A friend of mine asked me the other day how our daughter Elli is adjusting to the new house.


"Pretty well," I said.


Tomorrow she'll have been living here with us exactly one week and in that time she has miscalculated the distance to the bathroom and therefore peed on the floor twice. She has dismantled the new decor hanging on her bedroom wall. She has figured out how to stretch window-blind cord about halfway across her room. (If that doesn't strike fear in the heart of a parent not much will...) She has broken a lamp. She has used her bed as a trampoline/tumbling mat and she has consumed a quarter of a stick of butter. No, eating a quarter of a stick of butter has very little to do with moving into a new house. But it happened because the kitchen and the dining room are now separated by a door and she thought that because we couldn't see her we would therefore never find out. Seeing that just unwrapped stick of butter - organic, grass-fed no less - marred and mutilated by grubby little fingers also significantly added to the "Really? Are you kidding me?" level of our incredulous disbelief and escalating frustration.


So, to recap...yeah...pretty well?

"When I'm alone at night every noise I hear is a serial killer..."


-Pinterest


So. I just completed my first day in our new house alone.

Did every strange noise have me paranoid and freaking out and envisioning an intruder? No.

Did the unfamiliar quirks and idiosyncrasies of our new home suddenly take on a more malevolent feel and slightly unnerve me? Yes indeed.

There was the spontaneous grinding, sucking sound that emanated from the sink drain when I ran the dishwasher. There was the pipe-rattling noise that shook the floor of the bathroom when I attempted to fill the bathtub. And then there was the brown colored water that poured from the downstairs faucet after I flushed the toilet. (Interesting, is it not, how all those involve water? Interesting and probably not a coincidence.)

I grew up in an old house. I'm not some naive alarmist. Were my husband home I'd merely mention the noise or the sound or the color of the water to him in a "just so you know" kind of way and shrug it off; content in the knowledge that he, of the infinitely more capable handyman skills, would have an answer or explanation or solution.

But he's not here. I am. Alone.

And I find myself thoroughly convinced that I have somehow broke the new house.

Buyer's remorse is a common affliction among new home owners. Just because you have a sudden urge to weep doesn't mean you've made a mistake. Everybody knows old houses have their quirks...
The trick to overcoming buyer's remorse is to have a plan. Pick one room and make it yours. Go slowly through the house. Be polite, introduce yourself, so it can introduce itself to you.

- Frances Mayes ( as played by Diane Lane in the movie Under The Tuscan Sun. )

Do we have buyer's remorse?

No way. We couldn't be more thrilled. Even the work (and there has been A LOT of work) is a joy, we are finding. When it means you are creating a home.

But there have been new, shall we say, less than ideal experiences. Being locked out of our house? Yeah, that's one of them. Finding out we need to rewire our dryer hook-up is another. Working in the yard until 10:00 at night, coming in filthy, exhausted, covered in a million tiny cuts and scrapes and bruises, just getting settled in the bathtub and fully lathered-up in shampoo only to find the hot water suddenly not working...? 

I won't lie to you. That pretty much sucked.

But it's an old house, as my husband says. It has it's quirks, as Frances Mayes says. And it's all part of the charm.

Did I tell you we are only the fourth owners? Since 1920.

The doors and door frames in the bedrooms bear measurement marks from 2 different generations. As the new-comers we are the hot conversation topic amongst the neighbors. And we've already met most of those that live immediately around us. (They all know we have a daughter too, though they have yet to meet her.) We've been brought flowers, invited to the annual picnic and given a map of the whole circle complete with everyone's name and all their children's ages.

So, sketchy hot water after 10:00 at night? Small price to pay, I think...

I must apologize. I meant to take pictures of the BIG MOVE yesterday...but, alas...I couldn't.

A little before 7:30 in the morning 12 Firefighters (I know. Every girl's dream come true, right?) descended upon our condo and in a show of brute strength and impressive masculinity proceeded to load up all our belonging and transport them to our new house. And quite honestly they were so fast I was unable to capture them on film.

Really and truly.

You have your doubts?

Well, we were loaded and unloaded in an hour and a half.

Well, it's been a long day...as we knew it would be...

Here are  five of the many things I will take away from today:

The calm before the storm- an early morning breakfast date with my husband.

Standing in my new kitchen, putting stuff away and listening to the birds sing and the sound of the rain fall through the open window.

The tears that welled up in the eyes of our houses previous owners as they handed us the keys.

Meeting our new neighbors.

All the expressions of love and congratulations and support from friends and family.

Oh yeah, and here are some "sneak peak" photos! 

Enjoy!

Parting is such sweet sorrow...


-Shakespeare



Well tomorrow is the day. The day we never thought would get here.


WE ARE MOVING!


And yet as I sit here typing this I must admit I have ulterior motives. Sure I want to update you all. Sure I want to relay our excitement. But mostly I want to put off packing my daughter's bedroom.


You see, the prospect of going in there and boxing up all of her toys and her books and her clothes and her adorably displayed baby shoes is making my heart unaccountably ache.


"We're taking it all with us..." my husband has only just said, with a quizzical look on his face. And we are. More importantly we are taking her with us, of course. (Though for the next few days she is staying at grandma's house, playing and blissfully unaware of the destruction taking place in her house.) But the reality is I can't take her babyhood with us.


We are leaving behind the room I brought her home to after we left the hospital. We are leaving behind all the still-vivid memories of nights spent pacing the length of our carpeted hall, imploring heaven that she stop crying and I stop crying and we both get some sleep. We are leaving behind the living room she learned to crawl in and the dining room she took her first steps in and indeed all the other myriad places that conjure up a part of her life I will never get back.


So.

Here I sit. Crying on my keyboard and prolonging the inevitable. Who would have thought, huh?

But the important thing about learning to wait, I feel sure, is to know what you are waiting for.


-Anna Neagle

One week to go. One interminably long, endless week.

Can it go by fast enough?

Yes. And no.

On the one hand we waited two years to sell our condo. It took us three weeks to find our new house. And a rather prolonged weekend past before we knew the house was ours. In the grand scheme of things what's another week? Seven measly little days??

Yet. 

We are currently as packed up as we can be at this point. And as clean. I'm finding more and more that anything I want/need is located in some box somewhere in our garage. (Because two weeks ago I foolishly thought I wouldn't have any use for it before we moved.) And even the outdoor plants I have bought; despite their persuasive pleading they just have to hang on in their restrictive plastic pots a little while longer. In short there is nothing to do right now. Nothing. 

But I know that in seven measly little days there will be A WHOLE LOT to do. Thus this strange vacuum; this deceptive limbo. 

So I'm trying to remind myself what it is we are really waiting for. In my very task oriented way I tend to focus on the details. But the reality is we are waiting for more than the work of moving to begin. We are anticipating more than the cleaning and the unpacking and finally locating all those little things I haven't see since April.

We are getting a house. Our dream house. And we're beginning the journey of transforming it into the home we live in for many, many years to come. One chapter of our life is ending and another is about to start.

When I put it that way it's kind of a big deal. And I guess worth waiting for...so...here's to making the most of seven more days.