Remember our spare room/Olive’s change table area?

Yeah, now it looks like this.

BOOM! Progress, right?

Ha. Progress at me losing my MIND.

It’s gone fairly quickly so far. This is the result of 2 hours of solid packing. When Olive and I got back from baby yoga on Monday, Adam had dismantled the bed and started packing. Olive was a rockstar and just hung out and jumped while we packed up pieces of our lives, one by one.

My mom was here for the weekend, and as always it was amazing. Everyone always talks about how your relationship with your own mother changes and shifts once you become a mother yourself, and I couldn’t agree with this statement more.

Everything I do for Olive, she did for me. And we remember so little of our childhoods (my recollections are fuzzy at best until about age 7-8) that it’s easy to forget, or simply not understand how much your mother did for you. More than the infamous late night feedings and poopy diapers, more than all of the cliched motherhood stories.

It’s the neck kisses and burying your nose into their fuzzy heads. Being so utterly besotted and consumed by their simple existence. Bath times and snuggles and walking the hallways over and over again. Worrying that you’re not teaching enough, playing enough, doing enough to grow their tiny minds and bodies.

My mom has provided an incredible example. It’s intimidating to think that I have to be -that I get to be- all of the things to Olive, that my mom was to me. I stare at this little girl, four months old today, and can’t imagine holding her hand as I walk her to her first day of school, or consoling her after her first breakup.

My mom left early Monday morning and I felt as I always do when she leaves, a sort of hollow stillness. It’s so tough living so far away from family. I miss each of my five siblings, I miss Lizzie especially.

This move will bring us closer to Adam’s family, and I am so, so grateful for that, but I still wish I could snap my fingers and magically move my family here. To me. To Olive.

In the meantime I will just keep writing and packing, trying to give to this little girl what was given to me, and saving my pennies for family reunions.