A new home

Since we're adding to our family, we decided that we need a new place to live. We currently live in a nice, large 2 bedroom, 2 bathroom apartment in a quiet, small complex.

Occasionally there's some noise we don't like (we've had upstairs neighbors that we kindly called "The Elephants" because of their heavy footed walking, or the college boys who lived across the hall who would have parties and I would call noise complaints on them (yes, I did that!) or the people who moved in after "The Elephants" moved out and one night turned their television up so loudly that it was rumbling our house (yes, I called noise complaint on them too...and they moved out shortly thereafter!)

But we decided that we needed another bedroom or den space to have enough space for the baby and all of the houseguests who will be visiting and staying with us.

So for the past three weekends, we have spent our Saturdays touring apartments, condos and houses for rent in the area. We've found out that we're lucky in the fact that we have so much space in our current place. That some apartments and what they view as "large living space" is teeny tiny (when you squish three bedrooms, livingroom, dining room, kitchen and two bathrooms into 1100 sq. feet it's going to mean either tiny bedrooms or tiny livingroom.)

We've found one complex that we really like. Tons of storage, tons of space, a garage that is included with the apartment (most don't include it and you have to pay separate rent on it.) The downside is that it's on the 3rd floor of a building. Which means stairs. Tito is afraid of me taking stairs when I'm later on in the pregnancy. I'm ok with it since I climb three flights each day at work (building with no elevator.) I love the space of the place, it's townhome style, tons of places for storage, closet space, washer/dryer, etc. We can also paint it whatever we want (as long as we paint it back), put up shelves, etc. But we're still touring places to see if there's one better out there.

I've made up a list for this weekend, and it looks like we've got 9 places to see this weekend. So we're starting early and hoping that we'll get them all in and hopefully we'll find something. It's frustrating because we have the cats too, and we're not parting with them. But some houses for rent don't allow cats. Some places require pet rent of $35 a month per cat (ridiculous!) I don't mind paying a deposit, some of which is non-refundable, but I draw the line at rent for a pet that makes no noise, is inside all day and does no damage.

The upside is that wherever we land, I can't physically move anything. I'll be able to pack but that's it. Not too bad in my opinion! Tito is out of town next weekend for a friend's wedding so I'm going to get boxes and pack up a bunch of our stuff that we're not using right now. Just so it's done...