moving house

Moving House When you Have Kids

Two years ago I moved house from a place where I had lived for twenty four years. I found the whole experience very daunting. There is so much to think about when moving but when you add in the mixture your pets and your children it makes it all so much more difficult.

We had the added stress of having our moving date changed several times. It helped a little letting the children know right from the beginning what was going to happen though. We talked to them about moving house and changing schools, we discussed all their worries and fears and visited the area we were moving to so it wouldn’t be so strange for them.

The packing was the worst part. After living in the same house for twenty four years you accumulate an awful lot of stuff! We started by having massive clear outs and getting rid of all the things we no longer needed. They were taken to charity shops or the skip.

Then we set down to packing everything up. I involved the kids by letting them pack their toys into boxes and helping me write on the boxes. We colour coded the boxes for each room for ease. They still got mixed up on the day but it did help quite a lot.

It’s important to get your removal company right. I left that job up to my partner and it didn’t go to plan because he’d left it really late. We ended up calling around the day before we moved to try and get someone to fit us in. The company would not have been my first choice, but we had no choice left. So choose wisely, and in plenty of time.

On the day we took the kids to grandma’s house and she looked after them while we did the heavy moving. When we were ready to sort everything out the other end we picked up the kids. The whole experience can be very overwhelming, so keeping them out of the way as long as possible is the best idea if you can.

I packed suitcases for all the essentials we would need for the first day or two so they would be easy to find and close at hand. I was going away the day after we moved so I had a bag packed for that too. these were kept at grandma’s house until the very last minute.

Unpacking and getting back into a routine was not easy and took us ages. We tried to make it easier for the kids by having their space ready for them. we sorted their bedrooms and made sure they had their favourite toys. For ages our new home was a maze of boxes, but slowly and surely it all got sorted and life in our new home began.

Do you like moving house? Have you done it more than once? Is it harder with kids?

Attribution to www.volitionremovalslondon.com

Disclosure: All thoughts and opinions are my own, infographic provided by Volition Removals London.

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My Little Zebra

by Anne Sweet 6 Comments

You may have notice a new tab at the top of my blog with says My Little Zebra, this is where I am now going to keep my posts about Star and her progress and problems.
Currently I am trying to get a proper diagnosis for her, she has already been diagnosed as having high functioning autism and hypermobility syndrome, but I want further investigation into the hypermobility syndrome in a vain hope that she will get better treatment in the future.
Earlier this year at the beginning of the school holidays, Star woke up with, what is effectively, a slipped disc in her neck. At this moment in time she still has that slipped disc and all the physiotherapy she has been given has strengthened her neck so she can hold this twisted position without so much pain. No treatment she has been given has actually improved the position of her neck and I’m beginning to believe that it may be permanent. The medical slang for someone with a rare or obscure medial condition is a Zebra. Medical students are sometimes taught ‘when you hear hoof beats, think horses not zebras’ In other words, always look for the obvious problem rather than the unusual. In many ways this is a good thing, but not when it gets to the point where people are forgetting what zebras look like, or even the fact that they exist. I believe that Star has Elhers Danlos Syndrome (or Hypermobility Syndrome type III) and this is considered a rare zebra condition.

The past few months have been difficult for the whole family but even more so for Star. First she had to leave a school where she was progressing well. She had lots of help in place and I had a good relationship with the school and we worked together. It was sad that she had to leave but we really had no choice. Then she had her neck problem, the hospital still insist she must have fallen or injured it somehow, they won’t accept that it happened while she was sleeping. Most of the school summer holiday was spent in hospital or visiting hospital. We barely had time for anything else. Although we did manage a couple of days away in Blackpool.
Then we moved house. That was traumatic for all of us, I had lived in our old house for twenty four years. We left behind family and friends and although we didn’t move very far, it’s not the same being on the same street.

in hospital

Next up was a new school. I’d had real problems finding a school for the littlies because there were no places for all of them at any one school and I didn’t really want them separated. Also the school holidays hampered my looking and contacting schools, especially as the Local Education Authority in our area had recently handed back the school admissions back to the schools rather than taking applications themselves. By a stroke of luck I managed to find a school that had just take on a new teachers so they could have another year two class and the girls where accepted. This meant no planning, no visits, no preparing. Just one morning to say hello to the teachers and tour the school and then BAM back to school after nine weeks off. Of course, Star is still visiting the hospital twice a week so that has been another thing to contend with, as well as still having to wear a collar.

back to school, finally

So now we are currently seeing a severe regression in Stars behaviour. She’s not sleeping again, she’s having tantrums, being miserable and refusing to go to school. She has lost all control over her emotions and is constantly breaking down. I am hoping that this is just a temporary back step, only time will tell. It’s half term this week but my plan is to go into the school when they return and see what I can do to make school life more easy for her and make sure she has everything she needs in place.

However, despite this being a fairly negative post I still have to think of all the positive things we have achieved. We had a lovely new home for one, after being cramped up in a tiny house for so long it’s like a dream come true having somewhere big enough for all of us. Also, I did manage to find a school where they could all attend together, I really thought for a while that they would be split and I would be working out how to be in two different places at the same time every morning and afternoon. Finally, despite everything, Star has made a new friend. She doesn’t make friends easily, but she has really clicked with a little lad who lives in our street and goes to the same school. They walk to school together and really enjoy each other’s company. That’s a big achievement for Star, a little shining light amongst all this stress.

