Moving.

I haven't had time to write lately. I have been wanting to post so many things, but I just haven't had any time at all. We finally moved to Ottawa last Sunday, and as you can picture, our lives have been pretty close to a nightmare since last week. We spent every night packing until late at night, then the movers came and took everything but our bare essentials, and still we managed to travel with about 10 pieces of luggage between big suitcases, carry-ons and car seats.... Pretty crazy.

We got on our 3 hour pane ride late at night and didn't make it to the hotel until 1 a.m. Ontario time. This is two hours ahead of our usual, so the kids have kind of been struggling with the new schedule. Especially Paulo. Emilio, as usual, just goes with the flow and falls asleep when and where he can. He's pretty awesome.

Anyway, the plane ride went as well as could be expected. I think there where 2 keys to making this as stress free as possible: 1. One was to actually prepare mentally for the worse. I mean, we were, after all, travelling with an infant, a two year old, and a senior (Rob's mom). N number of things can get frustrating under these circumstances, and we just had to try our bests not to get angry or stressed, because we would only add to the situation. We just had to try and keep it together at any cost. And 2. Was to allow enough time to take our.sweet.time doing everything, from calling the cab to getting into the plane, just doing everything with way more time than necessary. Because we knew we would forget a million things, and we needed time to allow for tantrums, pit stops, snack breaks, etc. without making us late.

 

Discovering the Ottawa Public Library

As for the new house, I mentioned earlier that when we came to Ottawa the first time to look for houses, the one we had liked fell through. We didn't want to do another big trip like that again, so we ended up renting the house having only seen a tour on video. Pretty gutsy, I know. But actually, you can do that these days with all the technology there is, such as emailing videos using dropbox, using google maps ( to get an idea of where the place is relative to the rest of the city, and to actually SEE what the neighbourhood looks like), and of course e-mail to sign rental contracts tec. At some point we even almost used Skype because the landlord wanted to meet us. So yesterday we visited the new house and it looked just like it did on video. The backyard is smaller than we thought, though (it was hard to get a good view with all the snow), and we noticed all the open space around it is actually fenced off (bummer!) but I have decided not to worry about it.

Rob is going through an enormous amount of stress. We all are. But I think he bears the burden of not only taking care of us and all the physical stuff, but also the responsibility of bringing us all across the country, doing all the moving arrangements I have tried to handle these as much as I can so he doesn't have to worry about any of it), and then doing a good job at work (where he has been super busy as well). Poor guy. He's got a lot on his plate, and added to that he's having to adapt to a new city, away from his friends and most of his family. I hope we can all bounce back to our new normal soon.

 

For now, tomorrow is moving day, so although I know it will end up being a crazy busy day, I am excited and looking forward to moving into our new house, yay!!