The Chaos of Moving

The end of February, all of March, and the beginning of April has been such a whirlwind.

Charlie was born on February 10th.  I had 2 weeks of fairly blissful, quiet recovery, where meals were taken care of for me, children were carted to and from school so I could stay home, and I mostly just stayed in bed and cared for my new baby.  When I ventured back into real life, I looked at the calendar, now near the very end of February, and about died of shock.  How on earth could February be practically over?!?  There was so much to do, now!  Wasn't it just barely the new year a couple days ago??  Because, of course, we have known all along that we were going to try to move at the end of March, during the kids' spring break.  But somehow, March always seemed so very far away.  How could it suddenly be so close I could practically touch it?

So at 2 weeks and 1 day postpartum, things started getting crazy pretty darn quickly.  We had the moving company come and survey the home to gauge how much space they needed on a truck.  A couple days later we had real estate people come and look at our home so they could assess the value and give us a bid.  (You can imagine the frenzied cleaning that went into the days before that, having just come out of a postpartum fog, with Jesse in charge of both life and cleaning for two whole weeks.)  In the middle of all this, we had learned that Charlie definitely had a tongue tie, so I was now squeezing in lactation consultant visits, and went to an ENT for an only halfway successful tongue tie release.  Then I was doing parent/teacher conferences at school, taking Charlie in for a doctor checkup, and the very next day packing up and leaving for a house-hunting trip to California.  Jesse, myself, Malcolm and Charlie went on that trip - the older kids all stayed with Grandma and Grandpa Newson and Aunt Rachel, for 6 whole nights - their longest time away from mom and dad ever!  But everyone did great. 

House hunting itself was crazy.  Our first full day in California, we had a relocation specialist, provided by the company, drive around with us at places she had found within our specifications.  It was incredibly helpful to have her with us, so we could get a feel for the area, what might be normal for a rental in our price range, and how to interact with the homeowners who met us on site.  We really loved a big 4br house we saw with her on that day (lots of extra rooms, amazing back yard!), but when we called to ask about it, we found that it was already in the process of getting a lease with another family.  They said we could call back in a few days to see if it had fallen through, but that was too close to our last day - we didn't want to risk it.  So we kept on hunting on our own.  It was a lot harder without our relocation specialist.  There just weren't as many homes available as I had seen while browsing online in months past, and we could tell from pictures and prices that a lot of them just weren't really something we wanted to pay for.  We toured a few, and were just in the mode of "we could make this work..." instead of "yes, this would be great!"  We finally toured one that was going to have an open house in a couple days - as soon as we stepped in, I loved it!  It was all original/redone hardwood floors, open layout, everything updated... the only issue I had with it was the back yard, which was covered in woodchips, but Jesse and I decided that even that was fine, because it just made it more "kid proof" for a rental.  We quickly sent in an application, which was readily accepted.  But then curveballs kept coming our way.  First, the owners wanted an extra large deposit because of our family size.  It was unexpected, but not unreasonable, so we agreed.  Then the big one: When we got the email of the lease agreement, there was a methamphetamine disclosure attached.  As in, the paperwork you get when a house used to be a meth house, but got cleaned up.  We were suddenly thrown for a loop with that one.  It's sort of a long story, but the shortened version is that the owners and real estate agent working for the owners to rent out the property are all Japanese, with English being a secondary language for them.  When Keiko (the real estate agent) printed out the forms, she correctly added the "Megan's Law" addendum, and because of its proximity alphabetically, mis-clicked the meth addendum.  When she skimmed over everything after printing, she saw the meth addendum, wasn't familiar with the word, and thought it had something to do with methane from a neighborhood gas station, so didn't correct it.  When we started asking questions and thinking about backing out, she couldn't find the word in her translation dictionary, and asked a neighbor, who explained it was a drug.  She panicked, thinking she had just really messed up the whole transaction for the owners, too, and quickly got back to us to explain her mistake, and that the house belonged to an elderly woman who lived out her life in the home, and after she passed, the property was sold and "flipped", which is when the owners purchased it and then we came along.  So with it all worked out, we began the paperwork, and finished up the day before we flew back home.  We were so grateful to find a beautiful home to live in, and have it all wrapped up during that trip, so we wouldn't be left with any uncertainty about our move.

