If not now, then when?

Here is a picture of Lenny taking a bath in the tub for the first time:

The bath time picture I posted on the internet, naturally.
Photo credit Gena Golas.

If you’re like me, you think waiting 19 months before putting a kid in the tub for the first time is a long time to wait. Not that there’s any rush, but Lenny had been developmentally ready for almost a year—sitting up unassisted, good motor skills, attention span to sit and play for longer stretches of time. Why did we wait so long, then, before transferring bath time from the kitchen sink to the upstairs tub?

 

Here’s why: the ugly, painted-pink-plus-gold-foil-with-pink-roses-wallpaper upstairs bathroom. Up until recently, this bathroom hardly got used—the most traffic it saw was for my many overnight trips to pee during my pregnancy. We didn’t want to use the bathroom for much else until it was renovated.

Me with Lenny, enjoying his first bath in the tub. Shown: the ugly pink paint. Not shown: the gold foil-with-roses wallpaper, which is on the top half of the wall. The internet isn’t ready for it.
Photo credit Gena Golas.

Let me give you a piece of advice: don’t buy a house when three months pregnant and expect to have all of your home renovation projects complete within a reasonable time frame. We’ve learned this lesson the hard way. Our house is full of incomplete or yet-to-be projects, that upstairs bathroom being one of them. Until recently, I was content to ignore the upstairs bathroom. But…I realized I was also ignoring a good deal of the rest of my house as well.

 

Living in a house that is under some stage of renovation is tough, but it’s something I have to get used to—my husband and I are doing all the work ourselves, and our available time to work on anything is almost nonexistent. I went from being okay with this, to totally annoyed, to trying to be okay with it once again. So what, our house isn’t perfect—yet. We still have to live in it, but I want to really live in it. As in, use every room; invite company over, even. Let Lenny finally take a bath in the upstairs tub. As it turns out, he loves bath time, and it’s become one of my favorite times of day as well. Why haven’t we done this sooner? If not now, then when?

 

I want Lenny to grow up knowing this message: life doesn’t have to be perfect to enjoy it. Bath time can still be fun even if the bathroom walls are less than desirable. We can still invite family over for dinner even if the dining room walls aren’t painted (or if the kitchen still doesn’t have any electrical wired in, or still doesn’t have countertops—you know, minor details). We can still make a home as a family even if the house itself is still in the making. If not now, then when?