"There's no place like home, there's no place like home, there's no place like home..."

It's with mixed emotions that I report my interview last week was a smashing success. I've been offered a position with one of those big interweb companies back home in the Emerald City. I will be very sad to leave my new LA Offsprung friends, but I gotta say, it's such a relief to be headed home to Mommy. We've got absolutely no one in the way of family or close friends down here and it's been rough with the new baby. I just can't wait to have those extra sets of hands when needed. And I'm excited to show my little Parasite all the places and things and people I grew up with in Seattle.

Did anyone else here move back home when they had kids? Or, did any of you try to make it work in a strange city?

Oh yay yay yay yay yay! We'll be there...if not soon, then soonish-ish. Congratulations on your new job and on going home.

I've lived in a strange city since Alan and I got engaged 10+ years ago. I've made lots of great friends in L.A. and there are parts that I love and parts that I hate. But even after ten years, I still long for Seattle and my family and friends there. All the more so since the Dragon was born. It's really tough to parent without a strong support network within spitting distance.

Any idea what neighborhood you'll settle in?

Congrats on the new job!!!! And I'm glad this move takes you closer to family and in a more comfortable and familiar environment. I totally understand the desire to be closer to family and have more of a "village" to raise the kid. That said, it would be a VERY awesome job that would get us to return to our hometown. Let's just say we didn't grow up in Seattle.

Congrats atomic! And why oh why couldn't you people all have moved to Seattle WHILE I STILL LIVED THERE!!!

Although I must say, now that I'm down here, I would be lost without Ellie to talk to.

And I really miss having family around. AlphaGeek and I both left our parents, siblings, and long time friends behind for this move, and holidays have not been the same at all. Plane tickets for four are just too expensive for me to do every year, so we're trying to get used to being on our own. It is H-A-R-D.

The one good thing about it, is that my mom and I got the distance that our relationship seems to need to work. We get along a lot better now with 1800 miles between us, than we ever did when I lived 5 minutes away.

Congrats on the job!

We're moving away from family for the second time since GirlWho was born. For the first year of her life, we lived in a very isolated part of Missouri, with no family or friends nearby. We moved near my family in OK, but then lived here in TX with my husband's family all within 3 hours. I'm excited to go to Chicago, but I'm terrified about leaving our support structure behind. I desperately need it because of my health, but my husband just could not find a good job in Texas that had nothing to do with the "security companies" that we all know about from their dealings in Iraq and Afghanistan. He's excited about his new job, but we'll be pretty much alone and he has numerous events and such on evenings and weekends.

We'll make it work - somehow.

Congratulations on the job!

Mightyninjamom, I hear you especially regarding the distance with your mom. I adore my dad's side of the family and miss them like crazy, but living within driving distance of my mother would not be good for me, AwesomeAnalyst Husband, or Her Madgeness. On the other hand, it breaks my heart knowing she won't have the same close relationship with my parents as I did/do with my grandparents.

I've lived Away for 15 years and daydream all the time about going back to the Cornfield. What I would do for a job and friends, who knows, but being near family sounds like a dream.

Good news for you! I'm just bummed I won't get to see you guys and the Parasite if there is ever another OS L.A. get-together. That said, I bet you can't wait to get home and finally have some help!

Mamawho, my family is three hours from Chicago. You can visit them for some farm lovin' and support.

That is awesome. Congrats on your job.

Six years ago when I was 7th months pregnant with 1st kid I left Houston and moved back to my hometown. It REALLY helps to have family nearby and that is why we still live in the where we do.

yay new job!
we're definitely trying to make it work in a new city- namely the emerald one! woo! shoot me a message when you get settled!

sadly, we had to move away from our home/my mommy when the baby was born. san francisco was too dagblammed expensive, and the life duet got into grad school. so off we went.

Thanks, HRH PS. I'm really looking forward to city life (we'll be in Oak Park) but I'm sure I'll miss the slower pace of my upbringing in Oklahoma.

Thus far, people in Chicago were amused by my accent.

I'm kind of sad that my daughter will probably identify more as a Chicagoan than as a Texan or Okie. My family and my husband's are both deeply rooted in OK and TX.

Congrats on the new gig. But I'm bummed you're leaving LA. It was good to meet you at the last LA get together.

Kathy...et tu? Really?

Martini...I guess it's just you, me, Neal and Shauna, right?

Congrats on the job!!

And mcglory, I completely understand. It would have to be a very, very special job indeed to get me to move back home (and even that probably wouldn't convince Mr. S to move there--southern WV isn't his idea of a great place to live).

