roses for Elias

And just like that, we're all moved in!  When you race to unpack and settle in, it feels like maybe you did just snap your fingers and everything was magically done, but I know that wasn't the case.  And I have a few pictures to prove how crazy the last couple of weeks have been.

Elias's old room, pre-packing, throw-everything-on-the-floor stage.

If it weren't for the fact that our summer 2009 move involved crossing a distance of 3000+ miles, I'd easily say this move was my/our hardest to date (and I've moved a lot) but at least we only had to move our stuff and ourselves a couple of miles this time around.  Moving from an apartment to a house with a toddler and a micro business was...well, it sucked.  There's no way - or point - in sugar-coating it.  The move last year was most difficult in that it involved such a distance, a distance we were able to cover in a few hours but took our stuff several weeks.  That was tricky.  The details of last year's move are already pretty fuzzy but I do remember that last night and the morning of our flight being pretty miserable.  I remember, for example, cleaning the oven at 11 p.m. that night, the night before our early morning, one-way flight.  And I remember the amount of stuff we chucked in the end and yet still had to pay for overweight baggage!

So at least we didn't have to do that.  That was nice.  But the two weeks between getting the keys to our house and moving in were a mad dash to simultaneously coordinate the few repairs and updates we did at the new place before moving in, cleaning the new place,  wrapping up business, packing, packing, and more packing, moving, unpacking, cleaning the old place, and more unpacking.  Oh yeah, and taking care of Elias.  When you're childless you treat time very differently in these situations, working 12+ hours straight to get a project done.  But when you have a kid, the buck stops at their schedule.  And I for one have a really hard time stopping work on a project when I'm right in the middle.  Most modern mamas pride themselves on their multi-tasking prowess.  I do not. I hate multi-tasking and if we had a relative we could schlep Elias on for a few days, we would have.  But we don't.  So we all had to suffer through. Together.

And to his credit, other than a poorly timed cold, Elias handled things pretty well.  He really seemed to just roll with it all, for the most part.  It was kind of like those final weeks on Big Brother, when things start to disappear and the house-guests notice something's missing.  Or when the producers suddenly reduce the table size and the house-guests wake up one day to eight seats instead of sixteen.  Elias seemed to really notice what was missing day by day but more or less accept it and understand that we were moving and that our home would be located in a different place soon.

And obviously we packed his room last (the day before the movers came, just like last year) and tried to make sure his schedule and activities were as uninterrupted as possible.  On a bonus "Mommy day" the week of the move, we spent the entire morning out and about, first at Barnes & Noble for some old-school train table fun and a snack in front of the fire (oh, Bay Area summers), followed by a play-date at the Oakland Zoo with daycare buddy Hazel.

Less than one week in, we're settling in nicely.  We have a dozen or so boxes left to unpack, mostly books, and a garage already filling up with boxes to store.  We have a long list of projects to tackle but I don't think either of us is feeling too overwhelmed just yet.  Sleep has much improved since but our first night was pretty awful - Elias wanted to go home, presumably to our old place, fought bedtime like it was nobody's business, coughed until he threw up not once, but twice, requiring some spontaneous unpacking of boxes originally intended for another day (who knew we'd need three crib sheets our first night), continued to cough off an on for all but about five hours of the night, waking up so cranky and unmanageable I kept him home from daycare (of all days).  Also, through the night I was additionally woken up by one of two crazy productive persimmon trees out back dropping fruit on the corrugated metal that covers the patio.  Either the tree has to go or the patio cover or both. Who plants two fruit trees in the middle of the yard? And who puts metal over the patio? Ah, the mysteries of a new home.

roses from our back yard

But since that first night Elias has done remarkably better, even, dare I jinx it all and say he's had a longer stretch of sleeping through the night than he's had in a really, really long time.  Maybe apartment living just wasn't a good fit for him.  Or maybe it's pure coincidence.  Or maybe he'll wake up three times tonight. Who knows. The adventure continues...