When we were looking for a "temporary" abode three years ago one of the must-haves on the list was no stairs. After almost eating it, I just could not deal with two babies and flights of stairs from the parking garage if we all wanted to stay in one piece. Any place we looked at had to have a front door (and parking spot) at sidewalk level or come with an elevator. Since it's tough to find the former in Westwood, the latter was ours and has been awesome. So far.
Now that the kids are older and especially Jack and Christian are mobile the elevator is no longer our friend. For one thing, its incredibly impatient. It only gets summoned every 15 minutes or so so I'm not sure why it's always in a big hurry, but you can feel how desperately it wants to close the door as quickly as possible. I've memorized its open-time heartbeat by panicked heartbeat: 7 tiny seconds. This is nowhere near enough time to herd four little kids who all have minds and wills of their own over the tempting gap just the right size to throw mom's keys down, or maneuver a quad stroller that barely fits out the door. Or load in grocery carts laden with Costco food. So it's always closing on us and I have to push in the black bar quite hard to make it open again.
For one thing, it's the perfect recipe for pinched little fingers, crushed bones and severed digits. After all, it happened just recently to my friend, her little 2 1/2 year old, and their bathroom door. The incident resulted in a dangling finger and four hours before a doctor stitched it back on. This elevator is far more powerful, insensitive, and creviced than a mom and a bathroom door.
For another thing, it's the perfect recipe for chaos and mom-insanity. Tacking on the extra time it takes to go anywhere when we have to already have to pack snacks, locate and wash sippy cups, get kids dressed, wiped, socked and shod, last minute diaper changes etc. and THEN herd them to the elevator, try to get them all inside instead of playing on the stairs (while I get one the other runs away- you get the picture), and then exiting them safely and trying to herd them over to the car in the parking garage while trying to protect the wild little tykes from cars backing up and cars coming in and the massive garage door opening is unlike anything I've tried to do before. I need a sheepdog. I am a sheepdog.
I should be much more frustrated and upset, weeping on the ground, pulling my hair out and having a tantrum of my own when it literally takes me somedays 20 minutes (this is NOT an exaggeration) to get my kids from their car seats to the front entry of our apartment. Oh, and try to deal with a cargo load full of Costco loose food as well. My kids should be more maimed, and we should have far less Costco trips, but miraculously, and I'm talking about serious miracles here people, none of those things are really happening. Well, too much.
Lucky for us we have Wiley, Bingo and Champ. These are the trusty shopping carts that someone has thoughtfully placed in the parking garage to make cargo transfer possible. Wiley is the handiest, I don't know how he's in such good form, but he almost pushes himself. Bingo is solid and you can load him up with the heaviest stuff and Champ is just an all around good packhorse. I usually need all three to get our stuff up. But I can do it without too much problem. The kids love to sit in the child seats.
But even luckier for us, I have literally seen my kids fingers get fully pinched and caught and dragged in the sides of the doors while I'm thinking oh no, this is it, there's no way that's coming out but then miraculously their little hands slide out unharmed. I have seen my kids about to fall down the stairs while I'm trying to herd them back down into the elevator and as I'm watching in slowmotion it looks so bad I see an airlift in the immediate future, but then something lifts them and puts them back on their feet. I almost feel like I shouldn't talk about this unseen help because it sounds crazy or ungrateful, but I am not kidding, we should have had a thousand incidents by now and everybody's escaped with nothing worse than a couple scrapes.
As to my sanity, I have to admit I do get very grumpy sometimes, but it never lasts for very long and overall I'm good with it. The elevator keeps us humble, it helps me be more organized (well, than I would normally be;), use my time consciously and run our errands very efficiently. It helps me look at the things that I love about living here- walking distance to the temple, the best sushi right around the corner, and close to all the things Ian is working on so we get to see him more.
That being said, I don't want to tempt our good luck. We've been looking and thinking a TON about where we are going to move because we really do need to move. And our neighbors can't wait for us to move. And I must say a driveway sounds like a heavenly thing that I will never, ever take for granted. We made a massive list of pros and cons of all the places we are looking to move to and nothing is jumping out as a clear answer with a real advantage. So we're here for the moment. But every night and every morning we pray that we can find a house to move to and a plan to make that possible. (Caleb and Julian always pray for a house and a dog. Not in that order.) Hopefully we find it soon!
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