At the moment, we're 200 miles from our closest family member, Mr. S's sister. We're 400 miles from my parents, 300 or so from Mr. S's mom and sister, and even further from our other siblings. Other than friends, we've never really had any kind of support system here. It's difficult, but there's not much that can really be done about it.

Kathy: My new office is in the International District, so I think we're going to be trendy and look for a place in Columbia City. My exasperatingly fashionable brother & sister-in-law just bought a house there and I really liked the neighborhood when I was up last week. Comfortable mix of shiny and crappy houses, mom & pop stores next to Tully's Coffee. We'll also look at Beacon Hill and the surrounding area. The goal is to find a rental house on the south end with a fenced yard for the dogs, that's not too far off the bus lines.

Kommish, I will absolutely drop you a line when we're back in town. I think Floor Pie is up there too, right? We should have a little Offsprung-Seattle gathering. The LA one at Kathy & Alan's was such a good time.

Oh and Mamawho, I completely understand about wanting your child to identify a certain way geographically. That's another reason I wanted to go home; I've always been so proud to be a Seattleite and I have to admit I cringed at the idea of her growing up a SoCal girl. Erm. I mean no offense to SoCal natives. Hell I married one. But...

All our family is in Albuquerque. We moved to Charlottesville, VA 1.5 months after getting married in 2001 and had Girl Grey there. I totally understand the isolation. It took a while to make friends, but I'm telling you, I made the best friends of my life there. What a wonderful support network we had. When we all finished grad school and went our separate ways, it was VERY sad. Now we're near DC and started all over. I'm making friends, but I don't have the support network I did.

We'd love to move back to NM, or CO, somewhere closer. My grandma is almost 87 and doesn't like to travel anymore, so it's kind of heartbreaking that she doesn't get to see her great-grandbabies very often. She hasn't met Baby Grey yet and is very sad about it. We look for jobs there, but there isn't much for me...

Congrats on the job and it's great that you will be near family again. I would kill to be around family sometimes, although I have enjoyed the distance, too...

Congratulations! Please send some of your luck over my way.

Yeah, mamawho, I'm kind of sad that my kids won't identify as Appalachians either. They'll be pure midwest kids with redneck relatives, which is okay, but it isn't the same.

And they also most likely won't have the close relationship with their cousins that I have with mine either, as we all grew up as neighbors (literally--next door to us was mom's brother, on the other side of that was a sister, and up the hill was another sister, with more of her siblings less than a mile down the road--and everyone had 2-3 kids) and more like siblings than cousins. That's the part that really gets to me.

NICE! Get the hell out while you still can! I was up there for a job interview (didn't get it), and I loved it up there. It is SO much better than LA. I am envious.

My mom is from England and it's hard for her to be so far from her family. I can't imagine what it must have been like for her. Coming to the states to marry my dad (She met him when he was a foreign exchange student. She's not a mail order bride or anything.), then four years later having a kid (my dad's parents were split up and nowhere near them), and then my dad was starting his own construction company and gone for 16 hours a day. A pretty serious ultimatum and a 6 month trip to England for me later and we moved to Florida to be near my dad's mom and siblings. The first 9 years of my life were spent living close to family, first in Florida and later in Pennsylvania.

We were really lucky in that we lived so close to both sets of grandparents. Then Sailor joined up and we were moved in April to Virginia. Or folks live in Illinois so where ever we're stationed it's going to be far from them. I'm still trying to convince my folks to follow us but they are pretty settled.

Longish?

Congrats Atomic!!!! I'm really happy for you.

I have lived in the same county my entire life. Sadly, I have no family. I'm an only child and I have no siblings. Both of my folks have passed away. I have found my birth family, and they are great, but my mother never raised children of her own, so she really isn't the best resource although we could go to her in an emergency.

Lady Grey - I definitely think you should choose Colorado. Perhaps the Denver suburbs? ;) The chili stands are on nearly every corner and I think of you when I see one.

Congratulations on the new job, atomic! That's great!

mamawho, I'm a native Illinoisan, but my parents are both from out east. I think my mom is a little sad my brothers and I don't identify as East Coasters. She encouraged us to go to school out that direction, but the furthest east anyone got was Indiana, so, not so much. We all identify as midwestern. But we do have a good sense of our family history as East Coasters, and do feel a tie to that area, because we've always been told stories about our family, stretching back generations. So, maybe your daughter will consider herself a Chicogoan, but maybe she'll also see that aspect of her identity as an addition to the family identity she already has from you.

Congrats!

We've never lived near family - we've never had any help but we've never had any interference either.