Kyria's journal

Eduard and our neighbor joined forces and replaced our old joint fence with a brand new one. It is glorious. It also meant we had to cut down the thirty year old ivy standing next to it. Our garden is less pitoresque now, but we also don't have to climb up there and remove ivy any more. Win!

We ordered lots of meterials because we received our holiday money this month. E put all the sand in the backyard and started with tile laying. It's going slowly but every form of progress is aappreciated. The terrace will be huge, and it will also mean that we won't have to do a lot of upkeep on it. I used to hate gardens with a lot of tiles, but seeing how much time it costs to keep all the green stuff nice and trimmed we're going with huge planters all over the terrace.

Plus a pergola with climbing plants on top, and herbs in planters hanging on the fence. There will be a patch of grass alongside the house, roses and hydrangea's next to the bay window and the square foot gardens in the back. Things will be easier once everything is in place.

For now we have so much sand in the house, it's ridiculous. We're using a broom and dustpan three times a day to keep things in check.

Remember when I said the house is almost done? Well... whatever the builders were doing is done. It is now up to us to finish the rest and the list is getting longer and more expensive every time I think about it.

1. Get curtain rods up
2. decide what curtains we want, order them/buy them
3. put hearth back into the living room
4. put furniture back.
5. build temporary tv cabinet out of boxes and a shelf
6. E wants to build the bookcases by himself. Meaning four weeks of MDF, screws, painting, etc.
7. get Eliza's toys out of storage
8. buy more outlet protectors. Those things are way too interesting for Eliza
9. Get the paint splashes off the windows/tiles
10. Wash windows. Ugh.
11. clean everything AGAIN. Lots of dust coming from unexpected places
12. order new garden fence.
13. order new fence for side of the house for privacy reasons (Bay window gives excellent view from the street)
14. buy or make flowerbed for the garden
15. Buy sand for the garden, redo all the tiling
16. Wait for plants to grow through thick layer of construction debris, or get shuffle and start digging
17. buy new plants anyway, put them in flowerbeds on top of debris. Fixed it.
18. teach dog to not open doors to garden by herself. Fail. Drink wine
19. Be sad about the state of chaos in our house. drink more wine.
20. peek inside other people's houses while walking the dog to get ideas for interior design
21. decide that having furntiure and curtains in the first place is more important
22. Pet the dog. She's such a sweet girl. Reprimand dog for begging while Eliza's eating in her high chair
23. Hope that Elia will sleep through the night tonight
24. Mourn the loss of havign a clean and put togehter house, outfit, make-up and meals. Celebrate hugs, licks, pets, first steps, new words and lots of love from my family

Wait, what was I saying? Oh right, we'll have to get down to business and start cracking on the to-to list. And drink wine.

It has been a crazy couple of days but we're back home! The move included dropping Eliza off at my mother's house, Noushka running around and scrubbing an inch of filth from every surface downstairs. I never imagined that I would one day vacuum a toilet bowl on the inside, but I did.

E put the floor in the studio today to make it our livingroom for the next couple of weeks. In the house they have one more week to go to finish the work. The main impression is that the new livingroom is gorgeous. Lighter, bigger and with nice new places to hang. The bay wndow is one of our favorites. The new doors are higher and have glass panels, creating even more light.

In another five weeks we can put the floor in the livingroom and move back in. For now I am relieved that we are home again.

Packing up our stuff plus getting all the furniture and laminate out of the living room took us a couple of hours and it was kind of erratic at moments. We drove off around 14.30 and arrived in Katwijk around 16.30. The first couple of days, the dogs were a bit off and they are sometimes still disagreeing, but that's the way dogs are.

My mother in law is doing her best to make us feel welcome, she got groceries for dinner so we didn't have to worry. We've made a couple of visits to the beach with the dog and Eliza and they both love it, even when it is freezing cold. I also feel at home though I miss having a space to practice. As a result my dance practice routine is suffering. All for a good cause, of course.

The good news is that I started adjusting my eating habits a couple of weeks ago and it is really easy to keep it up. My mother in law lost 39 kg/ 80 pounds in about a year by changing her eating habits. It is kind of hard to sit next to a person who has the willpower to not eat sugar for over a year, and eat a chocolate bar. I don't know if I lost weight by now but I hope so. I took my measurements and I am a size bigger than I anticipated. Ugh. I'll compare measurements when I get back home in three weeks. It feels good so far, I adopted the eating habits of Eliza. I am eating something every two hours, mostly vegetables or fruit as a snack. I choose lighter options for lunch and eat breakfast and dinner like I am used to.

