What a difference a year makes...

Well!

Roll out the flags, let off the party poppers, pop the champagne.  Drum roll please...

Our building work and related jobs (mainly decorating) are officially done and dusted.  Finito Completo!!!!!  Yaaaaaay!!!! 


I can't quite believe I am typing that! 

Four years in the planning.
Two and a half years since the test pits were dug.
A year and a half since the work began.
Twelve months of the hallway looking like this (top left photo)....

and today Willie and John, the decorators, came into the kitchen mid afternoon to say they were finished and bid us a cheery farewell.  They have no idea how momentous their goodbye is!

David took this photo to send to Ele to show her a clear hall.  None of us can remember what that looked like!  It just had to be my blip!  

But if a year has made such a massive difference to our house, it pales into insignificance when compared to the difference in our boy.  

This time last year our world was collapsing around our ears.  It's a true saying that it's just as well we don't know what's in front of us.  I have never been so scared in my entire life.  Even when Alan was born, the thought of losing him never really took hold of me.  He's a fighter and I was sure this newborn bundle of mine would survive.  This time round I wasn't so sure.  I remember sitting in that hospital trying to visualise what our lives would look like a year down the line, desperately hoping for one outcome, but petrified of another.

But I am not going to dwell because we got the happy ending we hoped and prayed for and it is impossible to express how thankful I am for that.  It took a while and a few more scares over the following weeks but here we are a year down the line and our boy is doing better than we ever dared hope possible.

David weighed him tonight and he's the heaviest he's ever been (although still a skinny malink.  He gets that from his father's side :-)  He is surrounded by great people, is doing his own thing, has his doggy pal Lola, is getting into his pool on a regular basis (one of the most upsetting things things from last year was the horrible feeling that we could lose him without him ever having been in his pool.  That really would have broken me) looking forward to Christmas and generally enjoying the best health he's had in a very long time.  

It feels like our very own Christmas miracle :-)))