Dear Paxton,
Here we are, our little family, in what seems like a perpetual state of homelessness.
Our last moments in our house were far from what I had imagined. I thought we’d have time. I thought it would be organized. I thought we’d get a cute little family picture by the front door. The place where we began. Instead it was rushed, emotional, and full of people. There was no family picture. In fact, instead of posing for a picture, I sat with you in the kitchen of Grandma and Grandpa’s house and I cried. I didn’t stop crying for a long time. If I only would’ve known, I could’ve been prepared.
We moved in with Grandma and Grandpa Powell. We put our belongings in their extra garage and we lived out of boxes, laundry baskets, and spent a lot of time searching through piles. We slept in the basement, all three of us (4 with Jersey), which was somewhere between negative 20 degrees and a chilly 65. They went above and beyond to make sure we felt at home in their house, had the room we needed, and that we were comfortable. They let us stack boxes in their kitchen, spread our laundry in their living room. When you’re staying with someone else, no matter what the circumstances, it’s hard to feel like you’re not in the way. I’m reminded of a show your daddy likes to watch called “The Big Bang Theory.” There is a character named Sheldon, who suffers from OCD (I think your daddy can relate and that’s why he likes it). When Sheldon gets a roommate, he has him sign a ‘roommate agreement’ specifying what times he will take a shower, use the bathroom, eat his meals, where he will sit, and what kind of company is allowed. For someone such as myself, with no routine whatsoever… it’s a weird feeling to feel like you are always stepping on someone’s toes. Grandma and Grandpa were so good about making us feel like their home was our home. Katie came there to watch you while we finished up the school year. You loved the chance to play with your cousins- Grady and Liam every day. I would take you and visit Grammy and Pop-Pop on the weekends in between picture sessions. Life went from crazy to crazier.
Your dad and I both ended up with a stomach bug and then a day later I had a terrible migraine where my vision was surrounded by little dots- floating and shooting across my eyes. It all hit on my birthday. Birthdays are a big deal to me and usually I spend the whole month celebrating mine. The teachers bring treats, I like to go out for dinner, the whole shebang. Being sick is one thing. Being sick and not having a house is a whole different thing. Being sick, homeless, taking care of a toddler and having it all be my birthday was an entire ball of bouncing fun.
The process of switching my license over to Colorado was less than desirable and certainly wasn’t easy. It was a 38 step online application, fingerprints, essay questions, and preparing for a 4 week orientation starting July 7th. I learned that my benefits (insurance) wouldn’t start until October 1st with my new job in Colorado, and that they would end August 31st with my past teaching job in Illinois. That left me with one month without insurance, the month of September…and of course that was the month your little brother was supposed to arrive. If I only would’ve known, I could’ve been prepared. We learned that we couldn’t get pre-approved to put an offer on a house until we both had signed contracts with our yearly salaries. We watched one, then two, then three houses that we loved slip away. I learned that while I had taken not one, not two, not three, but SEVEN certification tests for my degree, none of them transferred to Colorado. I was highly qualified in crazy things in Illinois, but was not even qualified to teach at all in Colorado. The answer= more tests at $115 a piece. These tests are a lot easier fresh out of college than they are when you’ve been teaching things like colors, letters, numbers, and maybe some basic mathematics for 6 years. When they started throwing around questions about various wars, branches of governments, parts of cells, cinquains, algebra and syntactic structure of various passages…I was lost. I kept thinking, if I only would’ve known, I could’ve been prepared. When I finished the test, they give you the option to cancel your scores. If you cancel, they won’t send them to the agencies you’ve listed. If you cancel, you won’t even see if you’ve passed or not. If you cancel though, you don’t have to wait another month to take the test. I stared at that computer screen for a long time trying to decide if I should cancel, prepare, and take it again. Ultimately, either God took my hand and helped move it to the “report scores” button, or I had some strange muscle spasm and my hand did it involuntarily, but I passed.