My MIL loves seeing Eliza every day, and I enjoy spending more time with Eliza. For these couple of weeks I work two days a week and E works one day per week. this way we can stretch our free days far enough to care for Eliza and Noushka every day. At home, the floor of the living room has been replaced by a cement floor and next week they will lay out the floor heating. The foundation of the extension is also cast. It is a complete mess and I am glad that we're not home. This seriously the last big remodeling in a very long time.

We ordered our floor last Friday and we are putting it in by ourself in the studio in the weekend of 18-19 February. That will give us a week to transition back into a routine at home, for me to say goodbye to my coworkers at the university and have one day off. In which I will attempt to prepare my classes for next semester, get some dancing in and get things settled at home. The studio will be our living room for four weeks and then we will move back in. so far, so good

Only three more weeks to go before Christmas, the deadline for finishing construction on the dance studio is drawing near.

The past couple of week the weather got cold with more rain but the progress went as planned. We are really happy with our contracter so far.
In the second week the concrete foundation was laid, providing a nice, clean canvas


The window frames arrived and look huge. They are drom bottom to the top so fairly large. The entrance will be on the left, the frame in the middle are French doors from the dance studio towards the garden.

The mason build the inner walls. Due to pur climate being cold and wet, building regulations are strict and we are going all the way with double brick walls and insulation


Like, this insulation that stocks to the outside of the internal walls


As it is dark when we wake up and dark when I get home after work, it is hard to take a picture every day. The builders start at 07.00 and they bring artificial light. They placed the beams and the roof

When I got home yesterday, the skylight was installed. It's starting to look like a real building!

We are impressed with the precision and care of the builders that work onnour house. There are remarkable few people at work but they are fast and progress is being made.

Day 1 was the removal of the old building
Day 2 was digging out a moat like hole for the fundament
Day 3 +4 was one guy placing the 'bekisting', wooden stakes and planks as a mold for the concrete.

This Monday the concrete foundation will be done and then they can start building.

Ugh.

That's just how I feel, but I am dragging myself through the day with the thought that things will get better. We've been cleaning out the garage and shed in the last couple of weeks, because next Monday is D-Day. Demolition day, that is. Builders will show up on our doorstep at an inconvenient hour (before 7 am) and start demolishing the garage. They have one week to take it all down, dig out the concrete foundation and (I presume) while they're at it dig some more to prepare for the new concrete foundation. Don't worry, I'll take before and after pics and post stuff on facebook, because building projects are fascinating to follow. They are not as much fun when you're stuck in the middle but I'm trying to be positive. It's going to be gorgeous! And they'll be done with the studio before Christmas break, so we'll actually have a break. After Christmas they'll start on the living room, due to be finished in April/May.

Fun fact: E and I met three and a half year ago. We took two vacations (two weeks to France/Italy, and a weekend to Antwerp. The last one was our honeymoon). We have successfully finished two remodeling projects on time and within budget and this will be the last big one for a while. During our relationship, we've spent 12 weeks on remodeling and two and a half on going on holiday. We are crazy. The upside is that I am decluttering as stress management plus I haven't fitted into a size S for over three years so I might as well let it go. after letting go, I will allow myself to go out and buy some new clothes that make me feel pretty. Huzzah!

My belly dance classes are okay, with the difference that I feel my intermediate classes are doing better compared to my beginners. I am running inside and being scatterbrained during my beginners class, which is Not Helpful. Eliza is having her first molars coming through and s a result she is in a lot of pain. She is an absolute delight the rest of the time, making up for it in playing, talking and reacting. I can ask her where a specific toy is and she will look at it and retrieve it for me. It's amazing how much conceptual thinking is going on inside that tiny head of hers. Sleeping is currently not going to well and as a result we are not as sparkly and happy as we could be with five hours of undisturbed sleep.

The enrollment opened for my classes and my intermediates class was full within 6 hours. Huzzah!! Yes, I get a kick out of my students loving my classes. Some of them instructed their parents to enroll them as they were on holiday, others set an alarm clock because they were on the other side of the world.

For the beginners class we only have two people signed up, but there are two more weeks before the trial class and three more weeks after that. As long as I have five or six people to play with teach I'm happy. Teaching belly dance is one of the hardest and most fun and rewarding things in my life. I wouldn't be dancing still if I didn't teach.

