Lessons in apartment living

It's a little bit more difficult adjusting to apartment living (with 3 kids) than I had envisioned. I find myself a lot more worried about taking care of the carpet, the walls, the furniture, etc. because none of it is "mine". In all the apartments I've ever been in, I've never worried about being a bad tenant. I've always taken reasonably good care of the apartments, never damaged anything, never gotten complaints about being too noisy, etc. Now I find myself in an apartment along with 3 rambunctious boys, and there is a lot more potential damage and noise that I have to try and minimize. For starters...

This afternoon I got a call from the apartment office asking if we could possibly keep our kids from thumping on the floor too much, because the elderly man living below us called and complained. The office manager lady was very nice about it, and said that she totally understood that we have 3 kids and there's going to be a bit of noise, and she said that the man below us is very nice, but a little bothered by the loud thumping footsteps. Now, David and I had already been correcting Jack, especially, since we moved in, because we have also noticed that he's been extra bouncy and we can tell that the floor vibrates when he gets crazy. But honestly it's not too bad (or maybe I'm so used to it that it doesn't register as much as it should), and it's here and there (not constant) and never between 7PM-7AM. I hoping that no one would really notice the extra kid noise (that was probably a little naive), but I was a little surprised that we had already received a complaint after just being here 3 days! We haven't had any loud crying, temper tantrums, etc. that are bound to come around sooner or later. I wonder how Mr. Elderly Neighbor will tolerate those! So, we can definitely work harder on the bouncing and thumping footsteps, but beyond that I'm not sure how much else I can minimize the general kid noise that 3 little boys generate. I feel terrible about it, because I'm sure the man below us isn't used to all this, but we can't force the kids to live like mice out of fear of offending someone. We'll have to work on that balance. Maybe I'll see if we can request a dowstairs apartment for the next rotation.

For the time being, I can be stricter about enforcing a "walk only" rule in the apartment. I know a lot of it is my own fault -- I remember growing up that we weren't allowed to run in the house, but for some reason I went ahead and let the boys run around at home in Ramona. I figured there was no one else to bother, they didn't have a yard to do their running in, and it didn't bother me, so why not? Unfortunately, now it comes back to haunt me, and I have to untrain them from the bad habit I let them develop.

On the other side, though (if I stop stewing and force myself to think constructively), all of this is a good lesson in being considerate of others, which is more important for the kids to learn than for them to be allowed to run in the house. I think, in general, that apartment living is making me appreciate stewardship in a new light. Nothing here in Buffalo is mine, and therefore I feel obligated to treat it better than if it were mine. But, honestly, nothing in Ramona was "mine" either, so I should have held myself to the same standards and treated everything a little better there than I did, too.