Change of Plans

Well, it's been a long while again. And it may be another while before I get a lot posted on here. I'm just not in the blogging mood these days. (I think it has to do with having three kids, which would be worth blogging about, if I could just find the time.) But for today...

It has been brought to my attention that I have news to share and I might as well share it in a way that it travels fast and reaches the people who like to keep up with our news. So, I'm blogging about our move.

For those of you who got our Christmas card (and sorry if you didn't... I lost my address book awhile back and am still "reconstructing"), well, you probably think to yourself, "Ah! I know what this news is she speaks of. I read it in their Christmas card." Right?

Well, actually... right, and wrong. See, I have been quite remiss in blogging these past few months, and have deliberately not mentioned our move because nothing seemed very definite except the fact that we were moving. To London. To do the same thing we were doing before we moved to Idaho.

And then, finally, by Christmas, I felt like I had wrapped my head around the whole idea enough that I could at least include that bit of info in our Christmas cards. "We're moving to London," I wrote, trying to sound more enthusiastic and less overwhelmed than I felt. There are pros and cons to a move like this, and I'm afraid my current trend is to "gear up" for the cons, before trying to get excited about pros. Why can't I be more like Brian, or Blaine, or my mom, and focus on the positives first, I wonder? But that has very little to do with what I'm actually trying to write here.

Well, so we're NOT moving to London anymore. We're moving to New York. As in, New York City. And Brian's going back to work for the same firm he worked for in London, but he'll be in their New York office this time. And the kids and I will live in the suburbs nearby, and Brian will most likely live in his office most of the time, and see us on weekends. (You are reading that last sentence as a joke, I presume, and I wish it was. sigh.)

There. I've officially announced our move on my blog. Whew! I'm not sure what else to say? I could tell about the weird struggle Brian and I were both having about the decision to move back to London. It was officially my idea, way back a few weeks after Natalie was born... Brian was trying to decide whether to go back to work for his firm from before, and I told him NO WAY did I ever want to live in New York, (which is where one of the partners in the New York office wanted him to go). But I admitted I could probably do London again for awhile. Within a few days, the idea grew on us both, and we talked to S&S and got things set to go back to the UK.

But then, there was this incredibly long wait for visas (they eventually told us mid-February or March?), and the second-guessing started. I started getting really wistful and sappy about every little thing we were leaving behind. I started buying clothes (because they cost so much more there than they do here) and all my favorite "American" things to stock up and bring with us (like Kraft Mac&Cheese... how could my kids survive without it?! ha!). And every family event felt like our LAST time with everyone all together -- our LAST Thanksgiving, our LAST holiday season, our first AND LAST Christmas in our new home. (I blame all the sappiness partly on the fact that I'm still a sleep-deprived nursing mom.)

By New Years, I still felt like I was really dragging my feet, thinking about how hard it was going to be to drag three kids around London. Little things -- like paying a pound deposit to "rent" a shopping cart at the grocery store, or all the driving frustrations on those tiny roads with speed cameras, or trying to take three kids on a bus or the Tube -- kept getting to me. I'd get this overwhelmed, panicky feeling, like I just really didn't want to go. Poor Brian, to have to constantly be reminding me that it would be okay.

Then, one morning last week, Brian woke up and decided we should move to New York instead. It wasn't really that simple, but it kinda felt like it, to me. Once he mentioned it, it was almost like someone turned on a light bulb for both of us. We mulled it over, prayed about it, talked about it incessantly through last weekend. And by Monday afternoon, Brian asked the partner in NY if it'd be okay to change our move plans and come to NY instead. Two minutes later, it was a done deal.

I'm still not sure why I was so adamant that I DIDN'T want to live in New York when we first started talking about it. And I'm also not sure why we were so definite about going to London, or what changed to make New York suddenly seem like the right place for us. But it's where we're headed, and I'm actually quite excited about it now. Even though it's going to be sad to leave here, this will be a good thing for our family, I believe.

And that's a true story, written at midnight, by a very tired, uninspired blogger-mom who is now very content to go to New York instead of London, and is also very ready to go to bed! G'nite!