My dad was discharged from the hospital on Friday and my parents insisted they could manage by themselves, in fact my dad sounded so chipper on the phone that morning I couldn’t argue.

I had the whole day to myself because dad conveniently had has his heart attack during spring break. David took the kids to visit his family in Rockport and I spent time with my parents at the hospital. Now they didn’t need me and David and the boys would not be home until Saturday afternoon. I had nearly two days all to myself.

I should have been excited, but to be honest I was a little panicked. I hadn’t been alone for a weekend since…I didn’t know. It must have been before Dashiell was born and traveled to LA for a story but even then I was with friends from work, or maybe it was when I went on that press trip to St. Barths, but then I was with a pack of other reporters. Either way it was at least five years since I had been alone—completely alone for nearly two days.

So I did what any out of sorts mother would do: I purged and rearranged the kid’s playroom. I shunted the Playmobil toys to their bedroom toy chest. They don’t play with them but as soon as I donate them to charity, they’ll ask where they are. I cleaned under the couch and rescued the missing GoGos Conrad has become obsessed with and was heartbroken to lose (imagine if Pokemon and those little plastic ninjas you can get a pizza parlor vending machine had a baby they would make a GoGo.) and I created active play spaces for Dashiell to color and do crafts and play Batman. Lately Conrad’s Legos have monopolized the playroom and if real estate is power Conrad has become a pint-sized Ratner slowly expanding his domain and putting restrictions on where Dashiell can play. He had to be contained.

After the purge, I went shopping at the best New Jersey has to offer: Home Goods and the Christmas Tree Shops (stop laughing!). I got these bamboo blinds for next to nothing at the Christmas Tree Shops to make the playroom and upstairs bath and my office just a tad bit more pulled together and zippy. Seriously, stop laughing they were $15 each!

Then I moved on to more ambitious projects and I am now considering hanging this wallpaper in my downstairs powder room.

I love it and Erin, a good friend has totally endorsed it which makes me feel good about getting in touch with my inner or maybe I should say my future Palm Beach self. I still have to sell David on it. He usually goes along with most of my ideas, but this paper is fairly splashy. I roadtested it on the boys when they came home and Conrad turned to me and said, “Can you please stop changing the house?” Granted this was after I had rearranged the playroom and he was so unsure about the furniture choices I made that he re-rearranged the room back at 6:15 Sunday morning. A feat that included dragging the dog crate from one side of the couch to the other—with the dog still in it. He did ask if he could do it before he went ahead. It was 6:15 and I thought he wanted to move the end tables I had repositioned into a coffee table back against the wall so he could spread out on the floor and watch TV. Frankly I would have agreed to anything at 6:15.

When I came down at 7:30 I was shocked that he had moved so much furniture around on his own, especially when he rarely offers to help me with even the smallest household tasks like pairing socks. But the zinger was that the room looked good and much better for kids to play in. I had to go along with his plan. I guess I have to wait until high school for a coffee table.

There are so many things that Conrad and I can disagree about: whether or not to hit is brother; whether or not I always take his brothers side; if his brother has a more orange juice, a better school, or cooler zhuzhu pet…but I never expected I would have to argue with Conrad about decor and design. The problem is he has extremely strong opinions and like the other morning genuinely good ideas. I’m torn between this inner argument that says  “Its my house and the whole place is Lego and Mythbusters and Godzilla so I get to pick the way the furniture is arranged” and wanting to hear him out because based on the fairly intricate Lego ships he builds I know he knows how we could fit our canopy bed in the attic to make a master suite even though it has gabled roof.

But back to the wallpaper; I showed Dashiell the swatch of wallpaper and he said, “It was bright and he loved it and wanted to live in there.” I showed Conrad the swatch and he pleaded, “Can you just tone down all the colors because sometimes when I’m in the bathroom I already feel sick and that color might make me feel more sick.”

Maybe I can compromise? He figures out the attic and I get the powder room. One of my favorite design books is called a Pattern Language. One of the best ideas in it is the concept of the teenage cottage, where you transform a garage or shed into a place for your teenager to hang out, but there is no plumbing or kitchen so that the kids have to come home eventually. Maybe we should be focusing on that and not the powder room at all.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 27th, 2010 at 5:39 pm and is filed under Life changing products, Random acts of mothering. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.