Move Number…17?

I’ve checked my list…counted it twice. The number is right. Last weekend was move number 17. Address number 18. (Well, I guess it’s technically address number 17 as well since I’ve lived at one address on two separate occasions.) However you count it, at age 37 I am still maintaining an average of a move every two point some-odd years. Guess that’s what happens when 1) you’re born and military brat, and 2) “Thursday’s child has far to go”.

This move from our little duplex in Avalon (a borough of Pittsburgh, but everything in Allegheny county is a “borough” or “township” of Pittsburgh, a difference nobody can explain) to a little duplex in Rochester (a place I believe is also considered a “borough” but in Beaver county) has once again made me marvel at my mother. However did she pick up and move over and over again with one…two…four…five…seven…eight children?!?!?! I don’t recall any move of mine being quite so exhausting!

It didn’t seem exhausting during the whole process. I find moving to be oddly comforting. I’ve been packing boxes for months, knowing we’d be moving and there are some things (mostly just my books) that I don’t really need access to every day. We found our new place and I simply started packing everything. Moving day came, my parents came to help out and we had help from people at church. With two little ones, I was around only to see all the boxes piled up at the old place and then to see them piled up at the new place. (A couple from church wonderfully opened up their home for my mom and I to take Emry and Ethan so they’d be out from under foot while everything was loaded, moved and unloaded.) My tasks on moving day were to keep up with two kids, clean the old place and take the food stuff to the new place. The rest of the day and following day my mom and I unpacked important things (like what a friend had not unpacked earlier in the kitchen). Our new place looked like a disaster, but it would come together in the next day or so. At least, that’s what my previous moves had been like…

Of course, I had not given birth a mere three weeks previous on my other moves. After my early morning feeding of Ethan, I began to suffer from what is called “after birth pains”. Think contractions…every fifteen minutes…with no reward at the end. And they lasted off and on for seven full hours. After which I had a massive headache until I could collapse in bed that night at about nine. It was one of those days that – had I not had two kids – I would have spent on the couch drugged with painkillers. But that’s not an option with a near-two-year-old and breastfeeding infant. For those of you who have yet to have children, let me give you one piece of wisdom I’ve yet to learn: when they say SIX weeks postpartum recovery they mean SIX weeks. I didn’t learn that the first time around…and I have a feeling I haven’t learned it this time either. Yes, I have a stubborn streak.

But, that aside, we are moved. Like any new place, it will be an adjustment as things find places. (95% of which have found places now…at least for the moment.) And, all in all, it’s a good stopping place. But, as I always say, don’t put my address in ink. It will change.