Somewhere in this, I’ll be honest, I started to regret this leap, this whole being so adventurous thing. I started to think I couldn’t really do this. That maybe I could have if we knew all of this going into it. If I only would’ve known, I could’ve been prepared. Maybe I could swing it if I wasn’t pregnant. I hated feeling that way. I don’t look back after I make decisions, but every single fiber of my body was saying that I had screwed up. I was sick over the thought of leading our family in the wrong direction. My belly started growing and my fears grew with it. All of the sudden I had been faced with packing up a house, a classroom, a studio. I couldn’t lift heavy boxes, I couldn’t keep up with you, and things seemed to be unraveling all around me. I learned that panic attacks and heartburn feel very similar and I’m not really sure which I’ve been having more of. I had fellow teachers, friends, coming into my classroom to tell me goodbye. I felt like I was choking from the inside out. When I moved to the little town of Auburn, I had no idea that the people I would meet would become my lifelong friends. People I care about so deeply, that have been with me through 6 years of meeting your dad, getting married, switching positions, getting pregnant, having you, then finding out there was a surprise on the way! If I only would’ve known, I could’ve been prepared.
I’ve heard it over and over again, “Jackie, you’ll look back on this and laugh.” I call BS on that. I won’t look back and laugh. I will look back and say, “That was really hard, and really stupid, but it was also the best thing for our family, our little girl and our little boy on the way.” I’m not leading this family in the wrong direction, I’m helping steer our family towards more family (Uncle Logan, Aunt Kelsey, Baby Martin on the way –wooohooo, and Grammy and Pops). Leading towards more family is never the wrong direction. Grammy asked me one time right after I found out I was pregnant and was mildly, or majorly freaking out, “Jackie, what’s the most important thing to you- is it to be in Colorado? To have a house? To have a job you love?” That questions was easy, the most important thing is you. In Colorado, you wouldn’t go to daycare with someone I know nothing about, you would go to Grammy and Pop-pop’s house. Decision made. Knowing you will be taken care of is the most important decision we can make as your parents.
So here we are, homeless. Jumping from address to address in a matter of weeks. I think the post office thinks I’m messing with them to see if they can keep up. I’m not sure I can even keep up. Your daddy is still living with Grandma and Grandpa Powell right now. He’s working during the day trying to save up some extra money. As soon as school was out on June 9th, you and I moved to Clinton with Grammy and Pop-pop. We are staying here for 2 weeks until their house closes, and then we’ll move back in with Grandma and Grandpa Powell for a week before packing up all of our things in a trailer and heading out to Colorado on June 28th. It’s a weird feeling to watch them pack up their house- my childhood home. I’m so glad you’re here during these two weeks to soak up the country life. It’s where I learned to play in the dirt, ride a horse, bait a hook, hold a snake, camp out with friends. It’s where we brought countless pets home including a couple cows, pigs, chickens, horses, guinea pigs, rabbits, and the more usual- dogs and cats. I learned to love and appreciate animals and what they give us- although that lesson was a little harder. It’s where I got baptized. It’s where I learned who I really am, what I’m really looking for in life. It’s where I got married to your daddy. Now, the house seems empty, but those memories will always be there, and just while you’ve been with us, a short 17 months, we’ve made some pretty incredible memories with you at the ranch.
Just to keep with the trend, we will move in with Grammy and Pop-pop in Colorado. We don’t have a house yet, and we will have to put things in a storage shed and continue to live out of boxes. We don’t know if your brother will come home to their house, our own house, or a tent on the side of river somewhere. I feel like we’re driving past a sign on the interstate that has the town name written in a language we can’t understand and the mile marker is a big question mark… mocking our decision to do this at such a busy time in our lives. We don’t know where we’ll end up, or even how long it will take to get there. It’s a pretty unsettling feeling for someone who likes a general idea of what’s to come.
One thing has remained the same in all of this mess…you are our refuge. When I’m overwhelmed and feel like giving in, I drop what I’m doing and I take some time to just be Mommy. I fall into your crooked smile, your wobbly attempt to run, your endless peekaboo games and I realize that I’m just where I need to be- even if that means homeless. You’ve been such a trooper switching between houses, cribs to pack n’ plays, highchairs to eating on my lap, having Katie as your babysitter to having mommy back for a couple weeks (with A LOT of help from Grammy and Pop-pop). We spend so much time sitting back and laughing (hard) at you. You never stop, but in a good way. Your wheels are always turning. You walk around with your hands either clasped together behind your back, or on your hips with your palms turned up. You carry your giraffe EVERYWHERE, usually with those two fingers still in your mouth…if they’re not behind your back. I tried to outsmart you and buy two Mr. Giraffes, because I’m one of those moms that can go days without showering, can hike and get dirty with the best of them, but gets annoyed by kids with dirty blankies. My plan was to always have a clean one on standby. You quickly learned that there were two, so now when you only have one, you tell, “TWO” until we bring you the second. Maybe a third one is in order. If I only would’ve known, I could’ve been prepared.