We Moved House!

by Anne Sweet 8 Comments

Well, we did it, we moved house, we moved from a tiny three bedroomed house into a lovely big five bedroomed house. It is like a dream come true, and honestly, I’ve been dreaming of this for so long.

The actual move, however, was more like a nightmare, in fact I still have moving related nightmares on a regular basis. We knew we were moving for two months, but were told that we would be given two weeks notice before we actually had to move. I stupidly thought this would be plenty of time to pack up. Of course a lot of stuff was packed away in the two months before. Photo albums, keepsakes, books, pictures, the sort of things you have lurking in the back of cupboards or taking up space in your wardrobe. We also had some major clear outs, the understairs cupboard and pantry (yes, we had a pantry) were cleared of all their junk and we sorted out a lot of clothes and donated all those we really didn’t need.

I guess you don’t really realise just how much stuff you have, especially after living in the same house for 24 years. No1 son was definitely the most organised. His room was full of things he’d collected over time, from magazines to tiny little figures, all his consoles and games (he never threw anything out and all his stuff still had their original boxes.) He planned and sorted and bought himself some heavy duty plastic boxes to store all his valuable stuff. He must have at least a couple of hundred books! He was first packed with everything but his bedding and his pc packed with a week to go before move day. Good job too because I had to beg him to help me pack up his sister’s stuff. Eldest Daughter was offered work experience just before the move which meant early starts every day, and coming home fit for nothing but food and rest. She packed barely anything and we were still packing away her room when the removal guys arrived.

Packing is so difficult. You don’t want to be living out of boxes for a long time. It’s hard to decide what to pack away and what you will really need until the end. I found it particularly hard with the kitchen. I did pack away a lot of stuff only to find myself rummaging through boxes to find it again. Also, where on earth do you put all the boxes? As I said, my house was tiny, I didn’t want to be tripping up over boxes for weeks. Of course it was useful having the two cupboards we’d emptied of junk to store boxes in, but it wasn’t nearly enough space. Our already incredibly cramped bedroom space became a maze of boxes. The Little Man’s bed was taken apart and the space created used for storage while he squashed inbetween us in our bed. It still wasn’t enough.

Moving day came and I was really not ready. I was still packing up when the removal guys arrived, and we’d already changed the time to a couple of hours later. The whole day was a complete nightmare from beginning to end. It was non-stop packing loading and running back and forth between houses. The removal van wasn’t anywhere near big enough to what we needed, OH had found them online and they said they would be able to do the move in two runs. After the two runs they left us with loads more stuff to transfer. I called on help from a friend with a big car and I had a car that I’d hired and we carried on until around 10pm. I never, ever, ever want to move house again. Although, being my first time I realise I had a lot to learn. There may even be a blog post in there, ‘How Not to Move House!’

Well, with the move over (apart from the stuff we’d had to leave with a neighbour until we could pick it up at a later dater) we fell asleep in our house of boxes. The next morning I had to make my way to London for the MAD Blog Awards. Back home on Saturday afternoon I set to making our new house liveable. Here’s the good bit. Unpacking has been so much easier! I guess that’s because of moving to a much bigger house, we have so much space that we didn’t have before. All our stuff that took forever to pack was soon found a new place to live. And just a couple of weeks later everything was sorted, well everything apart from the photo albums and things I’d packed first. At last we can call our new house a home, and I love it.

We all have our own bedrooms, well apart from the two girls who are happy to share, we have three bathrooms, no more waiting for No1 son who takes forever! The other day I bathed the Little Man in the family bathroom while the girls were showered in another bathroom, it took half the time it used to. Also, I have a huge kitchen. My previous kitchen was not only tiny but it had a door on every wall which drastically reduces space. My new kitchen is all I’ve ever dreamed of, loads of space, loads of storage and I just love it. No, I mean it, I really really love my kitchen. I spent a whole day baking cakes, scones and pies all while cooking a family meal and I actually had space to do this! I just need a bigger cooker now, that’s top of my list of things to buy.

Our garden is smaller, ah the sacrifice! But we do have a lovely huge shed, a water butt and composter as well as a brand new lawn and tall fences. In the front garden (we never had a front garden before) we have grass and plants and I’ve already located a spot that would be perfect for a herb garden. The kitchen is at the front of the house so it makes sense to have my herbs there, and I’ll make sure to plant some delicious smelling ones to give our visitors a treat.

The week we moved I also acheived my goal of finding a school for the littlies, all three of them together. I’d been having trouble finding a place for Boo in year two as all the schools were full, but then I tried a school I’d tried previously and as stroke of luck, they’d just added another year two class. They have settled in lovely, it’s been a bit tricky with Stars neck but I’ll write more on that later. I’m just happy that they have a school to go to and it’s not too far to walk. On nice days we walk home along the canal which is lovely.

I feel truly blessed, I really do. For so long I wanted a nice home. No matter how hard I tried to make my old home nice it just wasn’t big enough for us. I had many, many happy years there (and quite a few sad) but they are now memories to hold and now I can make a new life in my new home.

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