Painting the new/old house inside and out was high on our to-do list before we moved in last year. As it turned out we had an extra ten days to get the house ready before we moved in thanks to our initial move-in date being cancelled due to a 1-in-100 year rain event. Although we had initial plans to paint inside ourselves, what with all the stress and exhaustion and two small children to take care of, not to mention the size of the job, we caved and hired professionals to paint the interior.

Best decision ever, every surface that wasn’t floor was painted, doors, skirtings, louvered cupboard doors, the front door, all ceilings and of course the walls. The difference was remarkable and it did honestly feel like a new house when we moved in! We decided to postpone painting the exterior until the renovation was finished and there were a lot of repairs to do to the old fibro first.

Finally the big jobs were complete and we were ready to start thinking about painting. Initially we thought we were going to paint the outside white. I don’t know why, maybe we had a large tin of white exterior paint in the garage, maybe the house was already white, or at least had been at some point in time.

But once Ron did the first coat of white at the back we quickly decided that we needed a new colour palette. We started with our beloved Woodland Grey which we used on the deck balustrades and chose a selection of colours on the same palette.

We ended up with Smoke Haze, a sort of beige grey that was dark enough to not be white but not too dark. Just right. There was lots of prep work to be done, some spots needed to be sanded down, Ron had to repair a lot of the joins in the fibro sheeting and we need to borrow our builder’s scaffolding but soon enough Ron was up and painting.

Being a methodical guy he started on the side of the house, moved round to the other side, then the back and finally the front. We still have some touch ups to do at the front before I take the final After photos. We love, love, love the colours, the Woodland Grey gutters and trim make such a difference and the actual house colour has brought our little fibro right up on trend!

It did take a long time and a lot of hard work but not only has Ron saved us a lot of money, he has added some significant value to our home.

This year has seen a lot of growing and changing in our family and our home. We have celebrated a few birthdays already and some other milestones.

Amy took a swan dive off the cubby house and split open her chin which meant a swift visit to the local emergency room. She was brave until she realised that meant going to hospital at which point she wailed a lot about how scared she was! After all that she was incredibly brave as a very young Dr glued her chin together.

She healed up quickly but it has left a scar which makes me feel just a tiny bit sad, her beautiful skin, so perfect and then this little raised red scar on her chin. We have been doing a lot of baking at home, Amy can make pikelets (little pancakes!) from scratch on her own and often makes them for her own afternoon tea.

My lovely stand-mixer has been put to good use whipping up cake batters for the occasional treat. There have been lots of days spent in the garden and equally as many spent playing indoors and as a rule, the girls are great friends who play really well together.

Amy is learning to be less bossy and to make up fewer rules for their games and Stella is learning to stand up for herself and tell Amy when she doesn’t want to play the game her way. I usually leave them alone to resolve their differences although I have been spending a lot of time recently explaining that telling tales is never a good thing even if she did touch your foot/food/face/toy/ Sigh, girls!

What about me you ask? What has been going on in my life? Well, sit back, relax and let me tell you a story. The last year of my life has been such a journey. Sadly it’s not really been one of those inspirational journeys where everyone ends up enlightened and better people as the result of their inner growth. Our big decision to buy our new/old house before selling our old/old house was a tough one. It really threw me for a loop and looking back the combination of the stress of the financial risk and the exhaustion of just trying to do all the things all of the time meant that I went into a bit of an adrenal overload. I was constantly alert and in a state of panic, ready to rush into action at a moment’s notice, to prepare the house for a viewing or to cope with some new twist in the tale of the new/old house. The longer the process went on for, the more intense my state of mind started to feel.

I began to have minor panic attacks where I struggled to catch my breath, my heart would race, my palms would sweat and I would be consumed by an overwhelming feeling of dread. The slightest deviation in the plan could send me into a spiral of nervous anticipation, fear and worry. I was struggling to stay calm and focused as we started Amy at school, trying hard to be present for her and coping with her anxiety and over stimulation. I was sleep deprived trying to deal with the later and later bedtimes as Amy was struggling to unwind after school and needed a lot of calm and patient attention at night to ease her into sleep. Stella was struggling with her speech delay and having tantrums where she just needed to be held and calmed and all the while I was trying to keep my tiny house looking like a show home so we could let potential buyers through at the shortest notice in order to be as easy going and open minded as we could be, desperate for buyers. I needed Ron to run the numbers constantly, updating me on every scenario, my normal personality traits of wanting to be in control and aware of every pitfall meant I was always thinking about the worse case scenario which lead to some horrible sleepless nights and desperate self-doubt.

