It’s a local move, and we don’t have to be out of the house immediately, so nothing is particularly high stakes. We can come back and get stuff. I’m sure we will. But still — it is a lot of moving parts.

I spent the past week feeling a lot of nostalgia as I took things down from the walls and packed up toys and plants and loose items that would be hard to move.

If the nostalgia was robust, I’m not sure the progress was. Looking back, this was probably not the most efficient process. We split up the family for the post Christmas week. My husband took the four older kids on a ski trip and I stayed home with the toddler (since I don’t really ski and he doesn’t yet — so we’d just be hanging out in a rental house rather than our own house, which has his familiar crib and toys…). I had some childcare, and I used that time to take bins of stuff over to the new house. But I am only so fast, and I am one person. Plus when I did have the toddler with me, moving stuff was painfully slow. Once the rest of the family came home, my husband and I could both load stuff in cars, and the teen/pre-teen children could carry things and unload them and I made as much progress yesterday as I did during the entire week. Moving turns out to be a team sport.

I am telling myself it will all happen eventually. I did record a few more episodes of Before Breakfast, and I did some revisions on the book. I edited emails for the time-tracking challenge that will run from January 10-16. And I spent a lot of time with the toddler. We played with his new toys, read a lot of stories and (yes) watched a lot of Blippi.

The new house wi-fi is definitely up and running so we’ll have that. We’ll see when the address change gets registered with the school district, though, so bus service is unclear. We may wind up driving for a while. The logistics are making my head spin. Well, one day at a time for the first week or two and then I’m sure we’ll get into the groove.

I did not stay up until midnight on New Year’s Eve. I went to bed around 11:15, but then the toddler woke up howling around 12:45, so I guess I rang it in in my own way…

(Though honestly he’s been pretty good about sleep this week — slept through the night most nights, and not too early in the mornings, and I don’t think that would have happened in a rental house, so I’m feeling good about that.)

We had a belated 2-year-old birthday celebration with the other kids last night. We even had half of an ice cream cake sitting in the freezer so we pulled that out for everyone to have a few bites. The little guy managed to blow out his candle quite well and is getting the concept of opening presents (though he had a lot of help there…all the other children seemed to want to help him!)

I have read about half-way through Twelfth Night in my Shakespeare reading project! I hope anyone who started reading War and Peace has enjoyed the first few chapters….

But as the little guy rounds toward his second birthday, and as he becomes better able to communicate, it has been so fun to watch the sibling interactions. Older siblings are built-in toddler entertainment. Anything they do is tremendously exciting. They teach him words. He often prefers them to his parents — on one car trip he wanted crackers but refused to take the crackers from me and would only take them from his 6-year-old brother. I have taken the 10-year-old along when picking him up at a babysitter’s house because I know he never wants to get strapped into the carseat, but if she’s there in the car…

They all fight like crazy. On the other hand, they are members of a club that I can observe but will never be part of. It’s fun to see the little guy wear hand-me-downs that I remember from the big boys. And the shoes! Big ones, little ones, all lined up. We don’t have too many more years where they are all under one roof. I try to remember that when lining up seven plates on the kitchen island.

Anyway, he’s continued to do his own thing ever since. There are inevitably personality clashes. Readers of Off the Clock know all about our bedtime battles. The good news about him being kid #4 is that I’ve relaxed a reasonable amount. I’m not going to die on the hill of whether we eat crackers for breakfast.

And when he does do his own thing, he’s quite the champ. I am impressed with his physical coordination. He loves his karate class. He once scored something like 8 goals in a game in his 4-year-old soccer league. He’s eager to learn whatever he can, especially (in classic rebel fashion) if one of his older siblings is claiming he’s too little to know something. This morning at breakfast one of the older children was quizzing him on multiplication and he nailed the answers. (Yet another reason fourth children don’t need flash cards…)

He is adjusting to his new role as big brother, rather than the baby of the family. I can’t say it has been easy. There has been a lot of acting out, but when he snuggles his baby brother, it is the sweetest thing in the world (see Instagram, @lvanderkam, for a few pics). And we’re trying to spend some time together, during which I occasionally see the softer side. I took him to his Little Gym class last Friday. On the car ride home, unprompted, he announced “I love you mommy!” The other kids never do that anymore, so I’m totally there for this. Happy birthday little dude!

*I generally don’t put my children’s names on the blog, not because it’s a big secret, but because of the search engine factor. I imagine they may want to create their own digital identities some day; my 12-year-old, for instance, has used his real name when guest blogging here because that’s something he does want to put out into the world.