Buster Benson

I read in a book yesterday that putting together a nursery is an important part of early bonding with your baby.  According to this book, objects and art around the baby will be a part of the baby’s first stimulation.  What we choose to expose our child to will become the building blocks of who our child is to become.  This will be the first way for us to give some culture to our child.  It will be the first teaching of our family’s aesthetic style.

Well then.  If this is the case, I venture to guess that our child will have a strong foundation in urban minimalism.  Our house has been on the market (with a small break around the the winter holidays) for the better part of 4 months.  We will give it another 3 weeks before pulling if off of the market in favor of getting ready for some baby arrival.

I love our little condo!  It was first Milton’s perfect bachelor pad.  Then we redecorated and made it our perfect love nest.  It has a great view of the city, a private roof deck, and is just blocks away from anything you could possibly want in Seattle.  It is my most very favorite place that I have ever lived in.  As a wife and cook, I work this small place like it is a machine and actually love that everything is so close together.  I don’t even think I would ever want a big huge house.  It just seems like too much work, and I feel like my husband and I would be too far away from one another if we had more than a few good rooms.

The thing is, our place is a loft.  It doesn’t have any separate rooms unless you count the bathroom.  It’s just one big happy box.  I don’t think that most couples could get along in a living situation like this one, but Milton and I are very very happy.  We know when to be quiet and we know when to have a discussion from the lofted bedroom to the living room below.  I don’t think we’ve ever had a difficult moment between us that is spatially related.  Adding a baby, however, could potentially cause a problem.  The slippery stairs don’t have a railing.  There aren’t any doors to close to block Junior from devastation.  There are nerdy wires falling from several computered surfaces.  It’s kind of an adults only sort of place.

Or so we’ve thought.  If this place doesn’t sell, we’re going to begin an endeavor in March that will redecorate this place once more to make room for this baby.  Some shelves.  An old-fashioned pram for use as a bassinet.  A few less computers.  An open space for lounging about on the floor.  A new easy to clean rug underfoot.  The key has got to come from a few creative solutions for urban baby nesting.  We can handle that as long as we can scrape together a few bucks.

The more I think about it, the more I think we’ll be just fine with our urban minimalist baby.  We don’t ever plan on living outside of a city (‘burbs scare me, I gotta be honest), so our son can just get used to slippery stairs, the sounds of cars outside, cavorting on the streets, and our voices shouting from the loft to the living room.