Moving On and In and On

My husband covered over one window, smoothed the walls, primed, painted and hung a new light fixture in our old master bedroom. It is purple, so purple, and exactly what little girls love. The new light fixture is a chandelier. It is the kind of bedroom little girls dream of. My husband did that for our girls.

The bunk bed that used to be just M's, bought when she was 22 months old in anticipation of her new sibling's arrival and needing the crib for that sibling, was dismantled and resurrected in the new room. M slept in the top bunk for the first time last night. D will be transitioned to the lower bunk with bed rails installed (as they were for her sister when she transitioned) next weekend. I thought D was too young to move to the bunk, but then I realized that Miss M had transitioned at a younger age than D is now. My perspective is skewed. K Man stayed in the crib longer than M as well, but he transitioned to a toddler bed first, where he still sleeps. When I get the rest of the junk moved from M's old room and Craig gets her old room painted, etc for K Man, he will have a full sized twin bed for the first time.

Suddenly all three kids have grown in leaps and bounds.

Soon the crib will be taken down for the last time. We went to Minneapolis to find that crib. It had to be a new crib. It had to be lovely. I was big and pregnant for the first time and loving it. (Also scared of what my future would hold.) We found the most lovely crib and bought it without flinching about the $600 price. Ah to be so naive and have such "disposable" income. We were both working then. I wasn't making much but I enjoyed my job most of the time and I didn't have nearly the stress level as my previous job. (I'm certain the move to a job with less stress helped me to conceive. I'm not sure it would have happened had I remained at the stressful job.) I still love that crib, for what it stands for, for the babies it held, for its simple beauty by itself.

There are new dressers, not the repainted partially falling apart old dresser of my youth, but new ones...white and clean-looking and big. There are new shelves, stacked and attached to the wall...almost full already. There is a pretty purple and navy rug to take away the disappointment that the carpet will not be changed.

I moved the framed caricature drawings we've had done (with all three kids around their first birthday) of the girls into their new bedroom and set them on top of their dressers...M's on hers, D's on hers. It's funny, the artists who drew them used the same colors in the background of both portraits...blue and purple. Seems a little like fate with the color of the walls and the rug. My two beautiful girls in caricature so similar yet both so unique.

The K Man is going to feel like he sleeps in a mansion when he moves to M's old room.

K's old room is going to be a study/desk/book room. K's old room is the original nursery where we excitedly set up that beautiful crib for the first time. No, wait. Actually, we excitedly set up that crib in the living room then realized we couldn't fit it up the stairs and into the room so we had to take it apart and set it up again in the room. When I say "we" I mean Craig of course. Also? I'm pretty sure I laughed until tears ran from my eyes when I realized he'd have to dismantle the crib to get it in the room. I'm a supportive kind of wife, especially when I'm pregnant.

How did we get here? Just three days ago I was expecting my first child. Then I was expecting my second two days ago. Yesterday? My youngest. I'm pretty darn sure this is how it happened. Where did these big kids come from?

Is it okay to miss the babies, the toddlers, the little kids they once were? I love who these kids are becoming (mostly). They are people, smart, beautiful, interesting people. But I will always miss those babies too.