reconnected!

When I was a teenager, I always smirked inside when I read the stats about what a large percentage of people live their entire lives within a few miles of where they were born. What boring people they must be, I thought. Now I am living four blocks from the house where I spent much of my childhood, and 1.21 miles from where I was born. Ha ha.

This is our fourth night in the new house and it's already feeling like home. We've encountered a few issues, but they're all very remediable and manageable. Tristan's settled in to his new room and really loves our back yard. He spent over an hour out there with me yesterday, just playing with acorns while I cleaned up a bit. All of our furniture is fitting in here nicely; we won't have clutter issues! We also have a huge attic, where I can stash those few things I just have too much of...*cough* fabric *cough*. Unpacking is going slowly, though not quite a slowly as last time. I'm planning having an open house of sorts for my family on a weekend from Saturday, so I have a timetable for when I really need to get stuff done.

We have tested for lead and found a couple of things that tested positive: the bathtub and bathroom sink (most older ceramic tubs/sinks leech lead) and the miniblinds in Tristan's bedroom (most vinyl miniblinds made out of the US---and most are---are produced using lead). The kits are easy to use and cost just under $6 in the paint section of Home Depot. We have blinds in the living room too, but they are aluminum, so that's cool. I'm taking down the ones in Tristan's room tomorrow (they're covered by matchstick shades, but the vinyl breaks down in sunlight and creates leaded dust, so they've got to go) and am going to sew him up some fleece curtains using $3 fleece throws as panels and cheap tension rods. Should be pretty cool. We're not using the bathroom sink and are only taking showers; we are going to get reglazing estimates, but might end up having the stuff replaced if the price of reglazing is too high.

We went and picked up our cat, Leia (not Manhattan, who sadly never showed up after early September), from my mom's house. She's meowing a lot and a bit freaked out. Hopefully she'll get used to it. We have a dog/cat door and I'd like her to have the choice of being indoor or outdoor as she wishes, but given what happened to Manhattan, Jon's not too keen on that idea. We'll see how it goes.

Oh, and Jon bought me a front loading washer! Yeah, how sexist a statement is that? But we have it and I'll be doing most of the washing with it...anyhow, it's awesome. I've never had such clean diapers and the matching dryer gets them all soft and quilty. Yay.