Moving house, a very busy weekend

Last weekend we moved to a rented flat near my office. We decided to shift to a place close to my office so that I could cut down on all the travel time- it was taking ½ hour in the mornings and between 45 mins to an hour in the evenings to get back from home, and office has become so hectic that I cannot leave before 6:30-6:45 on average (others stay back till about 8 but I can’t and I’ve decided not to) and need to be in by 10 latest which meant that if I left home at 9:30 in the morning I could not get back before 7:30-7:45 on average and I was not comfortable leaving S alone with the maids for such a long period of time

So far I was lucky in either being allowed to work from home – till S was about 9 ½ months old and then when I got back to office full time my mom and mom-in-law took turns to come and look after S. Now S is 13 and a ½ months and I need to put in place a system where I am not dependent on grandparents- I know we can force them to come but they have already done so much, and it is not fair to ask them to give up their lifestyle and come- my father in law cannot manage alone for long since there is no help at my in-laws place, and as for my mom she is used to a lot of freedom, travel, relatives, functions etc at our family home. Anyway I am digressing; this post is about my shift and busy weekend. So sum it up we took a decision to move to a place near my office to cut down my travel time so I can spend more time at home with S, to enable me to make it home for lunch everyday, to have the flexibility to drop in home at anytime (which would keep the maids on their toes) and also for peace of mind that home is only 5 mins away and anytime I am needed I can get there quickly.
One of the other advantages of the new place is that it is a gated community- there are about 10-12 building blocks within the gated compound and there is a play area in the middle. So security is higher (the guards do not allow people to generally enter the compound) and S can also play in the play area everyday and make friends with the other children in the apartment complex. Sometime if I get late from work the maids can also take S down to the play area since it is within the compound and they don’t need to travel to get to it- in the earlier flat we had to drive or take an auto to reach the park and I was not comfortable letting the maids take S alone. Another advantage of staying in a large community is that there are many get togethers/celebrations for festivals- since we don’t have any family in the city we stay in, it would be nice for S to celebrate Diwali, Holi, Dusshera, Ganesha Visarjan along with others. I remember when I was growing up- initially we had stayed in a colony where there were many kids my age and we used to play every evening for 1-2 hours and during all functions we all used to celebrate together. We later shifted to a bigger flat and different colony where the kids were much older and I really missed the earlier times.

We are still retaining our current house (since we own it and have spent a lot of time and effort doing it up the way we like it) and the current plan is to stay in our new place during the week and move to the earlier house over the weekend- the best of both you may say. Most people say this would be unfeasible in the long term since it is a lot of effort to maintain two households- I do agree but my sense is that this is only a temporary solution. Either when S gets older and starts going to school then we will shift back to the earlier house (since the time she has alone with the maids at home would come down), or else we would become so comfortable with the gated community and accompanying benefits (play area, gym etc) that we may move here permanently and rent out our place. Lets see..

So last weekend was spent in shifting..the hubby was on a foreign trip the whole week and only landed up on Saturday so the bulk of the packing fell on my head. My mom helped in setting up the entire kitchen- from buying the containers to getting the provisions and putting them into the container. My job was to pack mine and S clothes and decide which of S things to move to the new place- cycle, sterilizer, mixie (for her food) etc etc. The packing did not take long- however we had not hired any tempo/ packer so it took three trips by car to get part of the stuff across on Saturday and another trip on Sunday. We also had to get the new house cleaned before we moved in with S which meant getting all the cleaning materials across there, unpacking those etc etc. Anyway most of the moving was done by Saturday and by Sunday morning the unpacking was done. I had a very bad cold over the weekend and we were quite uncomfortable the first few nights in the new house – it was very hot (no air conditioner), if we opened the windows there were mosquitoes and there was a lot of noise from the road at night. But it was my birthday on Sunday and I was determined to be cheerful. We went back to the old house on Sunday since there was some more stuff we had to pick up from there and the hubby was keen to spend weekends (including moving weekend) in the old house. One of my friends dropped in in the evening to wish me and we cut a cake (the hubby had ordered one after much pestering by me-I love cake and cards on my b’day!) to celebrate. At night we went back to the new place and went out for dinner (to Dakshin, one of my favourite restaurants) – though I was really tired what with the shifting and the traveling up and down and the heavy cold. But was glad we took the effort to go out for dinner- what’s a birthday without a celebration?