Speaking of dancing, I told Sense of Bellydance that I'll take it slow this season. We have a show on October 22th and after that I'll skip most of the rehearsals. It took me a while to figure out why I am sad and happy at the same time. It's because I want to spend more time dancing. The bigger the troupe, the more time is spend on sitting around and talking. During the weekend in the cottage, we spent 7 hours on official sit down and talk business, like what we were going to do next year. I brought the costume I am working on and made a dent in adding beading. Thing is, for people who love to dance, we don't do much dancing. I hate that, I want to dance more. So I am focusing on surviving the next year and dancing as much as possible.

With regards to dancing I also scouted the local dance school that is ten minutes from our house. It is nice and they do various modern and urban dance styles, mainly for age 8-25. I am thinking of renting the studio every now and then so I can host instructors or teach a class with veils, wings or fan veils. Ideally in a couple of years it would be nice to have a group big enough to teach at their studio and go to the belly dance championships to.

Eliza is almost nine months and I have one more strip of the pill left. After finishing the strip, we'll wait and see what happens. The next twelve months will be filled with:

1. Totally rocking my weekly bellydance classes at Parnassos. I worked really hard on the lesson plans and had so much fun already. It contains stuff from Sadie's Raqs Flow, Ava's intensive from last year and various new moves I got from World Dance New York dvds. I feel like shaking things up

2. Remodeling! They start in the third week of October with demolishing our garage/shed. We will be living in our house while they are building and I am a bit worried about the lack of privacy but it's all for a good cause. The dance studio will be ready before the end of the year. We will then put all the furniture from the living room into the studio, leave the house and live somewhere else for four weeks while they work in the living room. I am currently gathering information and images for decorating the living room, dining area, play are for Eliza and the hobby area in the back of the annex. This interior design thing is fascinating though kind of confusing.

3. Getting pregnant. I have a serious case of rattling ovaries. Kind of disturbing considering that Eliza isn't sleeping through the night yet, but I love her to bits and I don't want to wait. I might get pregnant within a month, or after two years. I just don't want to wait. Plus, with the current frequency of intimacy we'll have one shot per three months so that's not helping either

4. Programming the dance studio. The builder will be done with the living room medio March/April. We'll move our furniture back into the house and have someone build sliding mirror doors on one side of the studio, plus decorate the interior as well. We'll officially open the studio in April and I want my program to be ready. I am putting quirky subjects on it that I always wanted to teach. Some costuming bits, stuff about the business side of bellydance and actual bellydance subjects but with a twist. Plus I'll schedule two prenatal bellydance workshops per month and see if there is interest in such a thing.

Slowly we're making progress on the remodeling plans. The contractor is making the drawings for submitting to planning permission. We're having a meeting in a week or two to discuss the plans, and then he can submit them. In another 6-8 weeks we'll have a go or no go. Building will probably start in October but right now the planning is a bit up in the air. It's making me anxious as I foresee a very stressful time for us as a family. It's true what they say: having a baby is a strain on your relationship. We're good, but both tired plus we both have our extra activities that take up time away from the family. I can only imagine the added stress of taking the whole family to another town/house/living with my mother or mother in law.

I like our house. I like our routine. I like knowing where everything is. My limit to accepting changes is getting lower as I age and this is a lot of change in a relative short timeframe. I hope that construction will be done on November 25th, on Eliza's first birthday.

Speaking of Eliza, our little girl is working very hard on growing up. She managed to pull herself to a standing position yesterday at day care, followed by panicking because she has no idea about sitting back down yet. She has six teeth and we're expecting the next two. Based on hw she's sleeping (not much) they are due any day now. E. swears that she's saying mama, dada and Noushka but it's all a bit random babbling around which is delightful. As is the smile on her face when she sees me and recognizes me.

I installed the maxi-cosy carrier on the back of my bike and she loves hanging out in the back and looking around. Once she can walk, we'll have to keep an eye on her all the time! My plan was to get her a necklace or armband with a gps tracker, just in case. Does that make me an over caring parent?

We are the people/family you can't invite into your house because something will brake or be damaged. During our visit on Easter Monday E went upstairs to fetch some stuff from storage. Noushka followed him upstairs for a minute. In that minute she managed to poo on one of the upstairs beds (my mother in law doesn't go upstairs any more, so they are not in use). This was discovered yesterday when my sister in law was cleaning the house.

With us having to move out of our own house for about four weeks later this year, we're looking for places to stay. Our kid isn't much of a problem, but the dog might be problematic. E's brother told us flat out that we were welcome but the dog not. Because the dog is used to lying on the couch and is in general very good at ignoring us despite our best efforts. Will our kids be the same when they grow up? I hope not!

Never thought that pets would be so complicated to find a temporary home for. I love her to bits and we don't want to put her in a pension for four weeks, so the only other option is finding a holiday bungalow where dogs are allowed.