Getting There

The movers come in 2.5 weeks. Aieeeeeee. . . I'm actually doing okay, organizationally speaking. I have my rooms all laid out according to where the contents are heading. Large guest room=U.S.; small guest room=luggage to take with us; guest bathroom=South America; front of garage=donations to charity; whatever is left in every other room after I'm done sorting=South America. Once you have the system down, it actually works pretty well. Of course, it is much easier to move when all you have to do is pile, rather than pack.

I finally feel like my toddler airplane kit is in good shape, too. Miss M loves Curious George, and for $32 on Ama.zon I found 32 half hour episodes. They are each about 30 minutes, so I consider this quite a deal!!! She also loves Madagas.car, and I just discovered (I know, where have I been) that there are like four of them out there. For another $20 I nabbed a 3 movie set. We only have the first movie, and it was purchased for a couple of dollars at a flea market and is so scratched that it won't play on her portable DVD player (it only plays on the one in our living room), so this works out great.

We also play "I Spy" a lot when we are in the car and on trains, so I thought this Peek-A-Boo game was brilliant. I can call out something for her to find, and then she has to find it in the bag. I got the "boy" version rather than the "girl" one, because I thought the hidden items were more interesting. Don't even get me started on the crappy gender divisions of toys. I'm still pissed about the gender discriminating Potato Heads.

I also found some time to finally download some things on to the Leap.pad my mother sent over. She had sent a $20 gift card, and games were buy 3 get one free, so for $45 I got an even dozen games, videos, books, etc. I played with it for a few minutes, and it all seemed pretty cool. Of course, I haven't bought new batteries for it yet, and it died just as she was starting in with one of the new things I downloaded. The stupid thing does not come with rechargeable batteries, if you can believe it. In this day and age, I find that ridiculous. It has an a/c adaptor that you can buy separately, but who wants their 2 year old playing with something that is plugged into the wall? Yeesh. Epic fail, LeapCompany. But anyway, hopefully the games, etc. will be fun and keep her busy on the plane, along with the rest of my stash.

Once I finish sorting, I need to get down into the weeds on a million other things: can we still get four seats together if we upgrade our airline seats with miles? What is our baggage allowance? Are our particular car seats allowed on board? Has the car arrived in America yet, and what time does the dealership close? And so on, and so on.

Because The Impending International Move Isn't Enough Drama

A family member has behaved in a very disappointing way in recent months. It is someone for whom we have done a lot and provided many opportunities over the last few years. Despite this, I have watched her treat my little family, her mother, and her siblings quite poorly at times over this last year, sometimes at the same time as going well out of her way for her friends, boyfriend and boyfriend's family. It has been very sad to see, and it's only gotten worse in recent weeks.

I know that deep down she knows that her behavior has been unacceptable. I think that she knows that she has done some things that are very wrong, although I don't think she recognizes how wrong they are. Perhaps someday she will wake up and realize that she has a decent family who mostly does right by her. Perhaps someday she will see her actions for what they are, and stop treating her family like dirt. Perhaps someday she will realize that friends and boyfriends come and go, but family is forever.

Until then, I am choosing not to dwell on it. I am cleaning up the physical mess she left behind. I am ignoring the figurative mess, the lies, the bad behavior, and god help me, the misappropriation. I think it's all rotten, but that's on her. I am focusing instead on the positive intentions and actions on our part. It hasn't always been easy (or inexpensive) to do the things that we did for her, but we saw that we had a chance to provide her with opportunities she would otherwise not have in life, and we wanted to do that, and I'm proud that we did it, despite the ultimate outcome. And I'll be thinking of this email that her mother sent me yesterday:

"I will never be able to thank you [and T] enough for [all that you have done for her]. It changed the direction of her life considerably, all for the good!!!!"

This Is Why People Don't Like To Move

I am weary in my bones. Why did mother nature make teething coincide with an infant learning to turn over? I am not getting any sleep. When we hit this stage with Miss M, I thought the screaming and crying that ensued was because we had left her in the bassinet for too long, and it was the newness of the crib that was causing the disturbance. She would throw a crying fit when she woke herself up turning over, and it was awful. In desperation, we began letting her sleep with us, as it was the only way I got any sleep. At that point, I was in training for my then-new job, in a warm room, and it was sometimes a bit dull, and the sleeplessness was killing me.

Anticipating this happening again, T. insisted on transitioning SB to the crib months ago, to head off this problem. Only. . .that wasn't the problem. SB learned to turn over, teething struck us, and she who has never been a crier now shrieks like a wounded banshee in the middle of the night when she wakes up. I mean, this kid has NEVER cried in the middle of the night when she wakes up. NEVER, EVER. But good lord, when she wakes now she causes a ruckus that sounds like the catfight from hell. Or maybe foxes mating. (Have you ever heard foxes mating? We live in a city teeming with foxes, and I assure you that it is the worst noise ever.) What the hell?!?!

