I just love our street. I know it’s not cool to live out in the ‘burbs, and urban sprawl, and all that. But man, our neighbourhood and our street in particular is just totally awesome.
A few weeks ago I walked down the block to pick up Captain Jelly Belly from the bus, and I took a magazine with me, in case I had to wait a few minutes. But right away, Rick, who lives across the street from us, came along with his year-old son, and we chatted about teething and aluminum water bottles and naptimes. And then Nadia showed up, who lives behind us and who was there to pick up her son from the bus too, and we chatted about the bus stop location, and she said she’d do all the work of contacting the school bus people to have our stop changed because we need it to be closer to my house so I can go outside to get the Captain while leaving the Wee One inside, if possible. And incidently, she did do all the work, and had it changed, and now the bus stop is at the end of our driveway, and how awesome is that?
About a week after that, I was walking over to the super mailbox, which is just one house down from ours, and it took me almost a half an hour to get there and back. Why? Edna, who lives on our street and who had a baby boy a couple of weeks after the Wee One was born, was driving by and pulled over so we could chat about our babies and how they were doing and how school was going for our older kids. After she left, Ben and Jody, who live across the street, came over to ask about the baby and to give us a book about babies that their kids had loved, to share with the Captain and Gal Smiley. How nice is that?
Then, a few days ago, Sir Monkeypants was making the most of the last of the good weather to take the kids on a walk around the crescent, as as they came upon the house that backs onto ours — which has a new family that just moved in a few weeks ago — there was a little girl playing outside. And she said, “Hey, Gal Smiley, want to come into my house and play?” And it turns out she is in Gal Smiley’s preschool class! They are already buds! So future playdates and school-related gossip awaits.
And THEN, as if all this wasn’t enough, last night around 8:30 the phone rings, and someone asks if I am the Captain’s mother. I totally feared the worst, like, did he beat up someone at school? Did he teach the other kids how to pick their noses? But no, it was all good. It was the mom of SweetGirl, who is in the Captain’s class at school and who also lives on our street, but who I have not actually met yet. She was calling because her daughter had told her that the Captain had missed a whole week of school last week (true — he had the flu) and that when the Captain arrived back at school this morning, they sang him a special welcome song (nice to hear about this grand event from SOMEONE ELSE, CAPTAIN). Since SweetGirl seemed really concerned about the Captain, her mom was calling to make sure he was okay, and that it was nothing serious, and to ask if we needed any help. And HOW AWESOME IS THAT?
And, I haven’t even mentioned the fact that our new next-door-neighbours have a baby boy who was born on the exact same day as the Wee One. And our neighbours on the other side are such good friends now that our kids are just at home at their place as our place, and vice versa, and we’ve swapped kid-care dozens of times, and they would absolutely be there for us in any kind of emergency.
Like I said, I know it’s not cool to live out here, but I really feel like I’m part of a community. Our street is almost like a really big family. Our neighbours know our names, they know our kids, and they actually care. It’s almost hard to believe it’s real.
TurtleHead 
Your neighbours sound fantastic. May I ask which suburbs you live in?
We live in the southern part of Kanata, a community called Bridlewood.
There are still a couple of empty lots left on our street :).
See, this is why I work so hard. It’s not that I want a lot of material goods, but being able to afford to live in a good neighbour would mean a lot to me, especially if I have children.
My neighbourhood is relatively safe, but it does have a vandalism problem. There are some noise problems because of the college kids renting condos in my complex, and there is almost always someone smoking nearby my windows.
Sure, you can’t ever be guaranteed a great neighbourhood, but I think that the nicer neighbourhoods tend to be nicer in general.
Ah well, it’s not like I grew up in Beverly Hills so I’ve adjusted fairly easily to my ‘hood.
It sounds really nice but it reminds me of an urban design problem that really bugged me when we moved into out neighborhood. You see this area was constructed in the mid sixties so most of the home owners were retires or older back in 2000 when I bought. There had been some turn over but there certainly wasn’t a neighborhood wide baby boom. This meant that my daughter didn’t have a buddy in the immediate area and we had to driver her around for
get-togethers. Luckily the boy had a basketball down the street.
After 7 years enough houses have sold that there are actually babies thru 7 year olds around but there was a 10-20 year gap where there the kids had grown up and the neighborhood was almost all empty nesters. I know because BonBon’s parents live in the area. It felt really odd.
I guess that sort of problem takes care of itself over a few generations but in my ideal world, we’d seed new neighborhoods with a more even age distribution of families in order avoid that odd empty nest ghost town feel.
We are definitely lucky to have so many families with young children on our street. In fact, we’ve been waiting for a long time for a family with some nice teenaged girls to move in on our street, so we can have some babysitters! At least a couple of the families now have 12-year-olds, so our time is coming.
It’ll be interesting to see how the street ages. There are a lot of very big houses on our street so I would have thought that they’d be too much to handle for an older couple. On the other hand, there are at least three families I know of on the street who only have kids that are away at university — so why they bought a brand new 3000 square foot home is beyond me!
Just one street over is a subdivision that is all bungalow townhomes, marketed at retirees. Since it’s so close, everyone over 55 has been ghettoized over there, and there’s no one on our street who is older. I’ve never really thought about it before. Hm.