Ah fuck, DH wants to move back to the U.K.

[backtotheoldsmoke]

DH is closing his start up which means we need to head back to the U.K. We have 6-7 months to plan the best timeline to go back to London. But fuck it. I'm not ready yet to leave where we are.

Tell me the good things about moving back "home"! Cheer me up about another admin nightmare of a move, this time with baby and dog!

What helps me:

• I have a Google Sheet of things to do near us, with columns for things like 'good for rainy days' - this makes it easy to find things to do on days when I don't have time or energy to do lots of research. It's also fun to add new things to it when I find them
• Keep a nappy bag prepped and ready to go - less faff to get out of the house
• Is there something in particular you're dreading? Think about whether your expectations of it are reality. Think about how you might mitigate the negatives of it.
• You mention you use to love London - write down all of the things you loved about it, and think about which you can continue doing and how.

Good luck!

If you'd rather not go to London could you rent your flat out and rent elsewhere? A city close-ish to London perhaps (eg Oxford/Cambridge, or maybe eg Norwich if needs to be more affordable)?

FWIW I think it would be fun to live in London, but appreciate the difficulties of active toddler/upstairs flat etc...

Erm… well… wracks brains… I got nothing sorry.

Some nice stuff

1. coming back will be in summer which is the best (also the 22 weather WILL be nice as it was a bit garbage last year)
2. transport is great super easy and relatively cheap to jump on the tube loads of things to see and do
3. loads of beautiful parks (royal and otherwise across the city)
4. you can visit one of the london Lido's with little one during the week when less insanely busy!
5. great restaurants which are generally reasonably priced vs other major cities
6. mum friends will be a plenty. its a child freindly city and it's easy-ish to make pals. There are tonnes of baby classes everywhere. check this for your very local area I found about 10+ classes within a mile of my house --> www.happity.co.uk/london/baby-toddler-classes
7. art galleries & museums a plenty (with decent stuff in them)
8. british pub gardens in summer time are the best! and child friendly
9. nice weekend brunches

10. catching up with friends and family

I actually like London with a toddler, I lived in Z2 when DS was a toddler and it was great to be able to take him to so much stuff, even in bad weather.

The yoyo is a good pram for London flats as it folds up small. Annual membership at London Zoo, London Transport Museum, Discover Childrens Centre are all great value. There’s a blog called Bablands with lots of ideas for stuff to do.

Meeting people wise, I think because London is so transient there’s always other new people looking to make friends. I think there’s an app for parents to make friends, possibly called Peanut?

I don't think it will be as bad as you fear. I didn't move back from abroad but we adopted so we went straight from childless, both working full-time to having nearly a toddler. So I didn't have the whole ante-natal class friends to ease me in. What I found was that there is a parallel universe, more so in big cities like London than smaller places I expect. There were things going on that I never knew existed before and it changed my mental map of my local area. We had a different play group or class each day of the week and we would see mostly the same faces so got to know lots of people. DS was (and still is) extremely extrovert and active so it was a good way to run the energy out of him. I don't even live in London anymore but I still keep in touch with many of the friends that I made then.

I moved out of London to have kids but tbh I think as teens they missed out massively compared to youngsters growing up in a city. And 30 years later, tbh I still miss it. So I'm a little bit envious of you ...

My experience there is that you REALLY shouldn’t approach it as ‘going back home’.
I’m not sure how long you’ve been away but it’s very likely that you will come back and then noticed a lot if things you never noticed before and that will feel ‘wrong’. I think that when you live abroad you absorb new ways of looking at things, new values. When you are ‘back home’ suddenly things don’t look OK because they are clashing with those new habits/routine/values.

So my advice would be to approach it as if you were moving to a new foreign country. What would you do then? What sort if expectations would you have etc…