So much has been going on lately that there hasn't been any time to write. The obvious, which most people already know, is that we sold our house in April, and the buyer wanted a very quick settlement, so we had a very short time to pack and move. The house was on the market for 3 months, and it seemed like it was never going to sell, so I never thought too much about how I'd fell once it did. In the very beginning, Josh asked me if I would be emotional when we moved. I brushed it off like he was ridiculous. Who gets emotional about leaving a little townhouse and moving to a nicer house!? Then we got the contract on our house. Still no sadness, just excitement, rushing out to buy a house, rushing to pack everything we had jammed into our house over the last 5 years, etc. Then, the packing was completed, and reality set in.
This was "our" house, and I loved it! It may only have been a small townhouse, but if you measure the size of a house not by its square footage, but by the happiness of the people inside, and by the memories created, than it may as well have been a castle! It was the first major thing Josh and I did as Husband and Wife, it was the first place we ever moved into together (he rented his apartment literally days after I met him, and moved in just after I met him, but even though we lived there together for a while, it was still always "his" place in my mind). This was the house where I stayed up all night watching Grey's Anatomy DVD's because pregnancy heartburn left me unable to sleep for the last 4 months of my pregnancy. This was the house where we brought Jenna home from the hospital, stopping in the parking lot and again on the front steps to take pictures of our little angel at her new house. We were so excited to have her at home that we went from room to room taking pictures of her!
This is the only picture I have of her, as a newborn, at work. The rest are all saved at home... this was less than a week after we brought her home from the hospital.
This was the house where she had all of her "firsts."
The very first time she ever ate solid foods... in that house on January 5, 2008...
That's the house where she developed her love of crawling into bed and taking naps with her daddy...
Where she first learned she could move all by herself, even though she looked a bit like a wounded soldier when she first tried to crawl...
Where she first learned to walk... http://greenwalds.blogspot.com/2008/07/baby-steps.html
(can't access just the video)
and a million more firsts. Jenna LOVED that house. She knew it like the back of her hand, and would race from room to room. Unsafe parents that we were, we never baby-proofed. Yet Jenna learned how to climb up and down stairs at a very early age, and by the time she was a year old, she would get to the edge of a staircase, stop, and go down on her tush. Of course, now she insists on walking down the stairs one at a time, but we never had to worry about her falling. She loved to run into the kitchen pantry, close the door on herself, and play "where's Jenna", forcing you to open the door and find her over and over and over again!
For weeks I tried to explain to her that we were moving, I taught her to say "bye bye, house" and I thought she would be ok. Then a day or two before we moved, she was up on her changing table, and I said "Jenna, we're going to go to grandpa's house tomorrow, and we're not going to come back to this house again, is that ok?" She got the saddest look on her face, looked up at me, and said "no!" More than anything, I just started worrying about how she would adjust to the change -- would she notice, would she be confused? would she miss her old house?
Sometimes I think she does, but most of the time, I have to give her credit, she has made a fabulous transition!! the first few days living at grandpa's house, she was like a kid in a candy store. Everything was new and exciting, and there were so many new things to see and new places to hide. Then she went to daycare the following Monday, and when we came home, it was sort of like... "ok, I was at grandpa's for vacation, but I'm back at daycare, doing my usual thing now, so why am I not at home?" she didn't sleep well that first night. She has been doing great since that first night, though. She has her ups and downs with sleep, she definitely isn't sleeping AS consistently as she was, I think she wakes up during the night and still gets a bit confused about where she is, and she has a much harder time going to sleep now than she ever did in her room, but I think part of that is also the age. Over the weekend, she went up to my dad's kitchen cabinets (he doesn't have an actual pantry, just a solid wall of cabinets, but there's no room to go inside of them and close a door), opened the cabinets, and tried to hide inside, saying "where's jenna?" It made me sad, because that was a game she loved to play in our kitchen pantry, and that's clearly something she was looking for/trying to recreate, and I just felt bad wondering if she was missing her house!!
The day or two before we moved, I got very emotional, just thinking about leaving the house where we brought Jenna home from the hospital, her first house, and never coming back. Josh and my dad both tried to convince me that I was being ridiculous ("it's not like we're moving away, we can still drive by it anytime" -- Josh's explanation; or, "you and josh are going with her, it's not like you're leaving her behind, she'll still have the most important parts of her life," -- my dad's explanation). We settled on the house on Friday, May 8. At the very end of the settlement, I almost got a bit teary, just turning over the keys for the last time, but I kept it together. Having driven to work separately that day, Josh and I met at the realtors office, and then drove home separately afterwards. As I got on the beltway, my cell phone rings, it's Josh, saying "I think I'm having seller's remorse!" he was kidding, but he, too, was expressing that it was emotional to leave behind Jenna's first house. Of course, hearing that he was sad about it was all I needed to set me off, and I immediately started crying. BUT, like I said, we're mostly settled into my dad's, where we'll be for the next 5 months or so (probably more), and she seems to be doing fine.
