New Roof.

The leaves on the maple tree are blowing around on their branches. I can see them from the kitchen window where I have a good view of the backyard. It's an early morning for me. Jeremy has been gone for an hour already. With a thermos of coffee in hand and sleep in his eyes, he drove to Ashland City to go fishing with his friend Scott.

Eli is back in his crib for a morning nap after waking briefly to gnaw on my bathrobe and greet the day. It's not often that the house is this quiet. Only early morning ever seems this quiet to me. I can hear the faint, steady hum of the refrigerator a foot away, and the click of my fingers against the letters as I type, but the rest of the house sleeps on.

We are thinking about moving sometime soon...probably next summer. Not away from Nashville, just to a house with a bit more room. Jeremy would like some land so we're keeping an eye open for that. There is still a big part of me that loves our neighborhood and would be sad to leave it, especially as I watch it continue to grow and because so many of our friends live here. We'll see what happens. Regardless of where we end up, I know we're both going to miss this house a lot.

The old carved too-shallow fireplaces are never used but they are beautiful to look at and give the house a sense of warmth, even without being lit. Our kitchen is small, but just enough space for a table for two where we often sit to have breakfast, lunch, and midnight snacks. We've spent time renovating the bathroom, reworking the plumbing and nailing bead-board to the walls. And our second bedroom has gone through many metamorphoses in four short years...it began as my office, then became a guest room, next Jeremy's music space (aka The Map Room), and now it belongs to Eli. And then, of course, there's been a lot of decorating. And redecorating. And redecorating again. As my friend Charla and I often commiserate (much to our husbands' perplexity) it's easy to become obsessed with creating new throw pillows. (I have a trunk stuffed full of them.)

So we'll miss this house. It will always be the first place we lived as a married couple, and the place where we brought our newborn son home from the hospital.

I'm not sure why I'm being so nostalgic about it now. We're not planning to move for awhile. Maybe it's something about the morning and how quiet it is; quiet enough for me to sit still for a moment and remember where I live.