The value of friendship

A couple posts ago I spoke of being homesick and missing the community I had built in Canada.  Something happened this last weekend that is helping me feel less of the impact of being in a strange new home.

Last week was my birthday and to celebrate we had a BBQ on the weekend inviting everyone we had met in Sundsvall and quite a few people we hadn't.  Three of the women we will work with lent us their apartment for the party, ours is extremely small and fairly ugly while there's is large and beautiful, and gave our baby a place to sleep in the closet.  For the grandparents I should probably point out that the closet was close to the size of Beth's room at home, it's just fun and very Harry Potterish to say she's sleeping in the closet.

It was a lot of fun, most of the people who came were new to town like us so we had hours of hilarity discussing all the ways things can be different, go wrong or trip you up in a new place.  Food was tasty, thank you Kevin and Lenita, and it was a lovely way to begin a new year in a new place.  We did not get to bed until 3am, and my daughter who normally sleeps until 8am was obliging enough to wake up at 6am.  Being a new parent I'm pretty used to sleep deprivation, but this hurt.  We had crashed at The Girls apartment, so we were just going to grab our things and go to ensure that they didn't wake up, but we couldn't access our stroller.  We had locked it up in their storage room the previous day to leave for space for the party.  So we took Beth to the park and let her toddle all her energy off until 9am.  When we went back upstairs one of the women were awake.  We chatted, retrieved our stroller and were about to go when she offered to watch Beth while we napped.

Unless you have been living with an infant and no outside support I don't know that I can quite describe my feelings of gratitude, in Toronto we would have taken her to Grandma's for the day and had a good sleep, but here we were looking forward to a day of tired, cranky temper tantrums and that was just us.  The nap was amazing.  I woke up two hours later to all three women in the apartment entertaining Beth and her having the time of her life as center of attention.  After that we spent the rest of the day with them and between the 5 adults managed to satisfy one small girl. While I am still extremely grateful for the sleep I am most thankful for the offer, it demonstrates something I thought would take months if not longer to find.  Looking out my window now is beginning to feel a bit more like home.