TRANSITIONING

I was dreading having to come back to work after a week away, but once I got to the office and started going through all my emails, I found that I welcomed the distraction from thinking about house stuff. The move and the new house has been taking up so much of my head space, it has been exhausting! Even with the resolve to pace ourselves, there are some basic things that we need to do to make the house as liveable as possible and those things have been time (and money) consuming. 

The week of our move, I went back to our old house to finish cleaning up and to pick up Walter the plant (who sadly, doesn't look like he's gonna make it), and I had to take a photo of our empty living room. It doesn't look like much happened here, but I know that some of my best grown up years were lived in this space. 

After we moved out, there was a space of a few days when we were homeless! Our dear friend Mignon welcomed us into her home for those days and it turned out to be a respite from the storm, and also a chance to spend extra time with her. She made us feel comfortable and she also filled our bellies with meals like this one, which I am craving right now...

One of the things I loved about our old house was the tall spindly trees in our backyard and I was mourning their loss, but the week that we moved in, these trees in the yard of our new place did a fine job convincing me I could feel at home with them, too.

Moving day: I noticed Sloane walking around with this wine glass pretending to drink out of it, and when I asked her what she was doing, she replied, "it's the afternoon, so I can drink some wine now." 

So.much.painting.

Also, my heart flutters every time Ken builds me shelving. Romance ! 

What made the week more bearable was friends who offered their help, fed us dinner and hung out with our girls for a couple of hours - how lucky we are! This here is one of my favorite photos recently that my friend Laura sent me of her, her little girl and our girls together at a playground.

The girls' room is probably the only room in the house that is mostly done and unpacked. We still need to put up curtains, art and shelves, but for the most part it is liveable and right now it is probably my favorite room in the house because of that rug! It was a spectacular craigslist find and notable, because it is what made the rooms start feeling like a home to me. 

One of the big ways I had to adjust my plan of transitioning to the new house was to make sure to unpack and settle the girls in first. I quickly realized that the faster I had them settled in and within easy access to their toys and books, the easier everything else would be...

...even if their playroom still looks like this and there are boxes everywhere, they seem to mind it much less than I do as long as they have some familiar things around them, including each other.