"Mom, Where is our stuff going??!"

As I have mentioned a few thousand times, we are moving.  I am 8 months pregnant, have two boys that are 3 1/2 and a 1 1/2 and a husband who works full time and just spent a week away (during "crunch time") at a school for work.  On a scale of 1-10 my stress level is at about 12.  This all has gone as best as it could, but it doesn't stop me from worrying, stressing, panicking, and stressing some more.  Seriously, moving is no joke.  Moving with kids though is a total game changer.  They have feelings, fears, and serious questions that need to be satisfied, explained, and reassured.  Just because they are little doesn't mean that they are completely oblivious to what is going on around them.  The are very observant. Most of the time, a little too observant... which requires some creative explanations depending on the circumstance.  I am convinced that after my answers to many endless "why's" and different situations that I've had to explain, my kids are going to be like Adam Sandler in "The Waterboy"... "But my Momma said..." I may take a few creative liberties with facts once in a while.  Oops.
That brings me to our explanation to Mason as to where our, and more importantly, his stuff was going.  He was starting to get upset/nervous because he thought he would never see it again and someone was, essentially, stealing it.  Oh how the mind of a 3 yr old works.  We saw this coming so we tried to think of the best way to explain it ahead of time so he wouldn't have a total melt down as the guys were carrying boxes out the door.  We came up with the following:

"Optimus Prime will be coming to get our stuff.  Him and the other Transformers will protect it until they bring it to our new house in Staten Island.  You can talk to him, but because he will be in his "truck" form and there will be too many people around, he probably won't answer you." 

Winner of parents of the year award, I know.  It is one of his favorite cartoons, he knows who Optimus Prime is, he just got it, and any fear about our stuff being gone forever disappeared.  Boom! Genius.  Have to give credit to the hubs for this one... totally his idea.

The morning of the pick up it dawned on us "What if the truck is totally lame and looks nothing like Optimus Prime!!" Oh crap.  There goes our whole idea and Mason is going to lose it.  This is what Optimus Prime (according to the internet) is supposed to look like as a tractor trailer. 

We started to panic a little and back pedal on the Optimus Prime explanation with " He might be in a disguise so that no one recognizes him so it is easier to protect our stuff."  "He doesn't want the Deceptacons to know what his mission is so he might not look like what you expect"  Surprisingly, he totally bought it.  Crisis adverted.

Then the truck pulled up and looked like this...

Ok, so it doesn't look exactly the same, but it wasn't that bad and Mason continued to believe that it was Optimus Prime.  Whew! I even caught him telling his friend that Optimus Prime was there to pick up our stuff.  It was pretty funny.  Since the pick up, Mason has asked a couple of times where Optimus Prime is and we tell him- guarding our stuff.  That seems to be enough to satisfy his curiosity.

We have now survived the yard sale, the packing, the pick up, and we only have 3 more days of living in an empty house.  Only things left are packing up the cars and kids for a 3-4 day drive to South Jersey from Southern Mississippi (current route still undecided), a 2 month stay at the "Hendrickson Compound", have a new baby, and another little move to Staten Island.  Like my very wise 5 year old nephew Wyatt says.. "Easy Peezy, Lemon Squeezy" We got this... I hope.