Life update, only took 8 months!

I can’t quite believe it has been 8 months since I last wrote a blog post! I still have lots to say but general life stuff has happened and the time has flown by extremely quickly, I’m hoping this post is going to break the dam and my posts will become more regular again. 

So what’s been happening? 

Work is great and I’m loving my new Director role and everything that comes with it, people often ask me what I like about my job and it has been the same answer for 8 years, every day at Spindogs is different, I work with great colleagues and clients and every day brings with it new ideas, new knowledge and new challenges. No day is the same and for that I am thankful and it helps keep the missing Rosie at bay! 

Rose is thriving! The last 8 months has brought with it more energy, more words, more demands, more potty training and more adventures. When I hear Rose laugh my heart sings, and watching her sense of humour develop has been incredible, she has a very loud laugh, just like her parents, and still manages to be endlessly cheerful despite mixed amounts of sleep. 

Don’t get me wrong, we get lots of strops and screams of ‘No!’ with a very dramatic foot stamp (anyone who has seen me bowling may notice a similarity…) but they’re usually short lived and we are slowly reaching the realms of negotiation. I’m still completely shattered from the constant changes in sleep and she is pretty heavy to carry these days, and we have had an A&E trip and a few tears at nursery again recently but generally we can’t complain. That seems like such a shockingly short summary of life with a 2.5 year old but it has gone by in a blur and I can’t really remember much more now I am putting fingers to keys! 

Potty training went well, we started earlier than I would have liked as Rose was super keen, she is with her cousin a few days a week who is several months older and seeing her getting to use the toilet and wear knickers was too exciting for her and she started asking to go for a wee all the time (ALL the time), but we did crack it. Then things went awry at Christmas, lots of change in routine and excitement led to regular accidents and so I made the decision quite quickly to put her back in nappies and Rose didn’t make any fuss. Then in the new year when everything went back to normal we brought out the potty and the knickers and Rose has been brilliant, it was very different second time around with Rose not telling us when she needed to go - whereas the first time she said she needed to go all the time - but it only took a couple of weeks for things to settle down and, fingers crossed, all is well in that department. I should probably add that we didn’t follow any particular method, I kept meaning to read a book or some blogs but in the end we just went with the flow. The accidents can be really frustrating, especially when they’re in the car! But all in all it’s not very long and definitely short term pain for long term gain! We’re still using pull ups at night time and aren't worrying about her being dry through the night for now. I’ve just remembered that I did get the Princess Polly Potty Book and stickers and they were a big hit in the early days and kept Rose on the loo for longer than 3 seconds!

We moved house! This may be a surprise to some as it happened very quickly and wasn’t a decision that initially had a huge amount of forethought. You know us, we decide to do something and that’s it, we’re very impatient and we just go for it. We started looking at houses all over Cardiff online and saw two that couldn't have been more different and at either ends of the city that caught our fancy. We put an offer in on the one and then put our house on the market and sold it within the week. Knowing how much work we had put in to the last house it may not come as a surprise that it wasn’t finished when we accepted the offer, new windows went in before the sale completed and although it didn’t seem great at the time a delay on our move date did mean we got to enjoy the windows for a couple of months! 

At first I didn't miss the old house at all, getting used to the new commute, new house and new sounds (nature is loud!), and making sure Rose was settled resulted in me barely having time to think about it. Then Christmas arrived and Kelvin had been the most incredible Christmas house with the high ceilings and a giant tree and that did make me pine a little (no pun intended!. 

We have moved to a house that couldn't be more different than the last 2, it is only 10 years old and quite modern, but thankfully has a few interesting features. The main impetus for the move was a bigger garden and we now have a lovely big lawn for Rose to play outside and Maggie is loving it. Slight drama on move day when we actually lost the cat and she didn’t move with us (there were a lot of tears and rattling of food/shouting in to the dark) but we were reunited the next day and all is well. Turns out Mags is a country cat, the first day I let her out she went straight up to a tree and started trying to climb it and I nearly dropped my cuppa in shock! Everyone has seen a change in her and it has been wonderful to witness, including more confidence around Rose as well, the two are becoming firm friends! 

This house doesn’t need any major work and is a fairly blank canvas, it’s been very weird moving and not having anything urgent to sort out and just settle in and decide what we want to do. Despite coming from a period property to a modern house most of our furniture has fit in remarkably well and doesn’t look out of place. A lot of our artwork / pictures / photo frames were chosen for specific places in the last house so that has been a bit more tricky but every weekend something new makes it on to a wall.

We have a drive and a garage (woohoo!) so Liam is happy and it means anything not unpacked can’t be seen which is a big plus. We invested in getting built in storage at the last house but even that didn’t stop it feeling like everything we owned was on display constantly. It wasn’t a small house but with the fireplaces in every room it did limit furniture choices in some cases and so storage wasn’t always great. 

The move also meant that I knew I could delay putting off thinking about pre-school, but now we’re a bit further out the logistics of schools, the nursery and work have proved challenging to consider and so rather than forcing a decision quickly that may cause us problems we have decided to keep Rose in nursery rather than preschool from September and this gives us time to think about the best way we can make everything work. 

So what’s next? We’re off to Center Parcs next month so you can expect a post about that shortly as I had so many great suggestions from friends last year about how to make the most of your trip and I still want to share all of those. 

In terms of the house, there is one wall of wallpaper in the entire house (pretty much every other wall is white) and so the wallpaper needs to go and I’m trying to decide on a colour, I’m planning on doing it myself this time as the decorator we have used for years and years is unavailable at the moment. Liam has his head in his hands at the prospect but I’m determined to get rid of the wallpaper ASAP. The next room to sort out after that is the spare room. It needs a blind or curtains ASAP as we’re using temporary black out blinds when people stay at the moment, and it’s a lovely room that needs an injection of personality. 

Long term the plan is to update the bathrooms so that is what I am mostly pinning at the moment. I need some new inspiration for interior accounts to follow on Insta that are more modern / self build properties so if you have any suggestions please send them my way! 

Hope this was of some interest and wishing you all a wonderful start to Spring!