the surprise

The house has consumed our lives. Poor G has been with Nanna and Grandad non-stop for the past four days. He is fine there, and well occupied and adored, but he's a bit lost. He clings and grizzles all the way home, all through dinner and struggles to go to bed. It's going to take a bit for him to recover from this experience. And then he'll have to move into a new house!

The baker and I wake up energised, full of plans and strategies. We get to the house and wander in circles, attending to bits and pieces. People come by, we stop and give them a tour, explain what's happening. By then it's about 4pm, time to collect the baby boy and wind up for the day again. I feel like we are getting nothing done. It's very frustrating.

But so much has happened!

We had a lot of little jobs to attend to preparing the walls for painting. We set to pulling off the faux wooden panels that lined the walls. Reveal lines of ancient glue needing to be scraped off with a blade or removed with solvent. Reveal a huge gap between concrete panels on the feature lounge wall. Gap filler, metal strip, leave it?

That was sidelined when we found the carpet rotten in front of the bathroom and along the wall in the little bedroom, meaning that the shower may be leaking. Huge issue, since we are putting down all new floor coverings and do not want them ruined by damaged plumbing. Investigate that. No real solution yet, but much discussion about ripping out the shower and putting in the bath. Back to the panels. Reveal sticky 70's wallpaper lining the kitchen walls. Steamer and scraper needed. Reveal a hidden door in the loungeroom wall.

Well, this was something we wanted to do later on- put a doorway through the kitchen to the lounge. But look! It's here already! However, on the other side of the door our kitchen bench and wall cupboards cover it. They are attached to the wall. Do we demolish the kitchen and utilise the doorway? How can we live without a kitchen? Why would we not use the doorway when we wanted it anyway?

So the kitchen is ripped from the wall and the termite riddled door smashed through. Wow. But oh, wow, you know? Suddenly we are in the middle of a renovation. One we were not going to do. In fact the discussions have been all about a kitchen and bathroom renovation. The two most expensive and time consuming things to do in a house! Money and time we do not have. We have time for paint and carpet.

The simplest ideas have snowballed and we are having to decide and react quickly in circumstances completely new to us. On a deadline. Thank goodness for those family members who have shown up with their reno experience and skills. This week I have realised how good it is to know useful people, and how many useless people there are in the world. Including the 'customer advisors' at Bunnings.

So where are we after three days? It's amazing, really. The bedrooms have been washed, holes patched, and two of the three ceilings painted. Tomorrow I am going to finish the bedrooms. And wash the hall. And prepare the doors, maybe. That's half the house done.

The baker has fixed the ceiling, scraped the glue. His Mum painstakingly removed the wallpaper, so tomorrow he'll be fixing the gap in the lounge and set about washing the ceilings and priming the walls to paint. I think. He may have other plans.

We must call the carpet guys and demand 10% off the quote they gave us. We must call the laminte guy and have him back to re-measure, since the kitchen has gained another couple of metres of floor space. We must find a plumber to confirm where our leak is. I have to call the water people and the council.

Oh, and tomorrow our current house is open for inspection....

the smell

We have the keys to our house. It's ours.

But it doesn't feel like mine yet. Mostly because it doesn't smell like anywhere I'd live. Smokers. Grr. Did the tenants have, like, 25 people chain smoking 24/7 for the past four years? How can a place smell like that?

And grime. Grr. The young, male tenants who lived there before us did not clean anything, for a long long time before we came. There's dirt on the inside of the windows. The kitchen is a greasy grime fest- I'm actually going to have to throw away the kitchen blinds, they're so putrid. They didn't even vacuum before they left. What is wrong with them? I mean, I couldn't leave a house looking like that.

Being pregnant I'm not allowed to bleach or use caustic or bomb the house to clean it. Fighting the urge to White King the whole place is taking all my energy. I like a clean house and I like to clean my own house, you know? I am a passionate Enjo user, but I'm not using my beautiful cloths on that house until I have sugar soaped and bleached every surface. Then we can go chemical-free cleaning!

