Less than a year and a half after we moved into our wonderful little condo near the heart of uptown, we’re back in the real estate market. We’d spent some time figuring out how we’d accommodate a kid in a our modest 750-square-foot space, but after a lot of pondering and conversations with parents we know, it became clear our living arrangement was impractical. Yes, the baby will be small, but its stuff will not. If we were in a loft I’d just rearrange things, but we have load-bearing walls to deal with.

We’re on a budget, making our options in Minneapolis and St. Paul pretty slim. I’m OK buying a fixer-upper, but don’t want to have to do a footing-to-shingles rebuild. Lisa and I hit a couple open houses over the weekend, and everything we saw would require a massive amount of work. We don’t need great, but do need good enough.

I have little interest in leaving the comforting embrace of sidewalks and street grids, but have started to get myself used to the fact there may be a suburb in our future. It’s not just about me, though. I want my child to grow up in the city, if not a big city like Minneapolis, at least a reasonably-functional small one like Hudson or River Falls. (The small Wisconsin towns in the metro haven’t been screwed up by suburbitis as much as most of their Minnesota brethren… Yet.) Granted, there’s the problem of school quality, but I figure if we could find a place in Minneapolis, we’d have a few years to figure out how to pay for a private school, or at least figure out which public schools to avoid.

So much to do, so little time.