Starting nursery – a parent’s reflection

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Taking your little one to nursery is a huge step. It often signifies the end of maternity leave and will be the place where your child will spend a lot of time.

I dropped my baby to his nursery intro’ session yesterday and as I drove away I felt content. I was prepared for the surge of emotions I was told that I would feel, but this didn’t come. I was also prepared for tears but instead, I was happy.

In the back of my mind there was the voice that whispered ‘what if he doesn’t like it?’ and ‘what if he doesn’t make any friends?’ but I didn’t listen and remained positive.

This lack of sadness isn’t because I was relieved I didn’t have to look after him for two hours – honestly, I do enjoy it as hard as it can be sometimes! But it was because I felt in control of the situation.

I had chosen the nursery based on how I felt when I went in. The children were happy as were the workers. The baby room was set out beautifully and there was always an activity they could get stuck into, as well as plenty of play and themed story times. There was also a sensory room for the babies to relax in if they get overwhelmed at any point and a relaxing nap space.

Bertie’s specific carer was lovely and spent time going through what his normal routine would be and answering my questions regarding meals, naps, and everything else.

I know the nursery will work to the latest guidance and is completely baby-proofed. So Bertie will have a full day of fun, plus 3 healthy meals, and plenty of love and care.

So I wasn’t sad because I knew he would love it and in time, eventually he will be asking to go to nursery!

It also gives me an opportunity to grow my career and earn an income for my family. Yes, childcare is expensive but I really do believe the benefits outweigh the cost cons. It also means that when he does see family, it’s a nice change rather than having to rely on them for childcare.

Some questions I asked when viewing nurseries are listed below:

⁃ Do the children have free access to water and drinks?

⁃ Are nappies, wipes and formula provided?

⁃ Do you need to provide bedding for nap times?

⁃ What safeguarding is in place for pickups?

⁃ Do we get notification of what activities the babies have been up to throughout the day?

⁃ What is a normal menu?

⁃ Are there any parents evenings or catch-ups with your child’s carer?

⁃ What outdoor activities are available?

What I appreciate now I’m older

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What do you think gets better with age?

The one thing I now appreciate more than I ever used to is a cosy home.

I like to spend time cleaning it, making it practical yet homely, rearranging decor and burning candles/wax melts.

I like the smell of the bread maker baking our latest loaf, or the clink of the glass milk bottles rather than plastic ones.

I like putting my money aside now to save for our home improvements. For example, over the next few years we will be investing in projects that help our home become self sufficient.

To briefly explain, my family and I live in a farmhouse that the previous owners extended into a horseshoe shape around a courtyard. So we have a big but awkward home. There are 8 bedrooms in total and 9 bathrooms. However, my family lives in the original farmhouse that makes up the left side of the horseshoe. We have 4 bedrooms and 3 bathrooms. We have separated our house with a lockable door so we are at no risk of people wandering in.

The entire house is run on one oil boiler that is temperamental to say the least. We also only have one hot water tank that’s enough for 2 normal showers.

This year’s investment is to open up the chimney and replace our small, non-efficient open fire with a wood burning stove. In theory we will go from about 30% efficiency to 80% efficiency with our investment!

Also, now that I’m working from home and Bertie will be home on the days I’m not working, we need to ensure the house is warm. Something that it never seems to be!

Next year or maybe the year after, we plan to separate our house with its very own heating system. We have solar panels so think that an electric boiler could be the way forward. As we do this we will also replace our upstairs bathroom and have an electric shower put in.

So, as I age I have started to appreciate how making a house a home is time consuming and costly. But it’s also so worth it.

The importance of our dining room

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I am sat at the dining table in the dining room helping my little boy by feeding him his lunch and passing his water bottle every now and then.

The layout of our house means the dining room is the central hub of activity. With the front door leading into the coat area just to the side, this room is the entrance to our home. This is where we have home date nights, where we host friends and family, where me and Bertie sit daily for breakfast, lunch and dinner whilst Dan is out at work.

