FYI

Moving with four children = not so much fun. Especially when two of them are nursing, and BOTH parents are required to sit down every so often for a dose of calming, relaxing oxytocin via breastmilk release. . . Seriously, the last thing Lena or I need right now is to be calm or relaxed! We have boxes to pack! We need endorphins and anxiety to keep us going!

This move is really wiping us out in a way that our other moves did not. Or maybe we're just forgetting. Like how you can forget about the nightmare of having a teething baby once your toddler has sprouted his final molar, until you suddenly realize that your 3-month-old (can you believe Leo is three months old today?!) seems awfully teethy, and the horror of it all comes flooding back.

I was trying to be a really organized packer this time around. Our new house is not huge--our smallest yet--and I was thinking how neat it would be to just be able to have everything that goes together packed together. Things we wouldn't need frequently ready to go right into basement or attic storage, only the best of our best art supplies packed separately with other daily essentials. But a couple of hours ago, that idea flew out the window, and once again we're doing things via the clear, dump and tape method. Clear of a surface, dump it into a box, tape the box shot. Write "random shit" on top of the box (since we've moved rather frequently in the past few years, our boxes have gotten a full life's worth of use. It's always interesting to see what they were used for 13 months ago--the last time we moved. "Random Shit" is written on top of possibly 25% of our held-together-with-packing-tape boxes), and add it to the pile. This is why--despite moving every 13 months or so--we have some things hanging around that should not have made the cut FOUR moves ago! But they just keep slipping into a box by the skin of their teeth thanks to the clear, dump and tape method.

I am, at this very moment, nursing Zeben to sleep. In case you were wondering why I'm blogging instead of packing. Tomorrow night, in the new house, I will put him to bed in the kids' room for the first time (up until now he's been going to bed in the family bed every night). He's getting the bottom bunk of the bunk bed. Such a big kid. This evening he said something funny, but Lukas--poor Lukas, hater of all things new and non-routine--was not amused, and I said something about how Zeben was, "small and very funny," (for those who don't know, this is a repeated line of Charlie's in the--much loved--Charlie and Lola show in regards to his little sister, Lola). And Zeben corrected me and said, "no, I'm BIG and very funny, not small and very funny." And Lukas--the grump--said, "you're not big OR funny." And Zeben protested, "but I am cute." Then Lukas--so dismissively--said, "Zeben, you're almost three, you're not cute anymore. You can't be big AND cute anyways." And then Zeben, not easily deterred, not even by his grouchiest brother, pointed out, "but I smell cute." Which of course gave all of us--even Lukas--a much needed chuckle.

And now he is asleep. And I'm off to finish packing for the last time in my entire life. When the day comes, they can bury us in our new backyard. Because we are never moving again.

Painting/Parenting

For the past week, ever since we officially became home owners, we have been dividing our days between painting the new house, packing the old house, going to work, and hanging out with our somewhat-on-edge (and understandably so) children. Every day feels like a crazy run around of not enough time. But when I'm actually painting, fiddle music blasting in the background, wearing my paint-covered carhartts, rolling the roller up and down one wall after another, I find I have more time to think than I have in a while.

Today I was thinking--as I worked on painting the sky-half of the playroom (the bottom half will be the ocean, the top half the sky)--that painting is kind of like parenting, in a way. Or at least, I realized that the way Lena and I approach painting a house is similar to the way we approach parenting. Like how when we realized--several times--that the colors we thought would be perfect for certain rooms in our new house were actually pretty terrible (to the extent that my mother literally gagged when she saw how we had initially painted our living room), we simply painted over them with new colors. We didn't wallow in our poor choice or wasted time. We moved forward with a new plan. It reminded me of the time when we decided to try training the 3-year-old versions of Luke and Jaz to sleep in their own beds, in their own room, through the night. When they woke up and called for us, we'd go to them and try to get them back to sleep, but we didn't let them come into our bed to sleep with us. It seemed like a great idea. But after about a week of this, we realized that we were getting way less sleep than we had been before, and we decided to paint over that parenting choice and go back to having the kids join us in our bed in the night, if they so desired (which they did, and still do, for the most part). Because we make the rules and we can change the rules. Just like we can choose the paint colors and we can pick different colors if it seems our original choices aren't working out. Painting, just like parenting, is a huge amount of work, but the rewards are so, so sweet.

Clearly, the ("virtually non-existent") paint fumes have gone to my head a bit.

