Less than a week to go

till we move in.

We have started taking stuff over, all our books have gone and I have started dekitchening next.
We are having to engage with all kinds of professionals to get various things done and it's interesting to see who does what and how helpful/friendly they are. So far the gas installer wins hands down, alongside the rubbish removal/house clearance men. A lot of last-minute letdowns though, very annoying, disappointing and frustrating. We have a removal firm coming to do the big stuff on Friday, so that's our official 'in' date.
I now have a big list of everything and am adding more to it than I'm taking off at the moment, which I guess is how this stage goes. Have bought lots of cleaning products to arm myself with for this house after we've got everything out.

And so on to non-move related news:

Back in spring (I think), I took F to a trial session of local early years pre-martial arts group. She loved it and I have heard from a few people that that kind of sport is excellent for children with her kind of hemiplegia. At the time I thought she was still a bit young in terms of concentration, but told Katya about it and suggested we take F and Ria together one term. My intentions were lost in the haze of move stuff, but Katya remembered and rang up one day last week to say 'let's go tonight' so we did and both the kids loved it, plus K and I got the chance for a chat (in whispers at the back). So we now have a great way of keeping up the contact between us, which had been proving difficult since Ria started school and K started teacher training and teaching. I missed K last year, only saw her about 5 times I think. F's concentration was very much better, these few months down the line, and she really focused on what she was meant to be doing, which I felt relieved about to be honest. It's 25 minutes walk for her each way but she handles that better now too, and we will get a taxi sometimes and make sure we allow ourselves plenty of time. I was delighted to see her stand very firmly on her right foot to do a high kick with her left, not even a wobble!

F has been making books, drawing, playing on ancient VTech, playing Sims 2 on XBox (she actually got one to take a job the other day, a new achievement for her), noticing words here and there and making more small steps towards reading. She played on Starfall quite a bit last week.

We have been back to MMs too, I did a short drama session which was rather chaotic as my group was very loosely formed and fluctuating! F played with L quite a bit I think. There were a lot of new people as it was another open session. We are missing this week's as I want to do lots of packing up and taking stuff along the road.

I went to a writing day on Saturday which was great - really didn't think that I would be able to focus but I did and it does do me good.

Other than that, I have been working loads - I have to keep this up for 6 months or so to have the money for various things coming up. It's nice to know I can do it though, barring the odd job that turns out trickier than expected. Much of my work now is very straightforward - huge quantities of technical French which I work on using translation software. But the odd extra job involves other ways of working and sometimes turns out to be a little bit more trouble than it is worth, but then it does keep my brain going, maybe. I would miss those '2 pages of blurry medical Russian in an image file' type jobs, I'm sure, if they didn't crop up now and then.

Last but not least piece of news - we've decided to 'try' for another baby, which we've all been very excited about. Don't know if we will be lucky but we'll see...