The House

So, we moved into this house in January 2004. It's a nice house, but the boiler was broken, and we didn't have a bed at first, so we spent the first weekend under about 4 duvets on a mattress on the floor.

We have a yard (no garden really, but we are 300 yards from a lovely park) and it's a big house - in theory we have 4 bedrooms over 3 floors, plus a dining room, a living room and a kitchen.  When we moved in, we both assumed it would be the house where we had our children.

Things didn't work out quite the way we planned.  All my miscarriages happened while we were living here.  At least part of some of them in the house itself.  The room that was my study but, next to our bedroom, always seemed like an ideal nursery, stayed that way. I thought about moving out (I now find out Mr Spouse never felt this way - but I know a few people do this after a home is associated with unhappy times).

Now, though, it's Baby Spouse's home. It's where he slept in our bedroom for the first time, and in a cot for the first time. It's where he learned to climb the stairs and to eat with a spoon (well, kind of, on a good day). It's where we had to babyproof and buy a new washing machine to cope with the nappies.

It's also getting quite full.  I am stuffing the loft with outgrown baby clothes (all sizes including very small, just in case - Mr Spouse is having a small case of cold feet but I'm working on him - and he points out himself he wasn't sure about having a newborn last time and was very besotted). Baby Spouse's room might not be the best room for him long term, but although we have 3 bedrooms on the first floor and one on the second, one of those is used as a living room and one as a spare room and as my sewing room.

So I'm having a declutter.  A fairly big one that may involve items of furniture. One of the reasons is that, although in the long term we may still be able to have 1 child's bedroom, 1 parent bedroom, and 1 spare bedroom, we may in the short term need 2 child's bedrooms, or we may possibly only need to pretend to have the capacity to have 2 child's bedrooms. 

In case you care, this is because non-related children (i.e. Baby Spouse and a not-yet adopted and not-biologically related child) can't share a bedroom, and because although we have a spare bedroom, it's not on the same floor as our bedroom (so not great for tiny children). A not-yet-adopted child can share our bedroom, though, until they are 2 (the NHS recommendation is definitely till they are 6 months anyway).

So if you are interested in Monsoon silk dresses that are now too big for me (hooray!) or back issues of Threads magazine, get thee to ebay.

In other and somewhat more exciting news, today Baby Spouse learned two important skills: 1) to get the Clanger to make a noise and 2) to put two Duplo bricks together.