Dear ones, school starts again today in NRW, the uni kid still has a bit of a term break, but for the twins the upper school starts tomorrow with a new course system and new teachers and certainly lots of new people because the classes are breaking up.
I used to be happy when the loooong holidays of incompatibility finally came to an end, but that’s no longer the case and I enjoy not having to set my alarm clock for 6.30am these weeks soooo much, I’m just not an early riser. Never have been.
Holidays, driving school exams, flat-sharing agreement
We’ve now spent another week at the seaside with all three children plus a brief visit from a child-in-law and – as far as I could tell – we all really enjoyed it. Shortly before the holiday, twin 2 had to take his theory driving test (passed!).
On holiday itself, twin 1 then crammed for his exams and then there was another life-changing surprise, as we suddenly got the promise of a flat near the university and now our first child will be moving out in a few (very few!) weeks.
First of all, experiencing all of this together was phenomenal. And the younger siblings suddenly had this feeling too: What, she’s leaving us? Let’s go out for a quick meal or to the beach together, it was like that: Wow, our days together are somehow numbered now. Mixed with great pride that she’s capable of all this at the age of 19.
It’s going to be a two-person flat share, we’ve now fixed up her bike again because everything in the city will be accessible by bike and we also need a new bed, we’ve realised that we have very different tastes and oh dear, do we actually need a toolbox then? Where do you buy dishwasher tabs or cling film?
These are the issues now. We didn’t get back from holiday until 3 a.m. and the very next day we went to sign the tenancy agreement – with compatibility challenges, by the way, because she had agreed to a babysitting job, so we went to our new home with a child in our arms, just wow.
The uni child moves out: How’s mum doing?
As a mum, I was of course excited about the search, kept my fingers crossed and thought back to how exciting I found it all myself when I moved to Cologne at 18 and finally to Berlin at 19 to study. But the search for our daughter was still relaxed, there was no time pressure, it was more of a „we’ll have a look around“. And then bäääm. Acceptance despite several applicants, what luck.
Nevertheless, of course, a tear came to my eye when I was sitting in the car on a trip and she wrote „WE HAVE THE APARTMENT“. Because wow, as long as the toddler years dragged on, these teenage years now feel so much like a bumpy ride. And she’s just so great that we just love having her around. One big decision follows the next and everything is constantly changing.
Of course, the big one has already got us used to her absence, she wasn’t at home so much anyway due to university, work and boyfriend, but moving out is a different feeling, because we’ll probably never share a household again in our lives.On holiday maybe, but not within our own four walls and that makes us so incredibly proud, but also melancholy, a new phase of life is about to start, at some point we’ll be left here as a couple and that’s a really strange idea, especially because there were always so many children of the same age here who dominated our lives and livened up the place. Like a tsunami that swept through our lives and then left behind a calm lake😉
And the youngest will probably leave at the same time, so we’ll go straight from two to zero, but we don’t want to think about that just yet, for now we’ll get used to this first big step towards independence for the eldest and then see what happens. Of course she’ll still come to visit, but that’s just something else.
Meanwhile, twin two is rocking the practical driving lessons and has already been allowed on the motorway this week and twin one just passed his driving licence at the beginning of the week. I’m not saying „stop time“, simply because it’s all so crazy gigantic right now!
Because we can have such great conversations at eye level and that’s not just the beauty of it all, it’s also the mean thing: now we’ve got them so big that they can do everything themselves and it’s really enjoyable – and they’re through the door 😉
But I don’t think much of the saying „We only have 18 summers with them“ either… because even after I moved out, I was still regularly travelling with my family, I later moved back to the extended family farm and who knows:
When the grandchildren arrive at some point, maybe one or two of our children will move back to the farm. And if not, we’ll just visit them in their homes in the big wide world and be happy that they exist, that they and we as a family are developing so rapidly that no day is boring.
(Can someone give mum’s heart a quick hug anyway, waaaah?!)
