The Easy (?) Life

After living in an actual house for less than a week, I can already say I love it! When both Declan and Eleanor were born, we were living in our condo in Scottsdale. It was not very kid-friendly in that it was on the second floor (my neighbors definitely got a show on a daily basis when they watched me haul two kids, the double stroller, groceries, laundry, etc. up and down the stairs), and we were not allowed on the grass. Seriously. Our HOA spent thousands of dollars every month making that grass look gorgeous, but no one was allowed to walk on it, touch it, look at it, or really even think about it. Once we moved to LA, we were on the first floor (bliss!) and had a playground right outside our door. But pretty soon, Miles was born, and we had five people living in a 900 square foot, two bedroom apartment. It was tight, to say the very least.

Our new (to us) house is by no means huge, but it seems like a palace to us! It has a third bedroom, though for now we're still keeping all three kids in one room and using the third as a playroom. It has a fenced-in yard that I can see from the kitchen window, which is the only way we got our house unpacked in just over two days. It has a driveway where we can park. No more driving around trying to parallel park in a too-small spot during rush hour, and then hauling the kids and groceries a quarter mile to get home. And the most exciting (to me at least, since I do the laundry) is the washer and dryer just off of the kitchen. I used to schedule in laundry every three days, since using the coin-op machines at our apartment took a dedicated chunk of time when I could be home to deal with it, and washing five loads at once meant a mountain to fold all at the end.

Life at home just seems a lot easier and more productive than it used to (not that life with a three year old, two year old, and one year old should ever be described as easy and productive). I would sometimes beat myself up over how little I was able to get done during the day, especially when I would hear from other friends about all that they had done in a day. We're still working on organizing the house and making it home. We finished a fairly minor, but very exciting, home-improvement project last night that I'll write about once I get some good after pictures.