We have a life, I swear.

For the past 4 months, I've essentially written about nothing other than the new addition to our family, Kaden, and the impact of him in our lives. I asked Erik recently why one of my latest posts (You at 4 months) got much less feedback than normal, and he said, rather matter of factly, it was because it wasn't funny. To which I replied, with all sincerity, "I guess I should write a post about my adventures with breastmilk, drool and poop, along with all the other bodily fluids I am dealing with." To which he responded, with more than a hint of exasperation, "Again?!" Somewhat shocked, I said, "Well, yeah, that's my whole life now, that's all that happens to me! What else should I write about?!" He seemed sad to acknowledge that I was indeed correct in that summary of my life. Despite the fact that my life is mostly filled with various bodily fluids and functions, there have actually been other things going on in our lives, but if your only contact with us is this blog, you wouldn't know it. The most major thing, and most blog worthy, is once again, our house. Luckily, thankfully, I am not going to write about more things breaking. I genuinely feel that we got our fair share of breakage during our first 18 months of occupancy. Now we're on to doing projects and discussing how to spend our hard earned savings in our "free time."

Shortly after Kaden was born, we both had a bit of a melt-down regarding this house. This place is giant. Way, way too big for 2 and 1/2 people. It's a full weekend expedition, at full speed, to clean the place, top to bottom. Then there's the yard - OH MY GOD - it's big! Once we had the little one, and realized, that yes, babies are actually a full time job, we thought that we couldn't handle this place and all the responsibility that comes with it. The payments, the maintenance and exposing its potential seemed too big, and too much to handle. In the midst of our freak-out, we decided that the best option was to sell this place and buy 2 reasonably sized places, one to live in, one to rent out. You know, because having two houses with yards, and renters would obviously be easier to deal with?! Our idea seemed brilliant, until I spoke to an appraiser. She wouldn't even send someone out to see the place, she just said, don't sell now, you'll lose money, end of story. I don't necessarily think that she was right, I've gone through a lot of comps, and I think the market might support what we need, but the banks probably won't, and funding is what is F-ing up a lot of deals these days. So there went that plan. If we couldn't sell now, then what were our options?

An attitude adjustment. After my conversation with the appraiser, our attitude changed. It had to. What other choice did we have? Erik and I had been freaking out, projecting loss of life, limb and security, but no more. We had to step back and look at our reality, especially in relation to so many other families, right now. We had more than ourselves to consider, which made everything more scary and more important. Our attitude was (and is) critical to the life we lead. If we felt scared, we needed to project positive things. If we felt hopeless, we needed to see the positive, and focus on that instead. Easy to say, hard to do.

Erik and I by nature, are both pretty conservative, not politically, but financially, and in regards to life decisions. We're not the most spontaneous couple you've ever met. We both played with spontaneity back in our early 20's, liked it, then retired from it come our mid to late twenties. Since then, we've been on a mission to invest in creating our "master plan." Erik strives to one day be a well tanned pool boy with a small empire of rental houses, I hope to be a brand name in home design, semi-famous in my field for my fabulous tile designs and perky attitude.

Despite our "master plan," this house and the economy shook us up and left us spinning, wondering whether we made a mistake, maybe a big mistake, in buying this place. I know that we are 2 among millions going through a similar thing, yet we have so much more than many of them. We have each other, our health, supportive families, a beautiful, healthy baby, a place to live, one job between us, a bit of savings in the bank, functioning cars, and a semi-functioning dishwasher! After slapping ourselves around a bit, we took it all in and were able to say, wow, what else do we expect or want out of life? We've got it pretty good right now. Neither of us want to lose what we have, but as is the American way, we want more. We don't want to be blase about what we have, we need to appreciate that we have a broken couch with cat scratches on the corner, at least we have a place to sit when we watch T.V.. Erik's car is looking more than rough these days, but it still gets 35 mpg. The dishwasher is making funny noises, the soap tray is broken, and it's fogging all of our glasses, but AT LEAST I DON'T HAVE TO WASH THE DISHES BY HAND. We both want to surround ourselves in the creature comforts we desire, and to do so, we need to be careful and strategic. We both know that shit happens. However, we are now trying to be cautiously optimistic that we can make it all work, while still having a back up plan.

The back up plan. Next spring, if the market will handle it, and the banks are back to lending, we will sell the house if we need to. To sell this house, and get what we need to break even, there are some things that need to happen. The backyard and window replacement are the two biggest negatives. People walk to the back, and their jaws drop. It's so big, and it's a total and complete wreck. It used to not be so so bad, but after the irrigation system spontaneously pooped itself, the sad little desert lawn died, as did some other random plantings. Then there was the whole mysterious puddling of water. Turns out the brilliant previous owners thought that 5 layers of plastic with bark packed between them would be an ideal weed barrier. OK, where do I even start with how stupid that is? First off, plastic with dirt, still grows weeds. Second, if you have a basement, especially if you have a basement, YOU NEED DRAINAGE. Draining into your walls is not a good thing, especially if you have a basement. I could continue, but I won't bore you. Let's just say that these people made some fabulously retarded home improvement decisions, many of which we are attempting to fix.... Point is, we are aware of some issues, and have a plan to resolve them in a responsible way.

Back to the back up plan. The idea is that we will invest a chunk of change into backyard, namely for: infrastructure, drainage, irrigation and a newfangled lawn. With those items in place, if we decided to unload the place and downsize, we theoretically wouldn't be as stressed out to get the rest of the place ready to sell. Although this back up plan sounds reasonable and mighty tidy, it has taken us more than a couple months of discussions to come to this decision. During the last 6 weeks or so, I have had numerous contractors out to evaluate options and give me estimates. I am hoping that by the end of this up-coming week, we will know who we are using and how much we'll be dropping. I am really looking forward to having some grass to play in with Kaden, and I am pathetically giddy at the concept of water actually running away from our house instead of into it. There will always be more to do, and I do have a larger vision for this place, but practicing restraint and taking one step at a time will ultimately allow us more options for the future, while still whittling away at our larger projections.

I can't guarantee that Erik and I will keep up our cheery optimistic attitudes, but it feels good to have a plan. The specific plan may not be for more than the next few months, but we'll keep squeezing in talks after Kaden falls asleep. We'll ponder the plethora of potential that this property holds, and contemplate how the hell we plan on paying for it. In the mean time, we will both keep going about our day to day lives, finding joy and contentment with what we have right now, while believing that if we keep our heads on straight, we'll come out strong on the other side.