The Chaos Among Us

I've mentioned quite a few times that we would be moving soon, but never really went into a lot of detail.  My vagueness was brought on by a few things, mainly that we didn't want to broadcast plans that weren't quite finalized only to have them change the next day.

But now, moving day is upon us, we pick up the truck and movers arrive first thing tomorrow morning, so I thought it would be ok to share a little about what's been going on around here the past few months! ;)

Starting from the very beginning...

When we moved into this little rent house we live in now, we knew it would be temporary, (hence the rental instead of a purchase).  Our original plan was to move to the "big city" for two years, which would have meant moving last summer.  Because we, (thankfully), got pregnant last summer, we decided to stick with it here for another year, since we didn't want to move in the freakishly hottest summer ever seen in Texas risk any kind of lapse in insurance while I was pregnant.  For over a year now, we've known for sure we would be moving August/September of this year, though we still weren't sure where.

Over the past year we narrowed down our huge list of possible relocation sites, to just a few cities.  The closest was about 5 hours from where we currently live, the furthest more than 12 hours away.  We ultimately decided we would like to shoot for the city 5 hours away, and husband began applying for jobs a few months ago.

We were getting things lined up to go for a short trip to check things out and husband to interview for a job, when I had to go to the ER one night in June and have an emergency endoscopy.  Everything was fine after the endoscopy, and I was only in the hospital about 6 hours, but that visit started to change our outlook on things.

Where we live now we have a small support structure, but over the next few months, (due to relatives moving and having babies), it's going to shrink considerably.  It's not ever something we've given much thought to, but now with Henry and a recent ER visit to make the wheels in our heads turn, we decided it might be nice to have a few more people we could call in an emergency.  Did we really want to move 5 hours away and start over with absolutely no support structure at all?

With that little seed of doubt in our minds, a couple weeks later I had a horrible, no good, very bad day.  Henry was doing a growth spurt, or that 4 month wakeful, or something, but my child who wasn't a good sleeper to begin with, wasn't sleeping. at. all.  Not even the glorious swing would do anything.  I was exhausted and beat down, and just tired emotionally, physically, and mentally.  Besides the ER visit, I had been with him 24/7 for four months, and I was worn out.  I started looking at jobs/houses closer to our families while I rocked Henry trying to get him to stay asleep.

You see, something that I've never really mentioned here before, (because it didn't seem like a safe thing to broadcast to the internet), is that for the past three years, my husband has worked nights.  He leaves for work at 6:00 pm, works all night and usually gets home a little after 8:00 am, takes a shower, plays with Henry while I take a shower and make breakfast, goes to bed at 9:00 am, gets up at 4:30 pm, takes a shower, eats dinner, and leaves at 6:00 pm again.  Three to five nights a week.  For three years.

When it was just the two of us it wasn't really a big deal, because I just slept odd hours so I could spend more time with him and he wouldn't have to flip-flop back to a day schedule on his days off, (except on Sunday, and let me tell you getting up for church was brutal with a capital B).  After Henry was born, that kind of went out the window, and husband has been flipping on and off of a night schedule on his days off ever since.  It's incredibly exhausting, but we actually realized that he sees Henry more on night shift than if he worked days.  Were he to switch to day shift, his schedule would be the same just change the a.m.'s to p.m.'s and vice versa.  This would mean that Henry would be asleep when he left in the morning and asleep when he got home at night.  No bueno.

But, back to the moving story... moving closer to our families was something that had never been a consideration before.  It was just something we hadn't really given a moment's thought.  But having a child changes things.  Back to the horrible, no good, very bad day, that evening at dinner, I told my husband, "don't think I'm crazy, but today I was honestly thinking of moving [closer to family]."  I then got the shock. of. my. life. when he admitted he had recently been thinking the same thing.

We decided he would check out the jobs available and see where things went.  He found a couple of jobs that peaked his interest, but we were in the process of setting up the job interview 5 hours away and wanted to see how that went first.  He decided to just fill out an application for jobs near our families, but just not submit them until he found out an answer about the job 5 hours away...

Except that he accidentally submitted it.  And bright and early the very next morning he got a call for an interview.

A couple of weeks later he went to the interview and was offered a job on the spot.  A Monday-Friday, normal working hours job.  A real schedule!  You have to understand how huge of a deal this is for us! Since we've been married husband's schedule has been: Friday-Sunday 12 hour days for 6 months, nightshift any day of the week for 1 year, Friday-Sunday 12 hour days for 1 1/2, and then nightshift again for three years.  We have never had any sort of a normal schedule.

With a job procured, we started looking for houses.  Almost a month ago, we found one that we liked and put in an offer that was accepted within a week.  We are so, so excited to be buying our first house!  It's a cute little house, but there's still lots of room for improvement! ;)

As of right now we're under contract for the house, but due to new mortgage guidelines put into place after that mess a few years ago, it will still be weeks before we close.  After we had received our mortgage approval, they dropped the bombshell on us that we would have to wait until husband had started his new job and was getting paychecks before we would be able to close.  Blah...  I completely understand the reasoning behind this, but it sure is frustrating!

Now, instead of moving all of our stuff into our cute new house tomorrow, we're moving it three hours away into a storage building.  Some dear friends of ours' have graciously offered to put up with us allow us to stay with them while until we close on our house.

So that is where we stand right now!  Our lives feel like they've been turned completely upside down lately!  The past month:

-I have been packing like crazy while husband works, and had his wisdom teeth out.

We've been putting packed boxes in Henry's room. 

This is what it looked like about a week ago, now you can barely walk in the door.

Lot different that it looked just a few months ago...

-We've been working on arranging all the mess of paperwork that comes along with buying a house.  From 3 hours away.  FedEx is loving all the money they're making off of us overnighting packages of paperwork back and forth! ;)

-Our current rent house was on the market, (it's since been rented thankfully!), and we've had to keep it clean and presentable while their landlords' realtor scheduled multiple showings.

-We've had to arrange not one but two moves.  One from here into our storage building and one from our storage building into the new house a few weeks later.

-I've had to pack everything in preparation for it being in storage for over a month.  While also keeping out things for us to wear for a month.  During the time seasons change and Henry switches clothing sizes from 3-6 month clothes to 6-9 month clothes.  Let me tell you, figuring all that out has been real interesting.

-Maintain some semblance of a "normal" life while all this goes on, including cooking dinner, (almost), every night so we don't gain 15 pounds while eating out every night for a month.

-Did I mention we have a 5 month old and my husband works nights? ha!

It has been stressful to say the least, but we're very glad that moving day is finally upon us!  The past few weeks have gone by at warp speed, but I'm kind of relieved about that!  I don't want to wish time away, but I'm really ready to be settled in our new house already.

Is it October yet? ;)

Jennifer