Some end results of the color-choosing drama:

the living room on the left, the dining room on the right

a corner in the kids' bedroom

Three more days until we move. Anyone who wants to hold a (very cute and very smiley) baby is welcome to stop by anytime and help us out!

Inspired By Color

Thank you all so much for your sweet, loving and encouraging comments on my last post. Unfortunately we heard today from the computer "doctor" that nothing was able to be retrieved from my water-logged hard drive. I will seek a second opinion, but I am not optimistic. I'm torn between wanting to think about each series of photographs that was lost--while I can still remember them--and wanting to not think about them at all. We are feeling very grateful for this blog and the pictures within it. They are small and low-resolution, but certainly better than nothing. And, of course, we continue to ground ourselves in our many blessings.

Yesterday we signed the papers and became the homeowners of our very own house. We are still getting used to it; the lack of rules--in the absence of landlords--continues to surprise and astound us ("we can just take down this hideous ceiling fan!"). It really does feel as though the possibilities are endless. Last night we had a bit of a celebratory dinner in the new backyard with Katie and Aaron and their boys (and several hundred mosquitoes), and it was so fun to get a taste of what our new life will be. We are planning to move at the end of the month, but will be spending lots of time at our new address up until then, getting things ready.

We are doing some construction work on the house (or rather, hiring some friends of ours to do it for us: taking out a popcorn ceiling, tearing up the carpet in the playroom and putting in a wood floor, building some kitchen shelving, and installing a woodstove & hearth), and painting as many of the rooms as possible in the next couple weeks. This afternoon we spent several hours trying to pick out paint colors while drawing lines on the kitchen wall, designating where we want shelves to be.

In one way the process of packing and moving and preparing a new home has gotten easier with practice and repetition, but on the other hand, having a larger quantity of children each time we move does seem to complicate matters just a bit. It's also that the current ages of our youngest two are not particularly well suited for any project that requires Lena's and my full attention (such as painting an entire house in one week). Luke and Jaz were happy to watch a new dvd from the library, upstairs in their new bedroom, while we worked downstairs today.

Luke and Jaz: in dvd heaven
Zeb: not so much

But Zeben and Leo both require more parental entertainment. Our experience today pretty much pointed to the necessity of getting a mother's helper to come and be an extra pair of hands if we want to finish painting before we move. That said, we did get one productive stretch while Zeben was "helping" me to measure things in the kitchen . . .

Zeben measuring the oven

. . . and Leo was happily hanging out on the kitchen floor.

Leo at 2.5 months

Leo is lying on the blanket that Katie (our beloved) wove for him, and this afternoon we decided that it looked so good in the new house that we're using it as the sole inspiration for the color scheme (if you can call "crazy, funky, multi-colored" a scheme). I am so excited to live in such a colorful home! The sky is the limit (and yes, there will be at least one painted sky ceiling when we are done).

Putting It In Perspective

On Saturday morning, before Jaz's first soccer practice of the season, I picked my laptop computer up off of the stool in the bathroom (where I'd left it the night before), and went to plug it in downstairs. I wanted to check my email before we left. I plugged in the computer, and tried to turn it on, but nothing happened. Our computer plugs have been finicky lately, so I didn't think much of it. We rushed out the door, had a lovely time at soccer practice (all 6 of us!), and when we returned home some hours later, I again went to check my email. The computer still wouldn't turn on, and I noticed that it was sweating a bit.

"What's going on?" I wondered out loud, "why won't my computer wake up? And why is it so . . . wet?"

"Sorry," said Lukas, coming up behind me, "I went to grab a towel from underneath it, and it just . . . fell in."

The life of my computer flashed before my eyes. I saw it all happening in slow motion. The kids had woken up early that morning and gone to take a bath. My computer had been on a stool next to the bathtub. And at some point during the bath, my precious laptop had been fully submerged in water.

"We didn't want to tell you," Lukas added, "because we thought you might be mad."

I nodded and silently took some space upstairs by myself. I wasn't exactly feeling mad. Not really. Devastated is a better word. Because, while a computer can certainly be replaced, the photo files within it can never be. And I still don't know if any of them will be recoverable (the computer shop was, of course, closed all weekend). And, no, I hadn't backed them up. But I couldn't bring myself to feel angry at the kids. It was I who left the computer in that vulnerable location. It was I who had woken up feeling grouchy and groggy and had welcomed the chance to lie in bed for another 20 minutes while the kids took a bath by themselves. I thought about how if my computer had been plugged in, and if it hadn't been the type of computer that has a fancy magnetic plug, the kids could have been electrocuted by pulling it into the tub. Indeed, when I tried to google, "laptop fell in bathtub" the links that came up all seemed to have to do with electrocution. I'm so grateful that, while my computer was destroyed, my children were left unharmed.

