Hannah has seen a variety of people coming in and out of our home these last few months. I haven’t gone completely into the story with her, but have talked about some parts of the house being dirty or needing fixed. Lately, the focus has been on our bathtub. This last week, we’ve had several contractors come by to take a look at it and submit their bids to the County. I don’t want her to be freaked out or worried by anything, so the dudes are just checking things out. Making sure everything is good.
Today though, I took the whole conversation farther. Now that we have the nod from the County to proceed, Hannah is going to need to know what’s going on. We were on our way to the U-haul store, for some packing paper, when I thought I’d better start filling her in. I know, that at 3 1/2 years old, I have *maybe* 2 solids minutes of her attention, but certainly no more than that. I told her that we’re going to start packing up the house. Remember when we packed up old house, and you helped put everything in boxes? And then we moved here, to new house, and we unpacked them all? Well, it’s time for us to pack up this house now! We’re going to take all of our stuff, our books, our toys, our food, and pack it up in boxes. Then once everything is packed, those dudes who have been looking at the bathtub are going to come paint it AND the house. I really had her attention at this point, because she let out an, “oooooooh!” That’s right. They’re going to paint the whole house! And once they’re done, we’ll come back home and unpack all our stuff. But while they’re working, we have to stay somewhere else. So, we’ll go up to hoo-hoo’s house, okay?
We’re not really going to move into hoo-hoo’s house for the entire month, it’d be too hard to keep the girls away from Lance that long. I figure we’ll be up at Mom’s for maybe a week or two, before we gypsy our way down the road. But, while we figure out where our next stop is, all Hannah needs to know is that we’re going to hoo-hoo’s. She was off and running with that, asking when, when, when? I know time is such a hard concept for kids to grasp, so I told her once our last box is packed, we’ll hit the road. During our conversation, Eliza had been squealing and babbling up a storm. I asked Hannah if she’d explain to Eliza what was going on while Mommy kept driving. “Sure Mommy, I’d be happy to!”
“Okay, Eliza…Mommy said we’re going to pack up all the boxes.” *squeal, squeal* “Ya, I know Eliza, I know, it’s very exciting isn’t it? And then, when we’re done packing, we get to go to hoo-hoo’s house. You member hoo-hoo? I will sleep in hoo-hoo’s bed, you can sleep in Mommy’s room, and okay.” “That good Mommy?” Then she and Eliza continued chattering and squealing about our move. I could hear Hannah keep wanting to say Grandma and Grandpa, but was correcting herself and saying “No, no just grandma”. Then finally, she stopped and asked me, “No grandpa? Hoo-hoo not have a grandpa?” I wasn’t really expecting to cover that in this conversation too…
I had to think for a minute before I said, “Nope, no Grandpa hoo-hoo, he died.” She’d recently been putting died and flowers together, so she gets the concept. I went on to tell her that, “Remember how Eleanor and Mesa died? Grandpa hoo-hoo died too. Remember we went to see his rock that one day with Grandma?” I got an, “ohhh, yep, and there were lots of rocks there? Okay, so we leave today after naps?”
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