We did it–we found a home! Woot woot!  Happy 3 year anniversary to us! It’s in the Upper West Side’s Manhattan Valley, dubbed “suburbia with subways” and one of NY’s “next big neighborhoods” by NY Mag last year.

Mike’s brother got a feel for the neighborhood for us (such a good guy…used his lunch two days this week to scout it all out on the hottest day in the city yet this year, befriended our land lord, and dealt multiple times with our broker), and felt confident about it.  We’re satisfied.  And excited!

To top it off, it’s a close walk to everything we wanted–Columbia, subway station, Whole Foods, and Central Park. I’m hoping I’ll be telling you in a few weeks that we’ve discovered Manhattan’s best kept secret. Fingers crossed.

We used PadMapper for our search and I totally recommend it if you’re on the hunt, too. It’s awesome.  And I love their slogan, “Making Apartment Hunting Suck Less.”  Seriously, though, I wish we wouldn’t have wasted time going through any other site.  It includes a comprehensive search from multiple listing agencies and is super user friendly, plus it gives you the option of getting hourly email updates of newly available pads.

Also while I’m thinking about it, you guys, do yourself a favor and join meetup.com. I’ve used it during each of our moves to find mom groups to get involved with, and I’ve never been disappointed.  It allows you to search thousands of topics/special interests to find a group that best fits you.  I’ve already joined a moms group in NYC and have received loads of recommendations on everything from gear to schools to fam-friendly vacation spots to you-name-it.  And it will give me immediate play-date options when we get to the city.

Ahh!  It’s all becoming so real!

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Momma’s Ruby Slippers by Kendra Canty is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License