Change

I am all for moving forward, upward and onward in life.  I was thrilled to go to college, get married, become a mother, and while I dislike the process of moving, six of the eight times I’ve had to do it I’ve been excited for the new adventure that awaited me.

What gets me is the lateral changes; the times when things are just different than they used to be but aren’t necessarily any better or worse.  Those changes take time for me wrap my mind around and figure out if I like or not.  Right now we’re in the situation of having three children and two rooms and trying to figure out who shares.  Our first try was putting the baby with the 4-year-old who is a super sleeper.  Turns out that baby wakes up too early when she sees her big brother in the room and starts yelling to get him up to play with her and even he couldn’t sleep through that display of noisy affection.

Try number two is going to happen this weekend where we’ll put the older two together and let the baby have a room to herself.  This idea has bothered me for months.  I just couldn’t wrap my head around the idea of having my girl share the boy’s room or my boy sharing the girl’s room.  One is pink and green.  One is red and blue.  Where would the girl toys go?  Can I handle the visual of  a princess castle in a room decorated with cars and trucks?  Does my boy sleep on a bed frame that has pink flower knobs?  Will they talk all night or wake up too early in the morning?  Where will I send them when they both need a time out?  Silly questions, perhaps, but to me it means big change.  We decorated those rooms for my kids when they were babies and to me a lot of their identity and memories and our routine are wrapped up in the set up we have.  They are just so settled, as apparently am I.  

But today I sat in front of their rooms for awhile and re-imagined what they could be.  I could see how my kids are growing up and are ready for new challenges and new arrangements.  I realized a little yellow paint and some shifting of furniture would feel like a breath of fresh air as we figure out a new normal.  

When life isn’t pushing us up or down, sometimes it is good to take a step to the side, just to see what you see.  Then it is easier to recognize that these little changes that our kids go through and that they force us through are always for the better. One of the greatest contradictions of parenthood is that while I miss my sweet babies as they used to be, I delight in the little people they are turning into with their increased knowledge and skills.

So once I got over the sadness of the change for my big kids, it finally occurred to me that the need to rearrange is because we added a sweet girl to our family. Not such a lateral change after all.