One More Night

Tonight will be our last night sleeping in this home. We moved here in July 2004, and I was sure we'd live here for decades. I Was Wrong! I know not to think that this time as we could easily be moving again in 4-5 years when Paul finishes his PhD. I remember being sooo tired after that last move. Packing and unpacking a house is Not Fun. However I had it easy then as it was the first (and since then still the only) summer I didn't work since I was a teenager as I was in between two jobs. In contrast with this move I am juggling a FT job and a 2 month old baby in between packing the house and also doing all the paperwork associated with selling/buying homes and also moving (change of address stuff). Honestly, I think the past 13 weeks qualify as the most stressful 13 weeks of my life. It started with the week in the NICU which was definitely stressful for me and while I was in there I was also grading papers to get my grades submitted on time for the summer session. Then within 2 days of coming home our house went under contract and the paperwork madness began. Of course that buyer ended up backing away. Also during this time Paul was writing his entire thesis which was stressful for both of us and then he had his entrance exams the first week of August at PSU. Then I went back to work and since then have needed to make a big decision about whether to keep working FT or not, and the list could go on. The good news is that the end is in sight (I hope!) to when my stress level should come DOWN. By tomorrow afternoon we'll be moved into our new home. Unpacking always goes more quickly than packing does, and my mom is coming up today to help us until Thursday. I will need to tell the babysitters and my students this week about the changes happening next week; so that unpleasantness will be over soon as well. Paul's commute is about to become shorter so hopefully that will decrease his stress level as well.

Yesterday Paul's family came up and we loaded a trailer and his Dad's pickup truck with our boxes and other stuff (like the grill for example). Paul's brother will be driving it to our new home this afternoon, and he and Paul will be unloading it (alone unfortunately for them). Then they'll come back and load the truck with a few pieces of furniture we're giving them. Tomorrow morning the movers will load up the furniture and move it to our new home. We have the closing to sell our home at 10am, to buy our home at 2:30pm, and then I teach tomorrow night. What a day that will be. I am hoping to go grocery shopping in between the two closings as we have VERY little food. I have no idea where the closest grocery store is to our new home. So many things to learn. For starters I need to learn how to GET to our new house, LOL. I truly don't even know how to get there yet. I am teaching this morning and taking a load to Salvation Army and then coming home to finish packing and cleaning while my mom takes care of Nadia.

I am sooo glad she has been sleeping well. It hasn't translated to extra sleep for me since I've been using that time to get more work done for packing, but it does mean once we're settled in the new home that I can get more sleep. She's getting one stretch of 6 1/2 - 8 1/2 hours (only went over 8 hours once and 7 is about the norm) and then nursing 30 minutes and then sleeping another 1 1/2 to 3 hours. Normally she's going back very easily (Saturday morning was the exception when she got up at 4;30 and was up for 2 hours) and normally she's going down very easily at night between 8:00-9:00 (the exception was Friday night when it took forever to get her down but thankfully that's now the exception).