moving, renovating and not being a good mother

We're in the middle of moving right now, we get posession of our new house on Monday, Feb 1 and although we're pretty excited, it also means a shit load of work. We have 10 days in both houses, before we have to be out of our current home. So we are not just moving, but doing loads of renovations in the new place before we move in. We're not getting everything done we want, we figure we only have time to get the bedrooms done (which means new cork flooring, paint, new doors, lighting, closets...) and some stuff on the first floor (like getting rid of wallpaper, accordeon doors -yes!-, and some painting. Kitchen, bathroom, new windows and hardwoods throughout will get done in the summer... and the basement and outside of the house, we have not even started to think about yet. I'll have to learn to live with the AWESOME kitchen which includes gold-fleckled green tiles and brown-green cabinets (yes, this is a color, and it looks amazing in a kitchen when you add yellow to it) and GORGEOUS bathroom which has a mustard green tub and 70s style cabinets...and gold fleckled countertops of course. Oh, and the hanging gold lights just top it off wonderfully. Oh, and the entryway which has panelling and pink carpet as accents.

But we are pretty excited about making this as much of a green, sustainable home (and lifestyle) as we can, given that it's in town and older. We are already cutting down on the commuting so we're already scoring points there. We have a park 10 minutes-walk away, same with the groceries, and school and work are also very close. No more huge driveway to snowblow (JM is happy, do we even need a gas guzzling snowblower now?), or huge lawn to mow (Chris can go back to her manual lawn-mower, which really is great in case you have never tried it. It's quiet and you don't stink of gas or grass when you are done... and supper cheap of course.) Not sure if there is room for a veggy garden, at least not the size we had before, but we'll try something, an excuse for a compost at the very least.

An energy advisor is coming next Tuesday to do that door, air-blower test and take a look at the whole house. Then we can get moving with other renovations, such as adding insulation to the roof and potentially changing the eating system to something more sustainable. JM is pretty interested in the geo-thermal systems... we'll see.

And now onto the topic of not being a good mother this week. It started this week... I... decided... to let JS sleep on his stomach!! (Gasp) I know. If you are not a parent, you probably have not been bombarded with all the advertising about how you MUST put your baby to sleep on their backs now. From what I understand, research suggest that it decreases the chances of your baby dying of this cribb death syndrom or something. I get the safety issue and promotion about that to the general public. But man, does it ever make you go through a major guilt trip if you don't follow! Mommy guilt is so easy to get though. This advertising is on diapers, baby clothes, toys, the doctors and hospitals all have the paperwork and pamphlets they hand out and although only about 10 years ago the rule was to lay baby on their stomach, now it's pretty wrong and not in baby's best interest. Ah! But JS sleeps INCREADIBLY well on his stomach... 4 hours at a time and he even drools he sleeps so well. And if you know JS, he is a grunter, all he does is grunt in life so far, even in his sleep. I think it must be the equivalent of a cry for other babies. Must be a deVink thing. That's why he even can't sleep in our room, he keeps us up! But when he sleeps on his stomach, not a sound. I mean, he just goes to sleep, not a grunt. So, I decided to be labelled a bad mom for the sake of my (and JM's) sleep at night and my sanity during the day. It makes that we are all a happier family. So there, I needed to get that out. Yes, I sleep my baby on his stomach.

And that's what's going on in my head today... not too exciting compared to what was going on 3 weeks ago. But I'm still happy mommy-at-home world is back for a few months...