Baxter and the Garage Sale. | Where's Your Dunny?

(No, that’s not a band name, two separate events).
Following on from last time about the kids giving things up, I thought I’d talk about two memorable events.

We had to find a new home for Baxter. Our very cool, very funny and very grumpy rabbit. The kids’ first pet (minus Isabelle the other rabbit who died last year). Yeah, that was hard. Hard on me too. Deciding what to do with Baxter was really tough, and breaking it to the kids that we had to find Baxter a new home was even harder. I still remember exactly when and where we did it. The tears, oh the tears. Broke my heart. REALLY broke my heart. I wanted to back out at that point, but it was too late since the tickets were booked at that stage. I’m glad they were. We couldn’t get someone to look after him, that wouldn’t be fair
We knew we could foster him out for two years that wouldn’t be fair on anyone, so we had to find him a new home. It didn’t take long at all, he was spoken for within minutes of me putting up the ad (seriously my phone rang within about 2 minutes). He’s gone to a home with two kids of similar age and there’s a cat that he’s “made friends with” (I find that hard to believe, but it makes the kids happier). But I still worry about him when it rains hard and it’s windy. We miss Baxter. I miss Baxter. He kept me company during the day and kept the stray cats away at night. So yeah, I miss Baxter more than I thought I would. The kids do too, but to be fair I was the only one who would brave his grumpy moods.
The day we gave him away was frantic too. We had the landlord and a service man over fixing the house alarm (we hadn’t our Landlords what was happening at that point). Alpha was being picked up for a sleep over, and Baxter’s owners were coming over. All at the same time. Poor Baxter’s last memories of us would be the house alarm going off. Lennox and I were super sad, to make ourselves feel better Nat and I took Lennox to see Star Wars #7. It helped.
The other event that was fairly traumatic for Lennox at least was the ‘Kids Only Garage Sale’. One of our friends had the idea that the kids should have a garage sale where no adults were allowed. The kids would sell their stuff to their friends and make some money. Great in theory, but very hard on Lennox. He was anxious the whole time and was crying when selling some of this things. I have a memory of him curled up on the stairs crying while the house was over run with kids excited to be taking home new toys and books. We rescued a few things from the ‘for sale’ pile because of that. The outcome was they made $55 between them, so I matched it, which meant that Alpha and Lennox each got $55. Lennox bout Star Wars Lego with it…sigh
As a final thought, I can see how divorced/separated parents end up buying presents for their kids out of guilt. I will no longer be judgemental on this front. Man, I’ve felt so much guilt over the past few weeks, and the kids have benefitted from it! I know you’re supposed to spend time with your kids instead of giving them things. But man, we’re going to be spending 2 -ears together 24/7 I want relief now! I want them away from me for a few minutes and I want the crying and yelling to stop. Lennox has seen two movies at the theatre since January (the same one, but still). We average maybe one movie every year or so with the kids. Mainly because one or the other of them will flip out at the movies, it’s too stressful. But come on, Lennox gets scared over Curious George, yet he will happy sit through Star Wars multiple times. It’s the X-Wing I’m sure.