Life Unshelved: A new home

My new blog. Here is it, finally! After much belaboring over choosing a blog name (and discovering most of the ones I was interested in had been snatched up), I picked lifeunshelved.blogspot.com. What I want most to do with this blog is exactly that - unshelve my life and the memories that I am making. I want to deliberate and relish the details that make up my day to day happenings, to keep them close just a little longer. I want to realize that a normal day is a special day in it's own right. And in doing so, I'll live just a bit better, with more spontaneity, more substance.

I do long for my past so many times. I wish I could go back and relive it - or at least much of it. Or if I'm not daydreaming about the past, I'm daydreaming about the future. When what I really want is to do is daydream about the present. Now that I write that, maybe what I'll be doing with this blog is exactly the opposite of unshelving it - I'll be electronically shelving it actually. Keeping it forever in words. I hope I'll keep up!

Life has been anything but "normal" this week. I dove off this precipice into a big ocean of change. Huge, frothy waves of change swallowing me under and spitting me back to the surface. Which is exactly where I am now, finally - at the surface. My head is above the water now, but I'm treading like mad beneath it.

This week we have: sold a house, moved into a new house, finalized the blueprint for building a new house, and found out we are having a boy this July. I'm tired just reading that sentence, seriously. But I have had immeasurable amounts of help from my family this past week as well. And my husband, who has the willpower, heart, and brawn to keep plodding from sunrise to sunset, every day. He does all the heavy lifting, because I can't, being pregnant. Not to say that I don't carry around my 30 pound toddler sometimes, but picking up heavy boxes and furniture is a tad more physical than I care to be right now.

Moving sucks. I'm so tired of it. Ryan and I have moved seven times in the past 11 years, but this time it was a full house worth. Not just a two-bedroom amount, but a four-bedroom, three-car garage, boat load of toddler toys, full attic amount. I did Goodwill some stuff, I swear. And am continuing to fill boxes to donate as I unpack. But it's hard to get rid of it all. Especially all my craft stuff. Now I think, "Well, Anika will want to play with glitter, paint, paper, stickers, etc... when she's older. I better keep it." I just can't move all this junk (I use this word lovingly) again, in 9 months when our house is complete. And therefore, I must be ruthless. RUTHLESS I say! Plus, if I donate all my belongings, I will have more space to BUY MORE STUFF!

I went back to our old house today to finishing packing the dregs. I was once again sucked into the pang of nostalgia for what I no longer have or will no longer experience. I looked out the window at the beautiful view of the hills and fir trees behind our house, and at the green lawn and flowers just beginning their season and thought "Maybe we should have stayed." What really got me was Anika's empty room. All the indentations from her furniture were still in the carpet - the glider, her crib, her changing table. All these items will soon be in the new baby's room. We're all growing up, I suppose. We're all changing.

Anika continues to fill my day with more and more light. My life gets brighter and brighter as she grows. She was tough wee one, when she couldn't express herself as well, or physically move where she wanted to go. But now I know her so well. We've created a groove for ourselves, for our relationship, in which we continue to get to know each other. Our days are filled with tiny-toothed laughs, sticky-mouthed kisses, and jammy-fingered hugs! Oh yes, and also skull-cracking, floor-pounding, eardrum-perforating temper tantrums. But those are quick to dissipate. I am so used to her antics, that I take them in stride. For every frown, there are two smiles lately. She's been a trooper throughout this move. I do love her so. Every day is new. She reminds me how fast time goes by.