bye bye batignolles

So when Husband found out I was pregnant, one of the first things he said was:  We have to move.

Me:  Why?  I love this apartment.

Husband:  It’s tiny.

Me:  It’s charming.  Look at the French windows.

Husband:  It’s drafty.

Me:  The neighborhood’s great.  You can see the Sacré Coeur from the street.

Husband:  There’s no natural light.

Me:  Won’t you miss hearing the opera singer doing his vocal exercises in the morning?

Husband:  The insulation’s terrible.  With the baby our neighbors will hate us.

He made some good points so we started to talk about it and decided maybe it was time to buy.  So we started looking and realized that we both had very different ideas of the ideal place.  After much discussion we whittled down our criteria to what was the most important for both of us. Me: metro accessible.  Husband:  big. 

If you consider our budget and the fact that the average price per meters square in Paris is 8,000 Euros, achieving both criteria is extremely difficult.  Nay, almost impossible.

I gave up pretty quickly (as I was the least motivated between the two of us) but Husband forged on. 

Husband:  I found something.

Me:  Ok…

Husband:  It’s huge.  And it’s new.   

Me:  Ok…

Husband:  It’s in the suburbs but it’s metro accessible.

Me:  Ok… and we afford it?

Husband:  Yes because you’re pregnant. 

Turns out the fact that I was pregnant gave us some advantages if we bought something new.  The first was that the interest rate for part of our loan would be zero.  The second was a reduction in the sales taxes we had to pay.  5.5% instead of the usual 20%.

We went the very next day to check the place out.  It was the exact opposite of our current apartment.  It was big and modern.  The neighborhood was “up and coming”.  Basically what it lacked in Parisian charm it made up in practicality.

I was reluctant.  Was I really ready to move out of the city and into the suburbs? 

I felt the baby move inside me and knew that this maybe was not the right decision for me but it was the right decision for us.  As a family.

We decided to go for it.