the nesting continues…

in the aftermath or Thing Two’s second X chromosome turning out to be a Y, the biggest shift has been in his room. No longer satisfied with peach walls, plum carpets and floral patterns, we’re in the process of repainting and redecorating.

(I’ve also set aside the “Madeline” wall sign — though, admittedly, I’m not throwing it out until “he” pops out and I get the official confirmation.)

Part of the bedroom reorg is that the white french provincial furniture we inherited from my grandparents is now going into sparklets room (above, top) and sparklet’s slightly more gender neutral furniture is sliding into Thing Two’s room in substitution (above, underneath).

We’re also painting both their rooms a light green — there by reducing the 137 things they’ll argue about some day to a more manageable 136.

This argument reduction effort was actually kicked off last week when I saw a “Thing Two” decal in Target that sparklet and I eventually put on his bedroom door. It was officially the first time I saw something in wanted for one child that made me say “oh, crap — what am I going to buy for the other.” Fortunately, there was a stack of Sesame Street decals (with sparklet favorite Abby Cadabby) on the next display over.

That might bring the list down to 135 1/2.

driving down to Williamsburg in this monstrosity to pick up some french provincial furniture for Thing Two sparklet’s room. at least it’s a rental that I get to give back tomorrow — can’t imagine trying to street park this tank in Mount Pleasant.

we bought Thing Two some Muppet stuffed animals for his room, partly because we had realized that everything in there was a hand-me-down or toy sparklet had rejected, and partly because I figured it was to early to start brainwashing him about star wars.

sparklet quickly fell for kermit, and has helpfully volunteered to care and steward the Muppet until a time that Thing Two can care for him himself.

this quickly prompted a Saturday morning viewing of the original Muppet Movie, which sparklet loved. of course, wewatched the “Edited for Toddler” version, which involves daddy skipping from song to song to song (running time: 35 minutes).

at least we now have an alternative to hearing The Jungle Book over and over again.

i got really bored — not much else to say. that, and the village (and the track) lasted about 30 seconds after sparklet woke up.

sparklet’s first night in a big girl bed went about how we expected — two hours of unbridled excitement at her new bed followed by a period of shear “wait, you expect me to sleep in this thing” terror.

mommy had to sing about 20 minutes of twinkle, twinkle after the lights went out — a shockingly long time considering her current repulation for the easy manner with which she goes to sleep.

of course, we’re spinning this as a “present” for sparklet, but in the end she’s got to get out of the crib because thing two is going to need a place to sleep in the spring.

UPDATE: the following night it was back to normal, with a quick hop into the new bed and snoozing just 5 minutes later.

turns out climate control in a 97 year old house is a bit of a challenge.

who knew.

it’s that time of year finally, and we’ve started to do the things i sincerely hope to be doing in this backyard each October for the rest of my life — pulling in the porch furniture, turning off the outside spigots, and firing up the radiators.

the boiler that feeds the radiator turned out to be a bit of a problem — it’s 40+ years old, and seems to be throwing a lot more heat back into the unfinished basement than it’s putting up the pipe to the main living areas. when we called a chimney person to investigate, it turned out that the chimney has collapsed, so the heat just has no where to go.

needless to say we’re getting that fixed. actually, we’re probably just going to replace the 40+ year old boiler while we’re at it.

in other news, sparklet’s room has become a bit of an ice box — which is (mostly) as we expected. it’s on the north side of the house (so gets very little sun) and has a door, a window and a transom — all of which are 97 years old and all seemingly more proficient at escorting the outside in than keeping it out where it belongs.

so, i spent last weekend opening up the transom windows to let some hot air circulate between the rooms. of course, i was doing this with a chisel, a mask and a hepa-rated vacuum cleaner just in case our 97 year old paint had some heavy, metalic surprises inside.

regardless, i think we’re all setup for the winter on Monroe Street — the first of many, i hope.

it’s officially the end of summer.

we grilled one last time before cleaning and covering, winterized the house, did one last round of gardening, emptied the (we-waited-so-long-the-leaves-are-rotting) basil plants, and put stuff away.

next up is inside — it’s 60 degrees out, and we can already feel the drafts through our 97 year old windows.

if sparklet has missed anything about our old place on park road, it’s the complete lack of fire and police sirens at the new place.

