Chicago Mama Spot

Paying the Price

It is no fun being a mommy when you've been a little party girl the night before.  Thankfully, Sweet Pea is a snoozer.  She is still sleeping past 9:00 am.  Today was almost 9:30.  Yes, I drank too much champagne and ate too little for dinner.  I had to fit into my "hot" jeans, right?  Nothing hotter than a "had a little too much drink" girl wobbling around in heels. 

I think all I did today was feed Sweet Pea.  She woke up, we had breakfast.  By the time, we were done it was almost lunchtime.  After lunch, naptime.  She slept until after 4:00 and then, it was almost dinnertime.  Bedtime at 7:00.  How can she sleep so much?  She's has a cold and is getting some teeth in, but still.  She's sleeping like a newborn.

I know this is a very boring post and I'm sorry about that. I'm trying to get my drunk post off the top.  I could delete it, but it seems like cheating.

A runny nose and a chatty Sweet Pea

I've caught the runny nose like a waterfall cold from Sweet Pea.  It's hard to do anything with this runny, runny nose.  So, I decided today would be a good time to give the new kitchen a spin.  Not the best idea with this cold and my whiny, still-sick toddler who can't be more than one inch from me.  It was going okay until I almost sliced my finger off with the potato peeler.  The kitchen must work magic though because everything turned out pretty well.  Daddy-O came back for seconds.

Another exciting day for the Cubs.  They could sweep the Cardinals tomorrow.  What a great way to start the season.

Sweet Pea can't stop talking right now.  She is starting two and three word phrase and it's like she thinks she discovering something amazing every time she says one and we get it.  It's so cute.  She woke up in the middle of the night a few nights ago and kept talking about everyone's hair.  "Mama's hair," "Daddy's hair," "Charlie's hair."  It was hard to stay quiet because I wanted to laugh so much.  It's lucky for toddlers that they do so many cute things. It makes the bratty ones much easier to take.

I am just waiting for Sweet Pea to climb out of her crib.  She can open all the doors in the house, so I just know one of these days I'm going to wake up with her looking right at me.  She is such a climber.  I can't believe when she was younger, my mom and I thought she wasn't much of a risk taker.  She must have heard us and decided that she needed to start proving me wrong before she even hit two.  I mean, why wait until the teenage years?

I am off to snuggle up to my box of kleenex.  Spanglish is on HBO and I'm suddenly very into it.  Although, what's up with Adam Sandler's fro?

Carpet Karma

What is up with this?  The carpet will not be here until "maybe" Tuesday.  How do you lose a shipment of carpet?

Luckily, I'm off to meet with my bookclub for Friday cocktails so I can forget all about the dust and the mess!

Three posts, one day.  I'm back!!!!

Smooth move????

Hello again!  I'm back in business.  I, brilliantly, decided to switch over to VOIP at the same time as our move.  I thought I'd set it up at the old place to make sure it worked.  As you can probably guess, it's been one little technical issue after another.  We moved on Friday and were without internet access until yesterday.  The phone was pretty shaky too.  It's amazing how addicted you get to the internet and the phone. 

On the plus side, I got so much done.  Not having the distraction of all the great blogs out there really helped with the unpacking.

On the minus side - get ready for a long phone company whine.  How do these people stay in business?  Skip past my sob story, if you don't want to hear all my bitching.

Wiring - the people who lived here before us had many, many phone lines.  I think the husband worked from home.  You can literally see 4 phone jacks from where I'm sitting in the kitchen.  Apparently, that makes it very difficult for the phone company.  The second guy on Saturday (I missed the first one because I didn't know that the doorbell didn't ring upstairs) said the phones were working, but I might have some trouble with the dsl.  Ok, when you've got an internet phone, that's a problem.  Then, he said he didn't want to "jinx me." 

Is there anything more jinxing than someone telling you they don't want to jinx you? 

No internet access - of course, I need a different guy.  I had the lovely 8 am - 5 pm window on Monday for the SBC data guy to come take a look at our crazy wiring.  About 4:45, I called for my second time of the day. 

"You're next!"  Hooray!

I didn't really want to share my evening with the SBC guy, but I was excited to be able to get back online.  Plus, who wants to wait around on another day.  With Sweet Pea upstairs sleeping, where was I going? 

Ha ha ha.  A few hours later, someone called to let me know that the guy who was supposed to come to my house hadn't shown up for work that day.  They knew at 8:00 am that he wasn't coming to work.  I had been stuck in my house unpacking from 8:00 to 2:00 am for four days at this point.  I don't have to tell you that the poor woman who called me got an earful from me.  Sweet Pea was screaming her head off and I shoved the phone toward her and blamed her hysteria on the phone company.  A bit of a stretch, but I was furious.

She gave me the priority slot for Tuesday.  Apparently that is reserved for the lucky people who want to be at the tail end of the 12 - 5 window.  The guy's wife kept calling to see when he'd be home.  It was almost 6:15 when he left. 

My happy ending is that at least I can finally get online.  I'm having some trouble with the router, but I think I can resolve that with a little more sleep to get my brain working. 

Don't even get me started on the Directv teenager who didn't do anything he was supposed to.

