A whole new village

It's been a stressful few months, but it turns out not for the reasons I was originally anticipating. Going from a city back to a village - fine, having to drive pretty much everywhere instead of walk - fine, much much smaller baby and toddler groups - also fine, even unpacking everything that took me months to pack up at the beginning of the Summer was fine (turns out moving to a house with more than 4 rooms makes unpacking go a whole lot smoother).

Instead we've had issues with our previous landlord (still being resolved and still keeping me awake at night), issues with our deliveries - no one seems to be able to find our house, our fridge was a missed delivery twice, so we had nowhere to keep fresh food for the first two weeks. Our new fridge started freezing everything. It took them a month to come out and fix it. We lost over £100 worth of shopping due to it, bottles had exploded sending shattered glass everywhere. We all keep getting sick. I've cleaned up more vomit and shit in the last few months than I have in the entire time since Grayson recovered from reflux. I have a cold that never wants to end, currently surviving on flavoured coffee and strawberry cheesecake oreos to cheer myself up.

On the plus side I feel like I have the kind of family unit now that I had always dreamed of. Now that we're not constantly on top of each other and tripping over the dog everything is so much more chilled. This house already feels more like home than the last house ever did even though we were there for 13 months. We have the space to have people stay, my parents are literally 5 minutes down the road, we're nearly an hour closer to Tom's parents and my best friend. It feels like things are on the up!

8 Days 'til Key day!

Next Friday we pick up the keys to our new home. Then it's "goodbye St Albans" and "hello Maulden" again! I'm a bit gutted to be leaving such a wonderful community, it's a city that feels like a village. We meet other dog walkers nearly everyday in a group at the park, we go to messy play at the Baby Centre where the women who work there treat you as a friend, we go to the church baby and toddler group for coffee and squash and a chance for Grayson to blow off steam.

It took me ages to get to this point though. Nearly the whole time that we've been in St Albans I have been too anxious to join in. I avoided the other dog walkers in the morning as I felt like they'd see me as bad company trying to force myself into their group. I never spoke to other mothers at baby groups, heck I only started going to baby groups a few months ago! Anxiety consumed me. That's the problem with anxiety, it takes away so much of your life. I look back on my first year of motherhood with shame and embarrassment that I really don't want to feel. I've been living here over a year and I don't have any new friends. Maybe a dog walker or two that would meet up for a coffee if I was brave enough to ask. No mum friends. There's one lovely woman at the church group who I talk to regularly but have avoided getting close to as I knew we were going to move away. My brain tells me that there's no point getting close to people when you know you're going to move, but it's not logical and it's lonely.

I'm hoping that this move back to my parent's village will be a new start. It's less lonely knowing that they're not far away if I'm having a bad day. I think that it's ok to admit that, we all need a support system as parents. It's hard when you go from working 40-50 hours a week in retail, seeing people for most of your day, to it just being you and a tiny human most of the time.

So I've updated my Mush account and my Mummy Social to find new local friends, there's no "Maulden Mums" Facebook group unfortunately (St Albans Mums Facebook group has been a lifeline!) but I'm hoping that with those apps and some baby groups we will end up less lonely and who knows, maybe we will even make some friends!

House viewing woes...

Today I was up at 6.45. By the time my partner got up at 9.20 I had already hoovered the house, fed and dressed the toddler, cleaned the kitchen floor, done the washing up, cleaned the mould off the bathroom ceiling and showered.

I asked him to walk the dog.

He got annoyed because I usually do it. And it's not a break for him doing things like that at the weekend. Never mind that it was his bloody dog before we got together.

Anyway, I digress...

Today we had two mini open house type things going on as the landlord is keen to fill the house as soon as we leave. That's fair enough. Hence the mad cleaning. I'm pretty sure I've done nothing but housework and childrearing from the moment I have woken to the moment I have fallen asleep for the last few days.

What I wasn't prepared for however was how horrible it feels to have people walking around the house, judging it whilst I was still inside.

I get that our house is small,but it's big compared to what else was on offer at the time for the price we pay. I also think it's got lovely sized rooms and nice big windows. I don't really know why I was getting offended by people remarking on the size, maybe because it feels like they're implying that it's not good enough for them, even though I know that's not true, if it's not big enough then it's just not big enough!
The other thing would be the comments on the state of disrepair that the house is in. When we moved into this house it was literally falling apart. The stairs carpets had been munched by moths, the lights in the hallway and porch didn't work, neither did some of the kitchen lights, the house stunk of dog, they had painted over mould, the oven door was hanging off, the garden was overgrown...I could go on....

We reported all of these things. Just like those who rent after us probably will.

But they'll be bloody lucky if they get fixed.

It took them a month to send someone out to fix our downstairs lighting when it all blew over Christmas. We were using beside lamps plugged in all over the place to see in the mornings and evenings.
They fixed the living room and kitchen lights and then boxed the hallway and porch ones off saying that they'd come back. They never did.
Yet I could overhear the agent telling people it would all be sorted before they moved in. It felt really insulting. I've got emails from when we first moved in, asking them to fix the oven door. We used to chase it all up regularly and it made no difference. I just don't trust them at all.

I hate the idea that whoever moves in here will think that we left it in this state, when in reality we just inherited it this way.

To end on a positive, here's Grayson playing in the garden with the dog....

Arghh we might be moving!

We are quite possibly crazy. We've only lived here a year. The last move was stressful as fuck, we were both coming from two different houses, he had a dog and I had a 3 month old son, he hadn't bloody packed anything when I turned up with the van. I was hoping we wouldn't be doing it again until we were ready to buy. I quite literally hate moving house. I am super organised yet for some reason all my long term relationships have been with incredibly laid back people. This makes moving beyond stressful. I want to be packed well in advance, to have things boxed by room, labelled to where they're going to go and an idea of room/furniture layout sorted. Now we're going to do it again with dog and now an energetic toddler in tow. Eek!

The house we're hoping for is lovely. Slightly less rent, twice as many bedrooms (hurruh for space!) and also the same village as my parents. Extra rooms will hopefully reinvent our lives as people can actually stay over our house in a bedroom instead of our tiny lounge with the dog! We also really, really want to become foster parents and the extra space will hopefully get us on track with that.

Right now though all I feel is impending dread! We're meeting the landlady tomorrow so that she can meet our dog, Zero, and see that she's not a mean one that destroys homes, then it could be all go from there!

Going to miss this sprog's bedroom if we move though, it's my favourite room in the house!