Patrick's Ready for Lemoore

A common concern among military families I've talked with when facing another move is "how will the kids respond?" I've been trying to prepare Patrick a little at a time, taking advantage of teachable moments to mention that we'll be moving soon. He's almost 3, so he has some idea of what's going on (more than we probably even realize....) Katie is too young to understand or care as long as she's fed and knows where "mama" is. Over the past few weeks I've told Patrick: we'll be getting a new house with a new bedroom and playroom for him, we'll have to say goodbye to our friends in Pensacola and meet new ones, and that all of his toys and furniture will go on a big truck "like Mac" (from Cars) to get to our new house. Overall, he has seemed fairly agreeable to this - taking it all in but not saying much.

Last Friday as I was organizing and starting to do a little packing Patrick came across the bag his Thomas the Tank Engine comforter came in and started telling me... "Oh! This is for my new bed at our California house. I will have a new Thomas and Percy and James!" "We are going to get a new house and you will have a new bedroom, but we are going to take your bed and your toys and books from this house to our new house." "Yes, and we will see Auntie Lindsey and Michael." On and on he went giving me back many of the little things I've mentioned casually to him over the past few weeks.

That evening I was looking at "For rent" listings on line trying to get an idea of what's available in Lemoore when Patrick walked up behind me. "What are you doing, mom?" "Looking at pictures of houses. Do you like this house?" "Yes!" " It could be our new house in California." "And that is my new bedroom...and my new playroom... " after that exchange he proceded to tell me he wanted to go get in the blue minivan and drive to the new house. Toddler time = now.

He threw a tantrum before bed because he wanted to go sleep at the "California house." How dare I show him a picture and not be able to back it up with an actual house. Apparently he has very few qualms about leaving Pensacola. Overall he seems rather excited about moving to a new house. We've been reading books about moving and I drew boxes and a truck on his calendar for our pack-out and moving days. We'll see if he's still thrilled about driving to the "California house" on day 3, 4 or 5 of our cross-country adventure! His comments have been dwindling this weekend, so for the sake of tantrum-avoidance I will keep the moving talk to a minimum with Patrick until the packers are ready to come box up our stuff.

Ah, the packers! Packing is my least favorite moving task (address updates to various companies, professional organizations & government agencies are a close second) so I am ecstatic that a military move can include people putting your stuff into boxes. What would take me a month to pack they can finish in 1-2 days flat. That's the beauty of packing up someone else's stuff -- you don't get stuck reminicsing or sorting or trying to decide whether it's time to get rid of this or that. Everything just goes into a box & reappears at the destination, for better or worse.

Our past two moves have been positive experiences for the most part. I have learned a few things about prepacking and preparing for the packing crew such as: don't leave 1/2 a loaf of bread on the counter for PB & J's later that night. When our boxes arrived in San Diego that bread was bright blue, green and black. Blue mold? That was new for me! Don't put coloring books on top of a wooden puzzle. When the packer flips the whole stack upside down to pack them (I'm assuming he did not realize there was a puzzle at the bottom of the stack...), a scavenger hunt for pieces amidst mounds of packing paper and unpacked boxes ensues during unpacking. It's much easier and less stressful to prepare without a newborn who needs to be fed every few hours.

So, Patrick is ready for the California house, I am ready to be finished with moving preparations and just get on with the move, and Katie is trying to steal the whole show by learning how to walk. She has taken a couple steps at a time this weekend and my gut tells me she'll be walking without much assistance before we leave Pensacola! She'll get her own blog post once I see her walk more than 2 steps before falling!

Movin' & Shakin'

Wow... our 6 months in Pensacola is coming to an end - less than 3 weeks until we hit the road to drive back across the country to Lemoore, California. I will say Pensacola has grown on me more than I thought it would in 6 months time. We've met some great friends and have done a ton of things in the last few months. I'm planning to add a few back-dated posts to document more, but I've got to start somewhere! I love to write & I'm frustrated that I haven't made blogging more of a priority. However, knowing that Bill will be deploying sometime early this summer I am very glad we have had so much fun and family time while here in Pensacola.

It has been such a blessing to have Bill home at night and on weekends compared to intern year when he "lived" at the hospital. It has been a relatively relaxing and restorative 6 months for me. I have enjoyed the answer to "Hey, Bill, there's book club (or girls night out, baby shower, scrapbooking, etc.) next Tuesday night, will you be home to watch the kids?" being a consistent "Yes, go have fun." Ahhh, the beauty of no call schedule. Even better is being able to consistently eat dinner together as a family and tag-team the bath & bedtime routine.

The photo above is from last Saturday's morning out at the McGuire's 5K prediction run/walk for St. Patrick's Day. I'd never heard of a prediction run before - you win not by being the fastest, but by making the most accurate prediction of how long it will take you to run the race. No watches or timing devices allowed on the course!

Katie, now 9 months old, is still trying hard to keep up with Patrick. He walks into the kitchen, she's crawling right behind. He plays with his trains, she's crawling across the train tracks as "Katie-zilla" knocking things down while trying to find a train Patrick is willing to share with her. One of my favorite things is when they "talk" to each other and Patrick starts making baby babbles back at Katie because they both end up giggling! This week she decided to explore underneath the stepstool - and got stuck trying to crawl out between the steps! She also discovered toilet paper...

Patrick has officially begun calling me "mom" more than "mommy" over the last few days. It makes me smile because he usually says it very quickly annunciating both m's very clearly. "Hey mom, you want to play trains with me." "Mom you want to read a book with me." His statements may appear to be questions, but what he really means is "Mom, I want you to play trains... read... color... watch Thomas... with me, now."

Patrick has also been really interested in books the last month or so which makes my heart jump for joy! My child who would not sit still long enough for me to read him a story for the better part of his first two years now brings me books & knows all the words to his favorite ones. He loves going to the library to get new books and tries to con us into reading "one more" bedtime story. Last week we went to the fire station for playgroup and he got to "drive" a fire truck afterwards.