The story of a house and its new little chef

When we bought our little 1960's ranch-style house a mere two months after we were married, it had recently been remodeled by the owner. Everything was crispy-new and smelled of fresh paint. It was a smart move on the owner's part, because it was like a blank canvas; I could immediately envision the place as ours.

Of course, it was awfully white. White walls, white baseboards, white door frames. I knew I'd want to paint eventually, although the thought intimidated me a bit as I'd never painted a room in my life. I helped my dad paint the trim on the outside of our house once, and once he made me stain a fence (do you see how I suffered?), but he claims that more paint made it on to my legs than the house. See, though, that's not a big deal when you're painting outside. So paint might get accidentally flung on the grass, or -- on one's little brother or something. Big deal. And okay, painting is pretty much the easiest home improvement ever and a monkey can do it, I KNOW, but it's an entirely different story when we're talking new carpet and wood floors and a completely neurotic, obsessive-compulsive neat freak.

Still, I finally worked up the courage to choose two colors for the living room. The only thing I had left to do was convince my husband that Memorial weekend would be a great time to paint. (I think I may have called it bonding.)

"But isn't the living room already painted?" he asked hopefully.

"It's all white," I explained, as though that should have been sufficient. When it failed to produce the desired response, I continued, "It's like living in a tooth."

Finally he agreed, and we painted the living room, and I loved it, and he loved it, and I wondered aloud eighty-five times how I could have lived in that house with that white living room for a whole entire year. ("It wasn't that bad," Matt said.)

[Edited to add: Matt just asked, "Did I really say that? That it's already painted?" And I said yes, baby, you really did. But then I felt compelled to point out that it doesn't even matter anymore, because according to my STORY, you did. He shrugged and said, "Well, I guess you're the doing the blogging, huh?"]

Gradually, we added colors to different rooms -- sage green in our bedroom, "sandstone cove" in the kitchen and family room (which is very light but still makes our base boards and door frames stand out nicely), and, when I was quite pregnant, a light, buttery yellow in what would become Suzannah's room. Our study is still white, mostly because neither one of us is particularly excited to move the desks and computers and bookshelves, and the guest room hasn't been touched, either. That's probably going to be my next project (and I'm thinking a light, dusty blue).

I was thinking about this today -- about the evolution of houses into homes. Paint is really only one part of that. I was just watching my daughter play this afternoon, and it occurred to me that our family room really has become her play room, and I love that. When we moved into this house, the family room contained one of the faded green love seats from the farm, our exercise bike, Matt's CD shelves, and the little 13-inch television I got for Christmas in college. Our "entertainment center" was really this wooden cart I bought at Office Max or Target. As a sophomore in college, it held the tower and printer to my computer next to my desk in my dorm, and when Carmen and I moved into our little college apartment, we kept the microwave on top of it. Our living room furniture consisted of the other faded green love seat and another old recliner from the farm. Suzannah's room had a futon and a closet full of camping gear.

Over the past few years, we've slowly replaced the old furniture with pieces we bought together: a couch and recliner for the living room, a new love seat for the family room. We bought a bigger TV and a modest but "real" entertainment center and moved the little 13-inch television and cart into the guest room. We gave away the futon and bought a crib and dresser. We bought shelves for the camping equipment and turned our storage room into a baby's room.

Now, our living room contains not only our comfortable "grown up" furniture and bookshelves but baskets of children's books and a tent. The family room holds a toy chest, a toy piano, a dollhouse, and Suzannah's brand-new wood kitchen. It's where Matt and I sprawl, legs tangled together, to watch movies after Suzannah goes to bed. It's where I nap with the pug in the afternoons, where I used to spend hours nursing my firstborn. It's where Suzannah watches Sesame Street and dances to Bruce Springsteen and The Ramones. It really is a family room, in every sense of the word. I love the way this house has told our stories. I don't know how long we'll be here; it's certainly not a huge house, and maybe I can't really see raising teenagers here, but it's exactly perfect for us right now. (Besides, when it seems like we have too much stuff for the space we have, my natural inclination is to want to clear out some of the stuff -- not move it into a bigger space where we'll accumulate more stuff.) I love the way it reflects the changes and growth in our family and becomes more and more ours.

So these things were on my mind as I was watching my daughter play this afternoon. Our latest addition to the family room is a beautiful wood play kitchen. It's something I wanted to give her for her second birthday, and I'd begun to check them out in a couple of toy stores in Seattle. Then, Matt's dad asked if we'd maybe like it if he built her one. And I'm all, are you kidding? That would be amazing.

So they brought it with them to Montana and we managed to fit it into the back of our CR-V, and now it has earned a spot in our family room, between our hutch and Suzannah's toy chest. It's completely beautiful. I knew it would be, but it surpassed every expectation I had. I mean, it embodies the term "labor of love." And Suzannah loves it a lot. Yesterday was fairly low-key in that we didn't go anywhere, we just hung around the house trying to readjust to being here, and Suzannah spent a lot of time cooking for Mama. Her grandparents also gave her a nice little assortment of pots and pans and utensils, so she made several batches of "soup." She strolled around the family room, wandering in and out of the study, merrily banging a spoon around inside one of the pans.

"What are you making this time?" I asked her.

She marched up to me, thrust the spoon at my mouth. "Try," she commanded.

So I did, and then she stuck the spoon in her own mouth. "Mmm, nummy!" she said.

"Yummy soup," I agreed.

"No." She shook her head. "Roni." She leaned forward for emphasis. "Roni." Her mother is slow to catch on, I guess, because I thought we were still on soup, but clearly this was a batch of macaroni and cheese, whoops, yep, I can definitely tell now.

"Macaroni," I said. "Nummy."

"Roni," she said again, smiling. And then she demanded that I take another bite.