Bittersweet Move??

So, if you have ever talked to me for more than five minutes, you know that I hated, loathed, despised, and resented the duplex we lived in. When we moved to the 'burg, we had only one income and already had a mortgage so we moved into a duplex that was. . .awful because it was all we could afford. Everyday, I would look around that place in disgust. The old carpet, the bland walls, the unidentifiable smells, the refrigerator held together with tape, the cigarette burns on the bathroom counter, the loud neighbors on the other side of the wall. UGH!! My blood boils just thinking about it.

I was so excited to find this house. It is clean, we could paint, it had a backyard, no noisy neighbors. It is in a nice neighborhood. We came over and painted. We talked to Kerington about moving to the house. She would ask to go to, "house?" She would tell us she was "movin." I painted one of Kerington's walls pink (something I had been dreaming about since she was born). She liked "house."

Wednesday night, I went to dinner with a friend. When I got home Steve told me Kerington was moving her rugs and chairs and baby doll crib out of the room. He said he asked her what she was doing and she said she was, "movin." Poor baby was confused, I decided I would talk to her some more about this being where we lived now, etc.

Thursday, we went to check out of the smelly, old, nasty duplex. We arrived a little early to make sure everything was clean and I had not forgotten anything. Kerington walked into her old bedroom and said, "room mommy, my room" I nearly broke down right there. To her, it was not a gross, yucky, dirty duplex. It was her home. That is where she learned to crawl and learned to walk. It is where she took her first bite of cereal, ate her first bite of cake, it is where she first sat in time out. It is where we had her first Christmas, where she turned one and two, she got her first tooth, she first sat in a high chair, she first sat in a booster seat.

So while I loathed that smelly, old, nasty duplex, we had a lot of happy family memories while we lived there. I know we will make happy family memories here, and Kerington loves her pink wall (maybe not as much as me). I just did not anticipate that it might be an adjustment for her. So while I never thought I would say this, it was kind of a bittersweet move.