For almost as long as I can remember I have slept with a stuffed elephant. Yes, I am a 32 year old woman who has a stuffed animal in her bed, along with her husband. I often joke that I just use it to support my enormous chest, but I know that isn't the real reason...however, I could never pinpoint just why, at 27, 30, and so on, I felt a need to keep that beat up thing beside me...until now, after the first night in our new house.
That elephant is home to me. My family moved around and traveled A LOT. We had family in Norway, so we always spent a month there in the summers. Then, after my parents got divorced, my brother and I were in a different bed every other weekend, not to mention, both my parents kept on moving. BUT, that elephant has always been with me. It is he one thing that has remained constant. It seems so juvenile to still need it...but alas, you all know that I am not really a "grown up." Never will be. Oh, and I feel like I should mention that about five years ago, Papabear could not bear the sight of my beat up, dust-mitey elephant, so he bought me a new one - which is now beat up and dust-mitey, but a friend to Littleman's own elephant.
SO, have you ever had "professional movers?" Well, we paid over $6000 for a company to take our packed boxes and furniture into their truck and move it across the country. Their brochure showed clean-cut looking men and women, in uniforms, gently placing lamps on end tables and smiling as they hauled a dining room table off of a tractor-trailer. Those brochures sure were comforting....until the REAL movers showed up. The crew in NY was very nice, even if they made crude jokes and swore. They were efficient, for the most part, and seemed to know what they were doing. Yesterday two guys came with a tractor-trailer to "move us in." I don't even know where to begin. One guy was grumpy and hardly spoke - he was a little overweight, but wore a cut up t-shirt that showed way more of his chest and armpits then I'd ever want to see. The other guy, was thin and super muscular, so he wore cut off shorts and sleeveless t-shirt to show off his biceps, which he did every chance he got, even to Papabear! In addition to being over an hour late, they dropped two boxes right off the truck! Ug. Overall, I shouldn't complain. The only thing out of all of our stuff that is "broken" is Littleman's excavator (which stinks, because he's finally big enough to really play with it - we will try to mend it, but broken plastic handles can be a bitch.). Well, we have about 150 boxes to unpack still...so, let's just hope I used enough packing paper.
Onto the house - it really is lovely. Once I locate my camera, I will put up some pics, even if the place is a disaster right now. While the guys were unloading yesterday, Littleman was given his tricycle which he rode up and down the sidewalk while I sat on a bench in our front lawn. It was so nice to be able to do that. I LOVE having a sidewalk and NOT living on a busy street! The house itself is pretty big...not sure where we'll put baby #2 (if Papabear ever feels ready to have one), but for now, it really is just right. It's kind of fancy, which I am not used to, but it looks homey now that our furniture is all over the tile floors.
Life has not slowed down one bit in the last month. Well...the few weeks we were at the house on the hill, I had some time to reflect and be sad about the things/people we were leaving behind. But, since then, life has been a whirlwind. Even now, with our stuff all around us, I thought things would feel more settled, but everything happening around us is SO charged with emotion. I can't stop to think...about anything. My sister-in-law is arriving on Friday from Guatemala with her new baby...we'll call him LilCuz (as in, Littleman's little cousin). :) We are all beyond excited about it. They have been trying to have/get a baby for years. We are so happy and excited for them. And then, there's Papabear's dad. It's so hard to see the pain in my husband's eyes when we take Littleman for visits. It's impossible to think of myself when I think about what Papabear is going through. I don't know HOW he has held up...or how he finished school and managed to get us all out here. That man truly amazes me...he always has. I can't write about this right now...I'm not ready. I'll sum up with: we're in for some really good times and some really tough times.
Some of you will find this next bit interesting - Littleman has stopped visiting my/our bed. Most of you know that he spent his first 15 months, pretty much by my side for most of the night. Then, for the last half year or so, he's been coming in only around 5 in the morning. BUT, ever since we "uprooted," he has risen any time between 5:30 and 6 am and just declared, "I awake now." Apparently, my bed is only for jumping on now....which is great. HOWEVER, now I wake up at 5:24 am EVERYDAY. I can't stop it. It is 6:15 right now, and Littleman is still asleep...but clearly I am not.
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