Romney Returns

As Romney started planning for luthier school, her number one concern was earning enough money to pay for tuition. She knew that she would not be able to keep living with her friends in the adorable home they had dubbed "Lola." Romney still refers to that house as if it were a person. "I'm going to visit Lola today." It's so cute. I knew she was so sad to move away from her friends and her independence, but it really showed how strong her desire was to go to the VMSA.

You know what else it showed? That Romney had become extremely adept at accumulating items. I think the total volume of her possessions increased by a factor of 5 while she was gone. And of course, when she moved away from home, our family had absolutely no problem filling up the space she had vacated with our own stuff. Getting her and her possessions back into our house was not unlike opening a tightly packaged sleeping bag for the first time and then trying to get it back into its original packaging. Nigh unto impossible. 

I felt like Emma was a really good sport - both girls love each other a lot but also had delighted in having their own rooms for a while. And here we went, squashing them back together. It was a little ugly for a minute. But oh my girls. They worked together to figure it out. Yes, they're occasionally really annoyed with each other, as can be expected, but for the most part they do such an awesome job of making space for each other. Sometimes the clothing-borrowing goes too far, sometimes they take many days to put away their laundry or tidy up enough to locate the floor, sometimes one of them gets up irritatingly earlier than the other one. And yet, our house is still standing and so far no yelling matches have taken place. I'm very proud of both of them. Even if I can't always look in their room without feeling anxious.

Here's what our living room looked like as Romney carted all of her possessions back home:

 

And here is the room with a new bed set up and rearranged. But before all that crap from the living room got wedged in. 

I don't dare take a photo of their room with all of their stuff in there because so far it's been presentable for about 3 minutes at a time, about once a month. Don't go in there. But I love them.