I can totally sympathize with trying to move all those bodies! I have a cousin who has EIGHT KIDS, plus all their animals, whose husband's job moved every 2-3 years for almost 25 years before they got divorced. They tried it both ways, more than once, and I learned from the experience of HELPING them move more than a few times, which way was more efficient and less stressful on everyone involved.Â
If you stay and he goes--particularly if you stay put till your niece/nephew arrives--you don't have to move all in a lump, which is just a mess, no matter HOW organized you are. I've done that by myself, and I HATE it. If he goes ahead, you can move in STAGES. He can take his time, and find exactly the right place, rather than finding the first thing you can possibly make work. You can pack up a few boxes every week, and he can come home on the weekends to you and the babies, and take those boxes home and unpack them thru the course of the week, a box or two a night, the same way you packed them. Or you can pack the boxes and go to him, leaving the babies with your parents for the weekend. There's always LOTS of stuff that can be moved this way--shelves of books, MOST of the dishes, closets full of off season clothes, boxes of holiday decorations, boxes full of whatever you or he collect, etc. Some weekends you can go to him and decorate the house a little while you're there--maybe paint the kitchen before you send most of the dishes or the bedroom before you send all the clothes and the bed, but you can do a room or two at a time, rather than all in a frantic mess, with boxes of all your stuff covered with tarps and your dogs everywhere!
You can see I'm a big advocate of the 'gradual' move.
 Upgrade your cell plans to more 'anytime' minutes so that you can talk to each other as much as you want without breaking the bank! Or change companies so that your 'in network' calls to each other are free.Â
It's scary to move away from all your family for the first time, but you CAN do it slowly, and your whole family can probably enjoy the process with if you do it over the whole period of from now till after your sister has the baby.Â
And...if it's important to you to take this last chance to spend that time with her, you should--because once you move away, no matter what you do, your relationship with her is going to change forever.Â
There's no relationship in the world like the one you have with your siblings--they're the only people in the world who will be with you your thru your whole lifetime. You don't find your husband/wife until you're an adult, and that person finds a grown up and never really knows how you go that way--but your siblings were there for it all. Odds are that at some point you'll lose your parents, and they'll never know how you turned out in the end.
But your sibs are right alongside you the whole way thru your life. They know you in ways that nobody who didn't live in your house with you when you were 8 and he was 5 and she was 3 and you dug a grave for the goldfish under the peach tree with your mother's silver gravy ladle, and who had that same memory running thru their head when you stood together over your grandfather's grave ever possibly can.
So if you the one thing you want share with your sister before you're out into the world without her right beside you is her baby...DO IT. You BOTH deserve it.Â
