In Which Connor is A Snuggle Monster

This morning Jer and I dropped Connor off at school and then drove to the new house to meet our awesome interior designer (I never thought I'd get to say that!), Pamela. She talked with us about our personal style, what we're wanting to use each room for, what we have and what we need in the way of furniture and decor, and then took some measurements of the rooms. By the time this is finished we are going to have a gorgeous house, and maybe after a while I'll stop feeling like we've somehow snuck into someone else's house and stolen their identity. Someone with a style very similar to ours but who hasn't purchased all of their furniture from Ikea.

While we were there a couple of the guys were working on laying the floor joists for building up the sunken living room floor. I'm starting to get a sense of just how big the space is going to be when they're done, and I must say I'm really glad we're going to have help figuring out what to put in it, as so far we have a grand total of two chairs to put in our enormous living room (Can you guess where we bought them?). I'm also having to physically restrain myself from buying a whole bunch of art to put on the walls. We'll have a lot more room for it, and you know how crazy I am about original artwork. I'll have to start hitting up all my artist friends for commissions again. Makes me happy just thinking about it!

After we met with Pamela we drove down to the hardware store to attempt to buy a compost bin. I say "attempt" because all of the local chains have a pitiful selection of compost bins. We found a grand total of one, and it was one of the worm bin ones with all of the fiddly little trays. Yes, I know I could build one myself, but I want a compost tumbler, because I hate doing more work than I have to. It's so much easier to just turn the bin rather than turning the whole pile. Also those bins work pretty quickly and I'm not the most patient person in the world.

I'd like to get one sooner rather than later because under all of that ivy (Dave ended up with twenty-three bags of the stuff, and the hill is maybe a third of the way clear now. The dump is going to love us. He had to leave today-- we miss him already!) was this wonderful half-rotted compost consisting mostly of old leaves from past years. I want to put it in a bin with the leaves I'm raking off the driveway and have some really, really nice compost in a few weeks. So I ended up ordering a bin off the Internet. Hopefully it will arrive in a few days and I can get to composting!

Connor has been especially snuggly of late-- he's started giving little hugs, which is absolutely adorable. I think he's feeling a little insecure; he's been having to play more on his own than he usually does because I'm not able to focus as much attention on him as I did before Jer came back home. So he's a little clingy when I do pick him up, and it makes me feel pretty guilty. Poor little guy- his neat, simple world has been pretty much turned on its ear in the past few weeks. I'm going to make more of an effort to get back into a routine that he's used to-- I think it would help him feel better. I'm actually kind of surprised we haven't seen more negative behavior from him, but he remains my own personal miniature saint, which in some ways makes me feel even more guilty. I know there are even bigger changes around the corner with the move, so I want to have at least a few routines established that will stay the same for him. He's definitely a creature of habit.

I'm thinking maybe reestablishing our Library Day might be an order. That way not only will Connor have at least one unchanging routine firmly established, but maybe I'll quit buying so many books and we'll have a bit less to move, too!

It could happen, right? Right?

~Jess