Moving!!! ...Into my Parents Basement. Womp wommmp.

By Amy

Well, it's a bit humbling to admit, but we just moved in with my parents.  I feel like I should take up video gaming and quit taking showers since I'm almost 30 living my parent's' basement. Haha. My toddler's room is all set up in my old bedroom, my husband and I, along with our baby, are in my sister's old bedroom, and we have a little kitchen/living room set up in the room that used to be my brothers' bedroom.  Which is kinda weird.  I never thought I'd be cooking meals in my brother's old bedroom.  It was a freaking pigsty growing up.  (Ha, sorry Billy and Aaron!)

My parents converted their basement into a little apartment for my grandma, and she lived with them for about a year.  She moved back to Utah a few months ago, and it got us thinking....  Since Patrick's last clinical for his physical therapy program is at an office 10 minutes away from my parents' home, it would work so much better to stay with them!  So, we brought it up with them and they let us weasel our way in!  We'll be staying for about 2 months. We're saving gas money by avoiding a daily 2 hour commute, as well as paying NO RENT! Wahoo! My parents are awesome to let us come, and--even better--my mom wants to watch and play with my boys for an hour everyday while I exercise and shower!  She is even the one who brought it up!  She's a saint, I tell you.  Hayden is very happy about that arrangement.  In fact, we had to put a child-proof knob on the door for the stairs that go up to the main floor, otherwise Hayden is constantly escaping to find Babba and Poppy (my dad) all day, haha.  It's not the easiest thing to take your fam and live with relatives, but this is a pretty good situation.  We're on our own floor, and we will have our own separate space for meals so we can still feel like we're our own little family unit.

Moving is so bittersweet.  I've always loved change and get super excited for new things on the horizon, but I am heartbroken to leave the friends we've made in the past three years of Patrick's Grad program.  I will miss the people we went to church with more than I can even express to them.  Plus, I worried about how this change would affect my very sensitive, routine-driven two almost three-year-old.  He likes things to be familiar and comfortable. We moved with him when he was a little baby, but not since he was about 6 months old.  At least with this move, thank goodness it's to a familiar place. But when we started packing the weekend before leaving, just as I suspected, he got realllly upset. We'd had already talked about moving several times with Hayden, but I don't think it became real till he saw the boxes piling and our stuff getting packed up.  And the crazy tantrums started.  And the terrible stuttering which he hadn't done for months, started again.  AND he got a bad cold.  Oy.  The week of packing totally sucked.  Then our baby Miles got sick too.  Patrick and I had had lots of hugs and discussions with Hayden that week and I kept trying to remind myself through the stress, "You are rocking his world.  Be extra gentle."  (I was NOT perfect at this.  I was pretty overwhelmed myself, and a few times I got pretty frustrated...especially during his 100th melt-down in one morning.)  But I tried to help him through.  So, instead of doing much in the way of packing while Patrick went to the clinic everyday, I would often end up sitting on our couch, surrounded by piles of boxes, and more piles of unpacked stuff and reading books and cuddling, to calm Hayden down.  We had some good talks, like when he asked, "But can we bring Doodle?" (his baby brother.) and "Is Dadda coming too?"  OH, it's enough to break your heart! So I kept reassuring him, "YES!  Of course, we are ALL going--Momma, Dadda, Hayden and Miles! Our whole family!"

Now we are settled into my parent's basement, (living the glamour life! haha) both boys are finally healthy again, and we're getting back to the normal routine.  Hayden seems happy but the stuttering is still pretty bad.  We keep talking through the change: "This is our home now!  We have all of your toys and your special big boy bed and we have your books and we get to live here! Babba and Poppy live upstairs and we live downstairs." He seems to be adjusting.  (Oh and, is it strange that he's been wearing his fuzzy comfort blanket on his head like a shepherd for the past week?  There's gotta be some deep, psychological meaning to that...Or he wants to be a Jedi.)  Here are a couple examples:

Ha, it's pretty cute, huh?

It's crazy how mind-blowing moving is for a toddler!  (It's kinda nice that my baby wasn't even phased...haha.  He's such a happy little roly-poly sausage!) For a toddler, moving is usually taking them from the only home they've ever known--their place of security--and their whole concept of life is suddenly transplanted into a brand new setting.  In May or June, we will move to wherever Patrick finds a job....and it starts all over again.  

So, any tips?  

I'd love to hear from you...have you moved with young kids? Or even older kids? What do you do to make a move an easier transition?  

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