*********************************************************************************************
*********************************************************************************************The move next door :-p
Well not really next door, but just a mile away, so you get the picture ;-). Its been 3 weeks already - first week being too busy to even think about writing a post, second week thought about it, but my PC was down and the third week I got a new laptop, still was too lazy to write anything :-D.
Anyways we moved from here:
To here:
It looks like an upgrade (the extra floor), but actually its a downgrade (it has 1 less room and no garage). To tell you the truth, I didn't really want to move at all. After living in the house for 3 years and having the life-changing experience happening there (if you don't know, Snugli was born while we were there), the house felt like our first home as a married couple. Yes, we were in Bangalore for about 2.5 months and then in 2 other apartments here in US for 6 months each. But this was the house we started building the nest in, so to speak. We bought furniture, our TV all there.
But (there always has to be a "but"), the 3 rooms were unnecessary. Snugli still sleeps in our room , albeit in a crib, so we literally had 2 rooms extra - 1 of which we used as an office and a God's room, other we didn't use at all. So a move to a 2-room house would be the logical thing to do. Saving a little bit rent money was a plus. The problem we encountered was the you cannot find a 2-room, 1-floor house. All the 2-rooms I have seen here are duplex houses. And you hardly get independent ones. Well, a town home was our only choice.
I was worried alright, about the move with Snugli around and more than that, about how Snugli would behave around the stairs. Earlier when we moved from house to house here, there were only 2 of us and we did everything - booked a Uhaul and we literally hauled everything. But with Snugli, we have food/milk schedules to maintain and her getting in the way of the move (we cannot really push her into a corner :-p). We did book an Uhaul truck, but we also engaged some labour through Craigslist (2 labourers for $20 an hour).
We didn't know how it all would work out, but it did wonderfully. The labourers were absolutely awesome. They were quick, organized and worth the $100 we paid them after 2 hours. We had initially thought of only getting the bigger items moved by them, but they moved almost 85-90% of our items! When Sri tried to help them out, one of them absolutely refused to let him, saying "This is what you are paying us for"!! Sri and the 2 guys took care of the major moving, while I took care of Snugli's food and getting the boxes ready for the guys to move :-D. Next day we were done with cleaning the house and giving the key back.
I felt bad when we were leaving, seeing the house so empty, yet so full of the times we had spent in it, but after we came to the current house, somehow I totally became indifferent and got adjusted. Don't know whether I'm still in shock and if the realization hasn't yet dawned on the fool thats me :-\. Whats even more strange that whenever we have moved from a place, be it earlier with my parents or later with Sri, visiting the older house is very rare. But in this case, the old house in on the way to anywhere for us. So for quite a few times, I used to feel a pang whenever we saw the old house, but recently, we have another shorter route we are taking, so its been sometime since I saw it.
The best part of it all was that Snugli got adjusted to the new house so well. She cried the first night (she wasn't used to the window next to her crib ;-) :-D), but then things simply fell into place. She loved the stairs, she goes up saying "Aane, aane" (elephant) and comes down the stairs holding the wall. We watch her all the time when she's on the steps, but thank God, there haven't been any incidents so far. We have decided, upon seeing such a good progress to not even install the gate we have with us :-D.
There are still things that need to get into some kind of order (the closet space is less here than the old house), but we were set into a pretty organized environment the first week onwards. I can only hope that this house will be as good for us as the previous one was :)).