My solution, given how desperate I am for sleep, has once again been to let her sleep with us. Sure enough, she sleeps like a baby. :) Not a peep out of her all night. Sigh. It's not what I wanted. If anyone has the solution to the teething/turning over/screeching problem, I would love to hear it, as I really do sleep better without a child in my bed (no surprise).

In other news, the movers come in THREE WEEKS. Shit. I am a long way from where I need to be, in terms of sorting and organizing. If only we weren't moving twice. I am coping with this difficulty by segregating out our things into different rooms. Room A has our luggage, and the things we need imminently. These will be all of the clothes and toys that we have for the first 6 weeks or so that we are back in the U.S. Today I have to pull out the 9 month sized clothing for SB, who is about to go up a size. That should take us through the next 10 weeks, I hope.

Room B has all of the stuff that we will have with us in the U.S. while I am there for some training. We will ship a small amount of stuff, but not a ton, since it will all have to be reshipped to South America when we go next summer. In this shipment, I need all of the clothes and toys the kids will need during this time. For SB, that essentially means everything from 9 months to 18 months, or maybe even 24 months. She will be about 16 months when we move to South America, and she's growing much faster than Miss M. I think I'm just going to pack everything. I don't want to have to buy new clothes when we already have so many. Ditto for age-apprpriate toys. Plus, I don't want the move to be traumatic for Miss M, so I want to be sure we have enough of her things that she doesn't notice that many of them are missing. Oh, and T and I need clothes, too, and Christmas decorations, and cookbooks, etc., etc.

The rest of the house will all be packed up and shipped directly to South America, and we won't see any of it for a year. Needless to say, its important to choose wisely!!!

This is why my lists have lists. And now I'm off to sort bins of toys into "US" and "SA" piles.

Airplane Bag of Tricks

I have a phone call to make, a stack of papers to go through, and a giant document I'm supposed to be drafting for work, but I don't feel doing any of the above. I'm really tired of making moving arrangements. My to-do list is a never ending array of boring and painful tasks. Oh, and I seem to have lost my drivers license. I used it as a form of identification at some point in the last two months, but I have no idea where I put it when it was returned to me. Apparently, not in my wallet.

So, one of my many current tasks is to come up with an assortment of goodies for Miss M for the plane. The general rule of thumb that I've heard is a new snack and a new toy/game/trinket every hour for toddlers on long trips. This is what I have so far:

--Stickers

--Stencils (including these spiraly things that are allegedly very cool)

--Washable crayons

--Plain white cardstock (for drawing and stickers)

--Disney princess paint with water thingy (no mess)

--Neon pipe cleaners

--Personal DVD player

--Toddler games loaded on iPhone (two matching games and a math game are her current favorites, thanks to Creating Motherhood).

--A Leappad thingy my mother bought, which I have yet to figure out

This is what I plan to purchase, but have not gotten to yet:

--a Colorform like book I found in our local bookstore (think reuseable stickers which can be placed on different backgrounds)

--a doll that comes with clothes that can be put on and off (a friend has one and she was mesmerized)

--an iPlay "find it" bag (lots of little things to squish around and look for) --2 new movies

Ideally, I'd like to keep her entertained and well-behaved throughout the flight. I know she will probably nap for an hour or two during the flight, but I want to be sure to have plenty of things for her to do. A happy toddler means a happy mother! What else will easily fit in a carry-on and will entertain a smart 2 2/3 year old for a long period of time?

Stuff

We have less than five weeks until we fly back to the U.S., and less than four weeks until the movers arrive on our doorstep to pack up our worldly possessions. I have done. . .nothing, unless folding the clean laundry and worrying count as "packing." Now that we truly are in our waning days, I am finding that I more often than not have a pit in my stomach.

I am not worried about the move, per se. I'm excited to be done with my job here (I am currently finding my job to be particularly vexing, but that's another blog post; suffice it to say I will be happy to leave it). We have a month off when we get home, before I have to start work in the States, and I'm excited to visit friends and family. I'm excited to be moving back to the States, to a city where we will know loads of people. I'm looking forward to the job I'll be doing in the U.S.. It's just. . .there is so much to do between now and then, and so many decisions to be made. It's causing me anxiety.

The hard part is the sorting. I really shouldn't complain about the move itself, because we have movers. It's the deciding and the weeding out that I find so troubling. We have to decide what to take in our suitcases, first of all. We need everything for that month we will be home. Plus, that is all we will have with us for when I first start work, so I need work appropriate clothes, too.

Then, I have to figure out what we'll need with us for our time in the U.S., because we are not headed back permanently. We're only back for a little less than a year, and then we head to South America. Much of what we have with us will be shipped directly there, because there is no point in moving twice. That means figuring out what clothes we need to keep with us for SB as she grows. I think it will basically mean everything, because she is growing rapidly! She is months ahead of where Miss M was at this point.

