Where does the time go? I think we now finally understand what people meant when they told us, ‘just wait and see how fast she will grow up!’ right after we had Gabriella. It seems like weeks and months now fly by like days and since she’s in daycare during the week, we only get to spend a precious few hours a day with her until the weekend comes. As you can see, blogging has become much more irregular as a result (um..we still haven’t posted about her first birthday party which was great, if we do say so ourselves!). Don’t worry, it will be up at some point in all it’s DIY glory! Our little rowhouse was the perfect place to celebrate our little lady but it has also been the topic of much of our conversations these last few months…
…we LOVE our house. Every square inch of its nine hundred and sixty square feet (plus or minus 
) and we love our street, our neighbors, and being just a 1 minute walk from what could arguably be the BEST park in Baltimore! We also love that in nice weather, we can stroll through the park and head down to Canton, Fells Point, and the waterfront. Oh, and being able to walk to work from home while strolling G into daycare, make where we live unbelievably convenient. All of these things, PLUS having Aunt Raq just 6 blocks away meant that we planned on being in our little house for another few years. I mean, how could things get any better?
As we approached the holidays and as G started becoming more mobile, we started really thinking about our house and how it was going to grow with us. We finished the basement just last year to create a playroom with TONS of storage for toys and plenty of room for family movie nights. But we were noticing that we weren’t spending much time down there. Our living room was starting to get smaller and smaller and we were starting to feel crunched for space. We started talking about the need for ‘just one more room, a living room that didn’t also function as the entrance hall, and a layout that would allow G to have a play area within ear and eye shot of the rest of the house.’ How can we make that work in our current house? Do we expand up and add a third level? That wouldn’t get us the play space we needed but would get us the extra room. Both homes next to us are occupied with homeowners, so we couldn’t expand to the left or right, and even that wouldn’t get us a great yard for G and Riese to play in long term. Could we literally pick our house up and move it to a larger lot and then expand? We WISHED that was possible. At the same time, interest rates were very low and home prices in neighborhoods we wanted to eventually move to, were beginning to level out. We thought to ourselves, “let’s just start looking at the neighborhoods we really love as we try to narrow down the location we’d like to move to and then we can start considering an actual move later in the year.” Famous last words, right? Like ‘love’, it always happens when you’re not ‘really looking.’ Note: this conundrum also happens when you go into an animal shelter just “to look”. And then you walk out with an adorable furry puppy. Just sayin’…(wink, wink, Mom and Dad)!
How did we even begin this process? We had a general idea of what we would want in a home. Would it be a ‘forever’ home? Could it be? Would we really stay in the City or, as so many others, would we make the move into one of Maryland’s counties? Taxes, space, neighborhoods, oh my! Naomi was convinced that we should remain in the City and I was well, more open to the idea of moving to the county. We decided that it would really need to be the right house for us, regardless of where it was located, and that we’d need to really feel like we were getting a good value in order to make the move. We LOVE the character of older homes, especially those within the pockets of Baltimore City that had a true neighborhood feel and were still within walking distance to local amenities. There are also some great areas just outside the City that offer a similar neighborhood feel and are fairly well connected and convenient to amenities. Indecision was everywhere and with no immediate rush to move, we began the process with an open mind and open eyes.
What we found was a wide range of homes and yards throughout the neighborhoods we were looking in. We worked with a GREAT realtor who knew that nothing was ever really off the table and that it was going to take a unique opportunity to convince us to move anywhere, so we cast our net far and wide. The online listings came pouring in and we disregarded 99% of them instantly. For the 1% that intrigued us, most of the time there was immediately something we found wrong with them. Layout, property, yard (or lack there of), school district, size, the list was growing. We would attend some open houses, this time with an eye looking to see if we liked it enough to ACTUALLY move, rather than (for those that know us) know we like to do as a hobby on any random Sunday! Things were just not hitting the mark. We’d walk around thinking, ‘we’d have to change this, need to move that, what were they thinking here!?, how much is this!?’ We could not find that charm we were looking for in the newer neighborhoods and were missing the urban feel in others. Finding a home that would meet our young family needs now, but that we could also see as the home that Gabriella would grow up in and that our large family from NY, NJ, and CT could visit us comfortably in was not looking bright.
Then, oh boy did it happen. Then something hit the market and we jumped. Hard, high, and fast did we jump!
As exciting as this news is, (and we know you’re dying to see the findings of our search…) it still hasn’t hit us that we’re actually not going to live on Port St. at this time next year. We still have mixed emotions about it all. Are we really moving? In true Cataldo spirit, for our next home, we decided to take on a large project with many moving pieces. With all of these changes, it seemed a good point to transition our lives, our home chronicles and our photos of your favorite polka-dot-loving-little-lady, over to a new address…please continue to follow our new adventure!
If there’s one thing we learned about our lifestyle, it’s filled with a love of urban charm…starting at home.
