I have always drawn a great deal of satisfaction from decorating and ordering the spaces I inhabit. As a child, my room was my sanctuary, and I loved being in it, door closed, among my books and games and knickknacks, all arranged just so. My favorite book was "Molly Moves Out," a story about a bunny who leaves her home full of messy, pain-in-the-ass siblings and gets her own little house. Total fantasy fodder! My sophomore year of college, my dorm room was described in an article in the campus paper on people who "decorated" their dorm rooms. I've always loved setting up my desk or office at work. And in each of the various places Alastair and I have lived together, we've enjoyed nesting and organizing and decorating -- never spending a lot on new decor, but finding ways to make the hodge-podge of stuff we've acquired over the years "work."
We bought our first house -- the one we currently live in -- almost two years ago, while in the midst of trying to get pregnant. In fact, while we were painting and sanding and cleaning our new "baby," I was doing my first (unsuccessful) round of fertility drugs. A few months later, our house was starting to really feel like a home, and I was pregnant with twins. I remember at one point in my third trimester, sitting (no doubt uncomfortably) on the couch, admiring the very adult-looking space we'd created for ourselves: Shelves full of books, lovely hardwood floors, various exotic knicknacks and framed artwork. Antique furniture in the dining area. Curtains I'd made on the windows. It was lovely, and it was neat, and I knew that soon, it would be history. I didn't know if I'd be able to cope with the change gracefully. (My world! My beautiful world!)
Flash forward a year, and, as predicted, our house is overrun with baby-ness. There's a Jumperoo in the corner of the living room, a ball house thingy by the window, an entire shelf of our bookshelves cleared for the girls' toys and books, and various plush and plastic doodads scattered around the floor at any given time. The sideboard in the dining room is a changing table. The dining room table is a catchall for stray bits of baby clothing, bibs, a box of Cheerios. Two giant white highchairs that vaguely resemble Star Wars stormtroopers take up a whole corner of the room. Our knicknacks and magazines and framed photos have been relegated to higher shelves, safe from little hands. The neat, sophisticated order of our home is, indeed, a thing of the past. And you know what? It really doesn't bother me.
Sure, in the evening after the girls are in bed, we like to straighten up a little -- pick toys up off the floor, wipe the errant flakes of rice cereal off the dining room table, put baby shoes and hats stripped off after a walk back where they belong. But we can't erase the evidence of the babies completely, nor do we want to. Their toys and books and clothes and feeding paraphenalia are part of the whole messy, tiring, chaotic, ridiculous joy of having these two in our lives. What can we do but relax and embrace it?
