THE WAITING GAME

I mentioned that last week Will and I had an offer accepted on a house we absolutely loved. We had seen it for the first time on Thursday, got our ducks in a row and put in an offer on Friday, held our breath all weekend, and got the call on Monday morning that our offer had been accepted! It all happened so quickly and yet it felt like the culmination of years of saving, renting, waiting for the right place to come along and for us to be in the right place to make a go at it.

*original post

And then Monday night, we got a call saying a significantly higher offer had come in that same afternoon and we instantly knew it was over as quickly as it had begun. We were already at the top of our price range and knew we couldn’t afford to get in a bidding war, no matter how perfect the house was and how ideal the timing would have been with our first baby on the way. Of course we got the disappointing news while Will was traveling for work and I was solo at home (why does sh*t always hit the fan when he’s out of town?!). My parents offered to come over, but I knew I needed some time alone to just let it sink in and let myself feel sad for a night. I cried a lot that night and wound up sleeping from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. I kept crying for a good part of the next day too, if I’m being honest. I kept thinking I wish we’d never seen that house so we wouldn’t know just how much we had lost.

I’ve been wrapping my head around going back to square one for the past ten days or so and trying to convince myself there’s a silver lining in here somewhere, but the truth is right now we’re just pretty bummed. We’ve been hoping to move back to my hometown and there just isn’t a ton of inventory in our price range, so it feels like the house we’re waiting for might not even be on the market yet. It’s hard to hope for something that may not exist! I’ve spent way too much time refreshing Zillow or trying to imagine how we could make this or that less-than-ideal floor plan work, but the fact of the matter is right now there’s not much we can do besides wait and hold out hope that the right place will come along, even if it doesn’t quite stack up to the house we lost or even if it doesn’t happen until after we welcome our first baby in a little over five months. 

This isn’t the first time I’ve felt anxious and impatient on the precipice of major life change. Between counting down the days until the end of my first trimester hoping for the nausea to pass and anxiously awaiting the appearance of a new house we can see ourselves in, it’s been a lot of hurry-up-and-wait over here. I went back and read this post I wrote in 2016 a month before we found out we’d be moving from Dallas back to Connecticut and felt like I could have written it yesterday (which doesn’t do much to convince me I’ve grown into a more patient person these last two and a half years!).

I can’t promise I’ll give up my real estate stalking, but I am going to try to remind myself to stop racing ahead to the next milestone and try to enjoy where I am, nausea and all. I’m trying to remind myself of all the little things I have to look forward to: baby’s first kicks (could be any day now!), sharing the baby’s sex next week, get-togethers with family and friends. If you too find yourself stuck in a waiting game, I hope this will be a timely reminder to savor the present and an excuse to give yourself a little something to get excited about while you wait for the big things to fall into place. Onward and upward!