Gaaaack!

As you may have read, we are moving. Packing up, picking up and leaving for Toronto. I really think people with children should reconsider ever moving anywhere until the kids are launched. A few reasons:

1) Children will dig up toys with 10,000+ pieces that they haven't played with in months once they get a whiff that tidy house is required. These toys are intricate enough that they require days upon days of setting up, and any hint of dismantling or putting them away will result in tears, devastation, and cries of "Why do we haaaaaaave to moooooove!" Grace currently has a structure composed of hundreds of bright, colourful straws and joints in the the works - and this is being engineered in the hallway of course because she doesn't want her own room cluttered. Edie is currently throwing down a story-line akin to Gone With the Wind, which is being re-enacted by a kajillion Polly Pockets (epic, absolutely epic stuff with multiple costume changes, and no, the discarded costumes do not get put away in the designated Polly Pocket box).

2) They will also detect freshly painted walls and washed windows and draaaaaaag their fingers along them,which is a crime in itself, but a travesty of justice after they have consumed freshly baked, warm and oozy peanut butter and chocolate chip cookies.

3) They will cry with zero abandon over the loss of friendships due to the move, and then after I work my ass off to arrange play dates they flippantly state that they would rather stay home with me, actually.

4) When asked to clean their rooms up, they will do a seemingly remarkable job, but when I go to do their laundry I go gray with the realization that they have stuffed their clean, neatly folded laundry (that I asked them to put away days ago) into their dirty laundry bags, and there is no way to way to distinguish the clean from the dirty. I outta just shove the kids in my frontloader at the end of the day.

5) They will prove over and over again, that at ages 6 and 9, they are indeed not too old for sippy cups (buy stock in paper towels yo). Milk, orange juice, apple juice, it all gets spilled. Except water. They are remarkably adept at not spilling water.

Actually, husbands get in the way of a move tremendously as well, for the following 2 reasons:

1) They (and by they I mean Jo) give no warning at all that they painted the floor of the utility room, and look put-off when you tell them you walked through their wet paint.

2) The beautiful marble counter tops that have been buffed and polished to a sheen that they have never had before are immaculate and void of any clutter, except for a lone, homeless baseball cap. If eyes could bleed.......

Someone should do a head count at the end of the day our our first Open House - I can't guarantee their safety after these episodes.