The home stretch

It would be an unusual feeling, except that it feels just like it has for the past 4 years. May 2008 - getting ready to move to New Zealand. May 2009 - getting ready to move to Charlottesville. May 2010 - getting ready to move to New York City. May 2011 - getting ready to move to DC.

I've made the requisite enquiries. School and jobs are set up, so we're at the point where we figure out everything else. Cars. Furniture. Doctors. The extra varients like dance, gymnastics, neighborhood pool, hippotherapy, PT/OT/speech. Can I stress it enough? We've done it for the past four years.

And wrapping up our current life. Like finally feeling like we're figuring out life in one location before turning the transfer switch and ending up somewhere else. Doing the "end of year" school stuff for Lilly, figuring out what to do with furniture that won't go with us (everything but clothes and toys), saying our goodbyes. Setting up the logistics of flights and moving and hotels and where we'll be when. Yet we've done that for the past four years too.

One foot out the door, one foot getting ready to step into a new door. Of a house I haven't even seen in person yet, which is unnerving. But we've done that for the past four years as well.

I'm excited and slightly nervous about this next move because it's permanent. We have to make it work and start off on the right foot because we're not moving again in a year this time. We'll set down our roots and hope we meet good friends for us and for Lilly. Hoping we like her school and that Jon likes his job and figuring out what the heck I'm going to do - continue to work part time at what I know and love, or spread my wings for potentially bigger and better? Hard to decide.

And like each year for the past four years, we're saying goodbye to a lifestyle and saying hello to another. Starting to say things to Lilly like, "Soon you won't go in taxi's or take the subway anymore, we're going to get a real car!" Just like two years ago it was warning her that we'd be driving on the wrong side of the road (again) and preparing her that she'll live in a new house (or her old house or a house on a cliff or the eighteenth floor of an apartment in the Upper East Side). Telling her about how much she's going to love her new school and meet new friends, and preparing her to say goodbye to her current friends - especially her best friends, her NY cousins.

Each place we go to is a lifestyle change; we couldn't pick 4 more different cities to live in the past four years, and none are even comparable to our "hometown" of Atlanta. A small town, a foreign country, the big apple, and the suburbs of the nation's capital. I almost feel like I'm having a taste of the Real Housewives of wherever with each move.

But I'm excited. I'm already thinking of ways to spoil my little girl when we get to our new house. Like, hopefully, a trampoline or some kind of swingset for the backyard. And a karaoke machine, very important. And her own bathroom (thank goodness!). And maybe, if I can get really domestic, a little garden - even if it's just herbs in pots on the windowsill. And most of all, promises that we'll be back in Manhattan for Radio City Rockettes Christmas show next winter, and for Annie's return to Broadway in 2012.

And as always, we never move without Lilly's typical "get on an airplane and do something Disney" along the way. On the way to NY, and on the way home from New Zealand we went to Disney World. On the way to New Zealand we went to Disneyland. And so in just 2 months from now we will get on our Disney Cruise in Barcelona and tour the Mediterranean. Just so Lilly has her "normal" Disney transition, of course. (And because moving is not expensive enough on its own, so let's add a vacation at the same time, right?)

Life is interesting, I think. I'm half excited, half dreading, half anticipating, half nervous (4 halfs?) about the next month of closing up shop and getting ready to settle in again. But maybe I'm most nervous about - for the first time since Lilly was born - actually giving up our adventures and tourist lifestyle for a "real" life. But maybe it's about time.