more city, less harbor.

Hi, poor neglected little blog.  I haven't updated you since...March?  So let's get the depressing what-happened-since-then rundown out of the way:

- My dad died suddenly of a massive stroke.
- I had to bust ass to keep the business we ran together afloat.
- While massively pregnant.
- I re-homed my horses, due to the whole uncertain-business-and-new-baby situation, which means I am a non-horse-person for the first time in 21 years.  
- It was really, really hot, which is significantly lower on the Things That Suck spectrum but not when you're massively pregnant.
- Dave got a new job, taking pressure off the family business and generally being our hero.  
- We had another baby!  That part didn't suck.

- He spent some time in the NICU and was diagnosed with a congenital heart defect.  That did suck.

- The pediatric cardiologist determined that he will not need surgery, hooray!
- I replaced sleep with Dunkin Donuts coffee, if that wasn't immediately apparent. 

And now for a variety of factors, chief among them being the fact that Dave's new job is an hour away from our current home and his commute seriously decreases the hours in which I am not solely responsible for two tiny destructive people, we're adding a grand finale to The Summer Everything Changed: we're moving. 

When we settled into this cabin on the lake four years ago, a part of me thought we'd live here forever, that the house was a big creaky inanimate member of our family and we were somehow responsible for being stewards of this little patch of land.  I thought that if we ever left, I'd lose part of my identity.  It took the whole sweaty awful stress-bomb of a summer for me to realize that it's just a house, and it's not the right house for us anymore.  I can wax poetic about ducks and herons and changing leaves all day, but all I really want--and all that really matters--is the four of us around a dinner table every night.  Evenings and weekends not spent on a 45-minute stretch of highway between home and everywhere else.  Neighbors with kids.  Streetlights.  And for the love of God, affordable garbage pickup.

Home is where your family is.  And when you realize that you're holding on to a home at the expense of your family, it's time to move on.

So in two weeks we'll be taking two babies, a shaggy dog, and a bunch of Ikea furniture to a new townhouse an hour away.  I've poked around in my head and my heart, trying to find the wound that this might leave, and honestly?  It's not there.  I spent the past six months being sad, missing so many parts of our old life, beginning every sentence in my mind with 'This would be so much easier if..."  And six months is enough.  We've done our time in life-transitions purgatory and we're getting the hell out one way or another.

I'm excited for all the usual new-house stuff--starting fresh with blank walls and purged clutter, planning out rooms, etc.--but most of all I'm excited for what this will mean for the boys.  Deciding at the spur of the minute to go to the park or the library, or heading to a parade or festival without planning the entire day around it for travel time, is not something we've been able to do.  I want those experiences for them.  I also want to get out of the freaking house regularly without someone starting to scream 20 minutes into a 45-minute car ride.  It's the little things.

I should probably start packing.