Moving In

I just walked into the large family bathroom of our new home and lo and behold the floor is flooded in about an inch of water.

"Egg, what's going on! What did you do?" I ask…

"It's the 'bum-bum' water Mama. I turned on the bum-bum water and it made a big mess!" he declares gleefully.

Egg is of course referring to the bidet (which is fitted in two out of three of our bathrooms and which I never even imagined would be a problem. How could I not have foreseen the potential disaster of a would-be water fountain on tap? Dumpie too has cleverly sussed the operation and now I know for certain that we are doomed and that flooding shall be a regular occurance in this household. I'm too horrified to even be questioning Egg's understanding of the bidet and wonder vaguely whether Jay might be responsible…

So as you can no doubt gather we are firmly ensconced in our new home and after only two days it feels like a real home. This is due mostly to me and my obsessive compulsive nesting instinct which has seen me almost break myself trying to unpack the 70-odd boxes we moved with, and scour every inch of this not exactly tiny new abode to within an inch of its life.

Yesterday I clocked 16 hours of solid multi-tasking frenzied cleaning/unpacking, and this was on only six hours of unrestful, jet-lagged sleep…with both boys in our bed kicking, fidgeting and demanding more covers. This morning our poorly time-adjusted three-year old woke us at 3:48 a.m. demanding cereal and telling us it was daytime and to get out of bed. (Jay had been out till midnight at his work xmas party and was comatose and oblivious. My mother guilt bade me to wait until the slightly less ungodly hour of 4:30 a.m. at which point I got up and made toast and cereal for my rather too-chirpy toddler, and sat with my head in my hands contemplating putting my head in the smashing new oven. I am NOT a morning person. Never will be.)

At any rate, my current dilemma involves Christmas in only one week, no internet connection set up at home yet, no home phone line, a missing mobile phone, and no way of communicating with the outside world. Add to that a list of urgent tasks a mile long, a sofa which is stuck in Yorkshire and now, I'm told, won't be delivered before the New Year, and you can see why I'm just a teensy bit stressed out today.

On a positive note, I'm really pleased with the new place and am 100% sure we did the right thing in buying it – even if we did pay top dollar for it. If I can ignore the hundreds of empty boxes and miles of bubble wrap which litter the place, I can even imagine how wonderful it's going to be when everything is unpacked.

After a hellish 10 hour flight home from India on Sunday (I wanted to die) we marched straight out and bought a lovely six foot Christmas tree. Then, whilst hallucinating and seeing bright yellow spots in front of my eyes (whether this was from extreme sleep-deprivation, delerium, or merely the bottle of celebratory champagne we'd just polished off) I proceeded to decorate the tree well into the night with the many gorgeous decorations my darling mom has furnished me with over the years (thanks ma – if it were up to me it would be a bare, 'Charley Brown' tree!)

At any rate, Egg is rather taken with the tree and lovingly 'redecorates' it daily, adjusting the chocolate santa's, candy canes and brightly coloured baubles until he is content. I'm just waiting for the whole thing to topple over one of these days.

Dumpie has mastered the stairs already and has discovered that by rolling over onto his rather ample tummy and pushing off, he can travel down three stories in seconds flat by adopting a reverse Jamaican bobsledding manouvre which has him giggling and me covering my eyes in terror.

I swear, if I don't have grey hair now, it's only a matter of weeks. These boys are hardcore. I'm serious