After setting the laptop up in a box of rice (apparently this is the recommendation for wet electronics), I went out to the barnyard to work on taking down all of the fences I put up. My mom is trying to sell her house, and the barnyard will look more presentable without my FBTSOYP contributions. It felt good to bang on something. To pull out nails. And bend wire. And destroy something that I had spent so much time building. To think about all of the fences that had come and gone on this land before. And to remember how different our life looked just 6 months ago. Before the goats, and Leo and our house-buying plans. And when I came back inside, I took a shower. And cried a little. And hugged my kids.

Just now, about 40 hours after I first discovered what had happened, I finally felt brave enough to look through Lena's photo files (on her laptop, which I am now using), and see what she had to show for the last 3 years (my laptop had 3 years worth of photos on it). And while Lena only downloaded a fraction of the photos that I did, I was pleasantly relieved to see that she does have some. She has the photos from Zeben's birth, and a handful from his infancy. She has pictures from our first two beach camping trips. Some wintertime pictures from when Zeben was just a year old. It's not as if the last three years will be without documentation entirely, regardless of the outcome when the experts attempt to retrieve anything off of my hard drive tomorrow.

This series of Zeben at the beach, when he was nine months old, is one of my favorites.

Already obsessed with birds (a fascination that continues to this day),
he'd crawled off after a sea gull.
I followed with the camera.

He turned around and discovered I was behind him
and I think his expression says,
"hey, what are you doing here?"
Of course, he is happy to see me.
The unstoppable joy of a nine-month-old.

Later that day we went for a whale watch.
The sea was quite choppy and we all got sick.
A memory the photographs don't show.

I'm OK with letting go of most of the photographs from the last three years. If that's what it comes to. Because there is still so much in this life that's so good. I can't see dwelling in the land of regrets. If only I had backed up the picture files, as I'd been meaning to do forever. If only I'd put the computer somewhere else before I went to bed. If only I'd decided to join the kids in the tub that morning. I'd rather not get mad. I'd rather choose peace. And happiness. And gratitude. For four children safely sleeping upstairs, while I write these words on My Love's computer. For having lived this glorious life, even if I don't have the pictures to show for it.

The Quest for the Simple LIfe

If everything goes according to plan (please, please let everything go according to plan), one week from now, we will be signing papers in a lawyer's office, handing over checks made out for enormous amounts of money (I can't really allow myself to think of it as real money), and receiving, in exchange, the keys to our very own house. We're still not exactly sure about how this all came to be, but I will try to recap as best I can.

1998: Lena and I meet.
1999: We fall in love.
2000: We get our first official apartment together (yes, we had already been living together practically since the day we met). The sole requirements were that it allow dogs and have wood floors.
2001: We move into our second apartment, our first without housemates. Pet Friendly and closer to town.
2002: We move into our third rental, this time a whole house! We needed something dog and kid-friendly (many of the rentals where we live have lead issues and landlords are very hesitant to rent to families with young children) since we're planning on having a baby. We are, in fact, pregnant with two babies a month after we move in. The house meets our needs but does not get a drop of sun during the winter months since it's at the base of a mountain. Oh, and the interstate highway is all of 20 feet from the front door. We are haunted by the sounds of rush hour traffic.
2004: We move into a new apartment, this time on the fourth floor of an old factory building, in the middle of winter. It is so sunny. The ceilings are 21 feet high. We don't have any yard at all. We enjoy living in the community of the building but can't deal with the cement-world outside the building's entrance.
2005: We move again, this time to a rental house 30 minutes away from town, in the woods. The house is luxurious (rent money goes so much further the further we get from town). We have a stream in our yard. And a jacuzzi tub in the master bathroom (yes, we have a master bathroom!). The price of gas doubles, and we realize that we are spending way too much time in the car, driving to and from town.
2006: Zeben is born and we decide that we can't keep living this car-dependent life. I spend months looking for a place we could live in town.
2007: We move into a house right in downtown. We've never lived so close to town before. The house is huge and beautiful. We love the neighborhood. But then we realize that we can't really afford to heat such a big house, and we start to feel like we are living in excess. We don't need nearly so much space. We start riding our bikes a lot, stop driving the car, and yet feel like the size of our house is holding us back from living "greenly."
2008: We move into our current home, less than half the size of the house we'd been living in. It's not as close to town, but still in relatively easy biking distance. The house has little yard, but is directly nextdoor to my mom's HUGE yard. Plus, it's zoned agricultural so we can get goats!
2009: We get two goats, and Leo is born. Life is full. Life is so full that it's overflowing. My mom decides to sell her house, and we realize that we have to move in order to keep the goats and have any sort of a yard.

