One Month in our House and Feeling Settled

We left two days ago for our Fall break road trip to Germany, the Alsace region of France and Luxembourg. It is a well deserved vacation! After a busy, busy month we are mostly settled into our new home. Time to relax and enjoy time together without the pressure of "getting stuff done around the house."

Friends and family have remarked how quickly we've settled in. The urgency to get our place set up was threefold. I was not functioning well living out of boxes, not knowing where things were. I got locked out of our house, showed up in the city with no diapers for Maeve and Pete had to wear the same outfit two days in a row when he couldn't find his work clothes! This way of living was driving me crazy so we worked our butts off to get unpacked quickly. We had the wonderful help of Oma and Opa for a limited time and wanted to accomplish as much as we could while they were around. And lastly, we borrowed all sorts of tools from our friendly neighbors and I am feeling badly that we've hung onto them for so long already. A few weeks back, while Maeve was at a settling in day at creche, I set my mind to hang our artwork on the walls. I knew exactly where I wanted things so I figured I could bang it out (literally) very quickly. Well, our cement walls were impermeable to nails and even to our neighbor's drill and try as I might, I was getting no where. Frustrated, I sought the advice of a new neighbor who I figured must have walls like ours. She shared that they used a hammer drill and kindly sent her husband around to let us borrow it! That was the happiest day of the whole move and I felt pretty bad%^$ donning the ear protectors and using the serious power tool.

Our house was more of less move in ready, but we still had plenty of projects to keep us busy this past month. Mostly planned: remove hideous bathroom fixtures, hang curtains, install blinds, run mosquito netting under heater grate to prevent toys from falling through the cracks, spray paint some furniture and decorative items. And unfortunately some unplanned: caulk the siding to prevent more water from leaking through the window frame. While I've felt like Mrs. Fixit lately, I have failed miserably with our lighting fixtures and will likely admit defeat and hire someone to properly hang them all.

I'd love to share some photos with you, but the place is still strewn with tools so it will have to wait until we are back from holiday.

I will tide you over with some very Dutch things about our new place:

The box.

Occupying a corner of the living room

When I moved here with Jude and learned that most Dutch homes with babies have a crib-like furniture piece in the living room to put the baby in called "the box" I was a bit appalled. It seemed really prison-like and confining. So we didn't get one for him. Well I am a convert. Now I see it as a safe place to put Maeve if I need to run upstairs or leave her alone with Jude momentarily. She likes being up high and is very content to play on her own in there.

Our bikes.

They say that there are more bikes in the Netherlands than there are people. Well, we are contributing to that statistic. We now have 5 adult bicycles in our garden. Poor Pete did not have good luck with the first two used bikes that he bought here so he finally bought a new, sturdy Dutch bike to commute with Jude to school. The old two remain. We got another really solid female bike with a basket from one of the furniture pick ups included for free. That is now my "shopping bike." We are getting ridiculous we know.

The stairs.

Our hideous cork stairs are long gone and we love the new carpet, but boy are these stairs steep. Much more so than our last place so we are still getting used to them. I know that they could be much worse though so I won't be complaining!