Colorful Colorado

We moved to Colorado this summer from north Carolina. It's so much more intense,

The "Little Tyke" Moving Co.

In a few weeks, Pappa Starbucks and I will be moving again. We'll be packing up most of our possessions and putting them in storage for several months while I spend the summer with Little berry and some wonderful family, and he spends the summer working his butt off for Teach For America.
We've done this before. We've moved some four times since we've been together- first from college into an apartment together, then into a bigger apartment where we lived when Little berry was born, and then we stored all of our things for last summer and went to Europe. Then we moved into this apartment and have been here for not quite a year. Moving is hard, especially when you have a little one underfoot. I'm not sure it will ever be easy, but I've found that there are a few things that can make it not as rough.





















(little berry shows her displeasure with our new digs on moving day)

1) Plan ahead- with lists of things that need to be sold/given away, things that need special care or to be returned to friends who've loaned them to you.
2) Try to use up all of the food you can several weeks prior to your move. We make a point to only buy fresh produce for about two weeks before we're moving, so we can use up all the other food.
3) If you can afford it, hire a cleaning crew to come behind you. This can save your deposit and a lot of frustration and energy. Tell them you will tip well if they earn you your deposit back and it will be worth it for both you and them.
4) Check Craigslist and local stores for free boxes. We were out a few weeks ago and saw a local chain restaurant unpacking new chairs and throwing the boxes away- all perfectly sized and identical. No one wants to pack into 40 different sized boxes.
5) Keep boxes handy for items you want to freecycle or take to the thrift store. No one wants to have to dig through already packed boxes for that thing that was going to be given away, nor are you going to want to keep everything.
6) Stock up on tape and markers ahead of time. You're never going to have enough!
7) Leave some boxes empty for the kid to play with while you pack. Maybe throw in a roll of tape. That's what they are going to want most and you don't want to have to keep pulling them out of yours!
8) Enlist friends to help for a few hours or to bring over food and drinks on the day of the move, because you're going to have tossed all that food and moving makes you hungry!

What are your tips for moving with a little one (or more)? I'd love to hear what you do to make moving with kids easier.

The wrong way

Have you ever noticed that going through things together with your significant other either strengthens you as a couple or shows you a side you didn't know existed, or maybe ignored? Pappa Starbucks and I have been through a lot over the past year, good things and unforgettable experiences (like our trip to Europe for two months) and bad things (like graduating from college with no job prospects and coming back from Europe to not have a "home" anymore). Little Berry is a dream, but sometimes I get worn out being with her all day and let's face it, baby's don't measure out what they want from you in little request throughout the day. They want everything, they want it all the time, and they want it right away.
Sometimes I feel like I am failing to teach her patience, and just focusing on teaching her love, how to be happy, that I love her being sweet.
I know there is a balance. And from any outside view, we're doing a great job. But we disagree so intensely on the small issues that the big issues become pushed to the back of our minds. I know this is a recipe for disaster. I know that parenting is hard. Loving her is just the reward, the special reason that being a parent is worth it and the reason we all keep going daily. I have so much that I want for my life, and so much that I want for her life, and so much that I want for Pappa Starbucks' life that I don't know what to do first, where to put my passion. I want to do it all, and all well, but I'm not capable of that.
I take responsibility for other people's dreams and projects and desires, people not in my immediate three- and I do the best I can for them, but at the same time I am afraid I might be letting down the people who DO count on me. I can't be in charge of everyone's happiness and yet I want for us to all be happy. There is perhaps an easier way to say this, but it feels like I am being an underachiever because the only other option is to do everything, for everyone, so I please the people I know I can please, and I let the rest fall by.
I want to please, I have always been eager to make people happy. There are reasons for this, reasons I am just now beginning to understand but not willing to admit. There are consequences to treating myself and my partner and my daughter like we are last on our on list, but I don't know how to begin stripping away all of the problems and commitments that don't make me a better person, who I want to be, who I am, and focus on the ones that do. I am going the wrong way to get to my dreams but I am going to fast to notice it.

Plowing ahead

Yesterday was a day of pins and needles. I was nervous all day and kept waiting to hear from Pappa Starbucks. We've been weighed down, dragged down, we've felt insufficient and inadequate. We've felt like failures. True, we have eachother and a beautiful sweet daughter. But graduating from college left us in a limbo, a place where we knew not what was ahead. We fought for job after job just to see it crumble away until we were thrilled to find out he had been offered a position. A position nannying for someone elses kids, something he is so overqualified for but grateful to have nonetheless. Our biggest disappointment came last year when he was accepted into Teach For America but placed on a wait-list. This was a job he wanted so badly and was really ideal for, a job that meant more opportunities to learn and opportunities to go to grad-school afterwords, things that are virtually unattainable to us without such an opportunity because of financial reasons.
Last night at 7:00 we found out he has been accepted into Teach For America this year. We are thrilled, excited, nervous, but mostly happy. It will of course be lots of hard work and long hours, but I know he is intelligent and will do swimmingly.
Congratulations to us!

What's the deal with hauling things around and putting
them in the same spot when you move? Tradition
around here dictates a refrigerator box: it's filled with magnets, photos, cards we got on birthdays past, receipts for appliances, even magnets for restaurants and hotels and doctors offices, delivery menus and emergency numbers that are long since far away.
My favorite forever has been a copy of a recipe for banana bread that I craved intensely when I was pregnant and would make about three loaves of it each week. It is my SIL's recipe and I swear by it.
This time when we moved, I couldn't find it. It was no where, just gone. I've asked her for the recipe probably twice now and I KNOW I have it somewhere...but it isn't where it always was...and now I am banana breadless.

So, do you have a good banana bread recipe? Perhaps it's time to try a new one...

Frustrated

Pappa Starbucks and I have been fixing
up my convertible Sebring for the past month
-it's one of those articles remaining from my oh- so
bygone days of:
watching other people's kids
until the wee hours without minding it,
cute handbags to carry MY things in,
and truly belongs underneath the couch alongside all my
other 'personal effects' -move over, broken sunglass frames!
Our move,
the trip to Europe-
it necessitates finding somewhere else
for the car because well,
we can't take it with us.
We've put probably about $700
into the repairs: brand new tires,
oil change, cosmetic repairs.
Today he is selling it to the first
looker who is planning on driving
it to Florida and selling it for twice
what he is paying us. Pappa Starbucks
came down
$300 on the price
and the guy wants us to meet him with
it at the Sears repair shop,
'cause he wants us
to put a new battery in,
and for us to pay for it.
It was listed as AS IS.
And we are due to be
out of our apartment by 8am tomorrow.
Not a single box is ready to go
because all we have done
is carcarcarcarcarcarcarcar.
Pappa Starbucks has been running
around since yesterday
(he took it to Car Max to try to sell it
...his name wasn't on the title
so it was a wasted afternoon)
dealing with these things and
I am frustrated because we
have put so much energy
and money into it.
It would have been better
to have just listed it before without
doing all the work and made the same
amount of money off of it.
And we would have had our time
back.
And then maybe we wouldn't have to stay
up until FREEKIN 2 AM
tonight loading a UHAUL.
And believe it or not, it's not that I
am upset about the car being gone
(not comfortable with putting a baby in it)
it's just that I want my
two days back.
and
I am just so damn tired
of the way he does things at the last minute.