Homeowners.

We bought a house.

It was a long-time coming, a few years of actively trying to improve our credit scores and our bank account, of trying to decide where we really wanted to live, wanted to plant ourselves. See, renting offers you a certain noncommittal sense--what's a year, in the grand scheme of things? Jason and I have lived in our current apartment for a year and three months now. That is longer than I've lived anywhere since my parents' house. From there, I went to the dorms at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York, then to an apartment in Memphis with Jason, then back to my parents', then into an apartment with my friend Elise, then back to my parents', then practically (although not technically) into another apartment in Murfreesboro with Jason, then a three-month stay in New York with my sister, then into my friend Alex's house, then into an apartment in Nashville with Jason, and then into the apartment we have now.

It's been a lot of moving for the eight years since I've graduated high school.

(And on a side-note, I loathe moving more than pretty much anything else. When we moved into this apartment I was pregnant, and I barely had to do a thing. It was AMAZING. No such luck or excuse this time around.)

When we first started getting serious about the whole house thing, part of me couldn't really come to terms with it. It just seemed so permanent, so grown-up. Too grown-up. More-so than getting married and having a baby. This shuffling around from place to place and home to home each year has been annoying, yeah, but it gave a sort of pretend-freedom to our lives, that we could suddenly whisk our family off to Europe to be ex-Pats or end up in the Florida Keys as a traveling family band.

I've struggled to accept the fact that this is our home, maybe even forever. Jason and I joke all the time about packing up and moving here and there, and as fun as it sounds it's just not going to happen. Adelyn's family is here--I couldn't take her away from two sets of grandparents, great grandparents, cousins, an aunt, stability. I absolutely loved growing up in the South; I loved evolving in the same place. I want that for Addy.

And I want it to happen here, in Murfreesboro, where we're all comfortable and settled and at home.

It's a heavy thing, as a parent. This making decisions for someone else first, always first. And that's the whole gist of a good family, everyone making choices for each other first, themselves second. That's something I couldn't have really understood until Adelyn came along, just how heavy that could be.

Finding this house, though, has taken some of the scariness out of it. It just feels right and easy.. The house is tiny--the same size as our current apartment--two bedrooms, one bath (eek!). It has a beautiful, fenced in backyard, perfect for a swingset and hopefully keeping dog pee off the floor. It has a huge basement and a walk-in attic. All wood floors and charm pouring out of every corner. It was built in the 1930s, and sits right off of Murfreesboro's historic, walkable, adorable downtown square, filled with tons of locally-owned restaurants and shops.

And the mortgage will be cheaper than our rent. Score one for making a grown-up decision.

Better yet, it gets to be Addy's first home--somewhere we won't be leaving in a year, two, or three. A home-home.

We'll have time to be a traveling family band later.