What I Will Miss

Yes, I have decided that moving is the best decision for our family.  And yes, I will be disappointed if we can't find someone to buy our house.  But I do love my house, and my neighborhood, and there are many things I will miss if we do indeed move.

(1) My neighbors (and not just because some of them read this blog).  Seriously, our amazing neighbors are the thing we'll miss the most, hands down.  We'll certainly try to buy in another neighborhood with quiet streets and hopefully with young families, but we know we'll never re-create the magic that we found in our current spot.  Where else are we going to find folks willing to babysit at the drop of a hat, turn on their sprinklers the day after it rains just so my kids can run through them, or buy us multiple obnoxious holiday decorations without asking us?  Where else will we have neighbors who let us use their swing set when their not home, or those who take our dog into their home for an entire weekend if we are away?  I do hope we'll find another group of people willing to stand out in the middle of the street and chat on a warm summer evening, even if they are not crazy enough to share Minh's love of renting heavy-duty tools.

(2) My house.  Literally, the physical house.  I really do love it.  I love my bedroom, and my master bathroom.  I love my nice big living room and my dining room.  I adore my floor-to-ceiling pantry.  And I love the playroom the most.  How am I ever going to live without that amazing playroom, the we just built?  Of course there are other houses out in the world with master bathrooms, and playrooms, and even with 2-car garages and central AC.  But I find it hard to believe I'll find one (that we can afford) that I will love as much as this one.

(3) My yard.  Specifically, my kids' trees, which are are planted in the back and nourished by their placentas.  (Gross?  A little.  But the kids, Tai anyway, knows why those are their special trees and I think he likes the idea.  And I always thought we'd get to see those trees grow up alongside our kids.)

(4) Speaking of....I'm going to miss the chance to watch the kids grow up in this house.  Yes, I'll still get to watch them grow, but not in the place I've been picturing it.  Six months ago we were envisioning how we would adapt the playroom to be a student office for doing homework, you know, when the kids reached middle school.  And now it's looking like this particular playroom won't be used that way--not by our kids, anyway.  And how sad is it that Quynh will probably have no memory of this house and neighborhood?

(5) The campus across the street.  I love being able to walk the dog over there, and take the kids to run around the lake.  Not to mention that Tai was just getting to the age where he was enjoying concerts and other events on the campus.

(6) The steady stream of undergraduate dog-walkers.  We acquired one great dog walker after another by asking each one that graduated to recommend a friend to take over.  We already have someone lined up for the fall...but will we still be here?

(7) Living a mere 5 minutes from a great little sprinkler park/playground.  This in invaluable, all summer long.

(8) Cindy's Drive-In.  Living only 10 minutes from a place with great food, ice cream, and tons of toys to occupy the kids is perhaps more important than the sprinkler park.  It's the only place that Minh and I get to sit and eat our meals in peace because the kids can go run around while they wait for their dinner and again after they finish.  It's fantastic.

There are probably 50 more things I'm really going to hate to leave, but I take them for granted and won't miss them until they're gone.  

Happy Birthday Quynh!

My "baby" girl is two years old today.

May 2009

May 2010

May 2011

Emotional Rollercoaster

Despite having all these grand plans about waiting for the right moment, calling a family meeting, and telling Tai about our plans to attempt to sell the house and move to another town, I panicked the other day and blurted it all out 5 minutes before we had to leave for swim class.

The news was not well-received.

He had already overheard plenty of talk of looking at other houses and possibly moving for kindergarten, so I was a little surprised that he flipped out.  I think it was the description of how our house will be sold (pictures taken, posted online, people can see if they want to buy it, etc).  He burst into tears, yelling, "I don't want to leave our house!" and "I don't want our house to go to the house store!"  My attempts to explain that moving could be both sad and exciting fell on deaf ears. 

Eventually, it devolved into "I don't wanna go to swim class!"  Having already paid for 8 weeks of swim class, and knowing we're going to have to miss 2 of them, I was furious with myself for the timing of this tantrum.  When gentle cajoling and promises of snacks after class didn't work, I promised a movie after lunch if he would just go to effing swim class.  He calmed down immediately.

About 36 hours later, while driving around town, Tai announced from the back seat, "Mama, I'm looking out for houses that might be good for our family.  I just saw one with a pool that I might like to move to.  I want to move now."  He then went on to tell me he likes the ones with pools, (of course) and the ones with decks on the roofs (duh) and he got very excited at the one with a camper in the yard and the one with a boat in the driveway.

I find this particularly adorable because I can remember house-hunting with my parents when I was about seven.  I was dragged on painfully long car rides to an infinite number of houses.  And all I cared about was: (1) is it red?  and (2) is there a pool?*   

So, despite my own mixed emotions about possibly moving, now I can start worrying that we won't be able to sell the house and get my kid the roof-deck-swimming-pool-camper-boat-house with cool rooms that he has his heart set on.



