Our New Apartment (3 months later)

So first of all I will get the mandatory Carter pictures out of the way. Here we are at the Palisades on Labor Day. We went for a picnic. Carter is a huge fan of his father and monsters.

This next section is for anyone who is actually interested in Isaac and I- we know that isn't many of you. I just want to warn you that if you continue past this point, there are no more pictures of the little man . . . almost.

As most of you know, for the past three years we have been living in NYC (now do you get out blog address . . . eh?) We found our first apartment through a broker on a one day extravaganza. It was a fabulous start apartment here in New York. It was small, but cute and functional. Plus it had views of New Jersey. Who could ask for anything more?

As you can tell, when I said small, I meant small (about 400 sq ft). It was perfect for two of us, but then Carter came. We weren't quite ready to give it up (or more acurately afford anything bigger). So Carter lived in the closet in our bedroom. At first it wasn't bad, but as you can see there isn't a lot of space for baby things and after a year, Carter needed to get out of the closet.

So, we moved. Sounds easy, but if you've never been through an apartment search in New York, I'm not sure you can fully understand what it means to move. There are few vacancies and generally they are vacant for a reason. To get a good apartment generally means you have to pay a broker which will charge you 15% of the annual rent (aka $5000+) and be ready to sign on the spot or someone else will. The documents that you have to submit require everything short of giving up your firstborn. So when we heard from a friend from an acquaintance of a friend that they were looking for someone to take over their lease for a 900 sq ft 2 bed 2 bath BELOW our budget, I was not playing around. I was literally sick to my stomach for a week until we had confirmation that we got the apartment. I still worry that at any moment we'll get an eviction notice, because this place is too good to be true. We had to put in a lot of hard work cleaning and painting, but in the end it was worth it. We totally love our place and hope to stay here for a really, REALLY long time.

I waited to post pictures, because I was still working on finishing touches. I still have a few things left to do, but you'll get the gist.

The Kitchen (not in our living room)

Carter's Room (polka dots courtesy of Grandpa)

The Living Room looking into the Dining Room

(for perspective, our ENTIRE old apartment would fit into these two rooms)
Looking out the window
The Dining Room (almost unheard of in NYC)
Our Bedroom (there's a little Where's Waldo? action in this picture)