Malcolm's Ramblings

So much has happened since near the end of September when I published the post: Do All the Stressful Things at Once.

The quick version is that we successfully sold our house in Kingston, moved our stuff into storage, moved in with Annie’s sister and family, Pixel was born, we bought a house in Orangeville, and Annie finished her Master’s program.

Selling Our House

When we put our house up for sale with Jordan Beckwith in Kingston, he and I had discussions about how it should be priced and after realizing that I had really dug in and done my research, he let me take the lead. He came over and provided us with tips and tricks on what we could do to improve the look and feel of our house to sell it quickly, and between the price and his feedback, it definitely sold quickly as six days after being listed, we approved an offer we received and the house was sold.

We got what we were looking for, minus $900, and the terms were otherwise favourable, and so there was no reason to keep trying to find a buyer. It was a fair offer, but it was still hard to say yes. We had so many good memories in that house. It was hard to not get emotional and ask for twice as much money or some other silly amount that no one would pay, but we had a plan we wanted to stick to – move closer to Annie’s family.

It all happened so much faster than we had expected and so we had to move our stuff into storage.

Moving into Storage

We have a storage unit near Kingston, just off the highway, but it was not big enough to fit all of our stuff. It just let us stage the house a bit by getting rid of the clutter and making the house feel more open and less geeky.

So we filled up that storage unit, and then decided to get another storage unit near Annie’s sister’s place. The same storage unit company that they were already using. When we rented the U-Haul, we also hired some loading help in Kingston and some unloading help here to make it easier on everyone. That was expensive, but not compared to hiring a professional moving team to do everything, and it was well worth it for the reduction in frustration and saving all of our backs.

Unfortunately, the storage unit wasn’t big enough and I had to, in an bit of a state of panic, rent a second storage unit to fit the rest of our stuff. So we have three storage units in two cities that we are currently paying for.

When we started having the storage units, I was expecting to be in them for maybe three months… Unfortunately, we are still in them, but hopefully will be out of them all by the end of March.

Buying a House

When it came to buying a home in this area, many people in the family have already selected their real estate agent and so we reached out to Cathy Graham-Smith and she said yes to working with us as well.

We told her that we were looking for a unicorn, that we didn’t have the budget really to buy the house we really wanted, and that it might be a quick process or a slow process. We told her we’d try not to waste her time, and so even before we closed on our house in Kingston, we were already going to houses for sale with her in an hour in every direction from her office.

We went to probably fifty or more houses with Cathy. We offered on four or so houses I think and weren’t able to make any of them work until Cathy came to us with a house that didn’t fit our list of requirements.

We were looking for a house with a basement apartment that had three bedrooms upstairs and two downstairs. We ended up finding a beautiful house with two bedrooms upstairs, and an apartment downstairs but the apartment has no separate entrance.

We offered on it because it was in a location we liked, had a nice sized property, large house with nice finishings, and they accepted our offer.

Securing the mortgage was a different matter. Because the downstairs doesn’t have its own entry, it isn’t considered a separate unit and so the rent we are going to be getting from Annie’s nephew and family couldn’t count towards the purchase, and because I have a balance on my line of credit, in part due to surrogacy and Annie’s schooling, the mortgage company wanted us to put twenty percent as our downpayment before they’d be willing to approve us. So we had to sell our investments to make that happen.

It was a lot of stress securing the mortgage. I almost wanted to give up because typically blockers like this when doing a big purchase feels like the universe saying “don’t do it…” but I hope that’s not the case this time as the house really is beautiful.

We take possession of it at the end of this month and we are organizing all of our moving efforts to try to get in quickly and easily.

Pixel is Born

During the whole house hunting process, Mr. Pixel was born. My son is amazing! Our nearly eleven year journey to grow our family finally had a positive outcome thanks to surrogacy. Annie’s tenacity, drive, and determination to make this real for us was immense. If it had all been on my shoulders, Pixel wouldn’t be here.

We aren’t going to share our son’s name far and wide on the Internet. We will let him decide what and when he wants to share that. For now, you can continue to call him Pixel or Mr. Pixel.

Master’s Graduate

Annie graduated from her Master’s degree. She worked so hard for so long to get here and deserves a ton of praise and celebration for making it happen. I know there were times where she thought she should give up and as Pixel became more real, she often questioned putting off completing her Master’s, but I’m so proud of her for sticking with it and making it happen despite all the adversity we were going through at the finish line!

Work at Acquia

Work gave me six weeks of parental leave at full pay, so I took it. It was hard getting everything ready to leave and around the middle of my leave, I checked in with my boss to see if everything was going well and he basically just told me to log off, which was both nice and funny.

Since coming back, I have had to balance my time at work and with Pixel and that has been hard. I would have loved to have another month or two with him as his primary parent, but work is also important to me and I know what it means for our quality of life.

I really enjoy my job and it seems like they enjoy having me do it as I received a promotion to be a Senior Technical Account Manager. The job stays the same, but the recognition of my efforts was really nice. Next, I have to figure out how to continue to develop my presence within the organization to be up for future promotions with Acquia.

What’s Next?

I focus on keeping my job, as the IT world continues to be tumultuous, we move into our new house with the help of movers and family. We will continue to raise Pixel. He needs a surgery in the first two years of his life to correct a minor issue, so we need to stay on top of that to maximize his health and happiness. Annie will work to grow her therapy client list. Annie’s nephew and his family will move in with us at the end of February and Pixel will have two quasi-siblings to hopefully grow up with over the next several years.

It has been a busy few months, but I don’t see any signs of it really slowing down any time soon…