As some of you might now, we bought a house in London. It is a small, ex-council terraced house. I would not have looked at it twice, but when you have children your priorities change. In this case our priority was a school. It is one the the top twenty government schools in London, and it is right in front of our house. Hopefully, Big Munchkin will get in and our sacrifices will be justified. Originally, we thought of doing only very cosmetic renovations. In reality, one thing led to another, and to another. Few things came up as a compete surprise. The main one is that the garage was not suitable for its intended purpose of storing our extra stuff. We had to completely change the roof, do the walls, electrics, door into the house from the garage, etc. All together it came to big, unplanned expense. We are also planning on completely changing the kitchen and the bathroom, and hopefully, installing a second toilet. We already change all light fixtures and did lots of other electric work. We changed the wall paper in all three bedroom, repaired the staircase, etc ... etc ... We have been very busy. My husband can only take so many (read so few) days off, and I still have two Munchkins to take care of. Work at neither bathroom nor kitchen will get started when we wove in. We are moving on February 10th. For about a week before and week after there will be glitches with Internet and phone connections. Basically, I will have no net and no home phone number.

On a lighter note, Big Munchkin is growing to be a little fashionista. Few days ago I took her to buy a hew hat. Since she insists on getting dressed by herself, I wanted to get her to pick a hat that she can wear. She tried one hat, than another, than another. I asked if she liked any of the hats. She gave me back the last hat and said: 'Mommy, I don't like this hat, I don't want this hat. I don't need this hat. But I would like to buy some new shoes.' And that I coming from a two and a half year old person, who already owns seven pairs. Apparently, she was upset that papa broke a zipper on her pink boots and she wanted a replacement. She took me to the store, which is selling those boots, and told me that she wants to buy 'New MY pink boots'. Needless to say, I did not buy it.