Homeowners, Take Two.

Raise your hand if you didn't realize that buying a house wasn't as simple as having the necessary money and making an offer and having that offer accepted. My hand is waaaay up there.

We lost that house. The one written about below, back like three weeks ago when I last updated this blog. I don't know what's up with my lack of writing, except that this house-searching and attempted purchasing, coupled with an even heavier-than-usual workload and a baby who does not stop moving has really made me reevaluate what I'm spending my time on. Writing in this blog has been so important to me, and the feedback I've gotten and readers I've amassed have been one of my favorite parts of this journey. It's just that recently our lives have felt a little off-balanced, a little up-in-the-air, and I've been spending every free moment I'm not working or taking care of Adelyn Belle stressing about our future home.

After we bought that house, we did the necessary inspection. Everything went great. I started downsizing our belongings, faced with a three-weeks-away move into a two-bedroom, one bathroom house that was noticeably smaller than our current apartment and with about a third of the storage space. We struggle now with fitting all of our (ahem, my) belongings into our mid-sized closets. So I gave away about half of my clothes, everything I haven't worn recently, things I've been holding on to thinking I might one day find a use for again. I came to terms with the idea of living with less; I even started to embrace the idea of streamlining our storage, our future purchases. I thought, you know, I don't even really want another child. So we will be just fine in this tiny space. Because, see, even though it was teeny, Jason and I had fallen in love with the idea of living within walking-distance to our town's historic downtown square and to living in such an adorable, charming, old house.

Then they did the appraisal. And it appraised for about $8,000 less than we had agreed on paying for it. And, guess what? They don't give you FHA loans for anything more than what the house appraised for. So we told the seller we'd buy it for what it was worth, $8,000 less. And she said no. She didn't have a choice. She was backwards on her mortgage. She couldn't sell it for a dollar less than what we had initially agreed on. The deal went bye-bye.

I kept telling myself that it was for the best, that it must have been somehow fated. This must not have been our house. But, oh, I was lying to myself just a little bit. I loved that house. I had already moved in in my mind. Addy and I were already walking to the downtown library and grabbing lunch on the patio of one of the locally-owned restaurants nearby.

To make a long story short, we spent the next few weeks house-hunting some more. We saw a few properties that were okay, but we couldn't get the nagging image of living in an old, charming house downtown out of our minds. But there was nothing for sale in our price range.

So our real estate agent sent out a postcard to every house in every neighborhood we liked, asking if they were considering selling. And, finally, we got a bite. A beautiful little house nearly next door to the 85-year-old elementary school that I attended and loved. The sellers were ready to let go of it, after their family had lived there since 1940 (the house was built in 1932, so it's only had two owners, ever).

We went to look at it and we fell in love and we made an offer and after some back-and-forths they accepted. Now we just have to wait for the appraisal. Knock on wood that this one is fated, because it is the first old, charming house I have ever seen that has a WALK IN CLOSET. And three bedrooms, just in case we ever change our mind about the second baby thing.

And what's even better, the seller told me that she is the second in three generations of people who lived there that attended and walked to Campus School. If we live there, Addy will get to carry on that tradition. I like to call that fate.

(Knock on wood.)