All things considered, life has been good on Turner Street recently. The kids had a happy week of vacation at home with Natalia, bookended by a well-documented weekend alone with me and a trip down to NJ. The "all-things considered" part refers to the added stress of us putting Home up for sale again and the impending (and as yet unrealized) stress of having to find a new place to live.
(One part of my brain has internalized this coming change just fine. Moving is a simple process--once we sell, we will just pack up everything we own and move to another apartment/house/cardboard box somewhere in Newton. But the less analytical part of my brain is starting to create waves on an otherwise pristine lake. On more than a few occasions recently, I've lay awake thinking about the first night that we are not here but rather there. A mild panic attack ensues when I think about how I'll get Andres and Celia through that first night. I know they'll be fine after a few weeks, but that does nothing to lessen my increasing trepidation about that First Day.)
So anyway things have been good. Happy and healthy. Celia's talking up a storm, becoming a diva, getting along with everyone, and sometimes even listening to her parents. Andres is gobbling up everything at preschool and talking about things like "double playdates." It's been a great few weeks.
Andres' recent love of astronomy has led to some comparisons of astronomical proportions, too. We've been playing (informally) a (very) sappy game where I ask him how much he loves me, and he uses a bunch of superlatives to express his absolute devotion. Then he asks me and I come up with something even more out there; we usually go back and forth a few rounds. So typically, it will go something like this:
Me: "Big boy how much do you love me?"
Andres: "Daddy I love you bigger than the tallest mountain. Daddy how much do you love me?"
Me: "I love you to the moon and back."
Andres: "Daddy I love you more than the biggest star."
(I haven't even tried to play this game with Celia yet, but I bet she would use food as a metric--as in "Daddy I love you more than a cheesestick." Though it is entirely possible that she would also just say "Daddy I won't love you until you get me a cheesestick," or "Daddy I don't love you get me a cheesestick.")
Naturally, we have our ups and downs. There are plenty of times when Andres has forgotten about all of the superlatives he has thrown my way, and declares that I am "unfair" or "a meanie." These episodes are usually triggered by major injustices, as when I give him the wrong color cup at breakfast or when I put toothpaste on his brush instead of allowing him to do it himself. (Perhaps not surprisingly, most of these seem to happen between 7:20 and 8:10 am when I am frantically trying to get myself ready and both kids out the door.)
The other morning we happened to be mired in one of these episodes, triggered by a toothpaste faux pas, I believe. Andres was fuming. He screwed up his face and pulled out the biggest insult he could conjure:
"Daddy I don't love you less than the smallest stone."
I almost started laughing, and I almost gave him a kiss on the head. This was awesome. In his desire to really get to me, he had thrown a bunch of negatives together and, in doing so, had created something not wholly negative. (Unbeknownst to him, of course.)
We've since repaired our relationship--turns out ToothpasteGate wasn't as bad as he thought--but there's something about this phrase, forged in the hot fires of passion and ignorance, that I cherish. "Daddy I don't love you less than the smallest stone." You too, big boy. Certainly no less.
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Parts of this were hilarious: ToothpasteGate is just brilliant.
ReplyDeleteAs to managing the move, my advice is that you can't do much to control it in advance, so roll with it. I moved house a LOT growing up, and my parents said it was always fine until the time they moved when I was in college and somehow that was the one that upset me. You can't predict these things; my younger siblings apparently always loved the process of moving and settling in, embracing the chaos.
That's good advice. There really isn't much we can do, and I think my anxiety (not the move itself) may be the most stressful part for the kids. They do have a keen sense of when one of their Responsible Parties is stressed out about something, whether it involves them or not.
DeleteI never moved as a child, so I think I'm worried about them being scarred by this. But it's a silly fear as many people do move. And it's not like we're being forced to move because Waltham is under attack or because dad is deploying or because suddenly all of Massachusetts' food supply has dried up. Sadly, millions of families have to deal with that reality every day; I'm not sure how they get through it.
I'm hoping it's an easy transition after a couple of weeks, and then we can have fun conversations about our "old home" vs our "new home."
I'm sure some kids deal with moving better than others, and I'm sure that their neighborhood relationships will be much missed, but the great thing about being that age is that new friendships are formed so easily, not like us adults. I mean, I had to settle for people on BH ;)
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