Where's my stuff?

It occurs to me that, despite the title of this blog, I haven't really talked about the impact all of this has had on the kids. Caroline, who's 5, was excited at first. I bought a picture book of London and we showed it to her the night we told her. She was really chuffed at the idea of living in a country that has a queen and at least one castle. She also liked the idea of the big Ferris wheel.

Caroline was so excited, in fact, that she wanted to be the one to tell our two year old, Michael, which she did, the next morning at breakfast. "I have yogurt," was his reaction.

Caroline's since realized that while England may offer real princesses, it doesn't have any of her current friends, and this has become a source of concern for her. (She's also worried that she won't be able to make fairies on the computer any more, though this was more easily addressed than the loss of her friends).

Michael, too, has semmingly become more aware of the magnitude of the change. He's asked our neighbor's daughter, Emily, to move to London with us. He's always been something of a ladies' man, that boy. He's also started lying about his age, and I suspect he's been telling the 5 year old girls that he drives a Porsche.

Recently, Caroline complained that "stuff keeps disappearing." And I thought she wouldn't notice given how much stuff she actually has (too much, as far as I'm concerned). But apparently, that empty bottle of bathtub paint was more important than I thought. Gee, wait until she finds out that we can't take the Barbie dream house with the elevator. Really, we can't - it's bigger than our new place.

Apart from the occasional griping about not being able to find something, though, Caroline's taking it pretty well, and most of the time, seems genuinely excited about it. Once she's in school (which she will be, until July, for full days!), I've no doubt that she'll meet new friends and start calling Michele 'mummy'. As for Michael, well, he'll still have his yogurt (though it's spelled 'yoghurt' and tastes like 'crap'), so I think he'll be just fine.