Mortgage

We got a mortgage pre-approval letter today. We're considering making an offer on a house.

On one hand, it's a great house in my favorite neighborhood in town, with several neighbors we already know and like. It's spacious and is in move-in condition. Other than the lack of a garage, and maybe the size of the backyard, it's exactly what we're looking for. We've been keeping a close eye on the market for over six months now and have been waiting for the perfect place. This is the first one we both agreed we should put an offer on.

On the other hand, it makes me feel a little ill to consider borrowing more than the purchase price of our entire current house. This place is listed at just above the top of our price range, and there's probably not too much room for negotiation because the neighborhood is popular and houses rarely go on sale there. We can afford it now, but what if one of us loses our job, or decides to cut back or go to a lower-paying job or go back to school? What about all my student loans?

We could get a beautiful condo for $150,000 less than this house, even though it would be smaller (probably 3 bedrooms, 1.5 baths instead of 5/2.5). We could easily make do with three bedrooms. We could even make do with our current two-bedroom house. The previous owner lived there her entire adult life, and brought up two boys there. It seems crazy to spend so much to get a single-family house, which are in short supply in our town.

It would be nice for baby #2, when that happens, to get a bedroom, and to have a place to put up our parents other than the basement, and to have some extra living space. It would be nice to have a place of our own instead of having upstairs or downstairs neighbors. It would be really nice to live on that street.

But $150,000 worth of nice? (I guess the $150,000 isn't a real number, since we'd probably just stay in our current house before buying a condo. But we might be able to spend $50,000 less and get something we liked. Not that we've seen that yet.)

After we walked through the house, I was sure we should put an offer on it. But seeing that number on the pre-approval letter is giving me pause.

To do in eight years

I saw an ad for an upcoming performance of the Boston Symphony Orchestra and thought how long it had been since I'd been to a professional orchestra concert. (The last time was when I was pregnant, and I fell asleep halfway through.) Then I thought it would be fun to find out in advance what pieces they're playing and try to play them myself before the concert. And then I thought how awesome it would be if K and I could do this together one day. Despite his turn as Daddy Warbucks in the high school musical, JW is not into performing music, so I have only K, and possibly future offspring, to fulfill my family duet dreams.

Since well before K was born, my plan was always that we'd both start taking piano lessons when he turns five. (Assuming he wants to.) I guess I also need to pick up my violin again so that we can play along with the BSO in 2018.

Weekend cooking: Brunch!

For over a year now, we've been saying, "One of these days, we should have a party and invite everyone we know." But we never actually do that, in part because our schedule is unpredictable. So I decided that we should just start inviting a handful of people over here and there, even if it's just a few days in advance, when we think we'll have free time over the weekend. Today we ended up with a small crowd for brunch.

The menu: leek and spinach tart, berry shortcakes with lemon cream (the lemon cream isn't part of the recipe, it's just whipped cream with lemon curd folded in), assorted fresh fruit (grapes, melon, pineapple), "drunken goat" cheese and crackers, chicken sausage,  and sweet potato and regular potato oven fries. Seemed like just the right amount and balance of food for seven adults and two kids. At first I thought we should have had some bread for when people walked in, but I think the shortcakes made up for that.


I also made these peanut butter crispy bars yesterday, because K wanted me to make something out of the box of Rice Krispies that's been sitting on our shelf for months, and totally forgot to send people home with them. So now we still have almost all of the bars, a half-batch of lemon curd, AND some banana chocolate chip muffins sitting around, not to mention some stray shortcakes and lemon cream. Anybody want to come over for a dessert buffet?

My birthday

I woke up at 2 a.m. to K crying. He was crying because his cup of water was on the table next to his bed, while he was in his bed. I handed him the water and didn't get back to sleep for the rest of the night. It was like studying for the bar exam all over again: as soon as I got in bed, the twenty things I hadn't made time to do rushed into my head and wouldn't leave until I got up to do them.

So I did. Between 2:30 and 5 a.m., I emailed about thirty people, wrote a press release, got through my entire to-do list for a town commitment, and amended our tax return. (Why am I most productive in the middle of the night?) Then I went back to bed, but gave up on that again after another half hour or so.