****Just for those who might be curious, we ended up in a grey house with no pool, 5 houses up the street from where we had been living.

Because.....

Quynh's new favorite word is "because."  She answers almost every question with "no, because...." and often forms a coherent argument.

The other day I was in the middle of getting her dressed to go to the park -- she was in a fresh diaper and a clean shirt -- when she decided she did not want to wear pants.  She was standing on the changing table refusing to put her legs into her pants.  I pleaded with her, "Quynh, you have to put on your pants."  She calmly replied, "No pants....because....it warm out."

Wow.  I was genuinely impressed with reasoning and verbal ability. "Oh sweetie, that was such a great sentence and a well-constructed argument.  And you're not even two yet.  I'm so proud of you."

"Now put on your friggin' pants."

Summer Plans

We've decided to sell the house.

Although I entered this discussion of moving kicking and screaming, I've now come full circle and will be disappointed if we can't find a buyer for our house.  We're still trying to remind ourselves that it might not sell -- it's not the best time to sell and our town is not exactly the most desirable in the area--but we'll see what happens.

And if it doesn't sell, we'll stay put for a while and then try again.  We visited the local elementary school and it seemed lovely.  Tai would do just fine there for the first couple years.  But once we visited the schools in the town to which we were thinking of moving, we knew that we had to try to move.  Amazing schools.  Not sure I can really articulate the difference, but we both came out of those school visits knowing that this other town was a better fit for us and our kids.  Nicer facilities, more diverse student populations, and just a generally great feeling we got about the principals, teachers, and philosophies of the schools.

Now we frantically prep the house for sale and keep our fingers crossed that it catches someone's eye.  Fortunately the house does not need much work, but we ought to get that huge pile of mulch out of the driveway.  And we need to de-clutter the inside and make it look like our kids don't leave toys all over the place all the time.  And it would be great if we could get the pets to stop leaving clumps of fur in the middle of the living room.  Oh, and we have to find a new place to live.  Oh, and we have to tell Tai about all this and hope he doesn't freak out at the idea of moving.  Oh, and Minh will be out of the country for just over 2 weeks in the middle of all this.

It's going to be an interesting summer.

Cute Tai Story #2

Last weekend I decided to take the kids out to breakfast so I turned to a pajama-clad Tai and said, "you can either go get dressed in clothes or you can just put on socks and a sweatshirt and go like that."

He disappeared into his room and came back 5 minutes later wearing only socks.

When I asked what  he was thinking he replied, straight-faced, "You said I could just wear socks and a sweatshirt!  You said that was an option!"

I have no idea whether he actually mis-understood my intention (that he was to add socks and a sweatshirt to his outfit of pajamas) or whether he was just messing with me.  I patted his bare bottom and asked if he really thought he could go to a restaurant like that.  He laughed and then trudged back into his room and put his pajamas back on.

Silly boy.
 

Cute Tai Story #1

Lately Tai has been watching lots of nature documentaries, as well as some documentary-like CGI shows called Walking with the Dinosaurs and Walking with the Prehistoric Beasts.  He himself has begun acting like a prehistoric beast, and often tries to involve his friends at school in his new interest ("hey, let's play walking with the beasts!")

These new shows have sparked discussions in our house about fiction, documentaries, and everything in between.  Tai now knows that The Sound of Music is based on a true story, but did not "really happen" the same way the footage in a documentary really happened.  And I think he understands that dinosaurs really lived, but that the scenes he sees in these new shows are not real dinosaurs, but computer generated images.

Last night, after dinner, Tai suddenly announced, "Come to the living room for a meeting!  Sit anywhere you want!"  So after Quynh finished eating her enormous dinner (growth spurt?) we all settled in and turned our attention to Tai.  He then proceeded to very thoughtfully debunk his friend's statement that she had seen the documentary Walking with Hello Kitty.  With his friend's name abbreviated for anonymity, his speech went something like this:

"One.  Is Hello Kitty really real in real life?"
"Two.  Documentaries are about real things."
"Three.  S says she has Walking with Hello Kitty....but that does not exist."
"Four.  S says she was not kidding."
"Five.  Dinosaurs were real, but Hello Kitty is not."
"Any questions or comments?"

Minh thoughtfully suggested that perhaps S was taking something she enjoyed playing and something Tai enjoyed and merging them together into one game.  But Tai insisted that was not the case.  Without actually saying it, he seemed to be mounting a case to prove that S was flat-out lying.  He also noted that S liked to play sweet things and he "only likes terrible things".