I promise I'll stop being a whiney-butt soon

I realized today that if we move back to the US in November, that means we only have about 6 months left here.

And then I realized that, um, we're gonna have to move. And what an incredibly huge pain in the ass the process is bound to be. And OH MY GOD maybe we should stay longer just to put that off longer...

It wasn't too bad moving out here, since it was just the 2 of us. And with just the 2 of us, it's not a big deal to spend one month in our old apartment with hardly any furniture in it, and another month in our new house with hardly any furniture in it, while waiting for our stuff to get shipped over. And spending four weekends in a row doing not much more than getting ourselves and our home set up. And going around to buy a car. Ect, etc, etc.

Then you throw a baby into the mix. Right.

Our loosely-thought-of plan is to have the movers come hopefully the day before we'd fly and pack up the house and start the shipment. That will take 2 months to arrive. I don't know if we'll want to take all our furniture, we'll probably have stuff we'll want to get rid of, and basically anything that plugs into a wall and isn't dual voltage will need to go. We'll also need to sell the car and Zach's scooter, preferrably also well-timed so we don't have to rent a car for long. We hopefully stay that last night at a hotel or friend's place, then fly to California (which will be a whole other mess-- we'll want bulkhead seats to fly with Donovan, but will need to have one of us-- or a helpful friend/family member?- sit with Sierra b/c the cat will need to go under the seat in front of the passenger) and Zach's company should be getting us a corporate apartment until our stuff arrives. Which will hopefully accept cats, and that Sierra won't get all whacked out by. Then we'll need to find an apartment, buy 2 cars, find a pediatrician (hopefully some local mommy friends will be able to help us out with that one), etc etc etc. While taking care of a 9-month-old, who may himself be all whacked out by all the changes.

I am kind of afraid.

Hopefully we'll be able to enlist help from people to make the process a bit less overwhelming. We'll see. I will say that, again, I really am looking forward to going back. Switzerland has been great, but I'm looking forward to getting to hang out with our friends, meet their own babies, go to farmer's markets, enjoy the glorious California weather, GO TO TARGET, be able to buy things for Donovan without it becoming a huge production involving shipping items to multiple addresses and taking weeks to arrive. Not to mention being a mere 3hr flight away from family (or even just an hour drive, depending on if Jen's still in SF!!).

In other news... D's been having trouble staying asleep. We gave up and skipped his last nap of the day b/c he kept waking up within minutes of being put down, and it took a while to get him down at bedtime, too. He'll be so sleepy, falling asleep almost as soon as I pick him back up, but then waking up as soon as, or within 10 minutes of, putting him in his bed. I'm wondering if he's having trouble adjusting to sleeping in his own room full-time? I don't know. He still seems to be in a pretty good mood most of the time, so I guess he's ok, but especially after reading Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child I'm all freaked out about him becoming sleep deprived. Though perhaps I should just follow the advice from Criss and Cherise and stop reading the books. Information overload may be part of the problem here...