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.
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I had mentioned to Bob that I wondered how Tai was taking this! It's hard as a child leaving the only home you ever knew; glad he seems to be enjoying the idea. I'm sure you are well prepared for the fact that the emotional rollercoaster is undoubtedly going to go up and down a few more times.
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