September
We had an offer in hand on our place on Castle Glen, so we put in an offer on a house on Sunnyside. It was older, and needed a bit of work, but it had a lot going for it, and we really liked it. Our offer was negotiated to a place everyone could live with. We were moving to Stittsville.
Then the inspection happened. Things did not go well. We named the price that we would require to make us more comfortable with the prospect of taking on a large dying tree on the edge of a busy road, and the other party was not amenable, so we walked. Becoming emotionally invested in a house you don't own yet is a sucker's game. Still, we were in a bind. November 7 was coming fast, two months and a day away as my lovely wife and I sat in Cabotto's and enjoyed a rare dinner out alone, on the eve of our anniversary.
On the twelfth, the Thursday before leaving on a long scheduled camping trip with friends, we went to look at two houses. Neither seemed like a sure thing, but even as we mentally prepared for the likelihood that we would need to put most of our worldly goods in storage and find a place to rent for the duration, we wanted to keep looking. The right house, we told each otheer, was out there somewhere.
I left work for the afternoon and met my lovely wife and the little man at the first house. It had a lot going for it, but it had an equal number of serious problems. It had a great room near the front to serve as Susan's office, a great living room, huge bedrooms; it had a tiny backyard dominated by an in-ground pool, it was on the corner of a busy street, it backed onto a pool, the kitchen was tiny. Parts of the house were very impressive but we couldn't really see ourselves living there. It just didn't feel like our house.
It started to rain as we headed over to Stittsville to look at the other one. The pictures had looked good, but we weren't sure how well it would fit for us. I struggled to get my phone's GPS to work (Google had just dropped the separate start icon for Navigation in their ongoing quest to fuck up a good thing) and ended up following the realtor and my lovely wife and hoping not to get lost. By the time we got there it was pouring down rain and the realtor had to run in to open up the garage so we could get the little man out without soaking him.
We looked around the house, and gradually, the tone of the conversation changed. "This isn't bad" became "this is pretty good", which became "we could use this room for that". By the time the rain had petered out and we got a good look at the deck and the pool, we were pretty much sold.
Follow up appointment was on the Monday. They had an open house scheduled for the Sunday, which introduced a bit of nervousness, but we weren't going to pull the trigger without giving it some time to sink in.
Our offer was accepted. Our original schedule suited them fine. Papers were signed. We were moving to Stittsville. You know ... again.
October
Some time in October, Owen decided it was time to walk.
Once he had made the decision to do so, he gained confidence with it very quickly, and before long he was tottering headlong wherever he wanted to go, occasionally toppling over and always swinging his arms about as if disconnected and separate from his pumping legs, a huge grin plastered across his face. He already knew how to go up stairs but he has added the ability to go down them, conscientiously turning himself around and going feet first. Sometimes he is inclined to slide down a few on his belly, but I don't think it's reasonable to hold that against him.
He noticed that my lovely wife and I make a popping noise when we pull the soother out of his mouth, and he started doing it too. Then he started making that noise to indicate that he wanted his soother. In Owen's mind, the name for a soother is a quick smacking POP sound.
Vroom is the noise his car makes. Bonk is the word for tapping your heads together as a sign of affection (although he once did this a little more energetically in the direction of the bridge of my nose than I would have preferred). Boom means rough-housing, throwing balls around and the like; boom-boom-boom is the word for my punching bag, currently resident on the basement floor where he can slap at it to his heart's content.
He's a tough kid, and strong. Gently slapping his hand or flicking his nose is not generally an effective deterrent; he doesn't respond to that sort of thing, and he has to pretty seriously take a tumble for him to respond badly to it. He happily will push around things much bigger than himself and in his sorting of pantry contents I've seen him quite handily toss around cans and boxes which I would have thought far too heavy for a little man to move the way he does.
Order is his compulsion. He likes to take things out of containers, and then put them back. He likes to gather and sort. He has a panic noise he uses to indicate that something is out of order, quite distinct from his energized, I-am-in-real-trouble panic noise. If something falls on the floor, or tumbles and spills, he becomes very concerned at the disorder, and he will make sure you know it.