And for the grand finale, the basement was supposed to be finished when we moved in.  They are putting the carpet in on Friday.  There is a lovely coating of drywall dust on everything.  Plus, we can't unpack the basement boxes, so everything is crammed into the other rooms.  No fun.

OKAY - end of the bitch session.  It felt good to get it all out.  Now that I've whined to Internet, I can move forward with my life.

Sweet Pea was at my in-laws from Thursday to Sunday and Charlie is at the Lucky Dog Lodge until next Monday, so I got lots done over the weekend.  I feel like I'm 80% done.  I'm really loving the neighborhood and the house is growing on me.  I miss my old house, but the gang tagging on our front door has helped me move on.  I doubt it would have happened if the house hadn't been empty, but still it's a little scary. 

Sweet Pea has been great.  She's been a little crabbier than usual, but I think that might just be her age.  She's been sleeping well.  She woke up in the middle of the night on her first night here, but besides that she's taken great naps and slept through the night.  She loves it here.  There is so much more room to run around.  It's supposed to be nice out tomorrow, so we should get a chance to break in the swingset.  It really is a great place to be a kid and it will be even better once the basement is finished. 

So, that's the move in a very large nutshell.  Hopefully, there will be no further technical difficulties and I'll start getting enough sleep so I'll have brilliant posts.

It's going to take me a week to catch up on my Bloglines.  I can't wait to see what everyone's been up to.

 

Moving Day

I'm getting pretty tired from this whole moving process.  I haven't been sleeping that well and Sweet Pea's been getting up.  Plus, it's just hard work packing - emotionally and physically.   So, expect a post without much in the way of segues or really any topic.  Just a little rambling . . .

It's been a tough few days.  Papa C came to pick up Sweet Pea today.  She's spending Thursday through Sunday with Daddy-O's parents.  It was so tough watching her go and knowing she'll never see our house again.  Not that she's really aware, but I am. 

Last night she woke up around 4:00 am and I was so happy to have one more chance to rock her in her room.  We've spent so many hours rocking in that chair.  I remember so clearly our first day home from the hospital, tromping up the stairs from the basement while my in-laws were here (the first day home, draw your own conclusions) so that I could sit in that chair and breastfeed in peace.  I was so clueless and Sweet Pea was not helpful in teaching me how to breastfeed.  Some nights now when she wakes up, she's all smiles and chattering.  Last night, she knew how much I needed a little snuggle time and she just leaned into me and sipped her water until she fell asleep.   It was just what I needed on her last night in this house.

It was tough going packing up all her baby clothes to give to my sister.  Lots of emotions running through me.  Sometimes I'm not sure if my baby ache isn't as much about wanting another baby as it is about wanting Sweet Pea not to grow up so fast.  It's hard to believe how quickly it goes.  Those little clothes - it's hard to remember that she was that small. 

Speaking of which, let the tantrums begin.  Yesterday, when I took her Dora concert T off, she threw such a fit that Daddy-O came running in thinking she'd split her head open. 

The new house is kind of a disaster.  We are tearing a wall down in the basement and it was supposed to be done before we moved in.  It's not.  The basement is just a big concrete slab covered in drywall dust.  They will be working in the house for next week to finish it.  It wouldn't be so bad, but the dust is covering every inch of the house.  I went over tonight and vacuumed and mopped the first floor and wiped down the whole kitchen.  It's almost futile.  By the time the movers get done, the house will be covered again.   I'm not going to worry about it though.  We're just going to be dirty and grimy for a little while. 

I've made the leap and gotten rid of my land line.  We've gone VOIP.  I spent all night getting it set up here, so hopefully making the move to the new house tomorrow will go smoothly.  I'm sure I'll have a few technical glitches, but I hope I'll be able to connect tomorrow. 

Off to bed for me now, I have to be up early and shower before the swarms of movers get here. 

The perfect storm

The perfect storm has hit my life - taxes, moving, and a pinched nerve in my neck.

This morning as I was writhing in pain, trying to keep from throwing up because it hurt so badly.  I just wanted my mom.  Luckily for me she happened to be spending the night.  Lucky for Sweet Pea, too.  She had someone to watch her while Daddy-O rushed me to the doctor. 

Can I just say that it's real hard to get any work done when you're knocked out on muscle relaxants?  I got nothing accomplished all day and we're moving in FOUR days.  I'm feeling a little better now, so I've spent the last 4 hours working on our tax stuff.  I have to get this out of my hair before we move.  I just know I'm going to work my butt off and the accountant will end up filing an extention. 

The hardest part is I want to spend time with Sweet Pea here, in this house while I can.  I want to take pictures of us and of the three of us and just generally enjoy the last few days here.  I can't explain to Daddy-O because he wonders what I've been doing for the past three years.  Am I trying to build some super-solid memory of our last few days here?  Is that crazy?  Don't I already have enough memories here?  It seems strange, but I really keep feeling like something is going to happen at the last minute and we'll end up staying here.

It's totally irrational.  We've already closed on our new house.  I don't know what I'm trying to capture here, I just know that I'm so busy I can't figure it out. 

Well enough boo-hooing, I hear little miss Sweet Pea starting to cry (why did I even have the thought that she had stopped waking up in the middle of the night?).

I need a vacation . . . ok, I'd take even the time to take a shower.