With so many of our friends and family living in far-off lands, I hope that this blog might help our loved-ones get to know our gorgeous Finlay as he grows up. I also hope that these posts may provide inspiration, provoke thought and conversation about creating beautiful Montessori environments for infants and toddlers at home. I'm always happy to hear your comments, thoughts and suggestions. Feel free to pop in now and then to see what we're up to!
With so little time to write (I've hardly packed a thing!), I'll let the pictures do the talking for this post. Painting is taking much longer than we expected and we're hoping it'll all be finished before moving the furniture on Friday... fingers crossed!
Let me take you on the tour:
Our lounge and dining areas, ready for their transformations...
Finlay, already busy exploring the deck area...
Hard at work...
And a fond farewell from Finlay in his favorite place in the world. This is our front window at the 'old' house. He spends so much time standing here, looking out at the world and watching the cars and people go by. I like to think of it as 'Fin's window'.
Driving to our new house on Friday to officially receive our keys, we wondered, 'Will it be as lovely as we remember from the inspection??'. I was a little bit scared that the rooms I remembered to be large and airy would in fact be tiny and ugly... Happily, it was even better than we expected. What joy!
We took this house on the condition that we could paint the living spaces since the walls are looking quite dull and patchy. I also wanted to make sure that this space will be as healthy as possible for the little people in our care (and us), so repainting with BioPaints was no.1 on my list of things to do. Yesterday we prepped the walls and today we'll go in to finish the job.
I'll post our first photos tonight.
Meanwhile, I was freshly inspired by this video this morning, and thought I'd share it. Enjoy!
I have sat down a number of times in the past few weeks to write this post, but never seem to get past the first few words before being distracted and putting it off for another day... I'm determined that today will be the day.
The reason for my absence? House hunting. Yes, it's finally time for us to pack up and move to that 'dream home' I have been longing for... space, sunlight, garden - this one has it all, plus chickens! We searched long and hard for this one and I'm so pleased to have finally signed the lease so we don't have to hunt any longer. We're getting the keys tomorrow and will spend a week painting and gardening before moving in next week. Exciting times!
Another exciting announcement is that along with this new home will come my new business - I'll be setting up a home-based Montessori daycare for 1-3 year olds. This is something I've been planning for a very long time and I'm so happy it is finally coming to fruition. It feels so good to have my brain working overtime, imagining, planning and determining every detail of the environment I'm about to create. I look forward to sharing the journey here at 'A Montessori Home'.
Meanwhile, Finlay powers on perfecting the art of standing, cruising, balancing and exploring every corner of the house. He's 8 months now... time is going by so fast. It seems like yesterday that we were celebrating how he could pull himself up to stand. Now he can balance by leaning against the furniture, climb onto our bed and get down safely (this took lots of practice to perfect!). One of my favorite new developments is that he is mimicking our vocal sounds now. Such a treat! Here's a video of Fin 'buzzing' with Daddy. Brent is a trumpet player, so he is thrilled that Fin has started buzzing his lips. Like daddy, like Fin :)
We're realising now that there is a reason Montessori floor-beds are recommended as single size ('twin' in the US). Finlay's cot-sized bed just isn't big enough to contain his tossing and turning and sleep-crawling. Many nights we find him like this:
Mostly though, being out of bed wakes him up which has resulted in many sleepless nights for him and us. Thank goodness he'll have his own bedroom in our new house so we can fit in a bigger bed for him.
So now we just need to get in this house and get started. I've ordered our Montessori materials from the US, collected tables, chairs and shelves from all over Auckland and now I'm ready to run with it. What fun!
