A move and a basketball hoop

Now that my family and I have made our move to the Chicagoland area, I am finding that it has been more difficult on my 2 year old that I thought.  At first he didn’t seem unphased by all of the change.  He got really excited when he saw the “BIG TWUK” outside the South Bend house…the truck that was coming to take all of our things away.  He didn’t even seem bothered by fact that strangers were packing up all of his toys into boxes where he couldn’t play with them.

However, things started to take its toll on the little guy once we actually got to Illinois.  We had arranged to live in a furnished apartment for a couple of months, but it wouldn’t be ready for another four days.  So, off to the hotel we went.  This was actually pretty fun for him at first.  It was sorta small, but the indoor pool was right outside of our room and every time we took the dogs out, he would say “Wanna go pool, Mommy”.    Unfortunately, because of the small space, he couldn’t get too many toys out and nap time was really difficult.   Normally he had no difficulties going to sleep.   In the hotel space, however,  I had to lie down close to his bed for awhile just to get him to consider a nap.  Going to sleep at night was also a challenge.  He wanted to lie down in the bed with us, which is not something I allowed.  We finally realized that we weren’t doing all of his little bedtime routines.  Once we started reading more books and singing his favorite songs, he started to adjust.  By the time we had actually gotten used to the space and developed a routine, it was time to pack our stuff up again and make another temporary move.

We loaded up all of our belongings…again…and set ourselves up in a two bedroom, two bath, first floor apartment.  Our first day in the apartment was yesterday and as we were putting all of our clothes and groceries away, my son walks into the living area and says, “I’m ready go home, Mommy.”  My heart just crumbled.  To him, we were just on vacation and he’d had enough visiting.  He was ready to sleep in his bed again.  We had to try to explain to him that this is where we are going to be living for now.  Luckily, my husband and I took great care to make sure that we had many of his favorite things with us in the apartment, particularly, the four foot basketball hoop that my son just LOVES. That has made it a lot easier for him. “Play basketball hoooops, Mommy” is a very common phrase for me to hear and having it out on our small patio has worked out well.

Now that we’ve had our house offer accepted we can begin to make plans to move into a new house.  Hopefully, that will be an easier transition that it has been to the apartment.