Packing it up

For the second time in Baby T’s short life we will be moving. Not that a move is such a big thing when you live on a reservation. Everyone will know about it and know where to find you after the fact so there is no need for forwarding an address or worrying that someone won’t know where you moved to. For instance, yes you have moved but you are technically still close to everything you’re used to like family, friends, and schools. Baby T will not have to change schools he will actually be much closer to it. Best of all he will finally get to ride the bus with his “sisters”, cousins who he has dubbed his sisters because there are four of them and since he has been an only child he couldn’t allow them to be referred to as cousins. That is another great thing about living here. Whatever school I would have chosen Baby T to go to out of five in the immediate area Baby T would have had a cousin he knew in his class or even in every grade at the school. That’s a comforting thing when you send your first baby of to the big kid school on the big kid bus.

I have always known that where we live wasn’t where we were going to stay. It is too busy here. It’s not just the traffic. We share a driveway with my dad so every time a car door shuts it sounds like it’s at our house. Needless to say Baby T jumps up (sometimes out of bed) to see who it is. I’m sure a lot of people go through this around here. Here meaning Akwesasne, we are family oriented people and when someone grows up and builds a house its usually next to or very close to their own parents. Kids end up playing in the same woods and yards as their parents, which has an upside because if you ever lose your child chances are you pretty much know where to look. Where we live now we have other businesses around us so when they too have car doors shutting due to customers it sounds like it’s at our door. I do have to say that the scariest thing for me is our u-turn driveway that people randomly fly into to whip around driving directions still going 30-40 mph while we stand playing feet from their car. No matter what they give me a dirty look like I shouldn’t be in my own driveway playing with my kid. I will not miss that when we move. A paved driveway, maybe.

For the last month I have been preparing for the move. I’d pack a bunch of boxes and bring it to my mother’s for storage while I waited for the time to move more stuff. Lucky for me lots of toys have disappeared while Baby T has been in school. There’s no way he’d let anything leave the house let alone while he watched it go away. One day I did get caught, I packed up the truck but hadn’t had time to drive it over to my mom’s and Baby T got off the school bus and immediately noticed a forgotten toy in a box that he couldn’t live without. The whole box ended up coming back inside our house.

After Baby T’s birthday it was crazy in our house. We were in the middle of trying to pack and in came a new houseful of toys. The great thing that came of it is that Baby T saw with his own eyes how little room he had left to play in. It was all toys. The kid has two toy rooms and both were packed. Not to mention the living room was hard to navigate when the birthday bounty came. Baby T and his father spent two straight nights filling garbage bags up with toys he doesn’t play with anymore and that he would be giving away. It was much easier for me to have them do the toy sorting. I always get grief from one if not both of them about what I am getting rid of and what I keep. I was glad to be taken out of the equation for once. They do not argue, they work as a team. I usually do the whole getting rid of stuff thing about every three months. Baby T hits his dad up every payday and with him being the only grandchild on both sides it’s hard to keep up. But since I’m pregnant and pretty much exhausted most of the time for what seems like no reason at all I haven’t been getting rid of anything. Just putting it away and losing more space.

Now it is crunch time and I have been packing for what feels like forever. I am so sick of the boxes and bags. I just want to move already. In the last two weeks I guess I can say I packed a few times more than I should have because once the boxes sat there staring at me I realized they would be there for longer than I would like and I would start to put stuff back away. But now I can’t do that anymore. I have to just let everything pile up at the front door and wait for Baby T’s dad to take it out. I can’t pick up any of the boxes I pack so I mostly drag things to the front door.

Well, I’ve sat here long enough taking a break surrounded by these boxes I better get back to it. I have one baby sleeping in the other room and the other kicking me to get back to work. If I don’t hurry up I won’t be totally unpacked before the new baby gets here. I think I’ll have just enough time to get everything in its place after the move before Christmas hits. If all goes well I’ll have time to relax after Christmas to wait for the new addition to our family in February. And I keep thinking to myself that I want to do a nursery this time around…Oh what am I talking about I’ll have both kids sleeping in my room because Baby T’s father and I like it that way. So I better hurry up and stop dreaming and start packing it up.