My lovely wife had given him a trio of nutella containers to play with and he had arranged them into a careful stack. While feeding him, my lovely wife accidentally knocked them over, and he was very, very concerned. When she finished his meal and let him down, he crawled over to survey the damage, lamenting the chaos and wondering how he would ever set it right.
November
The move went as well as could be hoped. Westmount Movers get a strong recommendation from us, and my lovely wife also found a company to steam clean the carpets that she would not hesitate to use again. Everything got moved in on Saturday the second and we had four days after that to clean and unpack and sort before we needed to be out. On the Wednesday we walked through the house one last time.
It was a little emotional, I'm not going to lie. The empty rooms and bare white walls made me think of the young couple, as yet unmarried and many years from parenthood, who it had found. A lot of years and a lot of life happened in that house; a few bad times and a lot of good. The people who left a helpful note and locked the doors are not the people who came to it so long ago.
But I find it hard to miss the old place very often. The new house immediately felt like home. It is so much better suited to us, with more space and a better location and much better arrangement for the way we've found we like to live our lives. We have much deeper and richer soil in which to put down our roots.
So now all of our stuff is here and we are slowly unboxing and setting up. The pieces of new furniture we need sooner rather than later are being accumulated; my desk is here, some incidentals. We still need a bed for the guest bedroom and some lights. It's coming along.
Owen did very well through the move; he is a trooper. He spent a lot of time with his Grandmas. The week after the move was a little more trying with him, as he eventually gave in to the urge to cling; although he is used to me being gone a great deal, my lovely wife has historically always been around, and he overcompensated a bit once he got her back. But he handled the actual chaos and disruption of the move itself in fine style, so one can't complain.
There is still a lot of work to be done on the house. I have a housewarming party to plan, at some future point when order has been established, and all the potential space has become actual space, and we are settled. There is a great deal to unpack and set up. But you can see the shape of it. It's already a comfortable place, friendly and warm.
All the way along, my lovely wife told me that the right house was out there, waiting for us, and we just had to find it. Now, here, at the far side of all of that work and worry, I sit snug and comfortable and happy, and I have to say that she was right, and it was, and we did.
We had an offer in hand on our place on Castle Glen, so we put in an offer on a house on Sunnyside. It was older, and needed a bit of work, but it had a lot going for it, and we really liked it. Our offer was negotiated to a place everyone could live with. We were moving to Stittsville.
Then the inspection happened. Things did not go well. We named the price that we would require to make us more comfortable with the prospect of taking on a large dying tree on the edge of a busy road, and the other party was not amenable, so we walked. Becoming emotionally invested in a house you don't own yet is a sucker's game. Still, we were in a bind. November 7 was coming fast, two months and a day away as my lovely wife and I sat in Cabotto's and enjoyed a rare dinner out alone, on the eve of our anniversary.
On the twelfth, the Thursday before leaving on a long scheduled camping trip with friends, we went to look at two houses. Neither seemed like a sure thing, but even as we mentally prepared for the likelihood that we would need to put most of our worldly goods in storage and find a place to rent for the duration, we wanted to keep looking. The right house, we told each otheer, was out there somewhere.
I left work for the afternoon and met my lovely wife and the little man at the first house. It had a lot going for it, but it had an equal number of serious problems. It had a great room near the front to serve as Susan's office, a great living room, huge bedrooms; it had a tiny backyard dominated by an in-ground pool, it was on the corner of a busy street, it backed onto a pool, the kitchen was tiny. Parts of the house were very impressive but we couldn't really see ourselves living there. It just didn't feel like our house.
It started to rain as we headed over to Stittsville to look at the other one. The pictures had looked good, but we weren't sure how well it would fit for us. I struggled to get my phone's GPS to work (Google had just dropped the separate start icon for Navigation in their ongoing quest to fuck up a good thing) and ended up following the realtor and my lovely wife and hoping not to get lost. By the time we got there it was pouring down rain and the realtor had to run in to open up the garage so we could get the little man out without soaking him.
We looked around the house, and gradually, the tone of the conversation changed. "This isn't bad" became "this is pretty good", which became "we could use this room for that". By the time the rain had petered out and we got a good look at the deck and the pool, we were pretty much sold.
