Moving Day

Happy Fatherhood Friday everyone! After you've finished reading this post, be sure to drink your ovaline "move" on over to dad-blogs.com to visit the great bloggers over there.

So last weekend was the big moving weekend. After many, many late nights of packing (I was puttying a small crack in the ceiling at 2:30 am on moving day), a bazillion phone calls, and a 2 week delay due to water leakage, we took the "plunge".

We were very fortunate to have the assistance--and extra hands--of Gramm-E and Grampap. Without them, I'm sure Mom-E and I would've both spontaneously combusted by now.

We took some extra precautions on moving day to ensure the happiness of small children, including 1) having brought over most of the toys to the house before the big move, so that the boys would have plenty to play with, and 2) a semi-planned picnic lunch on the porch from Subway, the semi un-official restaurant of Big and Little Brother.

All-and-all, the day went pretty smoothly.

Pupp-E was transported to the groomers for the day. Having to deal with his "Hey, where'd my house go?" was much easier than constant barking and having to corral him from the movers.

The boys didn't freak out at all of their stuff being loaded onto a big truck. In fact, they rather enjoyed watching an 18-wheeler up close. Big Brother had his usual 10,000 questions about the process.

Of course there were a few little scratches and dings, and a few grease spots on the carpet (NOTE TO MOVERS: perhaps it wasn't the best idea to carry the grill THROUGH the living room), but at least nothing broke.

Big Brother had also prepared himself a backpack of his favorite toys. This came in very handy when the two of us stayed behind to do a little vacuuming/sleeping/ grease-stain removing/etc. Okay, so I did the cleaning and he played with toys, but he did a TREMENDOUS job of entertaining himself.

And so eventually we all made it to the new house, and the truck was unloaded by lunchtime. (They estimated 7 hours total, but finished in 5, which is nice when you're paying by the hour.)

Then began the arduous task of starting to unpack.

And again, to my amazement, the boys continued to play and have a good time, enjoying seeing things set-up in their new rooms.

***
But then dinner time rolled around. In retrospect, it's clear that dinner time is synonymous with "meltdown time" at our house. Small children are tired and hungry, sometimes too hungry to eat. And when small children are tired they get HYPER.

This was made worse by the fact that the kids started to go into "TV WITHDRAWAL"!

Let me make it clear that overall we restrict TV watching at our house. But the boys really like to watch a cartoon or 2 in the morning over breakfast. It just helps them morph from "zombie" into "human."

But obviously the night before the move, the cable was disconnected and the TV was packed up, so they didn't get their morning fill of cartoons.

*At this point, think about how you'd feel without your morning coffee/tea/caffeiene.*

Then the boys saw me unpack and start to set-up the TV.

The only problem is that small children don't understand that just because the TV is plugged in, does not mean that Dad-E can make Wow Wow Wubbzy appear until the cable man sets things up.

"HONEY, DINNER'S READY!"

As always, everything happens at dinnertime. The baby is hungry. Another child poops. Yet another child wants to change into jammies. Then the child who pooped wants to put on jammies, too. A load of delicate-needs-to-be-folded-immediately-or-it-will-be-wrinkled-forever laundry is done. AND I WANT TO WATCH WUBBZY! NOW!

And so, dinner starts with your choice of the above, plus screams for "I WANT TO GO BACK TO THE OLD HOUSE (TO WATCH WUBBZY!")

(We didn't even try to explain that their wasn't a TV at the old house.)

And so, we took Belushi's advice from Animal House, "I suggest you start drinking. Heavily." (Okay, so we had one drink with dinner--the adults that is--except for Mom-E, to avoid Bab-E Brother drinking by proxy.)

Eventually, the meltdown moments passed, and we enjoyed the rest of dinner.

All said, I'd be very content to not have to move again for A LONG time!

Have a good weekend,
Busy-Dad-E