Fast forward to the present. Once again, we found ourselves looking for a new place to live. We just couldn't muster the energy or enthusiasm to rent yet another home. So we started thinking about buying a house. We hadn't thought that we were in a place, financially speaking, to be able to do this yet, but we looked into it and found out that maybe we actually could. We've always had this dream of buying a small farm, for years we've told people that when we do buy our own place, it would be in a rural spot, with at least 10 acres. Our goal has always been to Live Simply. To Simply Live, to enjoy the land, to feel self-sufficient, for our children to be a part of something bigger than themselves: caring for animals, growing their own food, having daily responsibilities that would contribute to our survival. And there are many parts of that life that still appeal to us, and that we hope will become our reality. But, a farming life--while calming, and wholesome and natural in many ways (there's nothing like waking up each day to a goat's udder in your still half-asleep hands)--is not necessarily a simple life. We found that getting the goats hugely increased our dependence on our car. Bi-weekly trips to the farm supply store--the best one is 20 miles away--and the time that it took to care for/milk the goats (and sanitize the milking equipment) meant that more and more often, we were driving to places in biking distance because we "didn't have time to bike." Every day felt like a rush. Less time to bike. Less time to blog. Less time to reflect on anything. Not especially simple.

When we realized that we'd have to choose between living a car-light or car-free existence and having a farm--that we could not actually do both--we ultimately decided that we'd rather not have a farm. It seems the simplest most self-sufficient life we can dream up is one that allows us to really live IN our community. To walk and bike everywhere, to avoid the chaos of traffic and car maintenance and buckling a million car seats 6 times a day. So we did something we never thought we'd do, and started looking at houses right in downtown. And before long, we found the cutest, most perfect house ever--a 100-year-old, 1200 square foot farmhouse, with a palindrome for a street number (I love palindromes)--it felt like home the moment we stepped inside. Actually, truthfully, it felt like home before we even stepped inside, while we were still waiting for the listing agent to arrive and let us in. We knew we wanted to buy the house just as soon as we walked into the backyard. It was like in the movie--Jerry McGuire?--where the secretary says, "you had me at 'hello.'" This house had us at the yard. A yard is not easy to come by in a downtown location, and this one--while not huge (it's .22 acres)--feels truly magical, with climbing trees and space for some chickens and a big garden, not to mention room for the kids to really run.

the backyard

Yesterday three of the goats (Petah, Wolf and Spot) left us--in the back of my mom's car--for their new home. They're going to live with some wonderful, old family friends of ours who live in a neighboring state. Luke and Jaz were very sad to say good-bye. They have, understandably, been resistant to this whole moving plan. They are living in a kind of kid paradise at the moment, and of course they can't comprehend why we can't go on living as we have been indefinitely. But the truth is that their interest in the goats and our small farm in general has been on a steady decline for the past couple of months. As was perhaps predictible, my once-eager helpers eventually abandoned me to do all of the barn chores all by my lonesome, rejecting my suggestions that they train the baby goats to walk on leashes, or bring them special snacks. So, as awful as it always is to see my kids upset (especially when I know that it's kind of my fault), I really felt no guilt about selling the goats. Just a couple hours later, I heard Lukas saying to Araela, "I was really sad when the goats left, but I'm feeling totally fine now!"

in the car, saying goodbye

And so our quest for the simple life continues. I am so excited to commit to biking and walking most everywhere we need to go; pretty much everything we need will be within 1 mile from our house. We are finally going to become a one-car family, keeping the minivan solely for emergencies and visiting with relatives, and--most significantly--I am just bursting at the thought of having a permanent residence. Of ending this crazy moving game. Of putting down roots, planting some raspberry bushes, and making our very own house our home.