Each Mother’s Day that I spend without my mom is easier than the last. The day’s significance has changed as I have – it’s become more about celebration than about loss.

Truth be told, I feel like Mother’s Day is less about me and more about family. I want to spend the day with my kids, with family. I want a sense of togetherness, I want to see my children with their grandmothers and Dave with his mother, I want to be squished in the back of the van while my children sit on either side of me and take turns poking me in the armpits and pinching my arm fat. I want us to be together, enjoying each other and being a family, but I gotta admit, when Dave offered to take the kids outside this afternoon so I could have a bit of ‘puter time, I jumped all over it.

We move next week and as we get closer to The Big Day I’m awash with mixed feelings. I’m excited about our new house and I can’t wait to get out there and start making it our home. I’m looking forward to being closer to my father and to the large, fully fenced backyard that the kids can run around in “like maniacs”, as Julia says, and the sun porch where I can sit and watch them. I’m at the point now where I’m ready to get this the hell over with – I just want to move already. I hate having all of our stuff packed up and jammed in the front room and I hate the feeling of having so much to do and so little time to do it. And the thought of unpacking everything once we move makes me a bit weak in the knees.

Yet while I’m ready to leave this house, there are things I’ll miss about it. When we found out Oliver was going to be a boy we had a jungle-themed mural painted on his bedroom walls and his room quickly became my favourite in the house. Decorating his nursery was one of the highlights of my pregnancy and he loves his room – he likes to say goodnight and good morning to the smiling animals and points out the painted trees that he thinks are balloons. “Banoon guy,” he says. Balloon in the sky.

I was pregnant with Oliver when we moved Julia into the then spare bedroom and created her new “big girl bedroom”. I cried for hours after we got the second coat of paint on her walls; the green I’d chosen looked much…harsher than I’d expected – think hospital ward green – and I hated it. Once we finished the room, however, the colour grew on me. The same artist who painted Oliver’s room did pink and blue butterflies on Julia’s walls and you know, I’m going to miss those butterflies.

This is the house that both Julia and Oliver took their first steps in. We celebrated Oliver’s first birthday here, taught Julia to ride a bike out on the patio and put up our first real Christmas tree in the living room. This house is where our family grew from three to four – it’s seen a lot of changes within our little family, this little house.

Today I’m spending Mother’s Day with my family, in this house. I’m enjoying the last days we’ll spend here, looking forward to the ones ahead at our new house.

Our new home.

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