My Little One,
Tonight is the first night in our new house. The walls are bare, and the smell of fresh paint still lingers. The space echoes with emptiness because most of our things are still carefully packed away in boxes. My back aches with exhaustion because it’s been a day full of heavy lifting, cleaning, and organizing, but it’s time to go to sleep now because tomorrow will be another long one.
Our bedtime routine feels different – your books are in a different order, the rocking chair isn’t next to the crib anymore, and not only is your room no longer next to ours — it’s now on an entirely different floor. Normally after we talk about what we’re grateful for, you climb into bed without protest, but tonight you cried and I rocked you.
“I want to go to our house.”
“This is our house now, baby.”
“I want to go to the blue house.”
They say the only constant in life is change, but change isn’t always easy – especially for little ones. Our old house is the only home you’ve ever known — the home where we became a family of three.
That little blue house will forever hold a place in my heart because it’s the backdrop for countless memories that I have made since I became your mommy…
It will always be the house that I organized and decorated when I was pregnant with you. Everything had to be perfect for my baby.
It’s the house where we brought you home from the hospital and introduced you to our pup. She licked you and tried to figure out if you were going to stay.
It’s the house where you had many firsts — first smile, first word, first steps.
It’s the house where we crammed more people than would fit around the kitchen table to sing Happy Birthday to you when you turned one year old.
My heart also aches a little for our familiar space because leaving it means saying goodbye to a chapter in my life that I always want to hold close. So instead of explaining all the wonderful things about the new house, I just told you that I knew how you felt and sang you lullabies and tickled your back until the tears stopped and your breathing slowed.
Tonight is the first night of many in our new house, a house that will someday feel like a home. The new will soon feel normal, and we’ll create more memories together to fill up the space. We’ll become a family of four here, and you’ll teach the new baby everything that you know. You’re going to be such an amazing big brother.
Someday I’ll drive you past the old house and you won’t be able to remember what it looks like on the inside, because although right now it’s the only home you’ve known, it will soon be a blip in the memory of your childhood.
I know change can be hard, my baby, but change can also be exciting. We’ll discover the next chapter together, and it’s going to be amazing. You’ll see…
