Post #879 About Moving

Everything from the old house has been moved into the Lake House or into "storage" (a garage, a spare corner of Trevor's parents' house, etc.). While I was packing up the boxes last week, I opened the top drawer of the armoire we kept in the living room to hold the TV and realized that I hadn't cleaned it out yet, and I was charmed by its contents so much that I pulled a box of books over and sat down to inspect each item.

When Berit was a baby I did a pretty good job of scrapbooking, though I've never been the crafty type. She has two giant, un-closable books detailing every moment of her first 18 months, and thank God because I truly remember about 20 percent of it.

Marta, oh Marta. She technically has a scrapbook, but it only has a few pages inside with my thoughts of her before she was born. When she was about seven months old I started this blog and called it fair. I also make a photo book for them each year on their birthdays, and a family one as well (ahem. I haven't exactly printed a family book, but I am filing photos for it).

The armoire drawer was filled with little scraps of paper that I jotted on before my blog, with "can't forget" moments:

When we drove past the statue of Mary you said, "Hi there, sweetie pie."

You talk so much at 23 months! Here's what you've said today...

Marta ate her first solids today. Didn't like them!

At church you thought the statue of Mary was playing air guitar.

I feel a bit guilty that these won't end up well documented, but I think the girls will enjoy rummaging through their keepsake boxes when they're older, finding little surprise messages from their early childhoods.

Looking at those memories made me realize how happy I am to have this blog, and reminded me to be sure to write in it more often. These days are hectic, with the boxes waiting to be unloaded all over the house and a few new projects I've picked up (that I'm "working on" right now, actually). We're also exploring some exciting new avenues for the business that are just out of our reach, and we're scampering to try to find a way to make them happen. I'm refusing to think we can't do them, simply because we're a small, family-operated business, and yet, how will we do them? It's on my mind constantly.

Poor Marta. She's in her bed bathed in sunlight from these new windows that lack her proper darkening shade (there's no place for a shade to be hung, and as this isn't our house, we're hesitant to rig one), listening to the leaf-blowing and construction happening outside, yet her instructions were to take a nap. Instead, she's sitting up in bed shouting, "I. Want. To. Play. Toys!"

Ah, and now she's saying, "Put the dog poop down there." While visiting my parents' house over the weekend, my mom was getting a bath ready for Marta and let her wander around the girls' room naked. Of course, Marta pooped. She pointed at it and said, "Eeeeew, look! Dog poop!"

Anyway, the move was a big deal for me. I'm not into major change, now that the girls are here and I'm a protective mother hen, especially when we're going to build our own home. Not, of course, that I have any doubt in the actual builder, he being my husband. But I do fear the building process -- it's my first one -- and the inevitable delays, the squabbles between us and who? someone, telling us that what we want isn't what they would choose, or something like that. But opening that little drawer was such a neat thing, because we're doing this for them. We bought the last house for them. We're planning another house for them. We're wondering what they'll be like in five years -- will a claw-foot tub be fun? will they have bigger beds? will they want a basement playroom anymore? -- and it seems both impossible and simple to predict. Simple because, well, I think I know everything about my children and naturally because Marta ate two eggs for lunch today she'll continue to eat two eggs for lunch when she's seven. But completely impossible because of that darn drawer, showing me that they are so different and so similar to their little baby selves and that I had no big hand in making those changes. They are growing, is what I'm trying to say. They are growing and aren't stopping. And if we don't grow with them, we are holding them back.

(Insert long debate with self regarding adding more children to our family here.)

And they will dig it all, I think. Because I am the one who sees the sun coming in the cute but inefficient wood blinds in Marta's room as a hazard to her sleep development, and she sees it as sunshine. (Insert weepy sentence about Marta being my sunshine here.)

Truly, we are loving this move. If I step away from being an organizational and control freak, it's so obvious that it's easier to move and breathe and enjoy life here at the Lake House. So much so that I shun new writing projects (which I enjoy) to feel as if I'm on vacation all day, blogging with the sun beaming around our living room, reflecting off the lake that is STEPS from where I am sitting. Have I mentioned that it's documented as one of the most beautiful lakes in the world? I believe it. After all, it's changed our lives.