Condo Update

We moved everything out of the condo on 12/22.  The movers spend 4.5 hours to empty out all the boxes and furniture--and we had already moved a lot of stuff to my mom's and my nana's (this summer when we made room in the third bedroom for the playroom).  Yikes!

I went back on 12/26--by myself because Carlos left for Mexico to visit his family--to clean up.  Everything is out of the condo now...here's how it looks:

Boys' room

bathroom

Master

Kitchen

Kitchen

View of backyard from porch/kitchen

Dining room

Stairs

third bedroom/office/playroom

Kitchen light which I LOVED.  I needed to take a good picture so I can buy another one for the new house.  I think we got it at Lowe's 3 years ago...

I feel sadder about selling the condo than I thought I would because unquestionably we are ready to be out of there.  But I loved the space and I loved fixing the place up.  We got very attached to our projects and the improvements that we made.  We loved the location and had many good memories there.  It will always be the home that our boys came home from the hospital to.  But we are ready to create new memories in the new home.  I'll write more about this after we close on both the condo and the house.  For now, I don't even want to jinx anything by talking about it!

Christmas

Merry belated Christmas!  This Christmas season came and went before I could even enjoy it.  I don't like to wish away time or hurry through days, but I've felt so desperate to sell our condo and pass papers so we can buy our house in Easton that I almost wanted the Christmas season to be over so that we could hurry up and get on with things.  I think we did more to enjoy the Christmas season over Thanksgiving than we did in the whole month of December!  

This is a photo we took with Santa so that we would have one to compare with the Santa visit to the NICU last Christmas.  We weren't planning on taking a picture with Santa on this particular day--the boys' hair was a mess and they weren't dressed in anything Christmasy or anything.  But we had to seize the moment!  None of the pictures really came out that well, but we bought the best one of the bunch.  It's hard to get a good picture of twins (meaning they are smiling and both looking at the camera) when it's a 16-year-old working the camera!

For the sake of comparison, then:

Sebastian (L), Adrian (R)

Christmas Eve we went to my Auntie Carol's, as we always do.  She has a beautiful home, and it's always so cozy and decorated so well for Christmas.  The food was awesome: turkey, lobster pie (we dream about it all year long!), squash casserole, tortellini with mushroom and sun dried tomatoes...there were numerous appetizers and pies for dessert.  And we had champagne with peach nectar--delicious.  I ate until I thought I'd burst!

The boys were all over the place...it is hard bringing them places now that they are so mobile.  Luckily we had lots of help.  My cousin Christian is so good with them---he's probably the best 8th grader in the world.  He was on the floor playing with them and he even gives them his old toys to take home and play with!  He has a Lego city that is A-ma-zing with a capital A.  There are various scenes and he puts all of us in the city doing silly things.  You can kind of catch a glimpse of the city in the picture below.  But it's actually two tables worth and there's a train that runs through it etc.  The city is even decorated for Christmas!  Sebastian was fascinated with the city; when my Auntie Carol tried to pry him away from it, he would fuss!

The boys wore their outfits that their NICU nurse Marcy gave them the last time she visited.  So cute!  Little Nautica button-down shirts, sweaters, and jeans.   Here they are in their outfits waiting to go to my Aunt's for Christmas Eve.

Sebastian

Adrian

The boys' newest thing is to play with the magazines in this basket that is in the play area.  They should not touch the basket because the wood is rough--they could get splinters.  We really should move it out of the play area, but there's no where else to put it.  And they left it alone for the most part until just recently.  They like to go over now and pull out the magazines.  We tell them no, but they laugh and think that it's a joke or a game.  The funniest part is that Sebastian shakes his finger at us when he goes over there to touch the magazines.  He knows he's not supposed to be into the basket so he shakes his finger and then laughs and then goes in anyway.  He occasionally will also shake his finger at us for other things, too.  It's so funny when he does it.

The naughty look

He was shaking his finger here...that's why it's blurry

Christmas Day Jim and Jen came over.  My dad was supposed to come over too, but he was sick!  I also actually brought Sebastian to the pediatrician because he was being extremely fussy and showing some signs of an ear infection for a few days.  Turns out his ears were fine, but I felt better having cleared it up.  He had a bad night Christmas Eve after returning home from my Aunt's.  I suppose it was because he was up past his bedtime, but there were other things going on for a few days that made me want to rule out any medical reason for fussiness.  So I missed part of brunch, but it was ok.  I ate cranberry sausage quiche and pistachio bread when we got home.  Then we just played with the boys for a bit.

Sebastian also loves to play peek-a-boo with the house...

