There has been some renovations going on and there have been some lovely peaceful times with each child engaging in their own interests too.
Here Timo is making his rat catching business signs, Lennox draws on paper on the floor and Caoimhe down the back is making clothes for her felt characters on the felt board. There are the vertical posts for the start of the new dividing wall.
The next day the wall went up, lots of stuff came out, and books which occupied the entire big bookcase were sorted. And we now essentially have our own apartment within the big house. There is a door to it which is open and you can see into the hallway. We have downsized to 2 bedrooms, more renovations to come for this, and we now have our own new living room in the front of the house behind the wall. It looks like we have moved out and we have in a way. We still have one room to vacate which will happen soon, and this room will become a spare room for guests, wwoofers etc.
So walls have been removed which used to separate the kitchen from the sitting room, there is now a nice flow and Audrey and Daniel will head off to Wellington to dismantle and pick up the pyro classic fire from friends of theirs who no longer need it and are giving it to us, to install in this part of the house. Toasty for winter :). This was a great stroke of luck because Jeremy had researched the best fire to install and were prepared to buy one and nearly did off TradeMe and their friends just happened to be giving theirs away!
This was how it was before the walls came out:
This is the lovely new living room which is considerably smaller and we love it! I wasn't sure how it would go with contracting into a smaller space and growing noisy children etc, but the changes and space has encouraged new parenting skills and a whole new lot of desirable behaviours and cohesion including Timo and Caoimhe reading to us before bed, their idea :).
Caoimhe is going through a phase of progressing in leaps and bounds with her reading abilities and ability in general to use her initiative to find out things for herself. I'm quite astonished actually. She has also started Math U See and is flying through that, will be passing Timo in no time if she keeps it up! Timo is developing in different ways and taking on responsibilities, his talent is acquiring knowledge from people, especially strangers through his 'gift of the gab'. We are working our way through Holling C Holling books and are currently reading Minn of the Mississippi and enjoying it (thanks to Jules and Fishpond vouchers).
Right, on with the work. There is plenty of it!
