Speak property!

I like our home. Actually, it's not even ours. For the past 6 years that we've been married, we have been staying at a humble 4-room flat in the West, which belongs to his parents. After Joerg and I married, we had his friend help us re-design and modernise the inside in a not-so-extreme makeover, to give it a more modern taste. And for the past 6 years, I could not have asked for anything better within our means - a 5-minute walk from the MRT station, a flight of stairs down to the bus stop which provides bus services to town, and a dozen or so eateries with fairly good food in every direction! Plus, his sister just a five-minute walk away, and my parents just a ten-minute drive down south, we were close enough to our families. We've also had the pleasure of hosting our Bible studies and small parties in this cosy environment.

But lately, with Gabrielle and now Theodore coming into our lives, this humble flat is bursting at the seams. We need more space!! The living room has pretty much become Gabrielle's play room. At times she bumps into furniture but that's ok; thankfully (I'm sure by God's grace!) we decided on a fabric sofa so there's lots of cushioning for little heads. For some reason, Gabrielle's head is always the first to knock into something. After she became more mobile at 13 months, we re-configured stuff, removing some of the harder furniture like the coffee table, so that she could have more space to wander around. Our coffee table now sits under the dining table, and that little area in itself has somehow begun serving as a second store-room...

So, we've been on a bear-hunt for a bigger place, mainly for the kids. We've been visiting Propertyguru daily (for me it's more than once daily, I must admit!) to see what's on offer, lured by the promise of the 'cooling off measures' that home prices are going to come down, but for the past year, the prices have remained pretty much stable, with some even heading north! With those kinds of prospects, we figured it was going to take a while before something fell within our reach.

In the meantime, it looks like another round of re-configuration of our current home is necessary. Now that I'm on maternity leave, I've made it my project to think about how to re-design the place so that there's more room for everyone. To this end I've been surfing around various property websites for ideas and that does take a lot of time. It's a little tricky as well because any further renovation is not part of the plan. I'm reminded of our little mission-awareness trip to Thailand during Christmas of 2006, when Joerg played the inn-keeper in Bethlehem who turned away the nativity couple, claiming "No room, no room!". Even as I expend some mental energy on this little project to make more physical room for my family, I hope I will not squeeze out daily moments with God!