I’ve been quiet on social media simply because there hasn’t been much time. My kids were home this summer and are being taught at home this fall, and that’s accounted for most of my busyness. But, we also made the decision to sell our home and to purchase a home in a new town, which has been a lot of effort in a COVID world, to say the least. Currently, we’re in contract to sell our home and to purchase a new one.
I think that acquaintances and strangers might be surprised by our decision to move, but those who know us well were probably expecting it. The primary driver in our move is our daughter. We live in a town with a wonderfully rated school district, but are experience hasn’t been what we were expecting when we moved here with her as a newborn baby. My daughter’s story is her own and it’s inappropriate to share any of it on a blog, but I will say she does suffer from a chronic medical issue that requires additional support at school. Compared to many, it is a very minor issue. However, she (and I) were met with derision — and, in some cases, cruelty — by her teacher last year, something I was not expecting after a really wonderful and supportive preschool experience. Unfortunately, through my child’s mistreatment, I have learned that she is not an exception within our school district, which often struggles to appropriately support children with special educational and medical needs. Beyond the issues related to her medical struggles, I’ve found the school distract unnecessarily inflexible in moments when they could have easily supported our family.
We had decided we were going to wait out her first grade year and make decision about schools once we had more information and an experience with a new teacher under our belt. COVID changed those plans, as she’s learning remotely (though her teacher IS wonderful considering the weird circumstances). In addition, COVID significantly changed the suburban real estate market. We put a ton of effort into our renovation, which made it a costly endeavor. We knew we wouldn’t get our money back in the house, but we figured that it didn’t really matter in the short term because our kids would get a great education. But, you plan and God laughs, and so plans get reworked
Once the market could support a better price for our home, and knowing we haven’t been happy in our current situation, we started researching private and public schools in other towns. We were transparent with private schools that our daughter might require some extra assistance next year. We were told across the board that they would not take a child with a medical disability in a COVID world, which then led us to dive more deeply into our public school search.
We considered Greenwich, CT, but if the real estate market is hot here, it’s literally on fire there. Houses that needed a significant amount of work would go almost exclusively in bidding wars and we weren’t willing to join in on that madness. Armonk, NY, the neighboring town to us, has a wonderful reputation for supporting children and providing extra help to kids with extra needs, so that was also considered, but the inventory of homes with big pieces of land was minimal. New Canaan, CT is great, but not on a direct train line to NYC.
Ultimately, we settled on Katonah, NY, a cute little hamlet where we had wanted to settle years ago when we started thinking about a family, but we couldn’t find the right home at the time. Once we knew that was where we wanted to land, we reached out to parents in the community. I spoke with two moms of kids whose needs for support were much more significant than our daughter’s, and they felt that the schools did a superlative job in supporting them. We realize that no public school will be perfect, as funds are limited and there are always state and federal guidelines that must be met (sometimes to the detriment of students), but it feels like the best place for us to continue to raise our family. We found a beautiful home that needs a quite a bit of work to meet our needs, but we’re certain that it can become that forever place that we never really expected our current home to become. There’s even room for a barn full of alpacas, which has been a silly dream of mine that can now come true (in time).
I love my current house. I’m going to miss it, but a house is made a home by the people you love. We can do that anywhere. And, my priority is to give my children an idyllic childhood, and a huge part of that is the support of their community and schools.
I’ll keep you guys apprised of all of the renovation progress on the ‘gram. Right now, we’re working on hiring an architect. We’re hoping to start working on the town permits as soon as we close in January, start the renovation in February, and then go from there. I will be adding all of my vision boards to my new Pinterest page, so head on over so you can see what the plan is, and then you can all laugh at me when my budget (husband?) tells me I need to dial it back.
I am both excited and terrified of this new journey. In the meantime, here are some of my favorite pictures that I’ve shared of our home in the past:
4 comments
Best of luck to you and your family. Katonah is lovely. We have many customers from there and it’s closer to LOLA. Best wishes. Denise
Thank you so much. We’re very excited about the move.
Love you guys and excited for the future! you will create another lovely home!
Thanks so much. Love you guys too and can’t wait until we can commiserate over our building projects 🙂
Comments are closed.