Toddlers and Change

On Saturday, my son's life will change forever. He'll become a big brother.

(Theoretically of course it could happen sooner, but that's the scheduled c-section date. Baby sister is showing no signs of arriving independently.)

We've inflicted a lot of change on him over the past six months, and more is coming. Since Noah's two serious falls and broken arm at his old day care, he's changed day care providers twice, and classrooms one additional time. He handled all of those changes well, except the very last classroom change, when he let us have it with screaming and crying and not sleeping for a month. Now we've emptied 3/4 of the stuff in our house into storage so we can sell the house. He doesn't know about my layoff, but he knows that his mommies have been stressed out and bickering more than in the past. Sometime after the baby arrives and the house gets sold, we'll move away to a totally different part of the country.

And yet, none of those are the changes that are making me worry.

I am worried about repainting Noah's room.

For some reason, I'm convinced that the disappearance of all the fanciful animals that Grandma and Aunt Anna so lovingly painted on Noah's walls are the thing that's going to put him over the edge.

There's the orange puppy by the foot of his bed, and the big orange dog in the corner. Last week Noah announced that the Mommy bird was eating the caterpillar herself, not feeding it to the baby birds in the nest above the window. Next to the changing table where most of the first two years of his diapers were changed, two big turtles smile and care for a smaller, paler turtle. We've probably talked about those turtles more than any other single image in the entire house. Above them, a frog with ironic eyebrows watches a family of butterflies flutter over the doorway.

The real estate agent is adamant. We must repaint.

I've declared that as the last major project before putting the house on the market.  But even so, the repainting is only going to be a few weeks after Baby Sister arrives. And of course, I worry about whether we should do it then, or sooner, or even later.

I know it's early, but please o please, let 2009 be a nice quiet year with very little change.

This is an original Deep South Moms Blog post. Liza regularly blogs at LizaWasHere.com.