We have emerged from our moving-adventure-cocoon, and there is so much to tell!
To begin with, moving, as many of you know, is a stressful experience for everyone involved. Adding three small boys into the mix didn’t help things for us at all. Not a bit. The boys handled the inpending changes in stride, only acting out a bit. When the movers showed up several hours early on the big day, though, all bets went out the window.
I’d like to take this opportunity to publicly thank our hero, Monika, for swooping in like the angel she is and taking all three kids to lunch. And the playground. Alone. By herself. With no help. This is a feat even I don’t often attempt. Monika rocks our world.
Around the crack of midnight we left Los Angeles. Yes, midnight. In addition to greatly underestimating how much time it would take us to get out of the apartment, packed up and on the road, we also misjudged the distance to our hotel for the evening.
We got settled in at 5am. The sun was rising, but David and I were ready to hit the sack for at least a few hours. Guess who wasn’t? The three musketeers were ready to start their day. Of course. They were in a new place at a strange time and weren’t having the “let’s just lie down for a bit” line we were trying to feed them.
The second night we made it to San Francisco, where we would be staying for a few days to visit with family and do some sight-seeing. We had a room at the local Courtyard by Marriott, which is our hotel of choice. They have free internet, a little 24-hour market with microwavable food, and the coup-de-grace, a room that comes with one huge king-sized bed and a fold-out couch. The fold-out couch is key here. Jack and Lennon love to help fold it out and make up “their” bed.
Between San Francisco and Seattle (where we had another Marriott room waiting) we had planned two days to make our way through Oregon and Washington leisurely. A thought struck us – maybe instead of “winging it” for two days, we’d actually plan our trip a bit and go where the Courtyard Marriott took us. We found hotels in Meford, Oregon and Portland, and headed out.
The tradeoff in losing our spontenaity was the glorious gift of consistency. We could tell the boys that at the end of the long day they’d have their couch bed to look forward to. Each room, while slightly different, was predictably the same, and they loved it. Somehow such a small paeon to conformity made the rest of the stressors a little easier to bear.
Jack thrives on consistency. All of our children do, but Jack needs to know what to expect from his days and nights. Moving throws all consistency out the window for everyone, and we’re doing all we can to maintain even a little. Looking back on the first leg of our journey to a new home, I’m pretty proud of us for figuring out something so simple.
(For the record, I am not a paid Marriott spokesperson. I’m sure any chain we had picked would have been the same throughout our journey; we just have a deep and abiding love for our Courtyard.)
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