Photo of our new home when we toured it

We flew home, and immediately upon arriving, went to pick up Jacob and take him to his Pinewood Derby weigh-in.  While we were gone, he did almost all of the work on his car on his own.  The next day was the race, and he came in 2nd fastest overall!!  What a great thing for his self-esteem!  We were sad we couldn't help him more with his first car, but with a result like that, I'm sort of glad it worked out that way!

Jacob cheers at his car's good race.

2nd fastest overall!  Way to go!

We had a few calm days with just normal school things going on, during which time I had put an ad on Craigslist for my blue piano - we had determined we didn't want to move it with us.  We were able to arrange for it to be taken away by a grateful family, and we also slowly decluttered other areas of the home as we could, and had the energy for it.  We blessed Charlie at church, I made gifts for a baby shower and attended it, we had a lot of last-minute playdates, Charlie went to a dentist for a laser procedure to release the remainder of his tongue tie (and lip tie, while we were at it!) and Alex even got a birthday party when Grandma and Rachel volunteered to throw one for him - all I had to do was send out invites and provide some food.  Almost all his friends were able to come, which was such a good thing for him.  Then we had movers come and pack up all our belongings, and we started spending our nights at Grandma's house - life was officially crazy.  The day after the packing was the loading of the moving truck.  I was surprised that they slated 2 different days for it, and both times took much longer than I thought ... but they had only 2 or 3 men working on each day.  Even at their fastest, it's not as quick as a big group of church friends helping you move!

Melinda and her best friend Emerson in front of the school.

Charlie in his blessing outfit.  <3 br="">

Alex requested a cake like the moon with minions on top.  Rachel pulled it off fantastically!

Laser obstacles to rescue the minions at the end of the hall!

Opening gifts with his friends.

Balloon popping game of tag

My living room wrapped up in boxes

Malcolm in the dining room full of boxes

One of the first boxes being loaded onto the truck in front of our condo

The day after everything was empty, we organized a small "cleaning party", where unfortunately most people who had signed up weren't able to make it at the last minute.  But we had our friend Andrea volunteer to take the oldest kids to the park, which was a huge help - it freed up myself, Grandma and Rachel to help with the cleaning instead of the babysitting.  We worked steadily for a couple hours and got a lot done.  But then the kids came back, and we had to pause for lunch and playdates (so many goodbyes to say!), so Jesse kept working on his own for a bit.  The rest of that day and the next were very very busy with cleaning - we wanted to leave it in the absolute best condition we could.  Jesse did the majority of the work, and Rachel helped quite a bit, too.  I tried to help a lot, but especially on the last day, Charlie wasn't very cooperative with letting me work, so I had to keep stopping so I could tend to him.  Eventually, though, it did all get done.  In the midst of all that work, we were also trying to fill out papers and get them to the appropriate people (we sold our condo without it ever really opening up on the market (woohoo!) to family friends who go to church with us, who are now going to use it as an income property), and also find and schedule hotels for our drive across country, and set up utilities for our new house, and all those other mundane tasks that just have to get squeezed in there somehow.  It was exhausting.  So when we were finally finished on Thursday early afternoon, I felt absolutely dead, and like I could sleep for a solid week if I only had the chance.  I kept wondering why on earth I was feeling so tired when it seemed like I had done so little work, and it would always surprise me when I realized - Oh yeah, I'm still pretty early postpartum!  I'm usually nowhere near working that hard only a month after I have had a baby.  No wonder I was feeling exhausted, right?

All clean and pristine, ready for new owners

I'm still so proud of how nicely my bathroom remodel turned out.  Hope to repeat it someday!

