Moving House

These past weeks have been so very busy. We are finally moving tomorrow so there have been lots to do and organise. As my cousin told me I should be an expert at moving already. Why? Because we have moved oh only 4 times in the last 5 years! Only this time we are not renting, it is OUR house so it feels great! It's funny though because for Bilaal it is so 'normal' to keep moving to another house (given that he has moved almost every year of his existence!) that the one day he heard me trying to organise a cleaning company to do the post-occupation clean at our current home and when he asked me and I explained, he followed with, "Oh, so when we move out of the new house we will also have to get the cleaners in?"

When Bilaal was born my in-laws were living in NZ and my folks were in the UK. They were all there for the birth, but all missed the 1st year of his life. We visited NZ just before Bilaal's 1st birthday where he 'met' his 'telephonic' grandparents. Unbeknown to us 8 months later would be living in the UK. He had 2 good years of quality time with his grandparents on that side when we returned to South Africa, but wait, not to our home city of Cape Town, but to Johannesburg where we had no family. In the beginning we used to worry that we are uprooting Bilaal so much that he might end up being an insecure child who struggles to commit himself to things of importance. But we soon realized that as long as we kept the most important part of his young tender life consistent and reliable and dependable he would in fact flourish with all these varied experiences. And that most important thing is US, the WE, the family UNIT. And I can see now that in fact these experiences have made him very adaptable, he makes friends very easily, he loves travel at this young age already, he's been exposed to different cultures and lifestyles and weather! And mostly despite family being spread everywhere he has a good relationship with all of them. I do realise that if he was older and there was the complexity of school and peer relationships at a time when identity starts to develop and all the rest it would've been a totally different story, so my advice to any young parents out there, if you want experience living abroad, do it now while the kids are still young and mouldable. I can tell you from my sister and sister-in-law's experiences it gets much harder when the kids are older.

But anyhew! I need to get my packing done and some more running around on erends so I better get going. It felt good to be blogging again. my internet may be down for a bit after tomorrow so I don't know when my next installment will be, so till then!