People seem to have found the idea of this move a bit weird. They – naturally – ask us if the new house is bigger. It isn’t. If anything it’s smaller.

However it has a number of very important things that the old house did not.

It has a garden.

It has a kitchen and living room on the same floor. Our previous house was a 60′s build town house, that had the (famously – for Oxford Kitchen Yarns at least – ) tiny galley kitchen on the ground floor, and a lounge on the first floor. I’ve written about how wonderful it was to be up in the canopy of the trees, but from a practical-with-baby/toddler point of view it was hard work, because there really wasn’t much room for FB to play while I cooked/washed up. I knew it would be even harder with a toddler and a baby and to be honest it was freaking me out a bit. Now we have a sitting room, a dining room and a kitchen all on one floor, plus a secure garden, so there is plenty of room for him to play. (Or there will be when we unpack the rest of the boxes!)

Also it is on a side street which is – as far as we can make out from the people we’ve met so far – full of young families and couples who are about to have their first child.

There is a lot of work to do. There is a lots of work to do just in the next three months before No2 arrives. (New boiler, insulation – our families keep asking what we want as a housewarming present. I’m thinking ‘wool insulation please!’ – a large shed in the backgarden to make up for a lack of garage, and getting the washing machine plumbed in.

But that is all ok. It’s a great house. We’re happy here.

Just wait till you see my new dye studio! (LOL*)

(*No really. You just wait. You’ll laugh too.)

I’ll show you tomorrow. :)

FB was pretty calm about everything. He made himself gatekeeper of the door at the top of the stairs, shutting it, and opening it again as needed. ;) But he was too excited to nap and he needed to spend a bit of time somewhere less crazy-busy. Having turned down grandparent help offered before the move (what was I thinking??) my lovely friend D offered to having him over to play with her daughter MM who is a couple of weeks older that FB.

They are great friends, and FB knows their house pretty well, but since we’ve only ever left him a couple of short times with grandparents at our house, W and I were pretty nervous – would the day of the move be the worst possible timing for something like that?

Of course FB had a great time. He was in a house he knew that wasn’t full of boxes and strange people. He had his friend there, and her mummy. He had lunch and even napped for two hours in his pram in their garden! D – being the utter star that she truly is – texted me photos of the two kids having lunch, side by side on big-people-dining-chairs. Apparently there was much giggled and footsy. :) She also sent a shot of him fast asleep, which made me feel SO much better, and able to get on with things.

She even sent FB home with some pasta with roast veg as a easy dinner, which meant we could get chinese for us without having to worry*! See I told you she was a star! And a good friends. x

The lead up the move and the move itself coincided with some of the hottest days of the year so far. On the first night in the new house, our new bedroom was 29 degrees C! A combination of the heat, and move, and generally being nearly 21 months old meant that FB had been having a horrible time getting to sleep, and his normal ‘in bed by 7am – asleep usually before 7.30′ was suddenly becoming ‘in bed at 7pm, EVENTUALLY go to sleep sometime between 9-10pm.’ Poor thing, he was totally shattered, but could get to sleep. Eventually – in the middle of this week – I learnt to blow on him as he nursed, so as to help cool him down, and bedtimes have – for the last two nights at least – gone back to something approaching normal. (Luckily my folks are bringing a fan for us to borrow when they come to visit this weekend, which will help a lot.)

(* of course FB still stole all the pepper, onion and carrot from my beef and blackbean sauce!)

I am so tired.

Really really tired.

The move itself went fine. Theres were a couple of scary moments – a mover lowering the top of our dining table off the first floor balcony, felt the balcony wall shift* and dropped said table top onto the drive below.

Somehow it got away with only the veneer chipping off one corner – a scar – but one we can live with.

The other scary moment happened not long after, when another one of the movers sliced his hand open on an exposed screwhead in the side of a storage cabinate. Ouch! Poor guy, he had to go to A&E and get stitches.

However a great thing that happened was that the movers managed to get our giant sofa into the front room. In fact it fits in the bay like it was build to be there! We had been so worried that it wouldn’t fit, since it is an amazing sofa that easily works as a single bed if you take the back cushions off.

However being towards the end of my second trimester is starting to catch up with me. The heat, and not being able to move boxes (both from a practical point of view, and because everyone shouts at me when I try), means that moving has – surprise surprise – been harder than I thought, and I’ve needed to rest more that I thought I would. The relaxin in definately in my system, and my lower back and feet ache by the end of the day. Plus currently we have no bath to relax in!

However I have made myself a little nest in the corner of the dining room – one of our yellow-green chairs by the window, where I can peruse my evernote notes (in lue of not having internet till the 8th), and put my feet up. Heaven!

More tomorrow…

(*it’s safe, but old and we would have had to refurbish it – which would have been a bitch of a job – if we’d stayed.)

Right now…

I am enjoying broadbeans from our allotment.  (The blackfly hasn’t been so bad this year, so even though the monkjacks got the winter sown crop, the spring has come through. Hurrah!)

Not particularly enjoying the heat – too hard to sleep. More importantly it’s been too hard for FB to sleep. Poor thing. (and poor us too!)

Missing the tour de france. With no tv and internet only set up yesterday we’ve been relying on the odd bit of newspaper news, and texts from my sister and Jaq. I do know that Garmin are having a horrible time with injuries. *hugs the boys* Hopefully we’ll get stuck into it in the next few days.

Preparing for a debriefing tomorrow about FB’s birth. Should be very interesting.

Wondering where my crochet hooks are?

(You want to know about the candle ring right? I made it using this tutorial. Since we’ve moved we’ve started lighting a candle at dinner time. Up until now I’ve been worried that FB might try to grab for it, but so far he’s totally left it alone. And though I originally intended the ring to be for birthdays – like they suggest – I think they’re going to stick around generally. I like them.)

Hopefully by the time you read this the van will be packed and we will have the keys to our new house.

This makes it sound like we’re moving miles and miles away, when in reality we’re going to be about six streets or so from our old house.

It feels strange to be leaving here – it’s definitely what we need to do as a family, and I’m looking forward to our kitchen and lounge being on the same floor, as well as having a garden. However W has owned the house for 9 years, and I was a visitor, then a weekend resident, and then a permanent resident, all that time.

I will definately miss being up in the canope of the trees. Getting to see up close as they changed through out the year.

I will miss how the bathroom glows green at the height of spring, as the light fights it’s way through all the new leaves, and watching the pigeons fill their round bellies with the spring blossoms.

I will miss watching squirrels while we eat breakfast (though this might still happen when we move, especially if we remember to take down the birdfeeders and take them with us.)

This house has been good to us.

I’m looking forward to adventures in our new house.