before, we were on one of the main east/west routes for emergency traffic — and now we only see sirens if something is happening on our specific block (and it’s a quiet block).

about a week after we moved in, someone half a block over caught his grill on fire, which led to sparklet busting out the front door and running up and down the porch until i agreed to walk her down to see the commotion up close.

there’s been nothing sense, sans an occasional driveby while we’re walking around the neighborhood — regardless of how much sparklet makes the “more” when she hears something pass in the distance.

one of the best kept secrets of capitol hill is that you can get an actual American flag (not the “patriotic banners” Walmart sells now to skirt the flag laws) flown over the Capitol for really reasonable prices.

while we’ve been flying the District flag and the Great Flag of the Republic from our porch for a couple of months now, on national holidays it’s growing increasingly hard to fly a non-American flag without betraying our separatist leanings.

so, after another awkward holiday (July 4th, featuring our Texas flag) we finally ordered an American flag, and did so in honor of my grandfather, grant “poppa” roberts.

it seemed an appropriate thing to do considering he is the only man i know who flew an American flag from his porch each day for the last couple of decades — right up until he moved into assisted care a month or so ago.

and, besides getting a reasonably priced flag to fly, we also got a nice little certificate from the Architect of the Capitol:

The is to certify that the accompanying flag was flown over the United States Capitol. At the request of the Honorable Eleanor Holmes Norton, Member of Congress, this flag was flown for Kate Elisabeth Parker, in honor of Grant “Poppa” Roberts.

long may it wave.

fortunately, no damage to speak of.

we got about 10 hours of sustained winds but we kept power the whole time, and it looks like we are the only part of my side of the family (virginia, new hampshire, maine, vermont) who are going to be able to say that.

for our part, we were cautiously optimistic — not only did the hurricane stay farther east than we had thought, but our neighbor told us that this part of mount pleasant hasn’t lost power in the last decade or two.

turns out most of our electrical infrastructure (plant, substations, wires) are all buried, meaning something pretty spectacular has to happen for us to lose power.

feeling pretty blessed right now.

one letter off the wall, one photo slightly askew — not exactly something to write home about, but certainly a good deal more severe than the last one.

i was actually in new york for work, so missed most of the excitement. what i got was a strange surge of vertigo (i was on the 18th floor) and didn’t realize it was an earthquake until my knees started bouncing half a beat later.

the lady sparkler had it the worst, being forced to walk the mile and a half home because the District (as expected) lost it’s collective minds.

most buildings downtown were evacuated, traffic was at a standstill which put a kaibosh on the bus, and the metro ground to a halt under unprecedented ridership and speed restrictions through the whole system.

unfortunately, none of this is terribly surprising. given how badly we handle snowstorms, i expected the District would see roving packs of bureaucrats in ripped suites — with bandanas made from yesterday’s ties — ransacking local stores for water, plastic sheeting and duct tape.

sparklet, for her part, was walking down the street and didn’t seem to have a problem with the quake itself, but more the fact that each and every front door within view immediately popped open and all at once people started flooding the/her street.

so, what’s next — a hurricane?

it’s not a pregnancy with out a really long list of things i have to do around the house.

with my new found salary, we’d already started ticking off a couple of items on our long term wish list — installed a water filter next to the kitchen sink, some cosmetic stuff in our bathrooms, and patched up some outstanding items from our home inspection (including some reinforcing some joists under the porch, and blowing more insulation into the attic).

the big update, however, has been installing a murphy bed in the basement, which instead of being a rental unit we now expect will now play host to a steady stream of family over the next couple of years decades.

the bed is just fantastic — it’s built like a tank, and takes an honest-to-God real, queen-sized, 12″ thick pillow-top mattress, which i’m seriously considering putting on the bed upstairs and dumping our old mattress on our guests downstairs (i kid, i kid).

i’m not exactly sure what else is going to be added to the list, but not to worry — the lady sparkler has only been pregnant for six weeks, so she hasn’t really had time to get creative.

the gardening we did at the beginning of june is starting to bear fruit — and quite literally.

sparklet picked her first tomatoes (and ate them immediately) and we’ve been using fresh basil in our cooking for the last month or so.

agriculture thrives in the heart of the District.