Saying goodbye to our condo was surprisingly bittersweet.  We had lived in it for about 3 1/2 years as newlyweds before we moved to Maryland.  When Jesse lost his job and we moved back, we didn't expect to stay squeezed into it as long as we were - over 4 years!  So combined, there was more than 7 years of my life lived in that little 2-bedroom, 900 square foot condo.  It was frustrating, a lot of times, but it was home.  It probably shouldn't have been surprising that I was a little sad to say a permanent goodbye to it.  I admit I cried a little, remembering how it was when we first moved in and only had sparse furniture.  Remembering how little my children were when we first moved back.  How 2 of my children were born right there within its walls.  How so many memories took place in that little home, and how it will be the first home most of my kids really have a solid memory of.  But we shut the doors and said goodbye.

We started our trip across country the next morning (after a final exhilaration family game of Settlers of Catan!), but it was a slow start.  I felt very unsettled and uncomfortable all morning long, so I was moving very carefully and slowly, which wasn't helping us get our car packed and ready to go very well at all.  When we finally had everything all together at 10:30am, and were just getting the kids buckled in the car, when I realized I was suddenly very nauseous, and tried to make it back inside to a toilet-- but ended up crouching down and vomiting in the front garden of Jesse's parents' house.  Lovely.  What a send-off.  We all cried when we said goodbye - we have very much enjoyed living so close to family for these past 4 years!  It's hard to move to a new place with no family and friends to look forward to.  :(

A rare picture of Grandpa Newson holding a baby Newson.  Gotta love it!

We spent a night with Jesse's family in Layton, Utah (and no, I didn't vomit for the rest of the trip, though it was an all-day recovery as far as it went for my stomach to feel settled).  The next day I felt back to normal, and we again made a late morning start for our trip to Reno, Nevada.  The distance for those first two days was about equal, although somehow the second day felt a lot shorter.  The third leg was just a 4 hour hop over the mountains (where we saw our last snow for the near future at Donner Pass, which was gorgeous) and then down into the Santa Clara valley to San Jose.  We were prepared to stay at a hotel several days there, but we got news that they could deliver our boxes the very next day.  We had a Sunday dinner with a lovely family from our new ward in church, where our children seemed to have dumped out every single toy on earth in their townhome.  They insisted that we not worry about helping clean up, and I have never been more mortified to agree than I was when we left that night.  They have rarely made even our own home as messy as they did this family's!  But it was nice to meet them and have a chance to talk about the area.  We spent the night in an annoyingly non-child-friendly hotel with a loft bedroom that had a wall they could lean over- so we spent a lot of time grumpily enforcing that all children stay downstairs, which meant that I was upstairs and Jesse was downstairs, and all the kids had a very long, painful time settling down and going to sleep.  It was nice that we only had to be there one night.  I will say that their breakfast was the best complimentary one I've had, though!  :)

Picture of 4 out of 5 kids in the car on the road trip

Donner Pass - hello (and goodbye!) snow!  We're on our way to California!

It was cloudy on Monday morning, when our movers showed up.  We had a short amount of time to have the house empty and to ourselves, where Jesse and I were soon deer-in-the-headlights overwhelmed with how much stomping running echoingly-loud insanity 4 children can cause in an empty hardwood house.  We soon set them up with a DVD player in a corner, and enjoyed just a small bit of calm before movers started bringing things in.  It took most of the afternoon, Jesse checking off inventory items and myself directing where the boxes should go, and by the time they were done everyone, including the movers, was starving and tired.  So we went out for a 3:30pm lunch/dinner and ate our hearts out, then came back to assemble our beds, unpack just a little (Jesse set up my computer so Comcast could install internet the next day, and I started in on the kitchen) and sleep for the night, the first time in our new home.

