New Hope

We are here.  We are adjusting.  We are nothing but a house in the country with some chickens and a bunny, trying hard to be a farm.  Stress and busy days have not left us yet.  But things are good.

The first week was like some nasty fraternity initiation.  It went like this:

Saturday: move, bathroom and kitchen sink not usable yet, go back to old house for baths, etc.
Sunday: finish moving, spend the night with Ellie vomiting all over the house like she has not done in over 6 months.
Monday: daddy to work, mommy to unpacking, kids to running a-muck, and then spending the night with a major power outage.
Tuesday: rain. rain with many of our boxes and items on the back patio still since we have no room in the house.
Wednesday:  out of coffee and the realization there is no Starbucks decent franchised coffee shop within a 20 minute drive.
And so forth, and so on, and on and on.

We have downsized from 2400 square feet to 802.  No one really seems to mind except for me and my OCD need to organize.  The neighbors are awfully close with their goat farm which brings delightful things like stench and flies, primarily in the evenings.  We now have to get up at the crack of dawn and schlop out to the chicken coop to free the waiting, squawking hens.  We have no reliable internet...yet.

It's been bumpy. But it's good.  We are comfortable. I am at peace. There are adjustments, but having grown up in a small farm town there are a lot of things familiar and I don't feel totally unequipped.

I LOVE our new address.  It's on New Hope road.  I LOVE that our house is so small that I can always hear the kids, and that they never feel too far from us.  I love that there are no neighbors blaring the 'F' word, and that Big Sis' feet are absolutely filthy by 10 a.m. every day. I love that we are purging like crazy, the night sky is full of stars and the water is fluoride free.

Things have been hard.  Things have been crrrrrrrr-azy.  Things have been a long haul.  But we chose this.

We chose this hard.

We didn't necessarily choose *how* we got here, but we chose this adjustment. We don't feel sorry for ourselves and we don't regret it. It's better for Ellie. It's better for Big Sis. It's better for us all.

It's all very new. New community, new house size, new way of living, new priorities, new goals....new HOPE.  38 months into FPIES and one thing is absolutely certain - FPIES has changed us for the better.  It continues to change us, push us forward, refine us and mold us.  It has taught us how to hope.