K toddled out of his room at 5:56 a.m., close enough to the 6 a.m. wakeup time that we try to enforce that I didn't send him back to bed. "Is it the weekend?" he asked sleepily. "Yes, and you know what else? It's my birthday!" He gave me a hug. "Happy birthday, Mommy! Can I have some candy?" "Uh, no. Why are you asking for candy first thing in the morning?" "Because it's your birthday." K returned to this motif throughout the day. (The next morning, he asked "Whose birthday is it today?" and when I said "Nobody in this house," he looked disappointed and then asked "Can I have some candy anyway?")

JW woke up around 7 and gave me my presents: a framed picture of the three of us from K, and Elvis Costello tickets from him. Then we all went out for breakfast. K loves going to restaurants lately and we no longer dread going with him. We had a lovely breakfast together and he didn't try to jump out of his seat or bang on the table once.

I spent the rest of the morning baking my birthday cake: this hazelnut brown butter cake with chocolate ganache, plus a batch of lemon curd to use up the leftover egg yolks. While I was making a mess in the kitchen, JW had to clean up K's mess in the living room. (K had decided to wear underpants for the first time.)

My cake was a little homely -- I had to use a pie pan because I didn't have a cake pan big enough, and I smeared on the ganache while the cake was still warm because we had to head out to a relative's house for lunch. These relatives kept inviting us and we kept not being able to go, so this time I felt like we had to say yes. They didn't know it was my birthday and I didn't want them to make a big deal out of it, so my plan was just to show up and say, "By the way, it's my birthday, and here's my cake."

A little while after we got there, my cousin's husband disappeared and took JW with him on a mysterious errand. Finally I got my cousin to tell me where they went -- to get me a birthday cake. "But I brought a birthday cake," I protested. "We want to get you something special!" she replied. "But... this is my birthday cake. I planned it, and I spent all morning making it," I said. "We don't need another cake. There will be enough for everybody. Isn't my cake good enough?" "We just want to get you a nice cake for your birthday!" she repeated. I was upset. But I am 32 now and I have to be gracious, so when they finally returned with a stupid cake from Whole Foods, I smiled and said thank you. It turned out that everybody swooned over my cake and nobody touched the other cake, so there. But then they made us bring it home (and there was only one tiny slice of my awesome cake left, and they kept it!). JW brought the intact "special" cake to work with him.

Anyway, I got to eat home cooked Bengali food on my birthday, and my two little cousins were there and JW and I went out for a walk by the river with all the kids. So that part was fun, even though we ended up hanging around there for most of the day.

By the time we got home, I was exhausted from being up since 2 a.m., so I just cooked up some pasta for a quick dinner, gave K a bath, answered a birthday phone call or two, and went to bed.

Not the birthday plans I would have chosen, but it was nice to be with family. And it was especially nice having JW take care of all the baby-wrangling -- I didn't lift a finger all day.

How do you feel

Around here, we talk about our feelings a lot. I ask K how he's feeling throughout the day, so he can catch himself feeling happy or we can figure out why he's not. As he gets older, he's been turning the tables on me. In particular, when I betray the slightest hint of annoyance, he looks into my eyes and asks, "How do you feel?" I often use a conversation about K's feelings to head off fussing and whining. But it works just as well on me -- it forces me to acknowledge that I'm usually getting upset at something silly or totally age-appropriate, and to articulate why I'm upset.

Yesterday we had this exchange after he insisted on changing into a Thomas T-shirt that I was trying to put away while sorting his clothes:
K: How do you feel?
I'm putting away clothes with my back turned and don't answer because I'm so furious.
K: Mommy? How do you feel?
Now I have to look at him.
Me: I feel angry because you're not listening to me. It's too cold to wear just a T-shirt. I got mad when you threw the hoodie on the floor and yelled and ran away.
K: What can we do to make you feel better?
Me: Please go play by yourself for a few minutes. I need to calm down. When I feel calmer, I'll come play with you.

As soon as he walked out of the room, I realized that I was mainly just worried about him being cold. I remembered that he had some long-sleeved white shirts that still fit him. I called him back in and asked if he would wear one under his T-shirt, and he agreed and gave me a hug. And the disciple becomes the master.