Being Nice Makes a Difference

For about 6 months, I posted on another blog.  This a post that was copied from that blog.  I used different names for the family.  Just so you know the names were as follows:

Prince Charming - Wandering Aengus
Princess Belle - Lilly
Princess Magpie - Rose
Princess Snifflefritz - Lotus
Little Prince - Reed

It pays to be nice to your neighbours.  Twice in the last couple of days being nice to our neighbours made all the difference in the world to our day.  Firstly, I made nice conversation with someone in the laundry room.  It turns out she lives across the hall from me and showed me a washer and dryer that will do my laundry for 1/3 of the regular price!!!  She went out of her way to go down and show me which ones to use!

Now I don’t know if I have mentioned but I live on the third floor.  The THIRD FLOOR with a 2-year-old, a 3-year-old, a nine-year-old and a baby on the way.  I try to keep them quiet, but I know they are used to a house and they run across the floor rather loudly sometimes.  Yesterday when they were playing quiet loudly, I heard a THUMP THUMP THUMP from downstairs.  I felt awful.  Wandering Aengus and I discussed it.  We worried whether we would be able to keep the kids quiet enough on this floor.  We worried whether this apartment would work out for us and I won’t lie, I DON’T WANT TO MOVE AGAIN!  So I decided that we would make nice with the neighbour.  I sent Aengus down to talk to her, to explain our situation, to apologize, to tell them we would do our best to try to keep it down and to find out if there was a particular time of day when it bothered them the most so that I could try to especially hard to keep the kids quiet that time of day. Well, he went down and she was really nice!!!  She said that yesterday a picture had fallen off the wall and she was hammering in a nail NOT knocking on the ceiling at us.  She said that she could hear us, but she could also hear our neighbours on both sides too.  She said she understood about kids and that it only bothered her early in the mornings.  She appreciated us coming down.  Being nice made a difference.  So, I don’t have to stress about it, I will do my best, I WILL NOT move, and I will keep them quiet in the mornings.  I feel so much better now.

On a side note, three-year-old Rose is learning to walk quietly.  She looks so cute when she is concentrating on walking nicely, kind of like she is walking on bubble wrap.  LOL
I also have to admit that I don’t get irritated at all when I hear other people’s music, televisions, children, conversations, etc in the building.  I just feel better that I am not the only one whose sounds carry outside the apartment.