On that note, we decided that there wasn't anything on the market that we really loved, so we're building a house in a great new local community. We've been looking at this house for over a year, and almost put in an offer in Jan/Feb. 2008, but it wasn't the right time. I'm so glad we waited, because everything fell into place perfectly. We love the area where we'll be living, and literally every single neighbor is right around our age, with kids right around Jenna's age. I know a bunch of people either living there already, or building there now, and everyone just loves it. I'm excited that Jenna will grow up surrounded by tons of kids her age. Our offer was accepted about a month ago, but the process is moving very very slowly. Supposedly they are going to start preparing our lot and getting the process underway on May 27. I was told that date was tentative, so I'll be shocked if it happens before June. Once they break ground, it supposedly only takes 4 months to build the house, but I'm just very skeptical about the process because of the lack of efficiency I've seen thus far! We go to the design center this week for a preliminary look, and then again on June 4 to pick out all of our options (floors, cabinets, counters, appliances, lighting, etc). There's a lot of work involved with building a house from scratch, but I love that we will be the first people to ever live in it. I try not to think about the house Jenna left behind, but of the house she'll be moving into, and how happy she'll be there!!
Speaking of Jenna... man is she growing up quickly!! I swear, she's 20 months going on 20 years!! she is speaking in sentences, telling us what she wants and when she wants it, and stubborn and independent cannot begin to describe her attitude if she does not get what she wants. Everything is "Jenna do it!" She has certain routines... she cannot go downstairs without stopping at this little alcolve where my dad has some artwork, including these two mini chinese dragons. She stops, points, and says "dragon." I say yes, then she says "TWO dragons!" EVERYTHING these days is the number 2. It reminds me of sesame street. 2 is the number of the day. She loves the # 2!!
She is also finally starting to understand the concept of bargaining, something I've been waiting for for a while. She definitely holds you to your end of the bargain, though!! this kid has some memory!! usually it's something little. She doesn't want to eat something, or doesn't want to do something, so I'll ask her to take one more bite of something she doesn't want, and then I'll give her something she does want. That never used to work before, but she finally understands, and she'll (sometimes) do what you want. Even funnier though, is when her end of the bargain isn't immediate. For example, Jenna HATES getting in her carseat. She loves playing in the car, and sitting like a big girl, so as soon as you put her in the carseat, she immediately flips out of it (too quick to be buckled in), and sits in the regular seat. Trying to force her in the carseat is impossible. She goes rigid, screams, claws at the seat, but will NOT sit down. Finally, exasperated trying to leave daycare one day, Josh promised that if she got in the carseat, he would give her raisins. He didn't have raisins in his pocket, he just meant that he would give them to her when they got home. She relented, and they got in the car. The drive back to our old house isn't far, but in traffic it can take a good ten minutes. So they got home that night, Josh unloads her and her stuff, gets her inside, and Jenna immediately marched into the kitchen and demanded the raisins Josh had promised! Quite the memory for a then-18 month old!
She is also becoming VERY "potty" oriented, even though she's not quite ready to actually be potty trained. She hates diapers, and as soon as she has the opportunity, she takes them off. She's a big fan of telling us when she has to go, or when she did go, and she's a big fan of sitting on the potty... she's even used it properly a few times. Of course, now she asks to go potty, goes and sits on it, and immediately asks for a treat, because she knows she gets a treat if she goes on the potty. I think the biggest hurdle to potty training is that I'm not home with her during the day. If I had a solid week to work with her, put her on the potty throughout the day, etc, I think she would be potty trained by now without question. Unfortunately I only have the weekends, and then she goes to daycare where she's in diapers and they don't have a bathroom handy. I'm not sure how potty training works with daycare, so I'll have to check it out. I love the thought of Jenna being out of diapers, but we're not quite there yet!!
Anyway, I have a bunch of recent pictures, but I haven't had a chance to upload them (getting the kinks worked out with the computer situation at my dads. Internet doesnt seem to want to work in our room). Now that things have settled down, I'll try to update more often!! I don't even know if anyone checks this thing anymore, cause it's been so long since I've updated, but if nothing else, it'll still be something Jenna can look back on one day!!
No comments:
Post a Comment