Already, it’s covered in books. And most of them are Charlotte’s.

Her new favorite thing is to run at you, board book in hand (always right-side-up, usually open to a page with a dog or a cow), thrust it into your hands, and then charge your lap (or your knees, if you’re in a chair). If you ask, “Charlotte, do you want Daddy to read you that book?” she yells “Doh!” which is, I think, how she says “yes.” (She says “no” for “no”.) Often it’s something by Eric Carle or something involving animals. When the story is over, she closes the book, claps, yells, and promptly exits your lap. The performance is finished.

Meanwhile, she yellst either “Dog!” or “Gog!” at the dogs, “Duckkk” at the ducks and “Mmmmmmmmmoo” at the cows. It’s completely adorable.

My old boss told me that she read somewhere that the single most accurate way to predict good performance at school is the number of books  in the child’s home.  Not the parents’ education levels (poor Charlotte), not the time spent reading.  Just the books.

And I shudder to think what’s going to happen to the Kindle Generation.

Mrs. Former Boss can’t remember where she read it, and I’ve been too lazy to look it up for confirmation.  But I can’t help but believe that the fact that we’ve been reading to and around Charlotte since before she saw daylight and took a breath has a little to something to do with her infatuation with books.

I hope the substance is not vital.  The first thing I ever read aloud to her in utero was by Jean-Paul Sartre.  I’d hate for her to grow up with my, ‘er, sunny outlook.

Fortunately for Charlotte, we live four tenths of a mile from a nice children’s bookstore.  And, fortunately for us, it’s mere yards from the local coffeeshop.

Said my wife on our last — and kinda bitter — night in The Old Building.

We have a walk-through late this afternoon. And then. That’s it. Our five-year relationship with a building we’ll walk past fairly often is over.

I feel badly for nearly-voluntarily moving away from Charlotte’s first home. Then I remember the broken windows, the leaking walls, a few two-faced people there. And I think to myself, “Fuck ‘em. We’re moving up in the world.”

Whatever “up” means.

Yesterday, I applied 3-4 coats (depending on the spot) of paint to cover it all up. The last stroke at the top of the Northeast wall that covered up the blue made me incredibly sad. My wife was interested in painting the room. I was [and am] bitter and sad and mad that we almost had to move because the building’s increasingly poor management and maintenance; so I almost took her up on it. All that work, and Charlotte won’t even remember those deep blue walls. Painting over it depressed me. But, frankly, I’m a faster painter, and we needed to just get it finished. So I did all the painting.

It’s sad, to me, that we had to abandon the first place that Charlotte ever called home before she would ever remember it.  Sweeping our bedroom yesterday, I realized that I was standing where Charlotte’s crib stood until she was 6 months old.  The first night away from the hospital and the army of nurses.  The first night in her own PJs, having a real bath, in her own crib, in our home.  The first place she ever slept at night because it was nighttime or slept through the night (though the latter is really still a rarity; she has a small stomach but a hunger for playing and exploring).

Now it’s not home anymore.  There are just a few piles of crap and our bikes there.  After Thursday, we have no claim at all on it.

Hell, it’s probably the room where Charlotte was conceived, though, for the sake of family folklore, that — ahem — happened after a Tori Amos concert in Washington.

Who knows if Charlotte will remember our current apartment?  It’s much larger, though, and she usually forgoes her toys in favor of running around.

Pictures soon.

I’m lucky enough that my family and my very good friend helped immeasurably in the move. Small thank-you presents and home-cooked meals are tiny tokens after an entire day (and, in the case of my Dad, another evening and afternoon to boot) spent watching Charlotte, lugging boxes, running errands and etc. We’re trying, though, to thank folks the best way we can.

Charlotte woke up at 5:45am on the first morning here and flipped out. She didn’t know where she was. But now she’s used to it, has her stuff and knows she’s home. Her walls aren’t blue anymore, but her room is much cosier now.

Low and behold, someone showed up this morning to fix them.  Over the course of an hour or hour and half, he broke glass, made a mess, cleaned some of it up and left.  Okay.  Come to find out, they’re showing our apartment tomorrow.  One of those windows has been broken for seven months.  But today — TODAY — they get fixed.

Only they don’t.  It’s been about four hours since My Man left and almost two since they said they’d be coming with glass today.

So two of our windows are missing their glass.  Nice.  I also sure had fun cleaning the glass and paint chips from the floor.

I’ve decided to be naughty for tomorrow’s showing, but I haven’t decided how yet.  I do plan on revealing the name of this building, for search engines to find — after we have our security deposit back.  There are some [negative] reviews on the web, but still.  Man.  Gotta give prospective tenants/victims warning.

–Wait.  Another, larger, guy is here to replace the glass.  It only took seven months!  Awesome.

Time to get Charlotte up from her nap, I guess.

Sure, you could chalk this up to it being an old building. We’ve lived here for nearly five years, our longest at any one address since we lived with our parents over a decade ago. Three apartments. We might have the very best one right now, actually.  But they used to run this place differently.  They used to run this place better.  Used to be that a maintenance request came right away.  I mean the same or next day, depending on the problem.  But now, we’ve had a window broken since October that the management has known about but hasn’t fixed; another they’ve known about for 3-4 weeks; water damage they’ve known about for 3-4 weeks.  They used to keep the building clean when we had the shitty carpet and the ugly wallpaper.  Since remodelling the place last year, they stopped sweeping/mopping or doing anything to keep the place from looking like a pooptrap.  I was excited that I would be less embarrassed to have people over, since everyone we’re friends with/related to owns a house (and quite a few of them look down on us for not owning a house or trying to own a house).

