All change!

My dear friends, you must think we Clearys are pretty hard to keep up with. We dream dreams, plan plans, talk ourselves in and out of all kinds of schemes. We say we're going to do some crazy plan or another then we go and do something else altogether.

And so it might surprise some of you to know that *drumroll please* I am having baby number five, even though I had recently half-given-up on Monsieur. Cleary thinking that this was a good idea!!! I kept saying "oooh I just have this feeling there's another little soul out there, whose just supposed to be with us!!!" And monsieur was a little less keen on the idea of nappies and being-up-in-the-nightime and all that goes along with baby living. He was already planning our retirement adventures! There's no way I'd ever bully him into it, and I never wanted to feel that he'd been forced to have a child he didnt want. The baby would know it, feel it, and grow up with a sense of not being quite wanted. No way that was an option. So I started to resign myself to the fact we might not have any more. I grieved. Inwardly. I mourned for my aching womb. I reasoned with myself it was ok not to have any more.

So it shocked the hell outta me when he turned around to me one evening very earnestly, out of the blue and said "You know what? Let's do it. We'll regret it if we don't. I'm ready again. Let's have one last glorious baby and enjoy the hell outta it!"

"Are you serious???" 'Don't shit with me I said. This is not a shitting-with-me matter. If we have a babay, you have to really want it too, else I'm not doing it".

"I really, really do" he said with big wide eyes. I knew he meant it.

So here we are, preggo!!! Baby number five is cookin' on gas!!!

The kids are so so sweet about it. They keep patting my belly and asking if they can be helpful. Indie actually cried with happiness when we broke the news to them. They are counting down the months already and taking bets on what it will be.

And on that big shocker, here's a bit more news. We've put our house on the market and are dreaming, hoping and wishing that we can buy a 5 acre place we have fallen in love with, that's a fantastic opportunity. We've said to each other 'We're mad if we buy that place. But we're even madder if we don't."

It's not that we don't like it here - we have some really amazing friends around us and our home is pretty special, but.... we have always said that we'd like the boys to have better access to home ed activities and other fun places and so that they can start to learn to be more independent as they grow older and may want to go to college etc etc. The place we're looking at is just a mile and a half from a train station that would give the kids really easy access to Norwich in their teens. We are a little limited here in that sense. So it will be a new start (ish), new home ed groups to go to, new friends to make and a new lifestyle to boot. If we pull it off, it will be really sad to leave our friends but they'll be able to come and visit and even camp since there's be tons of space!!! And if it doesn't come together? Well we'll just carry on as we were here! What will be will be. But we have to try. To not try in case we fail would be a real waste.

So lots going on.....