Enough with the bizarre housing situation and the equally weird weather!
Apart from that nonsense, life as we know it is starting to take shape. The first 2 weeks were a gelatinous mass of activity. It felt as if we were leading other people's lives, a mix of the familiar and the foreign.
We have had to learn to live in our apartment. Yes, there's less space, but also, thin walls. Being a good neighbor means teaching the kids not to make a lot of noise in the morning, which is tricky. Homework is harder for Sarah; it's tough to concentrate when your little sister sings incessantly and there's nowhere to go where you can't hear her. In general, there's too much togetherness. And yet, we need each other a lot, as we're still strangers here.
Our pets are the happiest. Home is wherever your master and/or your litterbox resides. After the initial travel, they settled in quickly.
The kids get 2nd place in adjusting. Sarah's teacher is a surfer dude/graffiti artist, a far cry from her teacher in Lisle who was a mothering type who was raised on a farm! But Sarah is taking the changes in stride, has made friends, and is doing great in school. Her adjustment issues have more to do with sharing a room, a bunk bed, and large amounts of breathing space with Becca. You can count on Sarah to have a smile on her face (mostly). Becca mainstreamed into her Montessori preschool very well. She misses our nanny, Ewa (me too). But she's proudly carrying her nontoxic lunchbag to school, where there have been no reports of bad behavior, is sleeping and eating (and singing) as usual. Her speech therapists think she's nearly ready to "graduate," which is great news! So aside from the sibling turf wars, they're doing famously.
In some ways, life is what it was back in October, before I started commuting during the weeks. The conga line of SUVs and minivans dropping off grade schoolers in the morning. The dry cleaners and the groceries and the homework. But it all seems to be happening in an alternate universe. It's Don and I who are the most set back by the move. Our sense of "home" is gone. Home isn't Lisle, but home definitely is not here. We feel as if we're on some sort of long, relatively boring vacation in a beautiful but unfamiliar place, where it seems we're the only ones who don't know what we are doing. If you've ever had one of those dreams where you're in school but suddenly you realize you're naked... it's like that every day (of course if you have never had one of those dreams you are now wondering about my psyche.)
My friend Joan (a friend from undergrad, by happenstance we're in the same city now and reacquainting!) and her family had us over Saturday night and we brought a cake and sang Happy Birthday to Becca. That was so great. Their friends told us where to find secret pockets of good schools and more affordable housing. They were welcoming and fun. For the first time in weeks, we felt a deeper sense of belonging. Not just here. Home.
I no longer need the GPS to get everywhere. The weekly routine is starting to feel more like a routine. We're not bone tired by 9 p.m. We're still moving, but I think, we're nearly moved.
Here's the kind of weather we had last weekend! There was so much hail, wind, and rain that Becca's whale watching birthday cruise had to be postponed till next Saturday.