The Almost Tiny House

Well we're settled into the nearly tiny home and finding a new routine in a new town. So here's a peek at the little place we have for now. I got a set of camera lenses for my phone, and it was easiest to capture with a fish eye lens instead of taking a bunch of photos. I'm not sure I'm doing it right, they seem blurry at the edges but oh well, good enough.

First, the view outside. Not bad at all. I like trees.

The living room, dog and baby for scale. The box is a cat and toddler toy, not trash. All of Lyra’s toys fit in that coffee table and one small kitchen drawer. I am realizing we have too many toys, she doesn't miss many of them.

The kitchen. And technically dining room as well, I suppose.

Another view of the main room.

The entry way and bathroom.

The bedroom. Everyone sleeps here. Some nights that's a bit rough. But realistically, it is going quite well, somehow we generally all sleep. The bassinet is for Wyn and you can just see Lyra's bed crammed in at the foot of the big bed. The open space is where the rocker goes at bedtime.

Lyra's toddler floor bed. It will become a travel bed once we move. But everyone needed their own space and this was the only viable option.

Lyra's fort.

Most of our things are in storage still, minus what we brought with us in the cars. We took some of my parents furniture and this place already had the bed and the clothing racks and shelves, and the bar type table thing. The only major thing we bought was the couch. It folds out to a bed and has storage on one side. The coffee table has storage too. I might steal that for good, my family wasn't using it. That's the biggest hack for living small I've found so far,  all the furniture needs to have extra purpose as storage.

It took a bit of creativity to make it work with both kids and animals. We originally didn't have a door on the bedroom. Travis was able to put one in but we had a few days worth of  juggling around doors and making do. Now we can fit a toddler floor bed (with just one tiny bit of smushing) and a bassinet in the bedroom. I can even get a rocker in there when the door is open. We have to leave the door open once we go to bed so that it stays heated but Roxi and cat have settled and aren't being super obnoxious at night generally.

This place has all the main things we need, even a full size bathtub and a washer and dryer. Those are must have things with little kids. There's no dishwasher, that's my only big thing missing but that's manageable. I purposely didn't bring too many dishes to avoid having a bug procrastination pile of dirty dishes. The location is most similar to Alaska or maybe Washington. About 25 minutes from town, rural ish with neighbors close by but not as close as Washington or Nevada.

There's been no internet and only half working cell service for me for a while. I can get messages out intermittently but it's annoyingly slow and hit or miss usually. I've been reading a lot more which is nice, but I've seen no news either which is tedious. I can't look anything up, make calls, etc. I try to  quickly get those things done when I go to town with the kids but it's hard to be productive like that when I'm out with 2 little ones. Hopefully it will be resolved soon. I don't necessarily think the cutback on TV and social media has been terrible, but it will be nice to have things like weather forecasts and local activities and Google back as resources. I haven't watched a TV show or movie in well over a month. I miss my podcasts. I like less social media. But I forget how all my recipes are kept online on pinterest until I need to make a shopping list. And I have twice been caught out in not ideal weather since I didn't see the forecast. Internet has it's upsides.

Also flu and cold season has hit us pretty hard. We've been rotating through illnesses and had at least one of sick what seems like all the time. I'm feeling very paranoid with the increase in illness around. Plus things like the measles outbreak. Wyn is too young for the vaccine. Which means if we walk through a room where someone with measles has been in the last 2 hours, there's a 90% chance he gets it. I can't say I've never had my sick kids in public. Sometimes you need groceries when your toddler has had a cough for 2 weeks. And I've definitely sent Lyra places not realizing she was sick. I don't, however, send a super snotty with a hacking coughing toddler out to a playdate or toddler activity though and it drives me crazy when I realize the kids seated by my 4 month old at storytime is clearly sick. It annoys me when people do that. I just hope the kids inherit Travis' immune system instead of mine.

Speaking of kids, Lyra has been speaking nonstop. I've decided to write a parenting book. Working on the title but I'm thinking, "Raising Serial Killers" has a nice ring to it. This morning as I was making her breakfast Lyra said, "I'm so hungry I'm going to bite your head off." I thought maybe she meant it in the way you say, "I'm so hungry I could eat an elephant," or "You're so cute I could eat you up." Until she continued with, "Then you won't be able to talk. Or look at anyone." Okayyyyy. Creepy. She also still says the word "carry" in a weird toddler way that sounds like "kill." She was sweetly telling my mom and brother all about how she likes to carry her baby. She likes to carry her baby just like mommy does (she has a toy ring sling she likes to put her dolls in when I carry Oswin in the wrap). Both my mom and brother gave me some serious side eye, Martin seemed particularly frightened. My dad baptized Lyra and Travis always likes to complain about how "that excorcism your dad did just didn't take." Besides the creepy speak, Lyra really is a chatty Kathy lately. She's always trying to negotiate with us which is hilarious as her grip on numbers is tenuous and something like "A, B, M, S, 6, 8, 9." She also sings 87% of the day. Sometimes I'll ask her what she is saying and she just says, "Oh I'm just talking to myself."

Oswin is growing too. He's in a bad napping phase which is unfortunate. Unlike with Lyra, I can't dwell on it or do much about it. At least he's sleeping alright at night. He's rolling front to back too at 4.5 months. He beat Lyra by a couple weeks. Impressive considering his gigantic head. He doesn't sit on his own yet but he wants to stand all the time. Similar to Lyra, so I guess we will see if we get another no crawling early walker. He's still generally so quiet and smiley. He loves people and is super social. Those big gummy baby smiles are the best. He has this goofy dinosaur sounding squawk/croak thing he likes to do all the time and he's started doing this weird face where he clacks his gums together. Unlike Lyra, he is not into being terrified. If you surprise him, he's pretty likely to cry. Lyra on the other hand, won't stop listening to goosebumps audio books, I am not even joking.

We are starting to find the regular activities to do around here and make some new friends. The first person I met here (Ok, second, I met the bartender at the local brewery first. And the food and beer and service was quite lovely, just saying.) immediately knew who I was once I said my first name. Our husbands both work at the mine and our boys were born within 12 hours of one another. Small towns, but still pretty slim chances. There's a lot of library story times around here which is awesome, and the libraries are big too.

It still feels kind of surreal to be back in Colorado. I think we've vacationed here so often I can't quite reconcile the fact we live here now. But mostly it feels like being back home.