Telling the kids

Yesterday, after a week of planning / discussion, Wendy and I finally told the kids. It's amazing how hard it was for us to keep the secret (and contain our excitement) for a week. We wanted to wait until the weekend so that everyone would be in a little mellower and not have all the normal distractions (dinner, homework, bedtime) and it worked pretty well. Mid-way through a standard family meeting (1. what are the rules around going into each other's rooms when a guest is over, 2. what are the play dates for next week, 3. what are we planning for the upcoming long weekend) we said we had a big announcement. Josh immediately asked Wendy, "are you pregnant?" before we told them that we would be moving back to the US but not to a house.

Each of their reactions was different. At first, Josh was upset because he thought he would be out of school for a year and then would be with much younger kids when he returned; we assured him that next year would be his 6th grade year and he'd start in 7th in 2010. Nonetheless he was insistant that "I expect to be supplied with extra school work." I'll make sure to have those words framed or put on a wallet-sized card for reference anytime he complains about the workload...

Simon (7 years old) was not really sure how to take the news. He knew it was big (he doesn't remember living anywhere else but London) and said, "It's weird and freaky... I feel like this isn't happening". It really helped him to be able to write out his feelings in his blog and he's looking forward to keeping a diary. Simon's biggest excitement was getting his own email account (his big brother had to wait until he was 11 for one).

After the initial shock, we started talking about all the cool and interesting places we are hoping to go and the kids have been very excited since. Each of them wanted to immediately call their best friends to break the news, and we took a recess from the family meeting while the calls were made, tears were shed and excitement was shared.

Once we told the kids, we then updated Facebook and emailed the announcement to friends and family. So far we've gotten very positive feedback and lots of good suggestions from friends all over the world.