Moving is a daunting task for anyone  but add a few little ones and a BlindBaby Daddy into the mix and you have a reality TV show. This was the Scheidies House over the last four to five months.   We recently moved from he Pacific Northwest to Brittney’s hometown of Birmingham, AL.  It was definitely very sad to leave the scenic and beautiful Northwest where we could be in the city one moment, or be in the mountains an hour later.  The cost of living was just getting too much as not many can afford $5,200 per month  in childcare in addition to the rising costs of everything.  The crime and drugs have also been increasing exponentially in the Seattle area and it just was becoming an unsafe and undesirable environment to bring up our kids.

I knew this move was going to be especially tough for me.  Going from a place I could walk  or take the bus most anywhere is a massive change and scary thought for someone that values independence.  Prior to the move, I knew that the South is not built for walking and so I would need to establish networks and find a walkable area where we could purchase a home.   

The above sets the storyline for what took place  in order to prepare for the move.  Now I will explain how it all went down from the eyes of Blind Baby Daddy.

Packing the House:

This section should more accurately be  titled, “packing, unpacking and repacking”, the house.  As we began packing up the house, there was constantly a child trailing behind taking stuff back out of the box.  It was either Kennan and Tut seeing the toys that they “rarely” played with   put into a box and now decide it was their favorite toy ever or LouElla doing what a one year old does and that is taking everything, toys or clothes, and throwing it on the floor.  The problem arose for Blind Baby Daddy when the already boxed items mixed with some things that hadn’t been boxed or that we needed in the near future.  For Blind Baby Daddy, everything is a blur so a red toy could be a red shirt, the difference being the sound when they hit the ground.  At some point, I settled on the fact that we would just have many little surprises  when unpacking the boxes. So long as the stuff was off the floor and in a box that I was satisfied.

For the most part, the kids liked to help pack, but the tough part was patience  or the kids overestimating their strength.  It was common for them to demand that they carry a box out to the garage without realizing the box was too heavy  so they would carry it part way and then place it down in the middle of the path thus creating a land field for Blind Baby Daddy to collide into.  I was constantly having to keep my other senses well tuned to predict where the kids were putting things or where they had gone amongst the new house layout.

As the house got less and less stuff in it and wee began taking many things to Goodwill or other drop offs there were of course many comical things the kids said such as, “Daddy, this is going to be like Christmas for some kid.” or “Daddy, we have a lot of stuff.”  There was also of course the “this is thee cleanest our house has ever been,” comment which always makes one feel good.

Preparing the Yard:

The other major task was getting the house ready to sell.  Our house was amazingly unique and beautiful but because of this it was also challenging to keep up with.  A lot of manual labor such as hauling over 5 “yards” of black top soil, 2 “yards” of chipped rock as well as countless bags of yard waste to the waste center.  The one thing that I could count on was the boys wanting to help with the work.  I can’t complain with their eagerness to assist and willingness to work hard but this doesn’t always make it the most efficient when they want to use the adult shovel or begin fighting and swinging yard tools at each other.

While Daddy filled the wheelbarrow full of rocks, Tut and Kennan filled their little Toe Mater wagon. All of this was going while LouElla attempted to mimic Daddy with the little kids rake and shovel.  As we worked, Blind Baby Daddy pretty much trusted that everything was going well until one of the kids started screaming or one child tattled on the other for throwing rocks or taking the tool that they were using.  There were days that the boys were outside with me for  over 8 hours working in the yard. On occasion, Kennan would get distracted and get on his bike and ride down the driveway, over the gravel pile and skid out his tires while still on the rocks, but to my amazement he was always able to corrective bike and never went down.   For the most part, the kids worked continuously for much of the day.

There were of course some classic quotes and statements during all this work.  One of my favorites  occurred when we had just returned with an entire trailer full of fine dark mulch.  As we began to unload it, Tut excitedly said, “Look at all of this chocolate cake mix, we are stirring it to make a chocolate cake!”  Another memorable moment when we were trimming the bushed in the front of the house.  Kennan had demonstrated that he was using the little cutters safely and we told him he could only snip off small little pieces of each branch.  In our minds, we thought this would pass the time and entertain him while we were able to be efficient with another project.  About thirty minutes later, Kennan came up to Brittney and I and said, “I’m all done trimming the tree, can you give me another one to trim?”  He led us over to  his work  and we were amazed at what he was able to do in that amount of time.  When I saw the remains of thee tree which was nearly bare up to his head height.  Part of me was cracking up inside because this was quite funny but the other part of me was thinking, “OMG what are we going to do.”  I felt so bad telling Kennan that he probably needed to be done trimming as he really was working so hard and so proud of how much he had helped us, but on the other end we couldn’t have all of our trees this bare (LOL).