Christmas morning in their Santa PJs

Eating time is torturous in the house right now.  Adrian pretty much eats anything you put in front of him.  Sebastian eats nothing but crackers.  He'll eat Ritz, graham crackers, goldfish, and pretty much nothing else.  Sometimes he'll eat fruit out of one of those squeeze pouches.  But he pretty much won't eat off a spoon, won't feed himself with a spoon, and won't eat anything on his tray that we put there to try.  We keep giving him what we're eating to try to get him to eat new things, but it's not going very well.  On a positive note, both boys have responded very well to cutting out bottles (except before bed).  They also now drink out of a more advanced sippy cup with a straw.  Bravo!

Lexi, the world's most badly trained dog (or most untrained dog), is always underfoot because the boys feed her!  Or they drop food or push food deliberately off their trays.  Lexi won't move out from under them!!

Watertown Condo

In preparation for closing on 12/28, I thought I'd share some updates about the condo.

Luckily, I was off the Wednesday before Thanksgiving and the Monday after.  And, most importantly, the daycare was open.  That meant I could go and actually get some packing done.  After a few trips to donate items to charity and 6 hours (each time) of packing, I managed to get most things in boxes and ready to be moved.  The attic is anothe story...most of the stuff up there is in boxes or bins anyway, but it's still a mess.  There's a lot of stuff up there I'd like to get rid of--like Carlos's old law books, but I'm guessing we're stuck with the damn things.  I got rid of old school papers, my master's capstone project (or whatever it was called), and some course books from college.  There's STILL more stuff to donate though...so much stuff.  I don't want so much stuff.

It is sad to pack up the condo.  I loved living there--sort of.  It's complicated and perhaps I'll flesh it out later, but not now.  The living space itself was great for us--just the right amount of room.  Of course it would have been nice to have more space, but we used every room and enjoyed living so close to the Charles River bike path and Boston.  I will definitely miss Watertown.  Someday I'd love to move back to the area, especially Belmont.  But I need half a million bucks first.

The hardest room to pack up and for me to go in is the boys' room.  So much care went into planning it, painting it, decorating it, etc.  And good memories with the boys in that room when I was at home during maternity leave.  It just makes me sad.

And so the boys can see where they lived when they were just born and the place they came home to after leaving the NICU, I'm going to post some before and after pictures of the condo.  I should have been more organized about this and gone room by room, but I don't have the patience or the time to do it right now.

View of living room from dining room

Kitchen--ugly linoleum floor; no lighting, old washer/dryer

Master bedroom with grody old carpet

awful bathroom with 4 different kinds of tile and old vanity

guest room/nursery with old carpet, yucky paneling, bad light fixture

dining room

third bedroom; just bad all over

nasty medicine cabinet and old wall paper

Ewwwwwww

ripping up the linoleum someone put over hardwood floor in nursery; I now think the tile had asbestos.  Whoops.

Bathroom in progress...this was the day the tile floor erupted and we discovered the subfloor was rotten.  

I scraped myself with a rusty nail that day and had to get a tetanus shot!

look at all the dirt that was under the carpet in the master bedroom!  At least 20 years' worth?

nursery after carpet was pulled up

backyard...the tree on the right later fell down in a storm!

another view of the kitchen; taken from the porch

bathroom with new subfloor and new toilet.  Waiting to put new vanity, medicine cabinet, and tile floor in

vanity installed

The third bedroom was the "junk room" for a looong time

Guest room after we bought the new bed

Guest room.  I barely remember when it looked like this!

third bedroom

master bedroom in progress

Carlos getting ready to lay tile in bathroom

The wet saw

Tile down!

The fireplace mantel we found in the trash in Brockton

The bar...before I put different (nicer) stuff on the shelves

Espresso bar

putting in the attic

With new lighting but still no paint on walls

With new drum light

new light over sink

Walls painted finally!

Kitchen floors in progress

After we made the playroom in the third bedroom, we changed around the nursery a bit.  Mainly we took the desk out, which opened up the room a bit

My sister-in-law made the name signs!

Love these frames from my mom's college friend.  The are currently packed, but it just dawned on me that we can now fill them up...all 12 months!!

These toy bins are the best thing ever!!

Still in progress...I actually did eventually clean off the couch!

Looking at all these photos, I'm remembering how much we did that you actually don't even see!  We put up shelves everywhere.  We had to add a pole and shelf to the nursery closet.  The linen closet walls were falling down; the pantry didn't have any shelves.  We changed out the switch plates and outlets/outlet covers (in most of the house, but not all), and we replaced the old brass door knobs with brushed nickel ones.  So many things...

I wish I had been more systematic about taking photos.  I should have taken more photos of the place staged, too.  It looked good.  Maybe I can get Adriano to get me the photos.  The last piece is to take photos of the place empty again....and I never did take photos of the outside after the retaining wall and sidewalk were done last spring.  And the front and back yard landscaping.  Oh well.  

I'll be better with the next house!!!