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

These Are A Few of My Favorite Things....

Did I mention that my husband is a darling? Yet another package arrived for me today, this one from my favorite company in the universe, SpecialTeas. He sent me a couple of different types of tea, including Connor's personal favorite-- Jasmine Phoenix Pearls (no I don't let him drink it-- he likes the smell). My husband knows me very, very well.

I would like to say that this is a stock photo, but sadly, it's not. At last count I had somewhere around fifty different types of tea and tisanes. This is well past a hobby and probably into an obsession. I have read books about tea. I have been to tea tastings. I can look at a tea called Dari Singbulli Special Finest Tippy Golden Flowery Orange Pekoe 2nd Flush Silver Tip and understand what that means- that's how bad I am. I can't even claim any of those teas are Jer's-- he drinks coffee, and he drinks it the way I drink tea-- seriously. The man hauls his grinder and espresso machine to work every Monday and hauls them back to the house on Friday, which is also when he roasts the beans for the next week in our kitchen with all the windows open. He usually sets all the fire alarms off anyway.

While Jer and I have a little love affair with our respective vices, Connor puts us both to shame. Connor is not addicted to coffee or tea. Connor is addicted to chocolate pudding, and while he is rather unpicky about its origin and preparation, he makes up for that in passion, eating and simultaneously bathing himself in it with a type of single-minded focus that any epicurean would recognize as true appreciation of food. You have to be careful of your fingers when you are feeding it to him. He has a tendency to lunge for the spoon. If he could tell you about it, he would probably scoff at the idea that pudding is just to be eaten. Pudding is to be experienced, and he does his very best to appreciate its every nuance, utilizing it in pieces of performance art that are stunning in their sophistication and complexity. Either that or he was involved in a vicious fight with some sort of custard monster. I'm pretty sure the poor monster lost.

~Jess