Dusting Off

Well. I hate these unavoidable absences from the blog because the longer they last, the harder it is to find the time to come back and start again. Things have been...nuts. Every minute of every day is pretty much spent before I even get there, and this is WITH the kids still in school. I'm going to do my best to catch up on everything in one fell swoop here and then hopefully sneak in short posts a little more frequently to keep it up.

The House

We have a house! I can't even remember where I got up to in our saga with finding it, but we ended up with the very first house we loved but thought was going to be out of our reach. Some unintentional hardball negotiation meant that we were able to finagle it and I couldn't be happier. It's a beautiful house in a wonderful neighborhood and I look forward to staying there forever and ever and never moving again. Ever.

The Move

We move in two weeks. I've been slowly packing boxes a few at a time and we spent about 10 days going through the garage and weeding out stuff, plenty of which hadn't even been unpacked after our last move three years ago. We were pretty ruthless and I don't think we will be moving with anything extra, but it's still rather overwhelming to see your belongings piling up in one place. Like, holy shit we have a lot of stuff. Chris has recruited his rugby team to help out with the actual move...between the two closings we have to attend (sale and then purchase) plus the move, that day is going to be a whole lot of not fun. Followed by a whole lot of not drinking by me. Take my advice: don't move while you're pregnant.

The Hedgehog

He's doing great, growing well, causing me to pee every five seconds, pummeling me from the inside and giving me heartburn after even such benign consumption as WATER. We are still on track for delivery on 7/22, so just a bit over eight weeks from now. I'm still in a bit of denial about actually having the baby, which I think will start to sink in once I don't have the move occupying so many brain cells.

The Big Brother

There are about three posts I have percolating about my boy, a couple even half-written but I just don't have the head space or the time to sort it all out. We have had a challenging time of late and I have had times of feeling very discouraged as a mother. My reserves are pretty low and the management of him has required more energy than usual so I'm pretty depleted. I'm looking forward to school ending in a couple of weeks, getting into our new house and then starting a more relaxed schedule that will hopefully ease some of the tension. As we come to the end of the school year, though, I am bursting with pride at how well his year has gone and what incredible progress he's made this year. Even six months ago he was working on putting 3-4 intelligible words together and now it's full on sentences with some complex structure and very age-appropriate content. Physically he's doing wonderfully, socially he has had a good year and I am just all around so proud of him.

The Big Sister-to-Be

She turned four!! See ya three, I'm not sad to see you go. We had a wonderful birthday party for her with an appearance by Cinderella (pics to come) and she really enjoyed having her special day. She remains ridiculously enthusiastic for life, will make friends in an empty room and continues to be just the best possible sister for Pacey. She's so excited for Hedgehog and I think she is going to be really helpful when he arrives. She has a hilarious sense of humor and is going through a pretend-to-be-a-baby phase which Pacey is very indulgent of (thank goodness, because: kill me now). She is constantly catching me off guard with her observations about her world and I am realizing that there are some serious conversations on the horizon.

Me

I'm just trying to keep sane through it all. Having just gone through the process of doing all the planning for next school year in our current district, I made the decision to bite the bullet and get everyone situated in our new area right away in the fall. Brighton will attend a preschool in our school district, which will hopefully mean we meet many of the local families that have kids that will start kindergarten next year too. I am beavering away at getting Pacey's placement and services all figured out...not an easy task but I think we will end up very happy with his school. Transition is hard for me. I like my routines, I'm very comfortable where we are and have built a really full support network of great friends in this community. We've already had many positive experiences in what will be our new neighborhood so I'm not worried about what's to come, but it is hard to leave this comfort. Throw in the addition to the family and...well, I'll be pulling out all the coping mechanisms.

I'm sure there is more but I have to go keep to our somewhat rigid evening schedule...a certain boy child has been waking up very early lately so I'm having to be a stickler about bedtime. I'll be back tomorrow with some pictures.