Pack Your Emotional Bags!

Back in October, Mark accepted a new job. With a new job comes new adventures and, in this instance, a new house . . . back in Illinois! Three years ago, all I wanted was to move back to Illinois, closer to all of my family and friends that I had to leave behind when we moved to Oak Creek. Now, I'm quite sad about leaving the place that we've called home these last three years. We've made some good friends, explored new places, discovered wonderful opportunities and places for children and families in the area. Mostly, I'm sad about leaving behind a place that will always be special to me . . . the place where my persona as "mom" was truly created, developed, challenged, and experienced. This place had been like living in some magical land where I was able to stay at home with my children, and get to know them and bond with them in ways that probably couldn't or wouldn't have happened had we not come here. Without the distraction of family and friends nearby, without a job to worry about, I've spent the last three years of my life doing the hardest, most rewarding thing I'll probably ever do in my life . . . I've gotten to know the three most darling little children on the Earth in ways I didn't know were possible before I moved to this magical place. I can only hope that we can pack up the magic and take it back to Illinois with us as we set forth on our next family adventure. I don't ever want to forget what it felt like laying in the grass blowing bubbles and looking at clouds . . . or taking walks on our neighborhood path and walking to the grocery store . . . or playing at the park behind our house and waving to the airplanes flying overhead . . . or waking up in the morning to see deer or coyotes wandering through our yard . . . swimming in our neighborhood pool . . . bringing Jack home from the hospital, or bringing Kara here as a newborn . . . Jenna's first days of school . . . this past winter (2007-2008) where we lived through record snowfalls in WI without a snowblower!
I have lots, and lots of things to pack in preparation for this move, but so many more things to take with me.

"Let's Get It Started"

I'm finally getting started on something that I've been meaning to do for a while. Well, actually, I have to admit that at first I didn't even know what a "blog" was, or how to even start one, but I'm here now and that's the important thing. For a long time I've also been meaning to follow the one piece of advice that is given consistently to all parents: "You should write that down!"
Every day my children say or do or create something that amazes me . . . and every day I'm becoming more painfully aware of the fact that these little snapshots in my memory simply aren't preserved forever. I HAVE TO write them down, or document them somehow so that they never completely fade away. With my first child, I was a scrapbooking maniac. I must have created a page for every day of her first year. Then, with my second, I became the stereotypical parent that doesn't take as many pictures and doesn't have as much time to spend making albums. Now that we've been blessed with number three, the mere thought of creating and maintaining three different albums for three different children causes me too much anxiety. As the kids get older, and my "baby" is about to turn one and enter the "toddler" stage, I'm starting to feel something that I knew all along: this phase in my life doesn't last forever. As impossible as it seems right now, one day it will be hard for me to even recall what it was like being a stay-at-home mom with three children under the age of five. We've been through so much living in these past five years that it only seems right that I document things for the future . . . so that my children will know, no matter how many albums or baby books they each have, that their mommy was too busy making the memories to document them.