You also love to be outside, to get dirty. We got you a sprinkler that you like to pick up and squirt at us, but honestly, one of your favorite things is just a couple buckets of water and some cups. You still love books and you are able to identify and say an incredible amount of words. You use sign language for more, please, and thank you, but you also say the words now. Please is my favorite because instead of using one hand, you get antsy and use both, which looks like you are playing the guitar and then you start hollering “peeeeaaaasch” in the best speech impediment possible. You flirt every time we’re in public, but you pick really old men to flirt with. You are loud and you aren’t shy. You get pretty upset when people aren’t paying attention to you and you crack yourself up on a daily basis. You spend a lot of time looking at/kissing yourself in mirrors. You love dogs still and have recently taken up harmonica playing. I’m not sure whose crazy idea that was…yes I am, it was Grammy’s. People keep telling me you have a dangerous amount of me in you. The world is not ready for the both of us. It better get ready, because neither of us is slowing down.
You love to “clean” things…especially with a broom. You sweep up about everything and you pick up anything on the floor that doesn’t belong there- crumbs, pieces of paper, bugs. You love to unroll the toilet paper rolls and throw them away. Actually, you love to throw everything away. Just in the past couple weeks, I’ve found 5 whole rolls of toilet paper, a toothbrush, a pen, my cell phone, 3 balls, 63 cents in change and a jingle bell in the garbage can. You think it’s pretty funny to get out of the bathtub and pee on the floor. I still forget that you do this and the other day I got you out of the tub and you took a few steps, started laughing, stuck your belly out and peed. Immediately after, you grabbed a towel off the rack and started wiping it up. You’re something else. If I only would’ve known, I could’ve been prepared.
You’ve started sleeping on your belly a lot with your butt up in the air. It’s one of my most favorite things in the world. At Grammy and Pop-pop’s house, sometimes I sleep in the same room as you and sometimes I sleep in the other room. Either way, I’m on an air mattress (try to climb out of one of those when you are super pregnant) and you are in your pack n’ play. I went into your room the other night and got all settled in bed with my 12 pillows, ok I’m exaggerating, it’s only 6. I finally drifted off to sleep when I hear “HEY!” I opened one eye first, and then the other, not moving a muscle. There you were, standing straight up, giraffe in hand, sleep sack on, pointing at me and yelling “HEY” over and over. I tried to play opossum, but it was clear that you knew I was there and you weren’t lying back down. I got you out and put you in bed with me. Secretly this is one of my favorite times, probably because it rarely happens. I don’t care that it means no sleep, I simply love the chance to hold you. You started by my side and fell asleep. Then you wiggled your way down so that you were lying with your back arched across my belly, arms spread out down one of my legs and up my chest. It couldn’t have been comfortable. Well, just like always, your little brother started kicking and squirming in my belly, but it was so hard that it kept waking you up. At first you would look at me in utter disbelief that I was doing this to you. At one point you started elbowing my stomach. I think it was your first fight with him…I’m sure it won’t be your last.
Here we are, homeless and crazy, and absolutely where we need to be. I can’t wait for things to settle down a bit, to be done taking pictures for a while and to just breathe. I can’t wait to watch a movie with your dad, to spend a whole day soaking in your smiles, to meet your little brother. If I only would’ve known that it was going to be like this, I could’ve been prepared. I could’ve been prepared for laughing so much around you that I’m crying. I could’ve been prepared for feeling like the entire world was spinning around us, but you just sit on my lap and say, “Wheeeee,” telling me to just enjoy the ride. I could’ve been prepared for knowing that although there are things I might do differently in this move, I’d do it again, because it’s all for you, for your future, for our future as a family. When I get asked what my address is right now, I don’t know. What I do know is that we’re surrounded by family. That eventually, we’ll have a place to call home. Eventually, your daddy and I will both have jobs…whether or not we’re qualified to teach them. Eventually, you and your brother will spend your days with Grammy and Pop-pop while we spend too much time away from you in order to support our new life out west. That we are doing all of this, because if I only could’ve known I wouldn’t change a thing in the long run.
I love you,
Your mom.
Dear Paxton... 