Technically, our 3rd PCS

Y'all we made it. 

We packed up our roots of 6 years. 

We moved 700 miles. 

We unpacked. 

We organized. 

We re-organized. 

We re-re-organized.

(All before Christmas. Yeah, moving at the holidays....................ummmm, please never again!)

I've wanted to write this post many times, but it has honestly been such a whirlwind and time has evaded me to actually sit down and write.

But my itching to write has kept at me so much that I even noticed AND applied to volunteer-blog for a local mommy blog...and they accepted my little humble application! Woot Woot!

I chat with those ladies on Tuesday, so we'll see what that's all gonna be about soon. My biggest hope is that it helps give me an excuse to keep at my writing. I know I've got a little knack for it, but mommy-hood of the little years is demanding!

In the meantime let me catch you up on my reality of PCS'ing. PCS stands for PERMANENT CHANGE OF STATION. haha. yeah. permanent. haha...........apparently there is another definition of permanent that the military works off.



Anyway, in the grand scheme of things this should've been like our 5th move and I would've been as tough as nails already about leaving friends and familiar places. But by some grander scheme above the military we've only PCS'ed twice (Indiana to Georgia and Georgia to North Carolina) before this move.

So, this 3rd move was oh so hard.  As my husband will attest, I cried and cried and cried and cried some more between December and January about small things and HUGE things. Small things like grocery shopping and big things like entertaining. Y'all finding your damn groceries in new grocery stores is SO annoying and exhausting when you're already exhausted from trying to find stuff that's in a new place in your new house. And y'all wanting to entertain has not been on my radar (but it has been on the husbands)...it's like I'm needing to get comfortable in my new skin before feeling brave enough to let new people into my new home. Maybe having three little people to care for is slowing down that metamorphosis for me.

That's the other thing. Little people. We have three of them ages 6 1/2, 2, and 18 months at the time of the move.

Our oldest processed the move pretty much before we left. She shed her tears and talked out her emotions quite a bit before we actually left. We did some special things for her with her friends and I've made a point to have some pictures printed out that we took of her and her friends.

Since the other two were "younger" I didn't expect them to have ANY reaction to the move.

Well I was wrong.

Our youngest, the boy, decided to discover toilet's immediately. Literally, when we walked into our new home he took his sisters favorite lovie (stuffed monkey) and threw it into a toilet. Since then it's been physics lessons daily with the toilet (although he is happy with just flushing it for you now) and our balcony. Even at 18 months he noticed the change and expressed it in the form or physics ;) We've tried to let this one be a laughing point.

However, our middle child took us for a surprise. Little G keeps our hearts wrenched from time to time about the magnitude of this move.  G is our dutch speaking child, even still at 3. She has SO much to say ALL THE TIME, but half the time you're not quite sure exactly what she has said. G marches to her own tune. She (so far) has met all of her milestones at the very last possible day the pediatricians "recommend" they will, literally.

So, she didn't talk much about the move before it happened because well if she did, she spoke dutch. And maybe that's because we didn't talk to her about it since we thought it was too abstract an idea.

Consequently, on the second morning in our new home her first meltdown took us all by extreme surprise. She was having a typical toddler moment of asking and asking and asking to put on her "twirly" dress and listen to her favorite music, the Frozen soundtrack. It was breakfast time and we were (obviously) surrounded by boxes, so someone eventually got around to getting her into her favorite dress and putting on her music.

But as soon as the music turned on, she fell on the floor sobbing. 

And said, "this isn't my house. I want to go home." 

And that's when we realized she had noticed we moved.  

#parentfail or #parentlessonlearned

Since then she's had other moments of asking to go "home" and talking about our "yellow house" as where we "really" live.  

And she misses our library. She asks, specifically, if I remember the library with the rocking chair that has a spider on it. Yes dear, I remember. It's downtown SP with so many other wonderful memories.

And she misses our parks. Man, that girl loves her swings. Thankfully we've found a park that has swings.

AND she misses her friends. Man, that.gets.me.every.time. She asks by name for some dear friends.

Equally though she's said statements like, "this IS our house. I like our house. mommy lives here daddy lives here. Mali-O lives here. AB lives here. I live here. And Boaz (our cat) lives here." 

Lesson learned 2 years old isn't too young to feel emotions about a move. 

Although it's been hard I am thankful our little people have been so emotional about this move. It reminds me constantly how important relationships are in this life. People need people. No matter the age.

While I know in my head that people need people, unfortunately relationships take time to build and I took that ingredient for granted in our North Carolina home. So, some days I wish I was my 6 year old daughter who can walk up to a complete stranger and say, "do you want to play with me?"  

Knowing it would be a challenge to meet people being a homeschooling mama I "forced" myself to join a home school co-op mid year and a bible study at the church we've been attending. So I've got two methods to get myself out mingling.

But it's only been three months since we've moved. So I do remind myself that time is the key. 

Good old fashioned time.

So, there's a snippet into PCS'ing. I "get" some things now that I didn't before from friends who have PCS'd more than me and for that I am grateful. Learned empathy is always something good to have in your back pocket. And most days I'm asking less "why why why" ;) One day I'll understand, again that takes, time.

But no matter how well I eventually blossom in this new town I think I will always have a North Carolina shaped whole in my heart.