But the hard part is the weeding out of clothes--mine, and T's, and the kids'. That carries with it a whole other pressure. I loathe getting rid of stuff on a good day. I am that "maybe I'll use it someday" woman, who hates to throw anything away just in case I might need it at some point. I save the pants that don't fit, because maybe I'll gain weight or lose weight and I will need them. (While I was typing this, T just came downstairs with a giant pile of clothes that I asked him to go through and he wants of get rid of all of it. . .which drives me insane, because some of it is perfectly good stuff, and he just wants to get rid of it because he wants to buy new stuff.) It's exponentially worse, though, when it comes to the kids, for entirely different emotionally-charged reasons.

I'm just not ready to let any of the girls' things go. I'm not ready to say "we're done family building." I'm not ready to close that door. It makes me feel old and sad and broken to say "we're done." At the same time, I also can't imagine having another child. I wish I were younger. I wish I felt like I had another pregnancy in me. I felt so rotten in those weeks after SB was born and it took me so long to get my body back together that it's hard for me to imagine going through a pregnancy and delivery again. Yet it's also hard for me to imagine that there will NOT be the possibility of a third child, a third happy addition to our family. So I am in this impossible place, where I can't give up this stuff, and yet it feels ridiculous to keep it. It's not like I can just stash it in the basement and think about it some other day. I am moving to a different continent. . .twice in the next year.

I always thought that if we had a family, we would have more than one child. I really wanted more than one, and we were blessed with Miss M and then SB. Before I was pregnant, during my pregnancy with Miss M, during my pregnancy with SB, I always thought that two was my number. While I was pregnant with each of them, I thought that I would eventually reach this place where I felt content with the two kids, where I was comfortable with our decisions, where I was just DONE. I really thought that I would just know. But I didn't get to that place after SB was born. Or at least, I'm not there yet. If I had six more months, or a year, or two years more, perhaps I'd get there. Perhaps I just need more time. But I am moving in five weeks. Less than five weeks. I need to make decisions about all of this stuff NOW. I don't have more time. Tick, tick, tick. . .

On top of all of this, I know pregnant people who could really, really use my stuff. I have three close friends here who are either expecting, or have newborns. I am 90% sure I will leave the baby swing and the bouncy seat with one of them, in fact. For whatever reason, I am not attached to those two things.

But the clothes feel different. They feel more personal. I have pictures of Miss M in the clothes, and compare them to the pictures of SB in the same outfits. They are in good shape. Many of the clothes are beautiful, and I love them. I would be delighted to have a third child wear them (in my head, my third child is also a girl, although of course we'd be delighted with a boy). This is hard. Ugh. . .anxiety.

40

"Mommy," Miss M confided to me last night when I got home from work. "I got you a special card". This morning when she woke up she raced to retrieve it for me. As I opened it, she sat and beamed up at me expectantly, full of happiness and 2 year old pride. It was pure joy, and worth more than any material gift.

Snippets

This morning, Miss M told us that "SB is fascinating."  Her vocabulary is just enormous, and I have no idea where she is picking up some of these words.  It makes me laugh, every day.  Her level of detail, the things that she notices, the things she thinks--it's all just amazing.  She such a bright, funny little kid.

We move in something like 59 days.  I have done. . .nothing.  We have so much crap to go through and get rid of.  The movers are coming NEXT WEEK to figure out how long it will take them to pack us.  In a perfect world, I would have done all of my organizing and purging already.  Yikes.  Some rooms are worse than others.  Like, everything in the living room is going to get packed, but there is tons of crap in the bedroom closets that needs to be given away.  And the baby clothes. . .I'm not ready to part with them, but it's crazy for us to move with them.  But I'm just not ready.

I went back to my kidney surgeon this week for an xray and a followup appointment.  The kidney is mostly looking good, but there are a few pieces of stuff still in my ureter.  Argh.  So frustrating.  He thinks it will all come out on its own, although there is a small chance I'll need another procedure.  I told him I choose "it all comes out on its own."  Given where I was and how complicated the surgeries ended up being, I know this isn't a big deal, but I really was hoping to get the "all clear" this week.  I have to go back in a few more weeks for another xray.  Sigh.

We have Olympics tickets for THIS WEEKEND!!!  I am so excited.  It is weird to be watching Olympics in a country that is not my own.  The commentators here are hilarious.  They invariably always trash the American athletes and say how tired they look.  They also constantly ramble on about how their athletes might actually pull off a medal, no matter how far behind they may be at any given moment.  It's so patently biased that it makes me laugh.  American Olympics coverage definitely is more highly produced, and gets better close-up shots, than the camerawork and production that is done here.  There are more channels covering it here, though.  Anyway, it's been an interesting experience, and I am really looking forward to watching the games live.