Tag Archives: small space

Mentally Checking Out

In less than a month, Hubster will graduate and shortly after that, his graduate assistantship will come to an end and we will need to move out of our campus apartment.  We don’t know exactly when we’re moving yet; mostly because we don’t know where we’re headed next.  Yet, I think I’ve already begun to mentally check out of this place.

Our bathtub is riddled with hardwater and iron stains, but I have no desire to clean it.  After all, I’ll need to clean it again next month before we move out.  Same goes with the window sills, corners of the rooms, refrigerator, kitchen sink, oven…the list goes on.  I’ve given up on keeping the place spotless because I’ll need to do a final scrubbing of everything just a few weeks from now.  Why bother to do it twice?  Who really cares if the bathtub is shiny for a few more weeks?

I’ve also come to the “end of my rope,” if you will, when it comes to living in this space.  Just above our bathroom is a bathroom shared by some students in a suite and shortly across the hall are public bathrooms.  The chorus of flushing toilets doesn’t bother me; but every time someone takes a sh*t in the tri-state area, we get to smell it.

I CANNOT. WAIT. for C to have his own bedroom.  Sharing a bedroom is becoming increasingly problematic the older that C gets.  He knows that we’re right next to him, so we need to wait for him to fall back asleep when he gets up in the middle of the night before we can enter the room.  I often wake up hours later with a kink in my neck because I fell asleep on the couch.  I also wake up every time C moves around in his sleep – and this kid is an untamed animal in his sleep.

Hubster would like to move our bed into the living room.  I told him that if he can come up with the logistics of that, then I’m all for it.  (You may remember that he had this idea a while back, and I wasn’t a big fan. “Welcome to my home, please have a seat on my bed.”)

*sigh*

Maybe it’s better to be eager for a new adventure than sad about what will be left behind.

Nighttime: An Open Letter to C

Dearest C,

When you were super little, I very much enjoyed sharing our one bedroom with you.  It was such a comfort to know that you were just a foot away from me.  It was so easy to come to your aid in the middle of the night when you needed one of us.  In the first couple of weeks, when my new maternal instinct was in overdrive and I had to check to make sure you were breathing, I didn’t need to go far.

Fast forward seven months…

You are quite a wild little sleeper.  You like to bring your legs up in the air and slam them down on your mattress.  You move your arms around all the time.  Even though you still have no interest in rolling over, you rarely wake up in the same position that we set you down in.

In short, you’re loud.  You’re also the lightest sleeper I have ever encountered.

When your dad or I enter the room to go to bed, we slowly turn the door handle and silently slip into the room.  Regardless of how stealthily we attempt to be, we disturb your sleep.  I don’t know if you can sense our presence or if we somehow disrupt the airflow of your sleeping radius.  If we’re really lucky, you go back to sleep.  But 90% of the time, you completely wake up just as I am drifting off to sleep.  You wake up crying.  Did I mention you’re a loud little person?  Then we need to get out of bed, make you a bottle, feed you, put you back to bed, shut the door and cross our fingers that you fall asleep very quickly so that we can begin the process anew.

This entire process has become so troublesome that your father and I have contemplated moving our bed into the living room.  The living room, C!  Do you know what that would mean?  If someone came to our door, the first thing that they would see is our bed.  *sigh*

Raising you in a residence hall environment certainly has its pros and cons.  I’m filing this under the “cons” and counting the days until your dad graduates and we can move on to a larger apartment.

Love,
Your tired mother, who wishes you were a heavier sleeper :)

Living in a Small Space With a Baby

If you’ve been following my blog for a while, you may know that our family of three lives in quite a small space.  I’ve blogged about the challenges of small spaces and products that make life easier.  This post on BabyCenter by blogger Sabrina Garibian was recently brought to my attention.  She talks about living in a small space – but! – her family of three lives in a two-bedroom condo.  Two bedrooms!

That’s when I realized the definition of a “small space” is relative.  While this blogger considers her family “the definition of living in a small space,” I respectfully disagree.  I would love to have two bedrooms.  Can I say that again?  LOVE.

What would I consider the definition of living in a small space?  Muffling the sound of your sneeze by directing it into your own pillow, so that your baby who sleeps one foot away from you won’t be startled awake.

A corner filled with diapers, toys, my workout gear and a bin of C's old clothes.

Why don’t we just move to a bigger place, you ask?  If only it were that simple.  Hubster works in university housing and his job requires a live-in position.  Until he’s finished with graduate school in May and moves on to a professional live-in position (typically accompanied by two-bedroom apartments), we have to make it work.  Although our space is very small for three people, it is nice.  I love our kitchen, dishwasher and laundry machines.  There are some definite pros, but I’m not going to say that sharing a one-bedroom apartment with our 6-month-old son is easy.

Everything we have in our apartment has a purpose.  It has to.  It’s awkward practically begging our family not to give C toys or more clothes for Christmas.  We only have space for practical things.  Toys and baby items are scattered on our living room floor.  There are stacks of grad school books and diaper boxes teetering in corners.  I dread the baby proofing that I need to do soon.

We’ve become super practical and I try not to complain about our lack of space.  I know that there are families bigger than ours that probably have tighter living quarters – or none at all.

The bottom line is: be grateful for what you have.  There is always someone out there who has less.