So, yeah.  It’s not a problem of it being an old building.  Wall leak?  Fix it!  Broken window?  Fix it!  New floors/walls/ceilings in the hallway?  Clean it [all]!

So we’re sad to leave, if we leave.

They showed us another building yesterday, which is where the office is.  We made the mistake of assuming that it was better maintained.  The building was gorgeous.  But the unit was, well, worse than ours in a lot of ways.  We went to lunch, made pro-con lists in my Field Notes, saw my old advisor/mentor, and apartment hunted online while Charlotte took her afternoon nap.  Called about a building we’ve always liked, and while they didn’t have any two-bedrooms there, they owned another building further up in Roland Park where they had/have a nice two-bedroom just out of our price range.  The lady said it was unlocked, to go and look at it.  Weird.  But we did, and we really liked it.  It has a sunroom, working fireplace, but it doesn’t have a great view.  We talked to the lady who works for the owner at night, and she called her boss, and he came down $100 a month so that we could swing it (and so that he could fill it). I also got a free coffee at the local Starbux (I know!) because I forgot my wallet.  Good omen?  And I broke the French press that reminds me of this building this weekend.

So.  We’re nailing down the last leads and getting the hell out of here in 2-3 weeks.  It’s only occurred to us lately that the difference between a charming old building and a shithole is that the latter is what happens to the former when you don’t take care of it.  I don’t feel safe having Charlotte here when windows fall and break (and don’t get fixed) and walls leak (and don’t get fixed) and plaster and paint crack and sometimes have tiny pieces of ceiling fall (and don’t get fixed).

Of course, I have mixed feelings about moving further into Roland Park and farther from everything we walk to now.  The closest grocery store is expensive.  The closest coffee shop is a Starbux.  Further from family and friends, too.  But.  Same bus line.  Easier to get to the one that goes downtown.  In a perfect world, they’d fix shit and take better care of this place, and we wouldn’t have to move and drop another $200 a month to live somewhere nicer.  But, thems the breaks.  Thems the breaks.

After a pretty exhaustive search for houses in areas we like (none of which, I confess, I like better than where our apartment is) and long walks (Charlotte and I strolled for nearly three hours today — lucky I’m always packing baby snacks on my person!), we cancelled our meeting with the real estate broker.

I haven’t written about the details on here or in my journal or even much in my brain.

While renting is not always the best financial decision, our student loan debt and very…modest income don’t make us the best candidates for loans.  Our apartment needs some repairs, and we have not ruled out looking for another apartment.  But, for now at least, it’s home sweet apartment.

I LIKE apartment living, though, to tell the truth.  I haven’t lived in a house since I was 19.

And, if nothing else, this probably will end my recent radio silence.

Apartment to house to condo to apartment to condo to co-op to house.

Also, the whole thing is really making me hungry, like all the time.

Strange, huh?

We never bother to paint because we move a lot; so our walls are all off-white.  For Baby’s room, I used non-VOC paint to get the space a glossy shade of blue.  There is wonderful light (from soft flower and bug wall lamps, to a medium lamp to a big floor to the nuclear dawn of the ceiling light), a soft rug, cute curtains, soft, wooden furniture (including some that we intend to grow with her), a rocking chair, TOYS and — for now — two bikes!Also , to keep the dragon plant company, a money tree!

It was a task. It felt like my Augean stables, as I cleaned off a storage shelf, the huge closet, computer desk, two full bookshelves, bike parts and tools, pens (PENS!). This took me several weekends.

Then I painted with a brush, so that I wouldn’t have to make a mess. Before and after painting, I had fun with sandpaper, putty and DUST (which had to be vacuumed from everything, mopped up, etc., in case of lead paint, etc.).  This took a week of evenings, with a few mornings and one afternoon.

Then there was a big trip to Ikea, after some careful planning and measuring.  And, you know, putting everything together (which I really enjoy).

And, finally, decorating!  This was the fun part.  I had a nice beer, my headphones and went to town last night.  I think that was the last beer I’ll ever drink in there.

The crib is in our room, closer to me, since I’m a light sleeper.  After that, it will replace the bikes in Baby’s room.  Her window looks out onto trees and, when they don’t have their leaves, North Baltimore.  There are three doors: one to the hallway, one to the closet, one to the bathroom (both bedrooms have doors into the bathroom, which is pretty cool and part of the “charm” of this old place).  The floors are the original (creaky and scarred) hardwood floors.

It’s weird to think that, in a matter of weeks or even days, there will be a tiny baby there.

Also, in the mail today: my new camera and the Baby Bjorn!

More photos here on Flickr!

I’m dehydrated enough that my fingertips are like sharkskin.  So I’m having tea instead of coffee.  I am eyeing the nice Guinness pub cans in my fridge, though, and the pint glasses I keep in the freezer.  Hmm.

You can move the apartment number literally up one integer in your address book if you have it.