THE STORY OF US: A home of our own

We've been waiting a long time for this. For about 10 years Neil and I have said to each other that when we finally get into a home will be able to... On February 2, we finally closed on our very first home. Despite the swell of emotions and excitement I felt at that time, amidst the packing and the chaos I had no time to write a real blog entry, nor could I find the energy to capture last moments of us in that old dear house, as much as I wanted to.

The last couple of months have been stressful, to say the least. With our house closing delayed twice, and our life packed up into boxes for too long, we had to take it one excruciating day at at time and hold faith that the day would come and it would actually happen .For about 2 months, the boxes took up half the house, and as each piled on top of the other and little by little accumulated most of our living space, so did my stress level rise up to new heights at trying to manage it all while still keeping Sailee safe. When you're in the middle of a move, no longer does babyproofing exist!

This move brought to mind so many thoughts about life and how we fill it. Every box I neatly packed
and labeled made me wonder why we have so many things! After all these years together, through so many moves and so many purges, how is it that we still have and need all of these things? The truth is that we dont, and over time, I hope that we can continue to work to simplify our lives, clear the clutter, and leave more room for the things that truly matter. This house should become a home to us, not because of the tangible items we will surely fill it with, but rather by the moments that connect us to it.
Sailee turned 18 months on January 16th, and none of this phased her a bit. She just maneuvered around and through and under and over and kept up all the usual games, and even invented new ones. Hide and seek took on a new level of thrill. At 18 months, Sailee is the same age that I was when my parents moved into that old house. She has taken to this new house as though she has been here forever, and with abundant new and spaces to explore, she is loving every square inch.

Already we are enjoying the increased space, and especially Sailee's booming voice that has taken on a new sound between these walls. Her vocabulary is exploding!. She approaches new words with a casual flair as though she has just always been that smart and maybe we just didnt realize it. I celebrate every little one, and she just looks at me like, "what's the big deal mom?" Her new words include open, shoe, up, down, book, Chewie, Daddy, Aaji (Marathi for grandma), home, and phone....and probably many more that I cannot even recall. The most hilarious out of her new repertoire is her version of Chewie, which mostly sounds like "toy" or "taowee." We also get overly excited about her use of words within context, and some small phrases. She will consistently say "Hi Mom," "Bye Daddy," "Chewie, NO!" and more recently, has started to say "Daddy home" when she hears the garage door, right before she goes into a fit of sheer squealy joy.

Sailee's just a sponge these days, and as she too quickly approaches age 2, her new developments are causing me each growing day to seek more balance in my life. I yearn to be there with her more, to teach her more, and to be a bigger part of her interests and her awareness of her world, to play more, be less tired, have more energy and dedicated time just for her. She deserves that, and I do too. I continue to dream of different ways to structure my life to have more of that, and have no real solutions just yet, but the wheels are turning!

We're having a lot of fun. Life is good. I've gotten to be really bad at taking pictures lately, in fact I still cant remember where we packed the cameras, despite Neil's nerdy organizational scheme for labeling our boxes that looked like an algebraic equation! So I have resorted to using my cell phone exclusively, which makes for some pretty bad pictures...

Here are some recent pictures of our little fam...