Spice, Sea World and Super Kitchen

April 7, 2010

Part 1: Spice

So I know our morning has nothing to do with the new house, but I can't stand to tell about part of a day and neglect to tell you about the other parts. It's just my nature.

After Ayize ate breakfast, I fetched a can of dog food for Weeman and accidentally left the cupboard door open. I handed Ayize a mixing bowl and a wooden spoon to keep him busy while I fed the dog and medicated Turkey, our bird. Finished my morning tasks around the kitchen and found my boy had gleefully raided the cupboard, selected several items and arrayed them carefully around his bowl as he prepared to "cook" for Weeman.

He shook in the ingredients...

...added the dog food (this quickly got Weeman's attention, who dashed over to investigate)...

...and inspected the labels (you never can be too careful, you know).

Then he went to work voraciously mixing his imaginary concoction as he delightedly crowed, "Weeman eat. I help goggy (the dog). I help Mama."

I seized the moment to surreptitiously retrieve all the cans and jars and quickly replace them in the cupboard for safekeeping. I'm sure he chose these things because they all had colorful, enticing containers, but even so, I found it astonishing that everything he chose to add to the dog food had one thing in common: they were hot as hell! Thankfully, all the lids were capped tight so he didn't have any nasty surprises (one day, I'll tell y'all about the day we made sugar cookies and he decided to "help" us by shaking hot-pepper sprinkles on top of them -- unfortunately, THAT lid was not on tight enough).

As I put them away, I quickly snapped a photo of each ingredient...

Japanese red-hot pepper flakes!

Salt-pepper sprinkles!

The main ingredient. By the way, we are HUGE fans of Merrick's dog food. Love, love, love this company, they are one of the few genuine organic dog food companies left standing after the green trend gave way to a bunch of phonies.

Arriba's Chipotle Salsa, yum yum!

More Japanese salt-pepper!

Powdered wasabi!

Definitely some spicy canine cuisine here. Weeman would be one hot dog after this meal.

I rushed to get ready for our day, and heard Ayize chattering on and on about "teeth" as I got dressed. Pulled a shirt over my head and in that instant, he was gone.

"Ayize? Ayize?" I ran around the whole second floor hunting for him. I actually went in the bathroom but didn't see him cuz I was looking at the floor. Then he called me, "Mama! I fix teeth," and I followed the sound back into the bathroom. And looked up. Ha ha ha!

* * * * *

Part 2: Sea World

Well, I'll get to the Sea World bit in a minute. But anyway, this is all about some recent home -- improvements?? -- LOL, and Sea World is just one (big) part of them.

Got to the new house and dropped off some coffee for one of the guys, Eniz (he's a Dunkin Donuts fan like me so I always brought an extra cup). Casey popped out of the attic with a gas mask that was seriously straight off the movie set of Outbreak (which, by the way, used only real equipment, not props. Fun fact of the day).

"How bad is it up there?" I asked. I had not yet even seen the upstairs, which can only be accessed through a ceiling panel.

"Have a look for yourself," he told me, motioning toward the ladder, but Ayize got upset the minute I put my foot on the first rung so I just handed Casey my camera and he flew back up and snapped a bunch of shots for me. Here's a sample. And then I made it up myself for a peek once Ayize got settled with a toy.

Bottom line: the attic is not well-ventilated. Poorly-insulated, too. And the insulation was done ages ago. But it's HUGE up there, and has three cute little windows, so that gave me some wiggle room. But anyway, I'll save my attic tales for another day.

At any rate...

...came back down the ladder, feeling pretty jazzed.

You all know how I roll, pretty much all it takes is a cute green blade of grass or a tasty potato chip or any other old excuse and I am off on some spastically-happy tangent.

So having seen my attic, and thinking to myself, 'Schweeeet, I have an attic!' I got pretty hopped up and did a happy dance complete with fingers pointing at the sponge-painting mayhem all around me (a source of much amusement to me and the electricians that just never got old) and Casey, handing me back my camera, dashed off one fast shot commemorating my jolly moment, ha ha ha!

My sister and I took a trip to Target to grab some stuff for the house. It was a rainy, dreary day and Ayize was hyper, so he was happy to dash around the superstore, periodically hopping onto our "choo-choo" cart (you know, the one with kiddy benches in the back) and hollering, "All aboard!" so loudly that he almost gave some nearby shoppers a coronary.

We headed home and he went down for a nap.

Later that afternoon, we made a stop by the house to drop off our stuff. I had my camera on me still so I took some photos of recent progress on the house by the electricians and some of my latest home improvements (I use that term loosely LOL; you should probably judge for yourself).

