Caravan Diary - Day 94

Bath day @ Vicky's: Having fun in the mirror

Wow! WOW!!! I did think I hadn't blogged for a long time, but THIS long?...

Those of you who don't like long posts look away now! I have so much to catch up on...

Since the last post, such a lot has happened:

• I have gone back to work (full time. Eurghhhh!) 
• We have a nearly new roof. 
• We have nearly got a bathroom (still lacking a toilet and a few tiles, but very usable and on the verge of beautiful!). 
• And - most excitingly - we don't sleep in the caravan anymore! Haven't for a while, in fact. As of Saturday, the boys are even sleeping in their very own bedroom. Willem is very excited - as are we! 

The boys and I had been out for the day while Hendrik got a chance to get on with the decorating, and as we got home Willem stormed upstairs and shouted down "Mummy, Mummy, you've GOT to come and look!!!! It's nearly FINISHED!!! And it looks so GOOD!!" Awhhhh, bless! How long have we waited for this? If I had a pound for every time Willem has said in his weepy voice "I want our old house back!" in the last few months, I'd be a very rich woman. Let's hope we've now finally laid to rest the ghosts of houses past!...

Between us moving into the house and the boys moving into their bedroom we all slept together in our smallest bedroom. The one that is going to be YOURS if you come for a visit. I don't think I will ever forget the day we moved out of the caravan. We sat on our sofa bed for a long, long time, just enjoying the fact that we had four walls around us that were not made of cardboard. And we were lying on a genuine mattress. We had broad smiles on our faces for hours.



We have really learned to be incredibly grateful for the small things. For example for a day that starts with a shower and the boiler doesn't play up. Or for no longer sleeping on 40-year-old caravan cushions. Or for finding a favourite Playmobil police car in one of the boxes at the very bottom of a pile. Or for a sunny day in our new garden (or, in fact, for a rainy day in our new garden - especially when shared with good friends over a BBQ...)

Don't be tempted to think it's all roses in the Schäfer household, though. Our life on a building site comes with it's regular lows as well as with the highs. Both Hendrik and I have found coping harder the longer this project has been going on. We are both utterly exhausted. And I have been surprised to learn which issues stress me the most. If anyone had asked me at the beginning of the build what I would find hardest to cope with, I might have mentioned "deadlines slipping", "building materials not turning up on time", "not having a bathroom", "not having my things" etc. What I would certainly never ever had thought of was "having no flooring". And that, of all things, turns out to be the single biggest annoyance, which is making my life hell. Because it means that I can't leave the kids to get on with anything, EVER. The second I put Mats down, he will be off, crawling to the edge of whatever rug or play mat he is on. And because all our floor boards are caked in plaster (and other) dust, if no one intercepts him before he's got off he has a 20cm wide and 40cm long brown-gray streak all over his front and needs a change before being taken out in public. It's so frustrating I could scream. And Willem keeps coming up to us with cupped hands (which, by now, already sets alarm bells going in my brain) and goes  "look mummy/daddy (delete as appropriate), I have found some NAILS and a BLADE!" Aaaaaarghhh! And then the fight ensues, as we try to take his loot off him: "Noooooooooooo, but I want to use them for HAMMERING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" And if you think the garden might be any better/safer: Mats has an obsession with eating grass and moss. Which would be fine in my book, if he then didn't reliably start projectile vomiting. So, yes, folks, life is STILL hard, albeit peppered with lots of glimmers of hope and a silver lining firmly in sight. When it's done we'll fondly look back and think it was all worth it.

In the meantime, I will probably have to find a new name for my blog posts, as the days of the caravan chronicles are well and truly numbered. I mean, we still have the caravan. Occasionally, like yesterday, we even use it as a lounge/playroom. But it doesn't nearly play the huge role in our life anymore, that it did in the beginning. Who knows, come stage 3 of the build with the kitchen extension we might gladly retreat to it again... If anyone can come up with a catchy new name for the build-your-own-house posts, please tell me!

And that's me for tonight. The matchsticks aren't strong enough for my eyelids...
I'll try to not leave another such long gap between posts.