Memorial Day my husband and marked our 7th year living in our house. I remember that day like it was yesterday. All our friends and relatives that could come were here helping us pack up and empty the truck. D and my sister went out for pizzas and didn't come back...for hours. The pizza parlor's ovens were broken and they didn't want to tell us, so they stalled because they wanted the huge order. They ended up going across town to another place while I held down the fort keeping everyone happy with beer.
After my hubby and sister came back victorious with pizzas in hand, everyone ate and sat on our beautiful wrap around porch watching my BIL try and get the moving van out of our driveway and turned around. It was an impossible task, it turned out, but amusing to watch. Because our street is so narrow the van couldn't be turned enough without driving onto someone's lawn. The road is also not in the best shape, there is a bit of a hump in the middle of it, which (now) has got some permanent, huge grooves in it from the truck's tailgate. BIL then went down the street asking our soon to be neighbors if he could pull the truck in THEIR driveways and see if he could pull the turnaround. No dice. Low wires and cars parked in the street thwarted all attempts. There were many guys in the street waving him on and guiding him. It was quite the entertainment. Eventually we all gave up. D and I ended up waking up at 4 in the morning so that we could back the truck all the way down our street and into the busy road at the end of it. It is the only time the road has no traffic, it turns out. I followed him to the local mini mall where D left the giant truck in the parking lot and then I brought him back so we could crash for a few more hours. We spent the rest of the day returning the truck, setting up our living room so that it was livable, and finally retrieving our pets from our old home and introducing them to the new one. On Wednesday I would drive D to the airport so he could go back to work in Virginia. He wouldn't be back in our new home for months.
Apart from having to unpack everything myself, I enjoyed the months alone to putter about our new house and yard. It gave me time to put my mental house in order along with the physical one. Our search for the perfect house for us had been one fraught with hope and compromises, a great deal of stress and more than a few tears shed. It didn't help that our search for a home was tangled up in the process of trying to start a family.
While trying to buy a house we were heartbroken and thwarted in our attempts several times. The most painful attempt was a fairly large and broken down Victorian, that in spite of its ugliness and awkward placement had become my heart's desire. Unfortunately, it was not to be. While walking through the house I had been able to see with my mind's eye what our children would look like, I could practically hear them running around upstairs, I could see their shoes, knee pads, and back packs lined up on the back stairway. The tiny room off of the master bedroom would make the perfect nursery. I had to have this place, because to not have it would be to accept that that family I saw wasn't to be...I had to do what I could to make that house ours so our family could come into being.
But no amount of hoping, wishing, and begging the Universe was going to make it mine. The house was in much too need of repair, and our lender wouldn't agree to let us burden ourselves with a (possibly) collapsing money pit. It was our second set back, and it wasn't going to be our last. We sank into despair for awhile and gave up looking. On the family building front, we were also at a stand still. After two years of trying, we had gone to specialists to figure out what was holding us back, and issues seemed to be twofold. I had a large fibroid that had taken up residence, which may or may not be affecting matters, and D's sperm was total, complete, garbage. The crappy sperm was blamed for our infertility, and we were told, that without a doubt, moving onto IVF was our only option. But before we could do that, we had to go to meeting upon meeting...with doctors, psychologists, money and insurance people, shot training and genetic counseling, blood work, and visits to an Ob/Gyn for me and a Urologist for D. The Infertility Circus would set us back another year before we could get started.
During that time we found the house that would be our home. It had all the lovely historic touches we craved, including a beautiful working fireplace...and it was in perfect shape. It was situated on a quiet, dead end street, with a 1/4 acre back yard...wooded and private. As we walked through the house we could hear kids playing in the street. But, it was small. Quaint, cute, adorable, cozy, whatever our real estate agent wanted to call it, it was small. Two bedrooms one bath, dining room, living room, kitchen...that was it. Tried as I might I couldn't picture a family living here. The sellers had two young children and needed to move on. This was a place for empty nesters, newly weds, a twenty-something just starting out. Buying this place was admitting to ourselves that we couldn't see the whole family thing working out for us, not for a long time, at any rate. We walked around the back and pointed to where a new addition could maybe, possibly be added, "when the time came". But I could tell by my husband's face that we were kidding ourselves. We would live in this place until our old age, with the sounds of other people's kids all around us, entertaining our families in the dining room with it's lovely built-ins, enjoying a cocktail in front of a roaring, non child-friendly fire with cats on our laps. It was a fine house, it would be a fine life, it just wasn't the one I wanted.
I suppose, that by the title of this blog, anyone can tell that things worked out differently than I expected. After major surgery to remove the fibroid, 4 rounds of IVF, and one heartbreaking miscarriage, we had twin boys. We started having fires only after the boys went to sleep, and the laundry in the basement drove me crazy. Then we started to potty train, and the 1 bathroom all the way on the second floor pushed us to have a potty chair in the living room 24/7. Then, in what may appear to be total madness, we decided to try for a third child. Understand...we didn't think it would work. We certainly didn't think it would happen quickly. We would have all the time in the world to reasses our housing situation. But it did work, quickly, after one failed FET attempt and one fresh IVF cycle a couple of months later, we were pregnant. Nearly fertile, of us, I have to say.
Now we are crammed...stuffed...full to bursting in our little house. Thankfully, joyfully, sadly full.