I noticed this on the ceiling of the second bedroom; cool beans! The guys had removed the horrid, rusty, old light fixture, re-wired the ceiling, and were clearly preparing to assemble and hang my second ceiling fan, as they had my first! I've said it before, and I'll say it again (ad infinitum, ad nauseum) -- I LOVE MY ELECTRICIANS! The absolute best!!

And there was the ceiling fan box, sitting on the floor of the second bedroom. Woo hoo! I was filled with anticipation. Yes, I really am that dorky.

My front door. It has changed since then, but this is what it looked like at the time. The envelope, as previously mentioned, was made by the outgoing owner for me, and I loved to see it and remember that. The string of Indian elephants is a good luck charm that I shame-facedly bought at World Market after Ayize grabbed it off a rack and ran wildly through the store with it, slamming it into the ground, and losing a few beads along the way. I was too embarrassed to put it back on the rack, so I bought it.

Note to self: never ever, no matter what the circumstances, take my son into World Market again.

Ever!

I still wake up in a cold sweat remembering the five minutes of impending doom we spent there, while visions of smashed vases danced in my head. Ack!

The second bedroom door. I had this left over from Christmas and I just wanted to hang it somewhere so I chose Ayize's future bedroom, mostly because it had a spare nail sticking out of it!

My Target purchases.

The Garden Stone set in the corner is for a future kiddo get-together, where I hope to have wee friends over to make handprint and footprint stepping stones for our garden. It comes with little gemstones and other el cheapo decor, but not hardly enough. So I saw the party favor rings (on top of the Garden Stone box) for a buck and bought them, since their design and material (color-dyed plastic) is such that they'll probably last a long time, even in outdoor conditions. And I've been keeping my eyes peeled ever since for cute beads, trinkets, and other stuff that would be fun to add.

The two welcome mats are for the front and back doors.

And the pirate octopus garbage is actually a gift from my sister; she saw how much I loved it, both because it fits the general aquarium "decor" (if I can even use that word LOL) of our bathroom, but also because it's sturdy and heavy and hopefully that will discourage Ayize from messing with it too much. But I decided not to get it because I couldn't justify spending twenty bucks on a trash can. So my sister got it for me surreptitiously, hurrah!

I looked up as I was putting my stuff away in the study (pictured above) and saw the electricians had hung the light fixture I'd gotten at Home Depot that morning. Schweet! It looked pretty good off...

...but even better on!

And I saw a brand new smoke detector...

...and the other light fixture, the one that gave me so much trouble , had been wired and hung in the adjacent closet. Hooray guys, thank you!

As far as the aforementioned "trouble"...I'd chosen a different -- very cheap but also pretty cool -- light that I liked a lot, but as it turns out, any closet fixture must be fully enclosed or it's not considered "to code", as it could pose a potential, though very unlikely, fire hazard. So I'd had to return the one I liked and choose from the very limited selection of cheap, fully-enclosed fixtures, of which this ugly "acorn" was actually the standout choice. Which says more about the others than it does about this one, ha ha ha!

As I walked out of the closet, I remembered to take a photo of this doorway and its hand-penciled growth chart from long-ago days, which -- as a mama myself now -- I always find so adorable.

So now...we are finally on to the Sea World portion, which is my affectionate nickname for our bathroom.

Another old nail hung on the bathroom door, at just the perfect height for my Spectraman Action Door Knocker (the "action" is you pulling the red string, causing the monsters to bang together with a loud bell clang LOL).

I moved our new waste basket into the bathroom.

You can see why I call our bathroom Sea World. Went a bit overboard on the marine mammal decor, I'll admit that, but Ayize is crazy about fish and aquariums, so I figured I would give him one of his very own.

Hee hee, check out the soap dish.

The soap itself is decidedly not very fishy -- it's actually a handmade, citrus-scented, thick-cut bar called "Moonlit Ocean" or some such name, that I got at the very-addicting garden shop, Mille Fiori. But the blue and green colors kinda went with the general theme, so whatever. You'll just have to pretend there are invisible fish flicking their tails and gliding under the surface of the ocean.

Some hand towels in a totally-random palette: one to match the rainbow-y bathroom rug (not pictured), one to match the green sea grass painted on the walls, and one to match the blues and greens of the ocean stuff. Ha ha I usually only keep one out at a time but the workmen were keeping the bathroom in heavy-duty handwashing rotation so I just left three out to accommodate all the action.

More cute sea grass adorns the top of the medicine cabinet, and I always enjoy seeing it, but in all this time, I'd never thought to look inside. I did today, just on a whim, wondering if the cabinet was for real or just a fixed frontispiece, and giggled when I saw the little postcard the previous owners left for me to find (they left cute surprises like this inside many of the fixed cabinets) -- dancing, partying frogs proclaiming, "Hooray!"