Preparing the House:

We decided to have a pre inspection of the house so we had a long “Daddy Do” list .  Many items required hiring outside professionals to complete, but there were some items that Blind Baby Daddy was not going to pay to have done.  For many items, others would say, “Aaron you shouldn’t do that,” fearing that a blind person is not safe to handle these tasks.  My life has been built on proving myself and that’s what I was going to do.  Some of these items included putting a vapor barrier in the crawl space, cleaning all the gutters and unclogging downspouts, cleaning moss and debris from roof and  trimming high trees that  overhung the roof.

Getting on the roof is not one of my favorite things to do and I am well aware of the danger for anyone when going on a roof. I strapped on my snow boots which had good traction and placed the ladder.  Our roof had multiple sections, one of which is very high and has a steep slope.  Once I was up on the roof, I pretty much scooted on my butt everywhere and felt around  to ensure that the shingles were nice and rough.  Much of the roof was pretty easy and uneventful but it became very interesting when I had to clean and unclog the backside high gutter. This gutter was too high for the ladder to reach from the ground on some sections.  Blind Baby Daddy called in reinforcements on this section and we kind of rigged up what some would call an unsafe solution.  In order to get to the high gutter on the backside, we had to stabilize the picnic table with some of Blind Baby Daddy’s bumper plates from  the Rogue squat rack.  We then placed the ladder on top of the picnic table and leaned it against the gutter.  My volunteer help stabilized the ladder on the picnic table and we were in business.  Some would call this dangerous but I would just call it innovative.

Trimming trees with “choppers” is a little different when you're blind and can’t see the cutter blades while reaching up above.  Basically, you must use feel and hearing.  First, you reach the cutters in the vicinity off the branch and then move it around left and right. When you feel the branch hit the cutters on the side then you know where the branch is and need to open the blades, slightly lower the cutters and start chomping.  If there is no resistance to chomping than you don’t have the branch within the choppers yet.  If there is resistance to chomping than you bare down and give a good squeeze until you hear thee leaves and parts of the branch hit other branches and fall to the ground.  If you are fully sighted and reading this blog, close your eyes the next time you trim your trees and you will understand exactly how the blind person accomplishes these tasks.

Strategic Plan for Moving

As we were prepping the house and the yard for the big move, we obviously had to strategically plan how we would move the kids, the dog, the vehicle and ourselves to Alabama.  Blind Baby Daddy quickly vetoed the option of the 3 kids driving across the country. The fact that Brittney was our only driver and the amount of distractions this would create over  36+ hours of driving across would have been a disaster.  Instead, we settled on the plan of Brittney and Gigi flying with the little ones back to Alabama  and then the kids  would stay with Gigi while Brittney flew back to Washington and her and I would load up with our vizsla Gunther to embark on the long trek across the country.  The thought of having enough room in the Nissan Armada for Gunther’s kennel to fit was nice but was never going to happen.  Wee crammed the Armada so full that any opening of doors other than the drivers and front passenger would result in an avalanche of falling stuff.  I had to settle having 50lb Gunther on my lap for the entire five day journey.    

The long drive across country was mostly uneventful however we did manage to make a few  fun stops.  We made our way through Montana and hit Yellowstone National Park  mid morning one day and took time to explore its unbelievable beauty.  From there, we headed South and went through Denver, CO to visit long time Spartan friends Justin and Lauren Fales as well as a Colorado Rockies game before hitting the road hard for the next few days to arrive in Birmingham just in time to attend Kennan’s “Parent’s Night” at school.  We literally rolled into the school parking lot with our crammed car and “”dingy” selves.  Hopefully none oof thee other parents noticed our very “casual” dress and possible body odor (LOL).

Although our cross country move was not totally complete, I am going to end this blog.  The daunting task of unloading and sorting through box after box would be uneventful and possibly never-ending.  I hope you have enjoyed this blog and quite possibly learned a little more about a Blind Baby addy functions and services in this world.