Having a break

from painting the kitchen architraves and doors...have I ever told you guys that I really don't like painting? Well it is not the painting that I don't like - in fact I like painting - it is the preparation...the cleaning the sanding, the filling.

So, I am just about finished and it makes the kitchen look so much brighter.

We have an ex-war commission home. Originally 2 bedrooms and red clinker brick. Built in the 1940's on good sized blocks of land (for the city).

We bought this home in 1989 - October to be exact and it was when interest rates were at 18%! We figured that if we could afford repayments at that rate - it could only get better. That was in the days of no kids and two incomes. I think our initial repayments were $1450 per month.

We got married in February 1990 and we were both still working.

Even when the interest rates dropped and dropped - we kept paying at that rate and paying more when we could. I took a package from where I was working at Vic Roads and got a great payout - all bar $2000.00 went on the house and then, just before Zachary's 2nd birthday, Stan was retrenched from his work - and he had just been there for a year - he got a pretty good payout and all of this went on the house and we had PAID IT OFF! Yay - I think it took just 7 years for us to do it - we were pretty pleased with ourselves...

One of the owners before us put on a very long back room as an extension. We originally used this room as a spare room.

We found out when Samuel was 5months old that we were expecting another baby and besides going into panic mode, we decided to add another room. All Stan had to do was insert a wall and door across the long spare room and voila - two more rooms!

The middle one became Samuel's, the other became my office. And of course Zachary went into the original room when he was a baby. Not long after, both boys were in the middle room with bunks and the new baby, Bronte went into the original bedroom which was next to ours.

Fast forward a year or so and the boys went back into the original bedroom as it was the biggest one and Bronte into the middle room. Then, when she went into a big bed we decided to put ALL three in the one room and made the middle room a playroom with TV and Video player and we had a sofa bed couch in there for visitors. It was great while mum and dad were still around as they could come and sleep in there.

Eventually, the visitors have stopped and the kids were getting bigger, so we decided to move Bronte back into the middle room - this was around October 2006 and it was not a great idea as far as Bronte was concerned.

She didn't want her own room. She wanted to stay with her brothers. Why does everyone ELSE get to sleep with someone and not her? Oh man, it was difficult.


Everynight Bronte would come into our room at 2am on the dot. It's scary, it's too dark, it's too noisy - any excuse she could come up with - we got it. At 2am, it certainly didn't work putting her back in her own room - who wants to listen to an 8 year old crying hysterically at that time? It was out of the question after the first few nights that she would actually join us in our bed...not enough room. So, she started to bring in her pillow and special blanket at 2am and lay them down at the end of the bed on the floor and snooze away. We often didn't even hear her come in...

After a while she thought she would prepare for this early morning ritual by putting her blanket and pillow in BEFORE she went to her own bed. I said no way to that one pretty quickly though.

My friend was saying - you have to stop this. You can't let it go on. During the day I would talk to Bronte about it and she would say she would try not to come in but every morning she was there.

We made her room nice, got her a lovely antique replica cast iron bed, painted the walls a sunny yellow, put hot pink accessories around and more. She loved her room - during the day - not at night.

Last night, I realised that she hasn't been in our room for a month. I knew it was getting good but a whole month and she is happy. She still doesn't like her door closed but she has a fabulous hot pink big flower night light that we got from Ikea that seems to have made all the difference. We leave it on (and it is high on her wall) all night and she said it makes her happy.

Well, I am now happy too thanks very much! Just goes to show that if you try and FORCE things like this - it just makes for unhappy inhabitants - if you take it slow it works out in the end.

Anyway - the reason I started this post was....while I was painting...I was thinking...how much we have all grown and changed as a family. It is a work in progress. Mostly a really rough work and we are doing it by the seat of our pants but it is going ok at the moment...fingers crossed.

Anyway - he she is, relaxing in her room...reading, with the Jasper the cat!