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We live across the main Ggaba Road in a different neighborhood, which is more upscale and much less convenient to public transportation. There is a small trading center just around the corner, and when I thought about it, I realized that between Buttercup's nap schedule and the kids' school schedule, I don't actually go far from home very often any more. Once a week I can either manage the double-minibus trip to town, or just hire a car. The house is kind of an actual house instead of a tiny apartment -- as in, we actually have multiple rooms! An archway seperates the dining/living area from the kitchen/breakfast nook area. AND there are TWO bedroom and TWO bathrooms! The two bedrooms are not useful in the traditional sense, as none of my children would consent to sleeping with walls between themselves and their siblings and mother, but I'm sure we'll find a use for it. Like for guests. And putting toys in the closet. As for the two bathrooms... well, one of them is a nice, large, reasonable size, which I am going to enjoy to the utmost, because the previous bathroom was tiny and had rough edges, and our bathroom at home is not small but it is not reasonably set up. When you are trying to coordinate several bedtime activities for several children, it's nice to be able to turn around without drawing blood! (Which actually happened, several times!) And the second bathroom... when we're engaged in said nighttime chaos and Hibiscus needs to poop, as she always does, I am happy to be able to send her and her stinks to another room! Although the smaller bathroom faces directly down the hallway out the front door, which is a little bit of a problem. As any mother of small children can recognize, I am not used to closing the door behind me!
The breakfast nook is problematic because it is specially set up for children to fall off the stools, probably bringing down several baskets of stuff with them. If I ever get the counter cleared off in the first place, I can use it for extra kitchen storage, because the kitchen doesn't have much. At all. And under the breakfast nook counter is -- guess what! -- a power converter. So when the power is out, we still have power! At least, some power. The heavy-duty things aren't hooked up to it, so we can't do laundry, use the electric stove, the tea kettle, or the iron. Instead, we have two propane tanks with burners on the top of them to cook with, which is kind of annoying. I am used to ONLY having a stove work when the power is out! In further power news, the most obvious and convenient outlets don't seem to work dependably, so I keep plugging things in at night only to find them uncharged in the morning -- but they work often enough to make me keep trying!
And the couch, instead of being big and squashy and ugly, is a pillows-on-wood-frame kind of couch and much more attractive. But I haven't found a good way to sit on it and type, which is very frustrating. In the evening when the kids are in bed, it's such a treat to take out the ipad and check and see how everyone on the other side of the world is doing. And I do NOT want to do it at the kitchen table, sorry!
And the washing machine has a child lock button, and it plays music when it's done washing. And we have a whole separate freezer, which is nice and large, but the fridge is TINY and I don't know how I'm going to feed three children from it! And the clotheslines in back are all for us, so I don't have to be irritated with the way other people hang their clothes that takes up more line than necessary. And they provided plenty of extra linen, which is nice (and would have been nicer if I hadn't had to buy plenty of extras already), but it took up half the cabinet space. And tablecloths. With three children who don't know where their bodies end, the last thing I need is tablecloths!
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| The view out the front gate |
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