Folks following me on Instagram probably know that we recently moved house. Two years ago, we opted to build our own house because:

1. We thought we could do it cheaper.
2. We would have complete creative control.

Two years, many delays, and a lot of hard work and sleepless nights later, we have finally moved in. Thinking back, did we make the right decision to go it on our own, with minimal support from the architect? The honest answer is I am not very sure. Sure, we managed to keep complete creative control and managed to whittle down the cost of things, but we spent a heck of a lot of time on it, and considering we are two working people with small kids to take care of as well, you can imagine the pressure. You also definitely need to bone up a lot on house building stuff if you don’t want to get cheated by the contractors. We ended up spending a lot of time on research and learning.

Anyways, we are now somewhat settled…still living out of boxes, but at least we have a reasonable idea of what’s in which box, so we can dig it out .

I wish I had a lot of fun and exciting things to say about our house moving, but really we just about managed to survive it. I used the move as an opportunity to clean up home and get rid of a lot of clutter that had spread through our house. My goodness, I think I threw whole cartons filled with random scribblings, old plastics, broken toys, and just stuff. It really felt like a fresh start. Nothing, I say nothing makes things feel new like getting rid of old, outdated baggage.

Here’s a pic of the mess that was our house during the move:

Moving mess

That’s not to say that we didn’t find some gems hidden. I love this old artwork that the snubnose had done (I think during her K1 or K2 days), and I can’t believe that it had just drifted into some random box. The movers were about to use it as wrapping paper before I spotted them and salvaged this one.

An Old Artwork by the Snubnose

Our new house is still a work-in-progress (not major things)…mostly woodwork and plumbing, and some much-needed baby proofing to make sure the piglet does not get into places he has no business to be in. Right now, piglet is at the friskiest stage (14 months), and he not only wants to get into everything, he’s strong enough to ram his way through if access is blocked. Within a day of moving into our new place, he had learnt to climb the stairs and he’s been climbing up and down ever since. Our existing baby gates from our old apartment are not wide enough for the stairwell, and so we need to get new gates made everywhere to prevent him from running off wild and getting hurt. He’s pretty fast on his feet, and while I feel proud of his athletic feats, it’s also extremely wearying running after him everywhere.

Getting the new gates built means a lot of strangers tramping through our house, a lot of noise, and a lot of equipment left scattered on the floors. This is of course heaven for the piglet who is extremely curious about that strange-looking saw or the washer for the plumbing (yuck)!, and guess whose job it is to run after him and keep him occupied with his toys and books, when something so much more interesting is going on in the next room? Me of course. It’s been a pretty draining two weeks, and today I was just so exhausted, with a scratchy throat and feverish feeling going round that I just had to put a sick leave and try to take it easier today.

Which brings me to some other personal news…the snubnose recently started ballet classes at Yanna Lewis. She’s been wanting to learn for a really long time. I wasn’t keen on it because the timings were inconvenient, but when I saw her looking up ballet performances on youtube and trying out the steps herself, well, then I knew I needed to at least give the classes a shot. Well, the timing is still inconvenient, the classes and the costumes cost a small fortune, but the snubnose loves her dance teacher and she loves her classes, and so for now at least, ballet it is. Today evening, I dredged up some hidden energy to take her (and the piglet for watching) to the ballet class, and it was a good hour’s drive each way, in heavy traffic. Sigh!