Also I know it's silly to spend too much time cleaning, as we are ripping out the carpet, painting the walls and doing something to the bathroom, within the next three weeks. But I just can't have it so grubby in the meantime. Because of the smell.

the house

Settlement on our house TOMORROW. Finally we can get in there and it will be ours! Well, the responsibility will be ours. Owning the building will take another 30 years, according to the bank.

So much checking and running around to be done all last minute. Plus appointments with builders to look at repairs and minor improvements, carpet and floor guys measuring up and all we want is to start ripping that hideous fake wood paneling off the walls.....

mother's group

Thank goodness for Mother's Group.

This free resource that new mums are encouraged to join is my saving grace in times of trial. I love it, and all the mums I have met, who, with their wonderful and desperate stories, and delightful babies, make my week, every week.

We are currently battling disrupted sleep (again). Initially, after brilliant mothers group counseling we tackled controlled crying (very successfully) at about 11 months. I thought it was going to be smooth sailing after that. And it was until a couple of weeks ago. Now G wakes at 11pm and 4am, without fail. Like a new habit. And me going in there does not settle him, it seems to make him worse. I pat and calm him, he gets worked up, I leave, he quietens and sleeps. But if I don't go in, he's inconsolable. And at 4am, he just wants to come into our bed, which I am trying to avoid. But I end up patting him for an hour and it's just seems pointless when in our bed we all just drop off and sleep until 7am.

Knowing I'll be able to float this problem at mothers group makes the waking and tiredness a bit bearable. It's the light at the end of the tunnel, the ten mums who may have a clue about what is up with my baby, since I am totally stumped. You think your baby is unique, and he is, but at MG you learn that babies are all pretty much the same, developmentally.

Lo and behold, several of the good sleepers had been waking and disrupted too. No-one had the answer yet, we couldn't find a solution, but we compared notes on possible causes- cold nights, new teeth, full moon - and what strategies had already been attempted. But for me the relief was in acknowledging each others trials and issues and knowing you're not the only bleary-eyed freezing zombie, stalking the hallway at 4am.

I never expected that MG would be like this. I was so self sufficient and felt so capable in my pre-baby life, I'd never relied on others to help me much. But honestly, I couldn't live without it, and if I didn't have these girls, I'd be at the mercy of every baby self-help book and a lost and confused soul (presumably with a screaming and neurotic baby!).

Free support and advice, solicited or not, true and correct or not, this resource is one of the most important available to new mums. Other mums, with no agenda, nothing to sell you and not 'invested' (like grand-parents and well meaning family members) are a breath of air in those first weeks. And longer....

a million dollar tip

Here's a free business idea for someone with the cash and space to do it. Ready? Set up a children's farm/petting farm, near me.

It's so silly that there isn't one. My Mum's best friend used to run a brilliant one near here. She was busy all the time with schools, parties and groups and on weekends it was sheer madness. Over-fed chickens and ducks and tormented pigs and goats everywhere. The kids just loved it. She and her family ran it for years, then the lifestyle got the better of them and off they went to see Australia. The new owners only open irregularly.

We were so thrilled when G started to understand what animals are, I was desperate to take him to the zoo or a farm. It just seems ridiculous that we couldn't find anywhere to show him a cow or a chook. We live well out of town, and yet to find a 'farm' we had to go to into the city. And it cost us $8 each to walk through, which is just wrong. You can't even feed the animals, just look at them. For all my moaning, we did have a fantastic day, G loved it, moo-ing and clucking all the while. He was thrilled with the geese and the ducks.

But surely there's some call for this kind of resource locally? What do the kinders, schools and general public do? Wait for the annual, local agricultural show? Not see farm animals at all? Take up the challenge and open a farm, dear readers, someone, anyone. It's a million dollar idea, just sitting there, waiting.