Running wild in the empty house

It was cloudy on Monday morning, when our movers showed up.  We had a short amount of time to have the house empty and to ourselves, where Jesse and I were soon deer-in-the-headlights overwhelmed with how much stomping running echoingly-loud insanity 4 children can cause in an empty hardwood house.  We soon set them up with a DVD player in a corner, and enjoyed just a small bit of calm before movers started bringing things in.  It took most of the afternoon, Jesse checking off inventory items and myself directing where the boxes should go, and by the time they were done everyone, including the movers, was starving and tired.  So we went out for a 3:30pm lunch/dinner and ate our hearts out, then came back to assemble our beds, unpack just a little (Jesse set up my computer so Comcast could install internet the next day, and I started in on the kitchen) and sleep for the night, the first time in our new home.

Jesse and the movers hard at work. 

And the next morning, Jesse went to work.

Yeah....

Bedroom full of boxes to unpack

Family room full of boxes to unpack.  So many boxes. 
Everywhere.

I was left with 5 kids and a house to unpack.  Surprisingly, I got a lot done on the first day.  The kitchen got completely unpacked, and I managed to get the kids bedrooms free of boxes, too.  The progress was amazing!  I quickly lost steam with unpacking, however, and the last several days have only gotten a box here or there opened up and sorted out. Instead my energy was focused on school registration, which included finding a dentist and a doctor and taking all the school kids for appointments.  The whole entire family went to the dentist together, which in retrospect, would have been better if I had just sent Jesse with them, or had Jesse watch the babies while I went, because it was absolute chaos.  But the dentist was great, and Jesse and I even have our own appointments scheduled.  (I'm afraid to see the work recommended for my mouth - it's been quickly deteriorating these last few months!)  Then we had to have 2 different days for the doctor appointments, because they can only do 2 kids at a time, and I had 3.  But we got them all seen, and I'm fairly happy with the doctor (especially the nurse).  Although I still think I prefer a family doctor to a pediatrician, and will switch if I can find a family doctor in the area.  But I don't have time to be extra choosey right now - I needed to get the kids a CA-licensed health exam, including a tuberculosis test that takes a couple days, dental exams, and all sorts of other papers and get them registered!  I thought I was going to be able to turn in all the papers and get things going on the school's side yesterday, Monday, but I showed up 2 minutes after a deadline for registration and they had to turn me away.  We went back today, and it was again looking like I might not get it all finished today, because the gas/electric company was having difficulty getting a proof of residence to the school like they said they could do.  BUT.  It finally all got done, we will be starting school in two days, on Thursday!  I'm a little bit nervous, but mostly excited, because I've had them out of school since just before our spring break, on March 21st.  I really need them to be out of my hair again! We've all had the case of the grumpies these last few days.

The weeping angel followed us to California!

Melinda pulled out her own tooth.  On April Fool's Day, our first full day in our new house, our first full day in California.  This was a super-exciting alignment of events.

So much paperwork to just get 3 kids into a new school.

Charlie's still cute, and growing faster than I can believe!

Malcolm is super grumpy today.

Things have been less than ideal around the house, because inside is all chaotic with things still in boxes and looking for new homes.  We've made trips to IKEA, ordered other furniture on the internet, and so on, and there's just been a lot of time trying to figure out how to make things in a good convenient place.  There's just one thing this house lacks, and it's storage.  (Well, yesterday and today I'd probably say it lack air conditioning, too.  SO. HOT.)  We came from having a lovely tall linen closet, a full-sized front closet by the door, and a giant walk-in storage closet.  They were both central, so we always had plenty of room to store things.  This house has no storage closet, no linen closet, and only a very tiny coat closet.  So the question of where to put things that don't belong in a bedroom or in the kitchen is a very real problem.  We've added a 4-drawer dresser to the end of the hall to act as our linen closet, and we're getting a hall tree for shoes and backpacks to put by the front door, and we've also added a standing coat rack to our furniture already.  We've also bought and assembled a hutch to store video games and extra books/etc that used to live on shelves above our computers.  The toys are still puzzling me.  Our toy storage was plenty functional when it was in the kids' big shared bedroom.  But we're now keeping them in the extra family room, and there's too many different types of storage.  I'd definitely like to "fix" it somehow, but not spend too much time doing it.  I also need to store my crafts and fabrics somewhere, and Jesse is not a fan of my original idea to do a big IKEA Expedit shelving system.  I think, instead, I will buy us a new dresser and use our old large dresser to store things, either keeping it in the garage or in one of the kids' bedroom closets, which aren't getting used very much right now.