All the while Ron was his ever present, calm and focused self, convinced we would sell in time, for the best price and everything would fall into place. I had no self-confidence, cried frequently and for no good reason and I had lost my appetite entirely. Eventually I talked to my Dr who prescribed me some anti-anxiety medication and suggested liquid protein shakes in an attempt to get some kind of nutrition into me. Between January and April 2012 I lost nearly 6kgs which was amazing on many levels because I had been working hard to increase my fitness and lose some weight the year before, but this was positively unhealthy. I felt like my whole life had shrunk down into a tiny box where I was living from moment to moment, phone call to phone call. Occasionally I would allow myself to imagine it all working out, mostly though I was swept away by the panic and spent many nights lying awake with my heart racing and my mind completely unable to stop running the scenarios, over and over. I withdrew from my friends and became sick of the same old story coming out of my mouth, no news, no buyer, worried, anxious. I let my photography business drop off completely, between January and September 2012 I only did two professional photoshoots and the occasional shoot for friends.

But things did slowly improve and then finally we had the news we were holding out for, we had a buyer and the timings fell into place and we sold and we bought and we exchanged and then we tried to move and then the electrics needed replacing and then it started to rain and then the house flooded and then we had to postpone our moving date and then we moved and then we had to move our stuff from storage and then we had poo in our garden and we had to replace the sewer and then we pulled the back of the house off and it wasn’t waterproofed and then things cost more than we thought and then we all got sick and somehow I ended up being a different person to who I had always thought I was. In my life before I would have described myself as resilient, realistic, generous and caring. Somehow I had become anxious, nervous, fearful and irritable. I didn’t know who I was anymore and my relationship with food had changed and I started to run further and further in the mornings as though I was running away from something instead of running towards a goal. All the while we were trying to manage a massive renovation, living out of our family room, no kitchen for nearly six weeks, children surviving on two minute noodles as I struggled to control my post traumatic stress. At night I would lie awake listening to the house moving around me, convinced there were structural problems with the extension, worried there were holes in the roof. The slightest decision would send me into a spiral of self-doubt and I honestly didn’t know who I was anymore. All the pleasure in the progress of the renovations was wiped out when something minor would go wrong. The back room flooded again and quotes to damp proof were astronomical. Ron saw potential and the realisation of his dream, I saw ongoing stress and costs blowing out.

Then I hurt my back. Bootcamp and running had been my escape and suddenly one afternoon after a great morning boxing session, I couldn’t move. My lower back muscles seized and went into spasm and the pain was unreal. Over the next two months I hurt my back another three times, each time worse than before, once while out running as I turned to look behind me when I crossed the road, another time when I picked up Stella to take her to her room during a tantrum and then again when I went back to bootcamp. I couldn’t exercise, I couldn’t run. It was a horrible time. In the midst of this Ron and I went to South Africa for a week without the girls to be there for my sister on her wedding day. We came home revitalised and I felt ready to draw a line under the year right then and there in the middle of August. The renovation was complete, the new kitchen incredible, the deck and garden a beautiful oasis in the middle of suburbia. But still, the self-doubt and fear. All I wanted was to feel like myself again, confident and content, happy in my own skin, present in my family.

On the surface that was me but underneath I was still unable to look myself in the eye. I didn’t know what to do, when I tried to explain how I felt to Ron, I just sounded slightly mad, worried, stressed, anxious, but outwardly I didn’t have anything to be stressed about. The financial stress was over and we had managed to complete the reno within budget. I threw myself back into meal planning, cooking and using my beautiful new dream kitchen that I strangely felt like I didn’t really deserve. On reflection it’s quite clear to me now what was happening, my anxiety was slowly spiralling into depression, my self-doubt was slowly being replaced by self-loathing. Luckily we had a wonderful holiday to look forward to, five weeks in South Africa, safe in the arms of my family, the comforts of home, Ron and the girls and I set off on our adventure and from the very beginning it felt like I was a changed woman. Away from the house I stopped worrying about the big tree falling over, the drains blocking up, the walls and roof leaking. Out of sight, out of mind and for the first time in months I felt as though I could breathe again. I had finished an eight week course of intense physical back rehab, learning to move again, teaching my core muscles to take on the role of supporting my spine rather than using the large muscles around my lower back to support my body. I felt strong, healthy, happy. We welcomed the New Year surrounded by my loving family, my girls were in heaven, Dad on tap, Mum with a smile and a laugh, grandparents present and adoring. I felt energised and determined to meet the new year head on, like I used to, confident, brave and focused.

Of course all good things come to an end and we landed back in Sydney with a large, hideous jolt of reality. Jet lag was severe and felt never ending, Amy struggled to adjust both to the time difference and the difference in her parents, she missed my Mum and Dad with an intensity I hadn’t anticipated and somehow seemed to blame me for bringing her home. The house had been well cared for by our house sitters but suddenly bills needed to be paid and I was on call again for meals, snacks, laundry and the new school year. Within days all the goodness of the holiday had evaporated and Ron and I were dealing with Amy out of control, exhausted, wide awake and emotional. Tantrums, hysteria, mania, refusal to listen, eat, sleep. She seemed to settle back into school again with no struggle but at home it was a different story. She was belligerent, disobedient and unhappy and everything was a struggle. I was consumed with jetlag and exhaustion and up three or four times a night trying to get someone settled back to sleep and then unable to sleep myself, my heart racing again, that feeling of dread slowly creeping over me and seeping into my waking hours as well. I tried to talk to Ron about it but he was seeing solutions not problems and it just wasn’t that simple, my go-to methods weren’t working anymore, I couldn’t concentrate on reading and within a few days of getting back into the daily grind I had hurt my back again and suddenly I couldn’t cope. Ron and I sat up late one night in crisis, questioning our parenting, our relationship, our coping mechanisms and we agreed we needed help, we agreed I needed help.

