Moving With Toddlers: The Good, The Bad, and The New

We’ve known that we’ve been wanting to move for a while. As our family grew, we realized that we were quickly outgrowing our home. We wanted a bigger house in a school district where we’d be happy sending our boys to the assigned schools all the way until college. A couple of months ago, everything just seemed to fall in to place and soon enough, we were moving!

I could go on and on about the difficulties of moving with toddlers, but that just seems a little too obvious because how could it not be difficult?! We’ve managed with lots of screen time, junk food, and help from grandparents. But heck – IT IS HARD. Between getting our house painted (Sherwin Williams Online is the way to go), trying to make important decisions on light fixtures (amongst other things), and moving ALL THE THINGS that have piled up at our old house for the past 5 years, all while trying to take care of two very busy, needy toddlers left us completely exhausted. But we are finally getting close to being all moved in, and we can see the light. YAY!

Something that I wasn’t expecting is how smoothly the boys have transitioned to our new home. My oldest can be a pretty anxious kid sometimes, so we had really been talking up the new house and how exciting it was going to be to move. Both of the boys have exceeded my expectations for how well they’ve been doing during this huge transition. We moved our oldest into a full size bed with no railings, which I was worried about because he is a wild sleeper, and he has been doing so well! We also had our youngest, who is almost 2, transition out of his crib and into a twin size bed. We started with the mattress on the floor in his room, which I think is the way to go because he’s rolled out of it a couple times in the past week. He also has slept longer than he’s EVER slept at home a couple of times so far – EXCEEDING my expectations!

The boys are so excited to be in our new house. Sometimes they’ll start a chant “NEW HOUSE, NEW HOUSE!” when we pull up in the driveway, which is one of my favorite things ever.

I think I went in to moving with very low expectations … that it would be difficult. The boys would miss the old house. They wouldn’t understand that we wouldn’t be living at our old house anymore. They wouldn’t transition to their new beds well. All in all though, it seems like I worried more than I should have. Of course we’ve had some difficulties, but I think I’ve learned a few key things about moving with toddlers:

1. TALK IT UP: Make everything about the move sound exciting. Be moving’s “hype man.” The more excited the kids are about moving in to a new house seems to cancel out any worries about leaving the old house.
2. SET LOW EXPECTATIONS: I went in to moving with very low expectations on how everything would go, assuming that everything would be fairly difficult. Going into it with low expectations helps you to not get discouraged, and it makes it easy for things to exceed your expectations!
3. GET LOTS OF SNACKS: Whenever we need a few minutes to pack/unpack, make important decisions, etc. etc. we just whip out some snacks and it buys us a few minutes. Fruit snacks, popsicles, fruit. Whatever will give us some time to think.
4. SAY YES TO SCREEN TIME: Another thing that will give us a few minutes is putting on the boys’ favorite shows. Paw Patrol and Ninja Turtles have been steadily on repeat over here and have helped us many times during our move.

With all of this being said, I’m pretty sure we won’t be moving again until our kids are off to college! Have you ever moved with toddlers? What were some helpful things that y’all figured out during the move, and would you move again with toddlers?