Anyway, beyond the chaos of trying to get inside the house settled, the outside has been in chaos, too.  That one drawback I saw initially, of a woodchip-covered yard, was thrown into remodel.  We arrived to find that they had completely dug up the yard, several inches down till it was mud, and had taken down the gate of the fence for the ease of the contractors.  Oh, and chopped out a few trees, too, including the avocado that I was really looking forward to. They were installing a concrete patio, but quite a lot behind schedule because of rain (which is good - California needs the rain!).  So I couldn't send the kids outside to play and get out of my hair, because there was no gate to keep them safely inside the yard, there was no yard, and there were also contractors tools, supplies, and scraps everywhere.  Ugh.  They finally poured the concrete on Sunday, and it's now hard enough to walk on, but still no gate, and still contractors' things everywhere, so still no playing outside in the backyard.  While I've had 5 kids at home all day every day for more than a week.  I can't tell you how much I was looking forward to using that yard while I unpacked and tried to get settled in!!!  How much I just looked forward to having it to use at all, after years of being in a condo with not even a porch to send them out on!  But it has to wait.  Hopefully not terribly longer.  But I think they're sticking with wood chips for the rest of the yard, for now.  But the patio will be great - they can ride their scooters back and forth around the back of the house, now!  Well, soon, anyway.

We also had sick kids over the weekend.  Alex got sick Thursday afternoon (fever and one episode of vomiting) but was fine by Friday morning. By Friday afternoon, however, Malcolm came down with a fever, and had that fever for 2 days, poor guy.  And poor mom.  It's hard to unpack at all (ha, ha!) when you've got a sick toddler wanting to be held constantly, and a baby who is also wanting a lot of attention at the same time.  By the time Malcolm was in bed those two sick nights, Charlie had gone into full blown witching hour, and wouldn't let me do anything at all even if I had wanted to, and raged even more if Jesse dare try to help. So thank goodness those sick days were short lived, but my progress with unpacking and organizing has basically come to a screeching halt. And shopping, UGH.  With Jesse at work I am essentially forced to do all the shopping with FIVE CHILDREN.  I must look like a walking advertisement for birth control.  (So you can imagine how excited I am that school registration is finally done, and I can have some relatively calm hours with only a toddler and a baby soon!)

Malcolm has been doing really well with a lot of big changes.  Not only did we throw him a major wrench by taking away his status as baby of the family (and he really didn't adjust well to that change!!), but now we moved him away from home, and simultaneously decided to move him straight into sharing a room with Melinda instead of sharing our room.  So, new family status, new home, new sleeping arrangements - and somehow he's still managed to go to sleep really easily most nights, without complaint or fuss, and he seems really well adjusted and happy, rolling with the changes like a pro.  Except today, when he's been in full Two Year Old mode, and everything, absolutely everything is causing him to have meltdowns.  He's been really off schedule - we all have - because of moving and having no daily rhythm, so today was our first enforced quiet/nap time.  He seems much better now, after waking up from his nap.  Thank goodness!

Overall we're still really excited and happy about this new life change, but there's definitely been some bumps and complications making the right-here-and-now feel extra crazy.  Miss my family and friends and routine, all of which would normally add a good level of sanity to the mix.  Still, we're headed in the right direction, and hopefully things will be attain a new level of normal pretty soon.  Because, ready or not, California is going to be our home for a long time!