Twelve Days Since My Last Post

I have to apologize for my lack of blog attention.  This whole "moving ten years of your life as well as the children and merging lives with other people" is not as seamless as it feels it should be.  There is so much to be done.

The floors are in the process of being put in.  We (and by "we" I really mean Stephanie) have completed all the bedrooms and, as of yesterday, the hallway and half the living room.  We still have the rest of the living room, the kitchen nook area and the dining room to go.  And then there is laying new vinyl flooring in the kitchen.  We have already painted the rooms that needed painting, the children's bedrooms are mostly moved from the old house to the new (Kelton and Andrew are sharing which presents a whole other issue for space for both of them).  There is still a ton of packing, sorting, deciding what goes into boxes to be stored and what we need to find room for, etc. to do.  This is no where near as "easy" as moving one entire home into a waiting and empty home.  It's tough, difficult and sometimes incredibly painful work.

I am more affected by the moving out of the home I have spent the past ten years building than I thought I would be.  I was working over there yesterday and I was haunted by ghosts of years gone by.  I swear I could hear Kelton's three year old voice echoing down the hall.  I walked by the back slider and I could have sworn they were out playing in all of their 2 and 5 year old glory.  Little ghosts of them are every where.  Ghosts of the family unit I used to have can overwhelm me but mostly it is the day to day memories I have of the children.  Those are mine - all mine - because I was home with them each and every day.

Christmas mornings in the living room.  Birthday parties.  First steps, bringing home Kaylen after her birth.  Moving into the house when Kelton was a small 10 weeks old.  It's all heart stoppingly difficult to let go of.

And yet - I'm excited about the future, too.

It's a very surreal place to be.

Learning the share the day to day with another adult after being on my own for virtually 6.5 years (4 years of law school when I was, let's face it, alone 97% of the time and the 2.5 years since Dakota left) can be both exciting and a challenge.  For her part, Stephanie has been living as the sole adult in a house for 7 plus years so to say we are firmly rooted in our ways is putting it mildly.  We are making it work though.  Step by step. Our love gets us through the tougher times.  And the good times are near perfection.

It will all work out.  I am just so looking forward to being moved and settled.  The chapters closed.  Time to rest a little and not feel so completely overwhelmed and exhausted and like I could fall asleep at the drop of a hat but never really being able to sleep for any length of time.

It's hard.  Leaving the home I built with, and for, my children. I never really thought I would move from that house.  We used to talk to the kids about them going to the middle school up the street...and the high school just down the street.  From the time Kelton was 10 weeks old, that house is where I thought I would watch my children grow up and become adults. I'm not one that dreams of relocating.  Ever.  I grew up in the same house we moved my parents from a few years back.  My parents lived in a total of three places their entire lives, besides their parents home.  My mom didn't move from the house she was raised in until she married my dad.  I don't come from a line of nomads.  We put down roots and stay put.  And I like it that way.

So moving.  It's a very, very big deal for me.  And it's very emotional.  Both the highs and the lows.  And it's often you can find me in a puddle of tears for a while before I pull myself together and move another step forward.

It's not just my own emotions I am dealing with.  Kelton and Kaylen are a bucket of their own emotions which, like mine, run the full spectrum.  Our good days are very good.  Our sad times are deep and sad and hard but together, we are all getting through and moving forward. Tiny step by tiny step.

Nothing is constant but change.