Shit changes fast around here, and as soon as I’m used to the current state of things, it changes again.
I’m still in survival mode. I say still because I think I shifted into it somewhere around my sixth month of pregnancy, maybe somewhere around my second round of strep throat? The “baby” is now almost seven months. It’s been a while. Maybe it’s not even really survival mode when you’re coming up on the one year mark. Maybe this is just my life now.
I’m okay with it. Because between the old life and the new, the moves and the changes, we’re all managing to survive. And that’s good enough for me.
Today marks two weeks since we moved into our new house. All the rooms are still piled high with boxes. We arrange and then rearrange while we try and figure out where to put all of these toys. Every time I think I’m making progress I find another box, jam packed with more brightly colored crap. I am inclined to think that Pandora’s Box was just full of mismatched doll outfits and random Lego pieces.
Each morning my husband leaves for work and I do a lot of wandering around in circles trying to remember where the silverware drawer is until he comes home at night.
I feel a lot like an old dog who’s had her water dish moved. I keep going to the last place I remember it being, but the reality is, I haven’t known where things have been in a long time.
This is our second move in two years. Our first, into my parent’s house to care for my grandmother just over a year ago. And now this. I feel like I have been looking for the silverware drawer for months, wandering from room full of boxes to room full of boxes, trying to find my water dish.
And that’s okay, because shit changes fast around here.
This time last year I thought my grandmother would live forever, and that we’d be sharing that house with her for years to come. Or at least until I finally had to convince her to move because that house would not have held the five of us as comfortably as it held the four of us.
This time last year I thought I could never love another child as much as I loved my first born.
I thought another house would never feel like home.
This time last month I thought we’d never survive the packing, let alone the move.
This time last week I thought that I’d have more time before the baby was on the move. That she’d remaining a charming little lump that stayed wherever I put her for a few months yet.
But, like I said, shit changes fast.
And as I watch my almost seven-month-old scoot around this new living room, that already feels like home even though there are still boxes everywhere I look, I have to remind myself that this part won’t last forever either.
Because everything changes, and not just around here.
The holidays are approaching, and even though this will be the first one without my grandmother, I am looking forward to it. This will be the first one with our family of four, in our new home.
So I’m going to sit here and watch the baby scoot, watch the toddler marvel over all of her brightly covered crap, and ignore the boxes — because shit changes fast.
And before I know it the boxes will all be unpacked, the holidays will be over, and it will just be us… that is until something else changes.