A male baby to be more specific. There you go. So much for my planned big reveal of the new baby’s sex. Sorry for not coming up with a super creative photo post, I already channeled all my energy into finishing the guest room before our first guests will use it this weekend, being sick, and caring for a sick child again. A child, that also just discovered the joys of fully blown temper tantrums. Ah, the joys!

It’s gonna be interesting to see how this next little boy is gonna differ from Milo and in which ways they will be able to connect. We are really hoping that in about two years they will be fully compatible play buddies that can entertain each other for hours with only minimal supervision.

My next couple of days will be spent designing a completely new nursery for baby nummer two. And we could really use your help to come up with a cool name. Milo was kind of the only name ever Linc and I really loved, so it will be hard to find an equally cool brother name.

My criteria for a name are pretty ambitious anyway and I’m gonna tell you right now that I usually have to reject about 90% of all suggestions that are given to me. Not to discourage you, but to set a challenge, this is what the name should be like:

• Uncommon. As much as I like the name Noah, I don’t want him to be one of three Noah’s in his class.
• Not too crazily unique
• Easily pronounceable in English and German. We don’t want the poor kid to have to spell out his name everywhere he goes.
• Short. If everyone calls the kid Alex, then why name it Alexander?
• Not easily to abbreviate or made into weird nicknames

Ready? Set. Go!

Our biggest task this year (besides pushing a baby out and taking care of a newborn) is to finally tackle the basement. When we moved in last year the lower level was sort of left alone as it was – hideous wallpaper and everything. Lincoln uses it for his home office and I spend only dark evenings down there anyway, so it didn’t really bother me too much what it looked like. What can I say – I am done ignoring that wallpapery mess down there. And we have to make some room shifting happening this year to fit in another child.

So here is the plan. The baby will move into the current guest bedroom, the guest bedroom will move into the playroom in the basement. We don’t have guests all year round anyway and for those few weeks the basement should not be too uncomfortable. The room is actually bigger and more isolated from noisy kids, the only downside is that it doesn’t have a window. But since it is mainly for sleeping anyway, I think everyone will be okay. This is what the playroom was styled like when we moved in and all we had to do was adding a few toys.

Looks totally appropriate for playing, but not really like a calming retreat for people that need to recover from touring DC all day. So, the blue, the wallpaper, and at least half of the toys will have to go.

In the main part of the basement things aren’t as colorful, but it looks even crazier. There is stuff everywhere, an oversized couch occupying half of the room, and Lincoln’s work stuff spreads out wherever there is still space. Currently he has a photo studio set up on one side of the room, his extended desk area on the other side, and garments anywhere in between.

 

The master plan for the big room is huge. And will take some time. And might have to wait until after baby a.k.a next year. Check out here the before and planned after of furniture arrangements:

The main goal is to separate work area from living area and confine work stuff to the area that it belongs in. Of course that also requires a comprehensive desk and storage solution that Lincoln has been planning passionately and might share in another post.

These floor plans were made with the free online software homestyler and they even let you shoot a cool 3D panorama view of the designed space. Of course all with limited design options, but this is an approximate idea of what the space will look like. The shelf will be built in as a closet with sliding mirror doors. The desk and work area will be on one side of the room and the lounging area on the other side. Milo will get a small play corner for his train table and other supplies as well.

Phase 1 of the project will be to neutralize the play room due to the urgency of impending baby invasion. We already started stripping down the wall paper and priming the walls. More on that soon.

Phase 2 will be to fix the lighting situation. Currently all lights in the basement are hooked up to one switch, so if you want light in the big room, you are necessarily gonna wake up the guests in the other room or vice versa. We have to separate them into two circuits and will also upgrade them to recessed lights with brighter shine power. The current boob lights are just too dim and won’t fit any bigger light bulbs.

Phase 3 would be to tackle the walls and closet building-in in the big room. But as I said, let’s stay realistic here and see when we actually get to it.

Oh yeah, in the above floor plan I also made the laundry room a little bigger, but that is not really gonna happen. Unless we decide to build a small bathroom in the basement at some point, then we would need the additional storage area.

Okay, enough of unrealistic dreams for now and back to finishing the new guest room.

