or a carrot?" 

"Clock." 

"Are you sure you wouldn't rather eat a carrot?" 

"No. Bleh."  

I laughed when I heard that because that's exactly what she says every night when she sees what's for dinner. She's definitely my pickiest eater so far!