settling in.

The best part about moving and unpacking our whole kitchen on Friday night was that we had a bona fide home-cooked meal our very first night here. I whisked my favorite Happy Herbivore stir-fry sauce and sauteed a couple heads of broccoli and a bell pepper and spooned it all over quinoa and the four of us sat down to dinner together. With our own dishes. In our own kitchen. It was truly great.

David and I worked hard unpacking on Saturday and I scrubbed the bathroom from top to bottom, then we shoved every extra box and pile of junk into our office/guest room and shut the door. David left Sunday morning for a two day worship-service-planning trip, and while my whole body got itchy every time I cast a glance in the general direction of the office, I refused to let myself open that door.

We learned this trick from our last move: to do our best to set up the bedrooms and main living areas right away, then hide all the extras away, to be unpacked a box at a time at our leisure. It allows us to immediately start to live in our new surroundings and, because we’ve started with the essentials, it (for the most part) prevents frantic rifling through boxes looking for an oven mitt or vegetable peeler. Although our kids have a knack for ignoring their nearly-completed bedroom and begging for the couple things I’ve yet to unpack. Sigh.

Anyway, as much as I wanted to keep working, to keep compulsively settling in, I realized that what I needed even more was to rest. I realized this at 10:30 Sunday morning, when I felt myself beginning to doze off while sitting on the sofa with the kids. My mind and my body said, “You need a day off.”

And so, I obliged.

Have I mentioned that I love our house? This all still feels surreal — that it’s really and truly ours. And none of us can get over how much we like it. Judah and Amie still dance through the rooms at random and sing, “We love our new house!” Of course I’ve realized that this is the first place we’ve lived that we’ve really chosen, among all the options and factors. So it’s a good thing we like it best.

On Sunday afternoon I pulled out the gluten-free oats and the maple syrup and the last ziplock bag of pecans in our freezer and I made Mom Gentino’s Everyday Granola. I know some of you may think I’m crazy, taking on a baking project on our first full day here, but cooking and baking comfort me. I can’t explain why. It’s a way for me to create order when my world feels out of order. It’s a way for me to be at home. It makes me happy.

Shari and the boys came over Sunday evening and we played and cooked dinner and went on a walk, and I felt my whole body resting. It felt so good that I decided that this will be, as much as possible, a Week of Rest. Not just because I need it, because my kids need it. And what’s more, they need me to rest.

So I made the decision, We are not getting in the car and going anywhere until David comes home. I read a great post on Apartment Therapy that said one of the ways to enjoy your home more is to consciously spend time in your home — rather than rush out to make all your memories elsewhere. This doesn’t come naturally for me, it’s something I have to learn.

We’ve had some visitors, but even so I felt jumpy and on edge at first. At every sign of boredom from my kids I wanted to drive to the nearest park, to keep them busy. But no. After the craziness of this month, we could all do with some boredom. So right now we stay home. Beyond the bare essentials of laundry and cooking dinner (and, as it happened, an emergency trip to the Columbia Water main office when our water got turned off yesterday), I focus my attention on Judah and Amie. We read lots of books. We color in their Disney Junior coloring book. We play with their Melissa and Doug magnetic dolls. We hang out with our friends who come to visit. They watch a whole movie every afternoon. We go on lots of scooter walks.

I take naps and drink decaf coffee and English Breakfast tea and yesterday I started a new book. I sit and soak in every delightful aspect of our house. Like the paint colors. I love these soft, airy walls after months in a house with heavy dark walls.

We’ve got lots of ideas for our space. Ideas I will share with you over time. But for now, there are just two big projects we will focus on: sewing living room window treatments, and taming the back yard and putting in the first raised garden bed. Other than that, we’ve most definitely maxed out our Move In budget, and all our schemes will have to wait. I find that I’m very okay with that.

Over the years my anxiety has fixated on the urge to settle in to the current place we live in, to unpack everything, to hang curtains and pictures on the walls, to make the space feel like home as soon as humanly possible. David has loved me through my compulsions, he’s understood that this is a way to serve me in the upheaval of our life.

But now.

Now I am home, whether everything gets done this week or not. It might take awhile for that realization to sink in.