Here our dog relaxes in one of her two comfortable beds. Here there are pictures on the wall showing memories and there is a mirror above the coat hooks.

We exist around our dining room and I’m so glad we do. So often you see the dining room as a dusty space devoid of character, only used for ‘special occasions’, and often for family birthdays or holiday celebrations.

Ours is well used – not as clean as it should be (typical farmhouse!), and we have a secondhand table with 3/4 chairs remaining. Bertie’s highchair dominates the head of the table and you will often find the dog snooping for crumbs of his meals left behind. But it’s perfect for us.

I’m fully embracing slow living. It’s an adjustment that I’m working on and one of the most recent changes is to connect my calming Spotify playlist to the Bluetooth speaker that is often just set to play the radio.

Having calming music playing over mealtimes just seems to make me naturally slow down and enjoy the food. Also, to enjoy the experience of sharing a meal time with my baby boy.

I hosted a dinner party last Friday evening (slow cooker chilli followed by a rhubarb crumble) and I got to dress the dining room table up a little bit for the event! Nice glasses, a candle, tablecloth, that kind of thing.

There’s a time for relaxing with food in front of the TV but for me, the dining room is where we get to communicate and make memories.

Renovating our farmhouse: 6 months on

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If you’ve been following my journey on Instagram you’ll know that in March, Dan and I moved into our forever home. I wanted to post another update following my blog post in June to update readers on what progress we are making alongside working full-time!

For a very long time the property was used as a halfway house for a religious charity so we were effectively taking ownership of a HUGE project. It was obvious not a lot of money had gone into any of the decoration, electrics, plumbing, the heating system or large kitchen – everything had been done as cheaply as possible and safety didn’t seem to be a factor in that. However, underneath the shoddy wiring and interesting décor’ is a jewel of a house just waiting to be rediscovered.

The first major task was the farm electricity. The whole farm was run off of the main, outdated electricity board on a household, non-watertight cable. Once this was sorted, the electrics in the house were then tackled and separated, with certain sections being turned off completely for being unsafe. The large house is now run off of 3 circuit boards so each section can work out how much electricity is being used.

Secondly, we had to work on the windows. Our house was the only part of the large property that had original, single-pain sash windows which looked lovely from afar but didn’t match the rest of the PVC windows on the property and did NOTHING at keeping the house warm. We had to replace 4 windows (1 which was over 2 metres long!) and fit a new PVC, lockable back door.

Amongst these other projects, I set to decorating the spare room so we could have guests stay over. This project cost about £80 in total and involved buying paint and accessories for the room. Everything else we already had or were gifted. Our own bedroom, living room and bathroom I decorated with the help of Dan’s Mum and sister just before we moved in, so they were already liveable. The bathroom does need replacing but with a little spruce up and regular cleaning, it should last us another 2-3 years. That way we can stagger the cost of the renovation. I’ve also been working on the garden all summer as well and next year I plan to really knuckle down on the vegetable garden and patio area. We are also planning to get our 2 stable blocks in place for the winter but this involves the boys and their diggers! So just waiting on some time from them – not that they really have any spare with how busy their business is.

Thirdly, our part of the property didn’t have a kitchen. It had space for a kitchen but the room was a large utility and 2 bathrooms. It’s taken a long time and we are about a month away (and a lot of hard work!) from having it finished but we are NEARLY there. We’ve removed walls, built stud walls, replaced the ceiling and rewired the whole room. Wren Kitchens have designed us my absolute DREAM kitchen and we are now just waiting for the plastering to be done before we get it painted and fitted. It will soon be a medium sized kitchen with a walk in pantry, mini utility room and downstairs shower room.

The kitchen and attached rooms are our most expensive project by far. It’s actually daunting working out how much money we soon need to part with to pay our lovely tradesmen for their hard work. Yet, once this kitchen is fitted our house is much closer to being a home.

I will do another progress report in the next 6 months – at that point we will have lived on the farm for a whole year! I already have a list of projects as long as my arm that I’d like to crack on with but a lack of time, lack of money and my sanity get in the way.

Follow me on Instagram for more updates.