Holy Crap.

We just bought a house!


The dining room.

Yes, that's right, sports fans-- when last I left you, I was waffling between hope and despair as one home choice after another presented itself, seemed to be "the one," and then fell by the wayside. I was trying to convince myself that suburban living was what we wanted, all the while seeing homes further and further away from the things in the city we've grown to love. And you know what? None of them "felt" right. not even that first house with no radiators upstairs-- it didn't really feel right even before I discovered we'd have to make bonfires out of the furniture to get a little warmth on chilly evenings.

Then along came The House.


The kitchen.

But first, allow me to backtrack. Picture, if you will, some downtime at work in an upscale retail environment, with employees chatting about this and that between checking in clients. I asked a coworker whether she knew anything about Midlothian, which is where we'd been concentrating our home search up unto that point. She didn't, but she did have another suggestion for me. Had we ever considered her neighborhood (which I'll thinly veil by calling it Parkview)?

Why, no. No, we hadn't.


One of the bedrooms in the attic.

A half an hour later, I'd gathered info about the schools there, how safe it felt, what was nearby and how convenient it was to Mr. Milkweed's job (a mere 9 minutes). That night, I went to bed tossing and turning at the thought of the six new houses in Midlothian that Eva and I were supposed to go see the next day. I called my realtor the next morning (way before it would be socially acceptable to do so, I might add) and explained my change of heart to her over the phone. I'd found a few houses in Parkview that I wanted to see instead; could we postpone to that afternoon?


Another attic bedroom. The downstiars has central air, with window units upstairs.

We could.

And at approximately 3:00pm last Thursday afternoon, I walked into The House, and knew absolutely immediately that this would be the home for us.

It was affordable. It was adorable. It had three bedrooms plus an office/playroom space, a redone kitchen with a brand new laundry room, and an ENORMOUS yard with a patio and privacy fencing. The floors were wooden. There were arched doorways throughout, chair railings in the dining room, and a screened-in porch off the living room. It had only one bathroom, but it had a partial basement with a repoured concrete floor and a new sump pump (important for during hurricane season). It had new electrical, recent windows, and a recent roof. It was about 1,550 square feet, which was more than our minimum and pretty typical for what we'd seen in our price range.


The deck/patio area.

It was PERFECT.

And so, shaking a little bit with the fear that it would be bought out from under us (as several other prospects had been, though none as wonderful as this place), I scheduled another walk-through for Friday afternoon, when Mr. Milkweed could attend. I tossed and turned all night worried about the narrowness of the attic stairs, only to see them again on Friday and realize that they weren't that bad.

Mr. Milkweed, who is typically stoic and all business with big decisions like this, practically danced a jig when seeing the back yard for the first time. We had arrangements with the babysitter and went out to dinner with the realtor, where we wrote up a contract and made an offer.


The yard. Imagine it with green grass and a garden in the back!

The next day was Saturday, and while I ran around like mad re-hanging wedding dresses and fetching consultant paperwork and greeting the two hundred plus customers we had at work, Mr. Milkweed called periodically with the seller's counter offers, which we then countered, until the price came down enough for us to agree that it was time to buy it.

Sunday afternoon, the realtor came by with the final contract (contingent, of course, on a home inspection, but about as final as one can get before that stage). We signed it, handed over our deposit, and collapsed in a huddle of exhaustion, disbelief, and glee.

We've bought a house, people. The inspection is this coming Thursday morning. Provided that checks out, we close at the end of March and move at the beginning of April. I'll still have a month left of my second trimester to unpack and nest and turn our new house in Parkview into a home for our soon-to-be family of four.

I kind of can't believe it.

(And a note about the pictures: I waffled about the legitimacy of posting them, but since I'm not posting the outside and most of these are exact copies of the pictures posted on realtor.com, I think it's OK.)