Things are looking up. We signed a lease on a place to live, and have a new day care for Nicki (2 of my 3 goals for October). We’ll even be moving in time to give us a few visit days giving Nicki a chance to adjust before she has to start at the new place. Win! And the fact that we will be all moved in shortly before Black Friday and just in time to take advantage of sales to buy anything extra we need for the new place? Extra bonus win.

When I first started searching for daycares I couldn’t find anything with an opening. I kid you not, one place didn’t have an opening for the toddler room until 2015. There are toddlers on the waiting list not even born yet. And houses? The average house rental on zillow gets 300+ views in the first day they’re listed. One place had an open house that lasted for just 10 minutes. Seriously, that’s not an exaggeration. Complicating the search was the fact that we really wanted to have the daycare and new living arrangements lined up and somewhat co-located. So I didn’t feel comfortable acting fast. I didn’t want to sign on the dotted line until we had workable options for both figured out. Needless to say, the last couple weeks were not fun.

With my thesis turned in to my committee, I actually had free time so I was able to do most of the leg work. Once I had a short list Domingo took off work and saw the final choices before we committed. We now have both a daycare and a place to live.

We both really like the new daycare. It’s not perfect, but neither is her current daycare. The new daycare’s strength is the toddler room whereas the old daycare’s strength was the infant room. They have so many different kinds of toys, and do so many stimulating activities. We both can see Nicki thriving there. We’re a little worried about the transition, but hopefully the visit days will help familiarize her with the new teachers.

We’re not as keen on the living situation. It’s a fine place, but it feels a little like we’ve settled on something that works rather than found an ideal place. Given the difficulties of finding a house rental (and the horror stories we’ve been told by friends) we opted to do an apartment. The new place has 13% less living space than the current one, and very little storage, which means we will have to part with some things. I’m tend to create emotional attachments to everything (even the baby gear that’s busted – that’s Pooky’s broken stroller that we used when she was just a tiny newborn!) so I’m not looking forward to that process. I’m already feeling a little emotional over a recent trip to good will and it was all stuff I had forgotten about in the garage!

Of course the new place has it’s positives. One benefit of the new place is it has a lot of natural light. After struggling with the lack of light in our current house this past year, I’m very much looking forward to that! It’s a convenient location, close to day care. We even found a really nice local park, far better than the one we’ve been going to! I’m hoping that once we transition to our new lives, and the stress of moving is behind us, we’ll start to enjoy it more.

That just leaves selling our current house on our to-do list. We’re feeling optimistic about that as well (although I don’t think we’ll be ready to sell for a bit). After watching our neighbors’ houses sell we’re fairly confident that we can get back what we paid. I think we might even end up a little ahead. Of course this depends on the government shutdown ending soon and the economy not melting down. I’m hopeful for that too.

Posted in Family Life | Tags: Moving