Whoa, an even-bigger surprise awaited me in the master bedroom -- our big Hunter ceiling fan, complete with rocket ships, the planet Earth, and star chain pulls, was assembled, wired, and hung. Beauteous maximus! I lay on the floor and looked up adoringly, imagining myself seeing it as I would from the comfort of my future bed. Aaaaaah. However was I blessed with such bitchin' electricians??

In the basement, I thought to examine the hanging frogs (they paper one interior door) a bit more closely. I really like the funny artistry employed in all four paintings, and wanted to check out the prints in detail. Turns out, they're old calendar pages. Really old. Like, from when I was 2 1/2 years old.

* * * * *

Part 3: Super Kitchen

Long ago, in a galaxy far, far away, back in early January, when this house was just a distant dream, I walked into Hand Me Downs one day and happened upon this crazy Step 2 Deluxe Kitchen, which is pretty much the creme de la creme of toy kitchens. The thing runs about $225 new, and has every bell and whistle you can possibly imagine, from sound effects on all of its appliances, to an overhead light and pull-out hose attachment in the sink, to realistic stovetop sound effects triggered by different types of pots and pans.

Monica, the owner, who has become a kind friend to Ayize over the past few years, and a great resource of information to me, was selling at an amazing price so I decided to buy it right then and there. As if I wasn't already walking away with a great deal, she threw in (just because she's wonderful like that), a giant Ziplock bag literally crammed full with fun fake food, another Ziplock filled with various toy pots, pans, lids, cookware, and cutlery, a Melissa & Doug wooden food set with a wooden knife (all the food is sectioned and then stuck together with velcro so the kiddos can "cut" it), and a pull-along Melissa & Doug wooden block-filled wagon that Little Man had been happily playing with as I agonized over my possible kitchen purchase.

There were so many crazy reasons why I got Ayize this kitchen, although the primary reason was perfectly logical: the price was right, and play kitchens have consistently given him hours of fun since he was a tiny little guy. And he's never had one of his own, because they take up lots of room and I didn't want to crowd my parents' space like that. So here comes the crazy reasons: first, um...so, given that, why was I buying it?? We had no space of our own.

Yet.

Yet being the operative word.

I seriously had the superstitious feeling that if I bought the kitchen, the house I'd been watching and dreaming about for so long might actually materialize.

Crazy?

Sure. But I didn't care, that was just the way I felt, and I can be stubborn like that sometimes.

Another crazy reason: I hardly ever buy Ayize toys, and actually have no need to, because we're constantly blessed with amazing hand-me-downs and gifts from family and friends. But I really wanted to get him a kitchen, and had wanted to for a long time. In my heart of hearts, truth be told, I wanted to buy him this kitchen, this crazy, ultimate, psychotically-large, bizarrely-real kitchen. And I knew I could never afford it new, and believed I would never find it secondhand in perfect condition at a cheap price. And then, one day, I did. Seemed like a sign.

So I bought it...and then I couldn't even move the thing. It was too frickin huge. Jeff had to lug out in his giant Chevy truck, take it apart with a screwdriver, and load the pieces into the bed. And then there we were, pieces of a kitchen everywhere, me feeling I had made some horrible stupid mistake, and I even had nowhere to put it. So he kindly offered to stash it at his crib until I found a place for it to live permanently.

A few days later, I visited the house, and...well, the rest, as they say, is history. So in a chicken and the egg kind of way, one begot the other and so on and so forth.

So on this night, after Ayize ate his dinner, we got into the car and headed back to the house. I told him he had a big surprise waiting for him.

When we got to the house, and Jeff and Talya pulled up simultaneously, he was already excited. And then we carried in the pieces of the kitchen and Jeff assembled them in the study and pushed it up against one wall -- it fit perfectly, absolute hand in glove -- and we beckoned Ayize to enter.

And he could not believe his eyes!!!

He went into a complete frenzy, whipping food everywhere, inspecting everything, running in crazy excited circles around the tight space of the study, shouting all kinds of crazy things, so rapidly that no one could understand him...

I took Jeff on a mini-tour of the house while Talya kept an eye on him, and as we wandered about, his gleeful shouts and screeches echoed through all the rooms. We walked back to the study and started laughing hysterically when we saw what he was up to. He had spilled all the Melissa & Doug wooden blocks on the floor, and in his mania, he kept imitating this scene from a Winnie the Pooh movie we'd recently seen where Rabbit keeps trying to get up from a pile of acorns, but continually flails his legs about and falls on his butt.

His joy was a sight to behold.

A mama could hardly have felt happier than I did that night.