Back in June 2019, we heard from one of my old neighbors from growing up that he was thinking of selling his house and moving to Florida with his family. I always loved living on that block and the neighbors are still some of the closest friends in my life. It was a no brainer that I was going to work with him on purchasing his house. It was perfect! Much larger than our current house, had a pool, and a street conducive for my daughter to run around without the fear of being hit by a car or a cigarette butt from the convenient store 2 doors down. Best of all, it was completely move in ready as the seller was a perfectionist.
We put in our offer, and he accepted! Now we just needed to put our house up for sale. Easy enough right? Wrong. The time restrictions for our new house meant we needed to get the house sold quick. Luckily, a good friend of ours is a real estate agent and was able to help us out to market and get the deal done. After a few weeks we received an offer!
As with most home offers, they are contingent on an inspection. That’s where the real trouble started. Mold? We got it! Unknown septic tank in our backyard? You bet! Cracks in our floor joists? Why not? Obviously, the new buyers wanted these things fixed, but we barely had any time! So, what else can we do but offer them a reduction in price to cover the costs of each of these things. We even went as far as getting quotes for all of them, but no. They wanted it all done prior to moving in, which is understandable.
Wonderful, so now I have a 6-month-old crawling around, I need to pack up a house we have lived in for 5 years and accumulated enough things to furnish the White House, and to top it off, I suddenly needed to become one of the property brothers (the construction one who actually does something on the show) and fix everything in my house.
For those of you who know me, I am clearly the poster child for fitness and brute strength, so my first thought was that I can totally dig this septic tank up. Yeah right. So, I hired a professional, for a hefty fee. They brought back tractors and all sorts of fun machines, which they conveniently decided to drive right over my paver walk way I installed about one month earlier. This of course cracked it, so back to Home Depot I went to replace and fix it before I moved out…THE NEXT DAY.
After fixing the walk way, I put some new sod down to ensure it looked nice for the new owners. As I am laying down the sod, I get a call that our deck that we had put in a year prior was never permitted. Long and very aggravating story short, the guy who built our deck was horrible. It took 4 months to build (it is only a 14X16 ), he didn’t finish everything with it, and apparently now I am being told that he never submitted the final permits. Now is when I lost hope of moving the next day because we all know how towns can be to get an inspector out to check something. So, I pop my daughter in the car and take her with me for some cuteness points and hope that my new friend Angela at the municipal building will be able to get someone out there quickly.
Although Angela absolutely hates me from having to bother her constantly for things with this move, my daughter’s cheeky smile won her over and we were able to get someone to come and approve the deck that day. We were back on schedule!
Once the permits were all set, we enjoyed our last night in our old house with some brisk fighting and quiet mutters of hatred as we finished packing up the last bit of items we still had in the house. We slept in a sea of boxes, which conveniently were placed right at the edge of my side of the bed, which made my late-night bathroom run equivalent to American Ninja Warrior.
The next morning, we woke up and handed my daughter off to my mom so we could facilitate the movers. Luckily the movers were the easiest and most dependable part of the moving process. We were out of the house within 2 hours and on our way for the long journey of 0.8 miles (thank you Google Maps) to our new house. Once the movers were finished, we were able to bring our daughter in to show her the new house. She was so excited to be in a new house that she decided to “go poop poops” (as she now says) right when we got in the door. That’s my girl!
We spent our first few weeks in the new house enjoying the pool and the rest of the summer weather, just the 3 of us…or so we thought.
One day I get a frantic phone call from my wife saying I need to come home ASAP. She will not tell me why, but it is an emergency. My mind is racing thinking something terrible has happened. I get home to my wife in tears holding our 6-month-old daughter while she watches something stimulating on TV. I rush over asking what happened, and she pulls out our old friend, the pregnancy test. Well, she pulled out 5 of them (she is very thorough). BAM, parents of 2, just like that. Not only 2 kids, but 2 kids that are 15 months apart.
I was ecstatic! Nothing has brought me more joy than being a dad to my daughter, so I was so ready for another one. I didn’t realize that my wife was crying because she was so concerned that we couldn’t handle 2 kids that close together. I told her that was nonsense and we would be just fine.
Not sure if it was the hormones or I am just really persuasive because her attitude switched on the spot! She was now sharing in my excitement, and of course, started shopping.
After a few weeks we found out we were having a baby boy, and that news hit us with even more excitement. We have one of each, my wife gets to shop for a whole new wardrobe for this kid, and I am finally not outnumbered in the house!
1st Time Dad Probs 