Since that crisis point things have slowly been improving. Ron and I are working together as a team to address the issues that the last year of our lives have thrown up. Parenting Amy can still be a daily struggle but she is so much happier now than she was a few months ago. We switched round some things and changed our mindsets, did a lot of reading and asked for lots of help and we are taking each day at a time, trying to find ways to be there for her without feeling like she is running our lives. Stella is growing and adapting to the changes in her life, we are back at speech therapy to help her catch up again to her peers, she actively communicates with everyone in her life but sometimes needs a little extra help expressing herself. Ron is busy with work and constantly working on our house and garden and I am slowly but surely finding a way back to myself. I have lots of help and support and am starting to feel more comfortable talking about what I have been going through. Despite being an extrovert who loves to communicate, talking about what I have been experiencing has felt like admitting failure on some level and it’s been hard for me to open up and be honest about what I have been feeling. On so many levels I feel like such a cliché, the stay-at-home-mum who suddenly finds herself wanting more, the out-of-work mum who’s skills have stayed at the level I left them at nearly seven years ago when I went on maternity leave. The non-Australian in a workforce rammed full of Mums like me, looking for part time work. Sometimes it feels as if there was a crack somewhere, I would just slip right through it. Validated only by the presence of my husband and children and my friends. My team of professionals includes my wonderful GP and a lovely psychologist who is helping me learn to validate how I feel and change my behaviour patterns. Slowly the panic attacks are lessening and I feel as though my ability to cope is increasing. I have given myself permission to not be the best I can be at all times.

There are many occasions where I have to remind myself that what is most important is that I am well enough to do my job, to be there for my children, to be present for my husband and so I am forcing myself to stop withdrawing, to reach out more and to talk more. Its not easy but then nothing tough ever is. And that is where the story finds me now, poised on the edge of change and coping with it.

A bit of Christmas nostalgia as I go through our video camera getting ready for the Christmas concert and presentation day next week. Two things. Amy looks SOOOOOO little and wow, Stella really couldn’t talk properly!

We are a few days away from the annual dance concert. This will be Stella’s first time dancing up on stage and she is pretty excited! Last year she was heartbroken not to be allowed to get up and have a go and I know she is going to love it.

It helps she will have her big sister watching over her costume changes and touching up her lip gloss while I sit front of stage sipping a cold sem sav blanc. It just gets easier and easier, this parenting gig!

These photos are from Amy’s school variety concert earlier this year, it was such a fun night but tired little kindy children aren’t designed to cope with all the excitement and we ended up going home before the finale. Luckily our dance concert is on at 11am so we should be good! Photos to follow soon!

One of the things that annoyed us from the first moment we saw the house was that the previous owner hadn’t botherd to paint the fibro sheeting the house is clad with. We later discovered that unpainted fibro is not actually really that water tight. Hmmm.

So various panels had to be replaced at the same time as we were renovating the back of the house. Our builder replaced three sheets on this side of the house, the steep side and while his scaffolding was still up, Ron took the opportunity to give it a base coat of paint.

Of course he fully intended to follow that up with a top coat but seriously, painting, worst job ever. So, at least the fibro is watertight, sadly its not all the same colour but we figure we are going to have to repaint the whole place soon enough anyway, just add it to the list! (Actually on the wishlist is to cover it all up with weatherboard cladding at some point but thats a lot more expensive than a coat of paint…….)

There are many side-effects to buying a new house. Along with the fun stuff, imagining where all your furniture will go and picking out paint colours, comes the negative. Discovering that your sewer system is borked and needs to be replaced. Sigh.

We have had lots of ups with our house but also many lows, some we were aware of before we signed on the dotted line and some we have discovered since. Unpleasant suprises. Just this morning Ron was crawling around under the house trying to find the source of the loud gushing water noises I can hear in bed when we run the dishwasher at night. He found it, a large pipe, somehow disconnected from its partner and spraying water all over the underside of our house.

Still, we live and we learn. A few weeks ago there was a strange buzzing noise in the bathroom walls, kind of electric sounding and constant and I could not figure out what it was. Ron came home from work and we were rushing around trying to get ourselves ready and the girls out the door to Ron’s parents house for the night while Ron and I went out to the Rugby Presentation night. Ron was under the house banging pipes and I was shouting down to him that it was “closer” or “further away” and then I went back into the bathroom and opened the cupboard door and found Ron’s sponge bag vibrating away as his nose hair trimmer buzzed! At the time we didn’t laugh, we were both stressed that there was some terrible electrical fault in our walls. Later we did laugh, only in our house!!