Follow up appointment was on the Monday. They had an open house scheduled for the Sunday, which introduced a bit of nervousness, but we weren't going to pull the trigger without giving it some time to sink in.
Our offer was accepted. Our original schedule suited them fine. Papers were signed. We were moving to Stittsville. You know ... again.
October
Some time in October, Owen decided it was time to walk.
Once he had made the decision to do so, he gained confidence with it very quickly, and before long he was tottering headlong wherever he wanted to go, occasionally toppling over and always swinging his arms about as if disconnected and separate from his pumping legs, a huge grin plastered across his face. He already knew how to go up stairs but he has added the ability to go down them, conscientiously turning himself around and going feet first. Sometimes he is inclined to slide down a few on his belly, but I don't think it's reasonable to hold that against him.
He noticed that my lovely wife and I make a popping noise when we pull the soother out of his mouth, and he started doing it too. Then he started making that noise to indicate that he wanted his soother. In Owen's mind, the name for a soother is a quick smacking POP sound.
Vroom is the noise his car makes. Bonk is the word for tapping your heads together as a sign of affection (although he once did this a little more energetically in the direction of the bridge of my nose than I would have preferred). Boom means rough-housing, throwing balls around and the like; boom-boom-boom is the word for my punching bag, currently resident on the basement floor where he can slap at it to his heart's content.
He's a tough kid, and strong. Gently slapping his hand or flicking his nose is not generally an effective deterrent; he doesn't respond to that sort of thing, and he has to pretty seriously take a tumble for him to respond badly to it. He happily will push around things much bigger than himself and in his sorting of pantry contents I've seen him quite handily toss around cans and boxes which I would have thought far too heavy for a little man to move the way he does.
Order is his compulsion. He likes to take things out of containers, and then put them back. He likes to gather and sort. He has a panic noise he uses to indicate that something is out of order, quite distinct from his energized, I-am-in-real-trouble panic noise. If something falls on the floor, or tumbles and spills, he becomes very concerned at the disorder, and he will make sure you know it.
My lovely wife had given him a trio of nutella containers to play with and he had arranged them into a careful stack. While feeding him, my lovely wife accidentally knocked them over, and he was very, very concerned. When she finished his meal and let him down, he crawled over to survey the damage, lamenting the chaos and wondering how he would ever set it right.
November
The move went as well as could be hoped. Westmount Movers get a strong recommendation from us, and my lovely wife also found a company to steam clean the carpets that she would not hesitate to use again. Everything got moved in on Saturday the second and we had four days after that to clean and unpack and sort before we needed to be out. On the Wednesday we walked through the house one last time.
It was a little emotional, I'm not going to lie. The empty rooms and bare white walls made me think of the young couple, as yet unmarried and many years from parenthood, who it had found. A lot of years and a lot of life happened in that house; a few bad times and a lot of good. The people who left a helpful note and locked the doors are not the people who came to it so long ago.
But I find it hard to miss the old place very often. The new house immediately felt like home. It is so much better suited to us, with more space and a better location and much better arrangement for the way we've found we like to live our lives. We have much deeper and richer soil in which to put down our roots.
So now all of our stuff is here and we are slowly unboxing and setting up. The pieces of new furniture we need sooner rather than later are being accumulated; my desk is here, some incidentals. We still need a bed for the guest bedroom and some lights. It's coming along.
Owen did very well through the move; he is a trooper. He spent a lot of time with his Grandmas. The week after the move was a little more trying with him, as he eventually gave in to the urge to cling; although he is used to me being gone a great deal, my lovely wife has historically always been around, and he overcompensated a bit once he got her back. But he handled the actual chaos and disruption of the move itself in fine style, so one can't complain.
There is still a lot of work to be done on the house. I have a housewarming party to plan, at some future point when order has been established, and all the potential space has become actual space, and we are settled. There is a great deal to unpack and set up. But you can see the shape of it. It's already a comfortable place, friendly and warm.
All the way along, my lovely wife told me that the right house was out there, waiting for us, and we just had to find it. Now, here, at the far side of all of that work and worry, I sit snug and comfortable and happy, and I have to say that she was right, and it was, and we did.
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