Nomad new parents

View from 'home' number 4 in 4 months, a 29th floor suite in a hotel

I found out I was pregnant on the 16th December. I told Neil on the phone, knowing that he would immediately come home from work. "Please be calm", I said, "I don't know how I feel yet". Since that evening, my entire life has been turned upside down. One of the major obstacles we knew we were going to have to face was moving. We (mistakenly) thought that our one bedroom apartment would only accommodate 2 people and set about searching for our new home and selling the one we had loved for 8 years. We knew we needed 2 bedrooms, one to turn into a nursery for our new arrival and we really hoped to get a decent amount of outdoor space, which was larger than the tiny balconies usually offered to Vancouverites.

A tiny Vancouver balcony, albeit beautiful

 After a pretty lengthy search, we found our new abode, complete with three levels, a decent sized balcony, one and a half bathrooms, a fire place, window seats, a lovely kitchen and (mercifully and so rare), our own private roof top garden. The area was different but family friendly and pretty with a large park and beach nearby and a community centre and farmer's markets a stone's throw away. There was one problem, however, the townhouse was not yet built. We bought it anyway, trusting the developers promise of "the end of July". We surmised we would have had the baby and enough time to settle in, while still enjoying Summer barbecues on the roof.

It's now the 8th, 11th 16th October and our house still isn't ready. Lilac has been here for 7 weeks and we've moved 4 times. First into rented accommodation for 3 months, the stifling June, July and August of this year, then again to a sub letted work colleagues apartment for a month, then a swanky Downtown hotel for 2 nights, (now at the developer's considerable expense) and finally, here, the 29th floor of the hotel I am writing this sad tale from. To cut a very long and painful story short, the moral of this weepy is to be very cautious if buying a property still under construction. The completion dates will be delayed, (even after signed contracts have been exchanged) and you will find yourselves having to uproot yourself yet again from a place that was rented just temporarily under false promises and hopes that only a few more weeks were required. 

View from 'home' number 2, an apartment on the 31st floor

We have lived out of boxes for too long, even with family visiting and Lilac's stuff accumulating and multiplying like I could hardly have imagined. It's been hard. 

I started this post with the intention of  writing about the difficulties of being without a decent kitchen or cookware, how sad it made me feel to be so uprooted without those small comforting things, like the cherished bed spread that seemed to follow us around and which is now in storage like everything else or the stuffed bunny of Lilacs that I pack into a bag wherever we go, or to lament about how Lilac is growing before us whilst literally living out of a box, but, I really don't have the energy.