The most frequently asked questions from people when they realize that I am pregnant are:

1. Is this your first? (unless they know)
2. When are you due?
3. Do you know if it is a boy or girl?

Since question number 1 and 2 are already answered on this website, let’s get to question number three. Just so you know, there will be no answer here today. Our anatomy ultrasound is in two weeks, but I get this question so frequently that I can’t help but have sort of an answer as to what our preferences are. Lincoln is hoping for a little girl. And I honestly don’t care at all. I always wanted a girl, but now that I have Milo I think it totally doesn’t matter what sex the baby is. Therefore I see the date in two weeks pretty pragmatically. I don’t care what the result will be, but I do want to know so that I can plan ahead. I need to know if I have all the clothes or should buy some girls stuff. And starting to look into names will be fun too. The biggest reason for me to find out though is so that I don’t have to call the baby an “it” anymore.

Whenever I have to decide about which option to chose I make a pro and contra list of the options. Not that I have any choice in this particular matter, but if I had to determine what my preference is, here are my considerations:

Pro boy:

+ We already have all boy clothes

+ It would probably be nice for Milo to have a buddy to ramble around the house with

+ I don’t really like pink. Actually I hate pink. The bright girl clothes kind of pink at least. I can deal with a pale muted pink, but not with all the girls stuff that is on the market. I know, I know – I wouldn’t have to get any of it if it was a girl, but honestly it is really hard to find anything without cars on it that is not pink and also I am pretty sure all 100 relatives here wouldn’t care what my color aversions are and buy right into the mainstream girl stuff.

+ I am actually not so much a girly type of person. I have always had plenty of guy friends, played soccer on the street with them, and got dirty in the woods rather than getting a manicure.

Pro girl:

+ Girl names are way easier to find

+ If a girl was anything like Milo, the cuteness would probably be tripled.

+ Supposedly girls tend to snuggle more than boys. And I do need my regular cuddle time.

So, what do you think it’s gonna be? Any wild guesses out there?

Not in Milo’s tummy. Although he might begin to think that that’s what is in bellies because we started preparing him for some major expansion and eventually a baby coming out of mommy’s tummy. Of course Milo has no plan what that means until the new baby will actually steal a good chunk of attention from him, but we are pretty sure that underneath it all he will eventually be thrilled and thankful to have a sibling. He is just a people person and needs his own little play buddy always available.

Now, considering that we are doing him a major favor here, Milo didn’t make it very easy to make baby number two. Seriously, once kids turn 1, they switch on some natural birth control mode that makes it almost impossible to find time to do what you gotta do. There is teething, sicknesses, and other random night wakings that set off a second round of sleep deprivation that not only leaves no time and energy for parent time, but also makes you seriously doubt that you want to go through this whole baby thing again. Against all odds we were able to make it happen somehow, but trust me, it was hard work.

Little Tran number two is expected to arrive on the same due date that Milo had (August 15th), and hopefully he or she will not come out three days early so that both kids can have their own separate birthday. Six more months to convert the basement into a guest room and the guest room into nursery. After three extremely tired, mildly sick, and lazy months, the home makeover blog will be back full force very soon!

If I ever said before that Milo was becoming a big boy I was lying. Because he is a big boy now! I mean, look at this kid. He is not even 18 months old and totally keeping up with all his older buddies. He is running, climbing, jumping, doing forward rolls, singing, dancing, and talking non stop. While I am writing this I absolutely realize that it is pointless describing all of these cool things when I could just post some self-explanatory videos instead.

Unfortunately it isn’t quite that easy, cause that kid has a serious iPhone addiction and as soon as you pull the phone out to shoot a video Milo just drops whatever he is doing and there is no way captioning anything but a kid running towards the camera with both arms reaching for the magical device. Of course it is our fault that this mini person has the iPhone completely figured out by 17.5 months of age. It’s the curse of the clever telephone. Instead of reading a newspaper, we read the news on it. Instead of calling up friends at unsuitable times, we just post something on Facebook. Instead of getting a book at the library for advice, we google the heck out of the phone. So there we are – a really bad role model for Milo showing him that phones are the most desirable toy in the world.

