As I mentioned before, we're selling our house in order to move to Memphis. We moved from Bartlett to Nashville in 2011 because Seth got into the Philosophy PhD program at Vanderbilt. I subsequently got a job in downtown Nashville with the company that I now work for, and we started looking for houses in late May through June. We searched online for where we thought we might want to be and the size of house we might want and we were put in contact with a realtor through a friend of my aunt Kristy's. We drove up to Nashville a couple of different weekends and found out what we liked and disliked and what areas of town we were willing to live in. We settled on Mount Juliet, even though it was farther out than either of us had originally considered, because we knew we would probably be needing to sell in 5 years when Seth finished school and it seemed like the Mount Juliet area was going to be stable and probably grow a lot (turns out we were right - Mount Juliet is now one of the hottest areas of town).
This actually wasn't the first house we put an offer on. There was another one a little closer to the interstate that I liked better, but they wouldn't put in a fence and we really wanted to have one in as soon as we moved since we had four dogs at the time (we've since lost Winston). So, we made the offer for this house on Windtree Trace and, honestly, I'm glad we didn't get the first one because I really do love our property and location. It has woods in back so we have lots of privacy; a large fenced in backyard that the dogs enjoy; a huge bonus room over the garage where we spent most of our time until Evie came along; vaulted ceilings in the living room with lots of natural light; plenty of counter- and cabinet-space; a nice soaker tub... There are a few things I'd change, of course, but I really do like our house.
I guess I didn't realize until we started planning to list it how much I've grown emotionally attached to it. This is our first home that we've ever owned. We came into this house just the two of us and we'll be leaving as a family of three. When we moved in, we'd been attempting to start a family for almost a year and only 2 months after moving here, we were pregnant with Evie. I have such vivid memories of being in our bathroom and finding out that what I'd wanted for so long was finally going to happen, of climbing up those stairs and sitting in the bonus room at my desk and starting this blog. I remember thinking about what having a baby in this particular house would be like: we'd have to get a gate for the stairs, would we use the upstairs room on the right or the left as the baby's room, where would we put the high chair - in the corner or facing the window? I remember planting Evie's tree outside where it would be in view of the room we'd decided would be the nursery. I remember Seth, Mom, and me painting that nursery from that terrible dark blue to the nice pale green and the painstaking precision with which Seth and I painted those elephants on her wall. I'm going to be so sad to say goodbye to that wall because it reminds me of those pregnancy fuzzies you have when you're expecting your first child, and also because Evie loves to look at it and says, "elephant!" She's now about the same height as the little pink elephant, actually.
And this is the house we brought that baby home to. I remember setting up the bear chair and the glider in the living room, nursing Evie while watching whatever random movie or HGTV show we put on, in a complete haze from lack of sleep and emotional roller coastering. And how her pack-n-play fit so perfectly between my side of the bed and the wall. How I used to sit in her nursery and stare at those elephants while I nursed her to sleep when we were transitioning to the crib. How she loves climbing into the bottom of the large cabinet and hiding in there with her water and a stuffed animal. How she tells the dogs to go "ou-side" or "uh-sairs" and opens the door or the baby gate. How she holds on to each spindle of the stairs as she climbs up for bedtime, saying "Night night, DaDa" every other step.
And this is the house were we lost our little Winston buddy. He's not buried here, but he sure did love having so much room in the bonus room and bounding up and down the stairs and running around the yard.
Now I've gotten all teary and emotional. We've only been on the market since this morning but we've already had two showings today and while I really do look forward to moving on to the next chapter of our lives and want an offer to come in as soon as possible, I'm now feeling the reality of all of these emotions. Seth has been talking about it for months, since we decided to move, but me... I'm the type where I get all hyped up about the cool new things we'll do and experience and I only see the bright side and the emotional part of it doesn't hit until the ball is actually rolling. I got butterflies in my stomach for the first time today, thinking about the emotional part of moving. So far I've only been considering the physical part - the actual packing and relocating - I'm a logistics sort of girl. But today, gathering up the dogs to get in the car so we could leave the house for the first showing... It was the first time I've felt like this is actually happening.
I know I'm not the first person to sell a house, or the first person to leave the house their kids were born in and leave all those physical manifestations of the memories behind. In fact, on the inside of the door frames of Evie's room and the pantry there are still marks in pen showing the growth of the boy who lived here before we did. And even though I'm very much looking forward to being close to my parents and the rest of the family and starting some new projects and making new memories, I can't help but be just a little bit nostalgic and melancholy about leaving this first house. I do remind myself, though, to call it a house, because for me, it takes family to make a home - and I'll never be leaving behind my home.
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