Moving day has finally arrived! Somehow, I managed to get the house ready with the 3 kids here and Bryan out of town. I think I've uttered the sentence, "I could NEVER be a single mother!" about 90 times in the past 2 weeks. The word "exhausting" doesn't do it justice. And I had help from grandpa and grandma, my sister, and my friends. If I'd had to get the house ready for the movers without their help, I'd be curled up in a corner of my empty closet begging for mercy.
Since we aren't taking everything with us to Switzerland, we had to come up with a system to let the movers know what needed to be packed and what should stay. Thank God for post it notes! There were blue post it notes to denote things that were to be shipped over by air, and yellow post it notes to denote things that needed to be shipped by sea. Every single drawer, cabinet, and shelf has been reorganized to fit my obsessive compulsive post it note system. The poor kids lived in fear of accidently knocking a post it note free. I felt a little bit like Mommy Dearest when Z knocked the yellow post it note off his bed while crawling under the covers one night. In a panic he said, "I'm sooo sorry mommy! I'm really so sorry!". Poor things are going to need therapy by the time we get there.
While I sit writing this, the moving guys are loading all of our boxes onto a giant green freight container in front of the house. It's strange to think of the journey our belongings will take on a boat over the next six weeks. All of the uncertainty of our adventure is intensified by watching all the "things" that we surround ourselves with being driven away. Hopefully when our sea shipment arrives in June, it will bring a sense of comfort to have some of the familiar things from home. Despite the stress of all this chaos, knowing the 5 of us will be together has been the one thing that has truly comforted me. It sounds a little sappy and strange, but this experience of getting ready to move overseas has forced me to stop taking for granted the fact that we have each other to rely on. None of us know just what to expect, but one thing we share is knowing how it feels to take this plunge. Not knowing anyone else who has done this with young kids, it's created a kind of "team" feeling that we are in this together. So, as the current captain of team Mj, the strategy for our next big challenge is making sure I have plenty of wine and the kids have plenty of Benadryl and dumdum suckers for the 8 hour plane ride. And if that doesn't keep them quiet, I can always head back to coach and pretend I don't know them.
As soon as we get through customs in Switzerland, I'll be handing 3 jet lagged kids over to Captain Daddy and finding a quiet piece of Switzerland to catch my breath!
Since we aren't taking everything with us to Switzerland, we had to come up with a system to let the movers know what needed to be packed and what should stay. Thank God for post it notes! There were blue post it notes to denote things that were to be shipped over by air, and yellow post it notes to denote things that needed to be shipped by sea. Every single drawer, cabinet, and shelf has been reorganized to fit my obsessive compulsive post it note system. The poor kids lived in fear of accidently knocking a post it note free. I felt a little bit like Mommy Dearest when Z knocked the yellow post it note off his bed while crawling under the covers one night. In a panic he said, "I'm sooo sorry mommy! I'm really so sorry!". Poor things are going to need therapy by the time we get there.
While I sit writing this, the moving guys are loading all of our boxes onto a giant green freight container in front of the house. It's strange to think of the journey our belongings will take on a boat over the next six weeks. All of the uncertainty of our adventure is intensified by watching all the "things" that we surround ourselves with being driven away. Hopefully when our sea shipment arrives in June, it will bring a sense of comfort to have some of the familiar things from home. Despite the stress of all this chaos, knowing the 5 of us will be together has been the one thing that has truly comforted me. It sounds a little sappy and strange, but this experience of getting ready to move overseas has forced me to stop taking for granted the fact that we have each other to rely on. None of us know just what to expect, but one thing we share is knowing how it feels to take this plunge. Not knowing anyone else who has done this with young kids, it's created a kind of "team" feeling that we are in this together. So, as the current captain of team Mj, the strategy for our next big challenge is making sure I have plenty of wine and the kids have plenty of Benadryl and dumdum suckers for the 8 hour plane ride. And if that doesn't keep them quiet, I can always head back to coach and pretend I don't know them.
As soon as we get through customs in Switzerland, I'll be handing 3 jet lagged kids over to Captain Daddy and finding a quiet piece of Switzerland to catch my breath!
