Miami wrap up

...And the blog went blank. What happened? Life happened. One minute I am traipsing along the Seine. Next thing I know, I'm in Miami, planes are getting shot down over Ukraine, Israel tosses a few bombs into the Gaza Strip, and Danny is given three hours notice to be on a plane bound for Qatar with no return date. What?

And then our household effects arrive from storage. While new tile is being laid. And my parents are in Europe...

Wait, what?!

And that pretty much summarizes the past 2 years. Danny goes to London, Geneva, Berlin, Seoul, Munich, Phnom Penh, Jerusalem, Riyadh, Toronto, Doha, Vienna...  And I hang back and field disasters. Gigi made it "snow" in the pantry with cornstarch, Toby stuck his hand in the paper shredder, Gigi literally fell off the wagon and passed out, Noemie threw up, Gigi ate gum she found stuck in a stairwell carpet at church, Dominic lost another library book, Giannina is tearing all the leaves off the baby papaya plant, Giannina pried open a can of latex house paint, Giannina is climbing the pantry shelves, needs a crown on her tooth, is smashing Hot Wheels cars into bananas, is rubbing lipgloss on Noemie's feet while Noemie sleeps, Giannina, Giannina, Giannina.

One time Gia went missing as church was starting. I circled the church, dipping in and out of every classroom. No one had seen her. I was standing in the foyer in desperation when I caught sight of the live-video feed of the service. There was Brother Malcolm leading the congregational singing, and behind him, dashing around on stage looking a little disoriented, was Giannina, cheeks bulging with peppermint candies stolen from the choir room.

One day, as I was making rounds from the car to the house with grocery bags, Gia found an unattended marker and ran it along the dining room wall. She wound her way around the corner. Then she colored along the tile grout to the bookcase. I caught up to her when she was filling in the black and white drawings of Dominic's precious Calvin and Hobbes. It only took her one minute. As I was furiously scrubbing the walls, I came across a puddle. Giannina had pulled a chair into the pantry and helped herself to a juice box and left a trail behind her. I didn't realize how extensive the trail was for a couple hours as I continued to step in sticky spots in the living room and into my bedroom. The sticky spots were now tinted blue by spray paint stuck to the bottom of my feet from one of my many art projects in progress. I suppose I should have expected this sort of behavior from the one whose first complete sentence was, "I pee-pee Mami's bed." 

Imagine. Here we are now, two years later. Danny is out of town yet again, and I am trying to prepare the house for real estate showings. Toby and Dominic, seemingly unaware of my plight, are searching for "weapons." There are swiffer wands, curtain rods, egg beaters, and chair legs being amassed in the kitchen, their new "gladiator arena".  Noemie is sneaking around the house hunting for paper and scissors, making birthday cards for everyone who comes to mind, and leaving piles of paper shavings in her secret hideouts. Like a termite. And then there's Giannina, the baby-monster. Except she's not a baby anymore. She's four. And she's up on the kitchen counter coating her legs in dish soap and salt.

How do I mark the days? By Danny's travels? By disasters left in the wake of his departures? By homeschooling adventures?

In the past two years I had corrective eye surgery. Twice. And I caught a raccoon in a trap. I learned to read syncopated rhythm in music, and I started dabbling in essential oils. I chauffeured kids to park group, swim team, library, dance class, and American Heritage Girls. And that was just on Thursdays. I tutored 5 year olds for Classical Conversations, sang in the choir, wrote the Kids Ministry's Christmas musical. I didn't sleep. At midnight you would often find me mopping. At 1 am I might be painting baseboards. When Danny signed up to be soccer coach and then was whisked away on a trip, I was there on the first soccer game of the season with the coach's bag and a sense of loss. Danny took me to Milan, my brother got married in Tampa, and my parents celebrated 35 years of marriage by treating us all to a Caribbean cruise.  Dominic and Noemie learned to sail, Toby learned to read, and Giannina memorized the classification of living things. And I was always tired. Always. 

Our Miami Field Office tour is coming to a close. Giannina is still alive. And my house is beautiful. It is one of the most painful things about leaving: the style, the colors, the hominess... expressions of myself and of our family. The new AC, new floors, the map mural in the office, the kids heights marked on the wall... records of the trials and growth we have experienced here. Watching ibis and herons and butterflies from the breakfast table, all-you-can-eat starfruit, kale, and papaya in the backyard...we are leaving this tropical paradise for the physical and social cold of North Virginia. It hurts the heart.

The first day we put the house on the market, we had 4 visitors. Three of those offered contacts, all of them at or above asking price. All that early morning garden watering and late night curtain-sewing has come to fruition. People love my house and they want to buy it. 

Time to start over.