Someone, please light a fire under my hubby's patootie

Some people, maybe all, I haven't asked everyone so I will only assume "some", feel that their lives are out of order when their house is out of order. I am one of the some, fo' sho'.

So you may have noticed by my last post that the first few weeks of Scribble's life were a little chaotic and that I may not have been the Mother of the Year. I assure you that things are settling down now and I am actually feeling much more balanced now that I'm back at work. (Which is so scary, you have no idea. My lack of postings about the job is not for lack of drama - I assure you there has been plenty. I am saving it for the book I am going to write about it someday.)

But when I get home, the disorder and clutter pings off some piece of crazy in my brain, perhaps in the amigdala (or is she the princess in Star Wars?). A major part of that is because we still have not figured out the sleeping arrangements for the new baby. Right now, temporarily, Scribble is still in his bassinet in my bedroom. Since I am the world's lightest sleeper, this means that I wake up at every grunt and baby noise that Scribble makes (read: about 13,763 a night). And then when he's QUIET, sometimes I wake up and check to make sure he's still breathing. The lack of baby noises lulls me from precious sleep. So, even when Scribble sleeps through the night (which he's done, about three times so far. Who IS this wonderbaby?), I still wake up a bunch of times to check on him.

We need to get him into his crib and out of our room, pronto.

The bottom line is: I need a bigger house. But, given the real estate market and the fact that we have some major repairs to make to the house before we can sell it and NO money for said repairs, we are making do.

So there are only so many options for where the crib can go. On the first floor, we currently have our bedroom and Doodle's bedroom. Ours is slightly larger. On the second floor, we currently have a computer and a bunch of junk. Some junk is important, but other junk is just occupying space and needs to be tossed. The second floor could easily accommodate a crib.

Problems with the second floor scenario:

• It is HELLA hot up there in the summer and HELLA cold up there in the winter. May be difficult for a baby to deal with these conditions. Solutions, such as a window-unit air conditioner and a space heater, will increase our bills drastically, and the space heater is unsafe.
• I will be climbing the stairs several times at night (well, hopefully not) to retrieve Scribble.
• We'll have to use the baby monitor, and I'll therefore still be able to hear every grunt and baby noise, resulting in me waking up multiple times during the night.

Option #2 would be to move Doodle upstairs, and move the baby into Doodle's room. In addition to the heat/cold problem, I think I'd need a baby monitor for him just in case he needed something during the night. Also, I don't want him trying to come downstairs in the middle of the night. Finally, every time we mention this possibility, Doodle gets really upset, and I just don't want to rattle his cage more than I already have these past few months.

Option #3 is that the hubby and I move upstairs and Scribble moves into our room. We can endure the heat/cold. However, I still have the stair issue and the baby monitor issue - and I'd now need to have a monitor in both boys' rooms.

I'm not thrilled about any of these options, so I am hoping that Option #4 will work: everyone stays on the first floor, but we flip-flop rooms. I've been thinking about it, and I mean, at 3 a.m. when I'm listening to baby noises, I'm thinking about it, and I think that we could fit a crib, Doodle's bed, and the changing table in our room (and not much else) and then we could move our bed and one of our dressers into Doodle's room. But that means one of our dressers, and Doodle's dresser as well, would have to move upstairs. I'd much rather be going upstairs to retrieve clothes during the day than going upstairs in the dark of night to tend to a child. So this may be the winner.

So now, the only problem is time. I hope over this long weekend that we are able to get this done ...