The little kids have finally arrived in Illinois. Finally. They arrived at our house yesterday afternoon and after showing their father and step-mother their new bedrooms, they dived into unpacking. OK I dived into unpacking and TW tried to dive into unpacking but we ran into some issues. The Prince was only interested in unpacking his TV and game cube. Once he got those unpacked he was too tired to unpack anything else.
Liz was very interested in unpacking but she was easily distracted when she discovered Michelle had allowed her American Girl doll to move to Illinois. From then on, Liz stood next to me with the Molly and ran commentary on whatever I unpacked. (Or Molly ran commentary on everything I unpacked.)
RJ showed no interest in unpacking. TW made the mistake of handing her the scooter and from then on, the child came in only to get some water and talk about whatever she’d been thinking while she scootered. She did head upstairs with me shortly before dinner to get her bed into place and she was interested in getting her bird lights hung up but we had some technical difficulties with that and got called down to dinner before we were successful.
They begged to watch Gilmore Girls, so after more technical problems related to TW having control of the remote control, we watched a few episodes. Liz has suggested we need to watch three a day to make up for the entire month of July. geez kid, I don’t think so.
It’s good to have them “home”. Really good but if you’re still reading, here’s where I tell you that it’s also really hard to have them here. It makes me miss the big kids even more than I already was.
The new normal isn’t going to include running into Chris in CVS or seeing him run into the LYS on Sunday just to say hello or having him stop by a couple of days before pay day to “borrow” some money or to have him drop off his laundry swearing that he’ll be back to move it to the dryer.
The new normal doesn’t include Michelle stomping around overhead, telling us all about what the dumb people at work did or the cool people at work did. It doesn’t include her talking endlessly about her wardrobe or her life plans or not talking endlessly about those things.
The new normal will be fine but right now, it’s not normal and I don’t love it.
