Buried Treasure

"My flip-flops!" Oscar's joyous shout fills the house. The flip-flops have been missing for almost a year now, and I had long assumed them to be left at a park or sucked away into that void of forever lost treasures. And here they were all along, stuck under the dresser.

The move has officially begun. No, not to a larger house. A slightly smaller move. It is time to move Matilda out of the nursery. Yes, I can hear you hysterically laughing about the term "nursery" to describe the ten-foot by ten-foot space the kids have shared until now. Or are you crying? But what better term than "nursery" - a room occupied with all our children and toys. Anyway, we have begun to transform the "nursery" into "the boys' room."

You may be wondering how we will do this magical feat in our two bedroom home? How will we all sleep? A space time continuum perhaps where Matilda and Geoff and I can all share the same room at the same time and not trip over each other? Has this been invented in Star Trek? Think of the environmental impact! But no. We are merely changing our household psychology. Instead of Matilda coming into our room every night to sleep, we will be going into her room to sleep. Look at that - I just solved our space problem and our sleep problem all at once!

When I proposed this change, Geoff asked, "Why? Why NOW?" He means, "Why can't we wait until we complete (start) the sleeping porch addition on our house?"

I really have no good answer to this question. Because I am impatient. Because it feels right. Because it is better to move us gradually. Because it will help motivate us to the next step. Because I am tired of stepping on Legos.

The Legos. It's the Legos fault. I want them out of my living room and into the boys' room. The special shelf, special bin, special box idea is no longer cutting it. The boys need their own space. We are growing.

So we begin the move.

We are repaid for our furniture moving efforts - in flip-flops, buttons, the lost mitten, coins, coupons, toy cars. And all of this just by moving two dressers out from the wall. And as we are moving and organizing and cleaning, we are counting our material blessings.

We are five people living in a very small house. But we have STUFF! This is better than a trip to the mall!