Exchanged! Balls! Insomnia!

We finally exchanged two days ago with a completion date that we could work to, yay!

The last few days have been a bit strained - what with buyers wanting to complete in less than five days, FBB getting a mysterious but rather painful and scary infection1, work getting increasingly pressured as we approach the end of month frenzy and to top it all off, Plate has now decided that bedtime is 10pm. Oh, I have been a bit stressed lately.

Let's start with our pesky buyers. Aside from boiler challenges which were quickly resolved, on Monday I got an email saying, oh by the way, your buyers would like to exchange on Friday. Er... no. How about August 3rd... and they started piling on the guilt - well, you know to be fair, your buyer came in to do this that and the other, she's already ordered furniture, you know, two weeks between exchange and completion is quite normal, etc etc. I just couldn't deal with it: I was under a fair amount of pressure at work, I really did not need this. So I passed it on to FBB. And boy, did he rise to the challenge. He resolutely stuck to his guns - we are completing on August 15th and that's that. Even if it means risking the sale? Yes, even that2. And it paid off! Exchange and completion in our favour!

The rental is still available, double-yay! and now it's ours. Come mid-August, we shall be living it up in the bright lights of Ely city (stop sniggering in the back, you!).

I'm going to skip the scary infection bit. It's better now but he still needs to go to a specialist clinic at the hospital on Monday. Fingers crossed it's nothing serious.

Not going to talk about work either.

Plate - bless her little cotton socks - is sleepless in Mepal. I think it's the heat. The last few days have been muggy and horrible3. She just would not go down at her usual time of 8 and will only start winding down around 9.30, 10pm. Tonight, she didn't drop off till past 10.30pm. Even daddy was asleep by then! But she's been a bundle of joy nonetheless. She can now say 'teeth', 'ha (hug)', 'kiss', 'cup', 'juice', 'boob', 'book', 'what this?', 'tractor' and from about a week ago, my goodness, 'mummy'! She can just about jump and can do forward rolls with a little help. I haven't actually seen her do it, but she somehow has managed to learn how to put her boots on herself too. Clever girl.


But clever isn't always good. Heart attack time: I was in the front room stuffing nappies and she was running around as she does, when I suddenly became aware that I couldn't hear her. I leapt up and found that the front door was open! Heart pounding, I dashed out into the drive, that the little girl in China who got run over repeatedly looping through my head, hoping that she was on the pavement... and saw her across the road, smiling at me like she'd won a prize4! Luckily this is an extremely quiet one way street and she'd escaped being roadkill. I scooped her up, held her tight, smothered her in kisses then told her off sternly. She did get that she had done a bad thing but it didn't stop her from trying it again. The little monkey had opened the front door and let herself out! Lesson learned. We don't just keep the door shut now, we keep it locked.


Highlight of the fortnight: FBB's dream of being a martial arts teacher becomes a little more real. Last week, he asked his teacher how long he needed to train for before he could teach. The answer: "You already are." He was utterly chuffed and is still floating on that5.

1 Bollock - that's all I'm going to say on the subject.
2 It was physically impossible for us to move sooner than that. Remember Dead Car Dilemma? It's still there.
3 Not to FBB - he loves it!
4 The smile did falter and turn into "uh-oh" when I went charging across the road at her.
5 Well, the thing with the bollock has deflated him somewhat but he's still pretty buoyant about it. Size of a nectarine. Maybe a bit bigger. *shudder*.