Anyway, we still limit Milo’s phone usage to half an hour of videos and half an hour of games a day and so far it doesn’t seem to have any negative effects on him (except for his addiction problem). He is still developing ahead of his age group, has way more fun playing with older kids and talking the days away. Lately his words have become more defined. Instead of just doubling up the first syllable of every word (wa-wa for water, ba-ba for bath), he is now very clearly saying “water”, “juice”, “car”, etc. He understands pretty much everything we say in any of the three languages and communicates clearly what he wants. I gotta admit that I am guilty of letting him go through with things I should probably say no to, just because I find it so cute how he communicates them.

So, tomorrow I will attempt another video shoot of all those fun things he does and then hopefully update with some footage here.

Cheers!

So it looks like 2012 could be a pretty interesting year. Apparently there is a good chance that the world may drastically transform or even go down all together in December. While that sounds all exciting and is probably a once in your life time event to watch, it still leaves more than 11 months to make it one of the best years of our lives. And in case we survive the apocalypse, we can live happily ever after afterwards.

Interestingly enough, the United Nations declared 2012 as the International Year of Cooperatives, highlighting the contribution of cooperatives to socio-economic development, in particular recognizing their impact on poverty reduction, employment generation and social integration. It has also been designated as the International Year of Sustainable Energy for All. Just another reason for me to work extra hard this year and help reducing Maryland’s carbon footprint.

Other than that 2012 is probably gonna be as busy and exciting as any other year. We will visit Germany in May, renovate our entire basement this spring (granted that I can find back into home renovation mode, I feel like last year’s efforts depleted my motivation completely), and Milo will start preschool in fall. We will be able to hire a house cleaner and pay off our car.  And of course, we will keep you in the loop about everything on this very blog. I am not sure if I will be able to keep up the weekly post, but might just check in with a few smaller reports here and there.

What is your plan for 2012?

On January 1st, 2012 I have officially worked for my company greeNEWit for three years. What started out as a commission based position with some volunteering hours has grown into a full time salaried position as manager. And I am still having fun.  greeNEWit and me, we are a match made in heaven and I could never imagine working for any other company. Today I want to tell you how we met and became such a great team.

About 3.25 years ago I started my job hunt in the US. After 6 months in the US my green card hadn’t arrived yet, but I was getting antsy and wanted a job lined up by the time I would finally be allowed to work. While I probably would have become a photo journalist in Germany I did not see too many opportunities in that field in the US and therefore shifted my focus to my minor that I had in university: ecology. The rest of the job market already started to go down hill, but green jobs were booming, so I jumped right on the green wave. After a few spontaneous applications sent to random green companies I realized that volunteering was a better way to go. So I started hanging out at the Green Building Institute.

On the side I also went to the Green Fest in DC, a big exhibition with green vendors and service providers. This is where I handed out my generic “business” card to many prospective employers and also Matej from greeNEWit. He said that they were looking to hire an energy auditor, but then never got back to me. Fast forward a few weeks later when I was volunteering at a networking event at the Green Building Institute. That’s where I met the two other greeNEWit guys Jason and Josh. Looking back I got a pretty accurate impression of both those guys. Both very enthusiastic about their mission, Jason the sales guy selling the world to me, and Josh the financial person being more elusive (probably still calculating back and forth if they could really afford to hire their first employee and if so, whether it should be a small girl recently immigrated from Germany).

Company Bike Ride

The rest is history. What was supposed to be my first job interview ever turned into a really great conversation at Panera’s. You know the feeling you have at a first date and you go home knowing that’s it? How you can’t stop smiling and are so nervous to hear back from the guy if he wants to see you again. Yep, I kinda fell in love with greeNEWit that day and we are still inseparable.While things have been a little up and down success-wise over the past years, we never ever ran out of fun at work. When jobs were low, my “bosses” found me a side job at a partnering company. When things went well, they made sure that I still got the personal time and pay I needed to lead a balanced life.

Holiday Party 2011

Now we got a new big contract that is bringing in some good moneys, got me a nice raise, and a manager position that is still somewhat flexible to accommodate family life. At least every other week the whole company gets together for spontaneous or planned happy hours, Frisbee sessions, bike rides, birthday lunches, or other parties. I feel extremely lucky to have a job that I like and where every single coworker/boss is a really good friend that supports me and understands me on a personal level as well as on a professional level. Thank you guys for everything you have done for me and for making me look forward to work every morning!

Peace and love,

Nicola