Don't Know What You Got, 'Till Its Gone...

No, I'm not much of a Cinderella fan, but it is definitely a day of mourning. Today, we found out that we have a signed contract to sell the urban highrise. Good news, right? Well yeah, it is good news. I mean, we don't particularly like to pay two mortgages, and we are very excited about moving into the country estate and all. We are really glad to be able to give Max the kind of childhood that we think will be perfect for him. And we definitely like the idea of living a slower-paced lifestyle. But...

We love it in the city.

This wasn't our first home. In fact, Kendra and I had lived in three other places since getting married. We even liked one or two of them. The first was a crappy, 600-square foot apartment in Columbia, MO. It was fine, but given the construction of the place I'd be surprised if it's still standing. Then, we moved to North Carolina, in a decent little townhouse. It was quiet, out of the way, but it never meshed. After that, we lived in a cool little loft in downtown Durham, NC. It was an old tobacco warehouse converted into apartments. It was convenient, trendy, and fun.

But this home in KC was ours. We bought it. We picked out the tile and countertops. It is located in one of the hippest parts of KC, in one of the city's iconic buildings. Above all, this is where we brought Max home for the first time:


He spent the first year of his life here. He learned to crawl here, smiled his first smile here, and laughed for the first time here. And he will remember none of it.

The reality of what we are doing is really hitting us now. There is much that we will miss about the urban highrise, probably too much to name. I'll give it a try anyway.

We will miss the intimacy of living somewhere that truly requires you to interact, almost 24/7, with those you love the most. Even if we wanted to, we cannot get away from each other. Having 3 people (and a dog) live in 1085 square foot will do that. And that creates something special, I think. With over 2400 square feet at the country estate, we will lose this intimacy, to an extent.

We will miss our neighborhood. For those of you not familiar with the Crossroads in KC, it is the center of the city's art scene (and increasingly its dining and nightlife scene). Our waistlines--but not our palettes--will thank us for moving on. But man, it was never hard to figure out what to do for fun on a Friday or Saturday (or Tuesday!) evening.

We will miss our door person, Dei Dei. She is friendly, enthusiastic, and warm.

We will miss our condo. As I said before, this was ours. We customized it. We forged a lot of memories here. We held three holiday parties here, each one going later than the last (thanks, usually, to my brother Chris, or Mike C., hanging around too long after everyone went home).

This is the only place that we have raised our family, and that is changing now.

We are excited about moving, but the sadness of moving on is real, too.