Return to my life...as it should be

We moved back to New Jersey last week and into our new home this past Monday. The walk-through was a disaster, as we tried to imagine our this house without the seller's belonging in it. We had to try to imagine it empty because with twenty-five minutes left until settlement, they were still taking their belongings out. The place was filthy, there was a Mustang with no engine up on jacks across the street, the engine and other random car parts in the driveway, motor oil and other combustibles strewn across the lawn...it wasn't pretty. Then we went to closing, and the sellers didn't show for another hour and fifteen minutes. Again, not pretty. Long story short, they finally got all of their "stuff" off of our property on Thursday. They also may have been secretly using this house as a fraternity, like in Old School, because that is the only explanation with which I can come up to explain the utter filth and funk that was left behind. But now the house is clean, and we certainly do have our work cut out for us...but I love this place. I love the rooms, the way our belongings look in them already, the way Erin and Meghan are so happy and peaceful. But mostly I love the fact that our house has been filled with our friends and family for the past five days. It just feels so much better to have them with us and near us and in and out of our door.

So I'm back...back to the homeland, back where things make sense and shopping is ridiculously accessible, back to the place that I call home, not because of what it looks like or where it is, but because of how it feels to be a family here and for all the people who we love and love us who are clearly as happy to have us back as we are to be back.

Now I have embarked on the path of "teaching" Elizabeth (or torturing her, depending on how you look at it) how to fall asleep on her own. She has been playing me like a cheap fiddle and I'm realizing that my motherhood-amnesia has gotten the best of me with this kid. I kept telling myself that I couldn't remember how to do this sleep-through-the-night thing, that it had been too long and she'll get there when she's ready. I've been so afraid to see her as a "normal" baby, so if she cries, I'm there to hold and feed and rock...and so, seven months later, that's exactly where she wants me. It has become a problem. So today I required her to put herself to sleep for both of her naps, and she did it, but it was so painful. She cried and screamed and coughed and choked on her dramatic phlegm and cried some more. And I know that this is the right thing to do, but it is so painful. For both of us. At bedtime tonight, things didn't go as smoothly as planned, but she is now asleep and I will just take the remaining hours of the night as they come. But I will not feed her no matter how hard she cries. This I promise.

If I am committed to making sure that life gets on a normal, predictable path, I must accomplish this. I have to get her on a schedule that includes sleeping through the night. I'm going to lose my mind otherwise.

I guess this is the point in every mommy-baby relationship where tough love rears its ugly little head. And so I have to get tough because I love her. I did it for Erin but not for Meghan, and now Meghan still can't cope without her pacifier. Ugh, I just admitted it...my four year old still has her pacifier and I have no immediate intentions of removing it from her person. And now anyone who may read this will know.

Thank God there aren't that many of you out there.