It is a big workhorse house.  It feels square (four corners, four rooms each floor) and strong.
It feels steady and balanced (two rooms either side of the central staircase).
Even the staircase is loyal and unswerving: no half levels, no side rooms - it takes you straight up. 
Behind the stair there is a small central door to the back garden: also symmetrical, lawned, neat.
This is our new home.

This will be our family home for at least a few years. 
We move in on 1 August 2013, but a strange purchase process means we have the key already, so we are getting to know the home without us inside it first.
We are not symmetrical or neat.  We try, between us, to push back the advancing tide of debris that gathers under us every day, but, in reality, we live amid a warren of contained clutter.
We are four:  Paul, me, Levin (2 nearly 3) and Robin (9mo nearly walking).

Our hope is that this home will be our refuge from the world, where we can be who we are as four and who we each are individually.  We will also invite the world in to be a part of that refuge, to share our space and to use a part of our home on a regular, relaxed basis. 
We are challenging our own idea of what home should be, and where the boundary between home and rest of the world should lie. 
We know already that young children need more than home and that parents of young children need more than immediate family to keep day to day life stimulating and joyful, so Paul and I have decided to commit two rooms of this house to a project currently nicknamed 'the mama space':  a community working and parenting space.  I'll write a bit more on that in another post.