Moving - Day 1

Well, it's been a while since I last wrote, and it's been a bit of a roller coaster of a week. Firstly, Tara had her first fever on the weekend. Although I didn't think it was too bad, it was still quite stressful and she was a bit beside herself. She was really struggling to settle and on Saturday night, I ended up sleeping in the single bed in her room, with her beside me. Gary came in in the middle of the night to make sure we were both ok. We both have colds now and Alex was a bit croaky today, so I really hope that he doesn't come down with something too. Will have to wait and see. I spoke to a doctor on Sunday and he advised me to increase the panadol I was giving Tara by 3 times (I was giving .6 ml - he suggested 2ml and assured me "It's quite safe"). We ended up giving her 1ml and increasing the frequency to every 4 hours. Her fever did pass and she has been quite well the past 2 days but still unsettled at night. Will see how tonight goes. Add to this, Tara seems to be going through a stage of needing someone with her all the time - as soon as I leave the room, there are loud cries. I sometimes feel like it would be such a luxury to go to the loo in peace!

Anyway, today being September 1st, was the day we got the keys to our new apartment. The estate agent picked us up this morning and off we went. We met the agent and the landlord's parents as the landlord himself is currently living in the US. Then the moving men arrived soon after that to make delivery of all of our stuff. It was a bit of a crazy day. We had a babysitter helping out to look after the kids at varying intervals. This helped a lot.

My first thoughts when I walked into the apartment were "It's smaller than I remember", "Oh my goodness, nothing is going to fit in here!" Then the Allied Pickfords guy comes in and says we have 113 items to be delivered. Holy cow - 113!! They then set up a temporary chair and desk (of boxes) and I had to tick off the boxes that they brought in. The bedrooms are not as big as I remember them to be. One of the biggest issues has been whether our Australian queen size bed will fit into the master bedroom. Australian queen size beds are not the same size as Asian queen size beds. Darn! The thing is if we had a fairly standard bed size, it would fit, but our bed itself is quite large, so I'm sure we could get something to fit with our mattress, but the dilemma then is that we need to buy a new bed to fit an Australian queen size mattress. However, tomorrow will tell whether this is necessary or not!

So, in came the boxes, and they kept on coming.... Then the rain set in. It was actually really nice as this meant they had to stop bringing boxes in. They then unpacked a lot so this cleared up a lot of space - less boxes - more stuff. However, no cots - they were in the other part of the truck that wasn't unloaded. So, I wasn't able to get the kids to sleep in the new place this afternoon. Which was probably just as well as there were no curtains - apparently the new curtains are coming tomorrow. Tara slept around an hour in the baby bjorn. Alex just rolled with it - I probably would have struggled to get him to go down for a nap anyway. In the taxi on the way back to our serviced apartments this afternoon he told me he wasn't tired! He then nearly dropped off to sleep, but he assured me he was "All good".

One of the biggest stresses I have with the new place is the windows. They don't have locks! When we viewed the place, the agent assured me that there were childproof locks that would be installed. On inspection today, they are a flimsy piece of metal (which Alex would be able to pull out) and with the piece of metal in place, the window can still be opened around 20cm or so, which is big enough for a small child to fall out. So I have emailed the agents tonight requesting window grilles or locks be installed. Alex is a climber and I really don't want to be worrying about this as well! Hopefully we will get this organised very soon.

On a positive note, the grounds and facilities at the condo are lovely. The pool is really nice - huge (but I guess it needs to be with 700+ apartments in the complex). There is a lovely playground and outside workout stations, an air-conditioned gym and apparently a basketball court which I haven't seen yet. So, lots to explore. I am really excited about the area too and discovering what there is to see and do around there. I will be very relieved when all of our stuff has been delivered and unpacked and we can actually feel at home! It is very nice though to have the moving men unpack and take away all of the excess packaging materials - there was such a lot!

Well it's past 10 and Gary is just on his way home from work now, so I will sign off now. Hopefully I will be able to update the blog with positive news in the next day or so - all of our stuff fitting in and finally feeling "At Home"!