Finally, a Bookcase!

**Feel free to skip the part about the bookcase and scroll down to the four videos of Chase**

We had been talking about getting a real bookcase for the living room basically since we moved in.  The wire cubes worked great, but they did look a little... college dorm life.  :)  Finally, after being able to throw a few things in storage and start the big de-cluttering process., we (or more like I) decided it was time to upgrade.  

So we ordered a bookcase this week.  I knew it would be a big project, so I started by moving the wire cubes into the bedroom to hold clothes that were stacked around the room.  I knew it would be a couple of days before it came, so there was just a pile of stuff that used to be on the shelves.  (Older pictures show the corner of the room stuffed with books and other random things.)  It wasn't quite a black hole, but it was definitely a pile of doom...

The bookcase arrived earlier than expected.  Thank goodness.  And I put it together all by myself.  (I'm just going to need Marcus' help to secure it to the wall.)  Chase watched most of the building.  

I still need to go through the books and decide which ones to leave on the shelves and which are going in a box, but I wanted Marcus' input before carting his stuff to storage :)  Even with the pile in the corner, I feel like the room grew.  The wire cubes took up so much space, and this just looks a million times better.  My plan is to get rid of the stuff in the corner so the diaper bag and stroller can be there with nothing else.  Then when Chase isn't in his jumperoo (which rarely happens because he loves it so much), we can push it back toward the wall and still have room to walk!  I feel so grown up.  Haha.

It is really full right now, but I remembered some tricks from Nate Berkus' show that will help maximize the space and minimize the look of clutter.  (He's a genius-- Whoever decided to cancel his show was obviously not from a small, city apartment!  Punk.)  We'll see if I can really internalize what I learned from him.  At least for now there's more room to walk, and it looks so much cleaner, at least to me. :)

I'm trying to learn how to "decorate" a New York apartment, and slowly, very slowly, it's getting cleaner as I learn to maximize vertical space and clear as much horizontal space as I can. :)  I'd like to blame the baby for taking up space, but let's be honest, even before Chase, it still was a mess.  Maybe I should just get Nate Berkus to clean and re-decorate my entire apartment...

And of course, a video of Chase, and the bookcase :)

Here's Chase singing and jumping some more

Trying for the cat.  He loves to watch and pet (more like grab) her now.

And finally, a new favorite food.  

He actually kept opening his mouth for more for so long that I had to put a little more in the bowl.

The end.