Chapter Two: Our Dream House

We moved into our dream house in Jan of 2009. Built by Baddy and meticulously designed by me, every window had a designated view. The house was our new baby, and our other three boy babies were making their claims on it very fast, hanging off of every ledge and jumping off of every precipice. How wrong I was in thinking I had them in mind when designing the house, apparently short sighted. "Great designing Mommy," sadistically joked Baddy, "too bad we didn't put in your requested interior skateboard ramp, instead of stairs." And it was indeed too bad. Once again, Baddy shoulda listened to mama bear.

But I was happy, and felt as though we had arrived. While it's true that home is where your heart is, this house was the shit, where our entire family could run around inside and out in our skivvies and throw cannonballs into our very own pond built by Baddy and his beloved skidster. As a family with boys, we didn't have to worry that our loudness would bother our neighbors, and that the only purveyors of our lives were the wildlife who occasionally peeped into our windows.

We were like real adults, with a bonafide East Coast staircase with the softest carpet winding up it and through the upstairs hallways. Below our feet lay wide-planked recycled hard pine wood floors. And the kitchen? The kitchen had windows where we could watch the boys playing while cooking. We had a side by side freezer/refrigerator, and sparkling Caesarstone "White Shimmer" quartz countertops with ultra fine mirror chips. I took immense pleasure in cleaning that shimmer. We also had a breakfast nook with queen Anne windows where the boys could eat in the sun and do their homework. The rooms had soothing J Crew faded colors that I painstakingly chose with heaps of hours spent combing through magazines and in paint stores. And it was all ours. I felt like we were cheating

I had to sheepishly apologize to the crew for moving in before they were ready for us but I was ready for more space and needed release from the tiny condo we were living in while building the house. Two years was enough. I agree that living in small areas keeps the family closer together but I'm not convinced this was healthy for our particular rogue family.

In the condo all three boys slept, and leapt off of, bunk beds adjacent to our room. The bathroom was where I went for privacy while on the phone. The worst part of suburbia was my neighbors who hated the thumping. "What is going on in here?" They'd inquire as I turned down my loud music to yell at the kids to stop doing 720's off of the couch. Why did I never hear a thing from their two little girls?

Having space made us so much happier and we actually all liked each other again. Perhaps I should exclude Baddy from the equation. He wasn't ready for us yet, but I didn't mind that the oven was disconnected and sitting unusable in the middle of the kitchen.

A yard with sod would have been nice. April in Colorado is not beautiful like back East. It was muddy and messy around the house. Even the children didn't like it, unless they were deeply immersed in it, buck-naked. As soon as all their crevices were filled with mud they traipsed through the house yelling for me to hose them down with the warm water bib outside and throw their clothes into our enormous washing machine.

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