Hopefully, we will progress to a point with the Babies! where not all of our furniture becomes fixtures.

After taking down the Christmas tree, I rearranged the living room to give us a fresh new start in that room. I pushed the piano over to the opposite corner, and angled it out. I moved the sectional couch to the corner where the piano had been, so the room was more open. I shifted the cat tree over and put the rocker into the time-out corner.

I did not move the grandfather clock, for two reasons. First, it doesn't work. One of the weights fell off and I have to get it fixed and fixing the clock is way, way low on the list of priorities. Second, and more important, the clock is bolted to the wall to keep the Babies! from pulling it over onto themselves. Until we get them Civilized, that's a necessary step.

I'm thinking, though, that I'm not going to fix the old grandfather clock, a clock the in-laws gave us and which has served pretty well, overall, but has never really seemed like it fit in, probably because we didn't pick it ourselves, and also because it's just... you know, a typical grandfather clock.

Instead of repairing that one, I'm inclined more to pick up a new grandfather clock, one more like this:


That's the Howard Miller "Cherish" Grandfather clock from 1-800-4Clocks.com, which is the best possible place to shop for grandfather clocks because they've got every kind of clock you can imagine, and they're all marked down, all the time, from the high prices that grandfather clocks usually go for to something that even I can afford. (They've even got a blog with tips and stories about grandfather clocks, things that I could use to impress/bore the kids, like the different names that grandfather clocks have had depending on where you live.)

I like the "Cherish" because it allows the clock to not only have that grandfather-clock quality but also to highlight other things -- pictures and knickknacks and the like, so that the clock becomes more like a part of the house, instead of just some piece of furniture that nobody's supposed to ever look at or touch.

I mean, if it's going to be bolted to a wall, it should be treated like a member of the family, shouldn't it?