Are you still there?

Oh hello Internet, how have you been? I’ve missed you! I am obscenely pregnant. My belly is like a beach ball out in front of me, an alien beach ball that warps and wiggles and thumps and seems to manage to be everywhere at once, on the inside. Only five short weeks and Baby B2 will be out in the world with us. That is insane! I will love this baby with all my heart but I am SO not ready to manage the extra responsibility.

In the past few weeks since we were last in touch I tried out (temporary) single parenthood. I don’t recommend it. My hat is well and truly off to those who do it all the time. You guys are my HEROES.

While working, and battling a horrible virus (I coughed so hard I cracked a rib), and caring for my child 24-7 (and I really mean the 24 bit, Madeleine took to sleeping not only in my bed but on my pillow and ON MY HEAD), I also trialled life without a couch to sit on, without books, and without a television. At meal times we watched a lot of Peppa Pig on iView in order to keep Madeleine still (because we were also living life without tables to sit at). By night I watched a lot of previously-downloaded-on-iTunes Dr Who while packing boxes (because I happened across an old episode while flicking randomly through channels a couple of weeks earlier, and just had to find out what the deal was with that woman called River, and Amy “the girl who waited.” Most intriguing).

And then while still single-parenting, Madeleine and I moved house. That was fun.

Actually it wasn’t too bad, due mostly to my gorgeous friend Tonia, who took the day off work and filled her car with drop-offs for charity shops, ferried the dog to and from his hair salon (new houses require clean dogs), fetched lunches and dinners and emergency groceries, unpacked and tidied up a storm, made the beds, AND made Madeleine (and me) laugh. What a trooper! What a friend!

Oh but then we entered life without Internet as well as TV, the couch arrived but it was wrapped in plastic and needed the feet put on and I was too pregnant to be able to lift it (and therefore we couldn’t sit on it), the books were still in boxes, and the cat wouldn’t come out of the back shed. AND no hot water for almost a week. AND no curtains on the bedroom windows (helloooo neighbours, helloooo lack of sleep).

Still, Madeleine didn’t care. She and I were well and truly used to sitting on the floor by then, and we could make our own fun. We’d boil the kettle and bathe her in my fabulous new ceramic farmhouse kitchen sink. I had a lot of wash-downs. Plus, Madeleine had a whole new house to run up and down in like a crazy person, and stairs to be constantly told not to climb (no safety gates yet).

So we chipped away at the unpacking and the setting up and on Saturday afternoon (a whole 24 hours early) Mr B came home. And darn it if I wasn’t just a bit more than a LOT glad to see his jet-lagged face. (If you want to know what he was doing overseas, read this blog).

Earlier this week the hot water came on. Yesterday we finally got the Internet working. I have a tiny office of my very own, in a converted wine cellar. Madeleine has a play room. We have a grown-up living room AND a dining room (with a dining table at which we actually sit to eat. If you’d seen our previous several homes you’d know what a posh luxury this is for us.) There’s still a lot to do (curtains on the bedroom windows pleeeease), but room by room our new house is starting to feel like a home. I can’t wait to share some befores and afters with you of this renovation experience.

(Photo is of the three of us about a week before Mr B went away. Madeleine wore that strawberry costume all day, a gift from this Deb, stroking the shiny sleeves like you stroke a sleeping kitten).