2017 seems so long ago, now .....

[Xenia]

Continuation of our previous thread.

I am in same position with DC's - part of territory I suppose with a big age gap between eldest (with a child at secondary school, house, mortgage etc) and youngest at university and others at various stages in between.
Certainly keeps me active with the various requests and problems they have (and can ask each other).

@bettbburg have your student DCs bought houses already?

Son has now done one week of his first full time solicitor job. He says it is a lot more responsibility but he likes it; so so far so good.

Week 2 of his qualified solicitor job has gone fine for that twin (only 1 day in 5 is in the office so he is certainl8y around and about at home on constant Teams calls etc in the house) and at end of week I got him to change his linkedin profile to show he is now qualified and has the solicitor job which felt like the final stage of my bringing up children/educating them when he did it. So I might drop out of this thread now (not that being a parent ever ends and grandchild no. 4 is due next month so family life certainly continues to be wonderful).

Good luck to everyone's children on the thread. I still feel involved in university stage (remotely) to an extent because my children are the oldest of the 9 cousins and all the other cousins are at university or post grad stage too currently.

Glad it's going well,@Xenia

DD was briefly home - together with half a dozen friends - last night en route to the Lake District for the weekend. Oh for the energy of youth!

Oh no...I thought we could carry on until they were collecting their pensions.

In particular want to know how @Decorhate 's DD and the other medics get on. @haffdonga @Carriemac

The house purchase is pushing forward. I am running the process on behalf of DD as she is so busy. It should be straightforward but these things never are. Mortgage companies seem to think everything should be perfect, even if the house is 100 years old and the roof is far from new. It should be fine. The only possible wrinkle is that the owners levelled the garden a few years back and found an air raid shelter which runs under the neighbours garden. The opposite of a flying freehold. The pragmatic lawyer has agreed to ignore it. If the neighbours, who are apparently very nice, ever make a fuss DD can un-level the garden and bury the shelter again, after perhaps leaving a time capsule in there. In the meantime she has decided that it can be visiting parent accommodation.

DD has never lived anywhere with a garden. As a small child she used to yearn for a Janet and John house with a garage at the side. Now, fingers crossed, she will have one.

DS is coming back to the UK, so I am offering him my KirstyandPhil services. So far he is not biting, though might change his mind once he has dipped his toes into the rental market.

Best wishes to the Xenia twins and the growing number of Grandchildren, and to all the other 2017 DC. The Covid student generation. I think lockdown had a big impact on mine at a crucial stage in their lives. Parts of the US took it far more seriously and DS practically stayed indoors for two years and we did not see him for over three. DD is having the time of her life, working and playing hard. I think her decision to stay well away from London teaching hospitals has proved a good one. She needed the couple of care free years she should have had in the middle of her degree. .

My medic DS1 has a jog in Melbourne! Saved hard this year and is travelling in South America then going to Oz . Should be buying a house sensibly but that's not his priority Z

That’s great news @Carriemac I hope he enjoys Australia.

News from here too - my Dd just heard this afternoon that you got a place on the training programme she wanted! So that is her sorted for the next 4 years.

That's amazing @Decorhate training places are so competitive!

She worked very hard to do as well as possible in the exam so I am really pleased for her.

What wonderful news. You must all be delighted.

As a medic mum I won't feel that DD is on stable ground until she gets a training place and and therefore a first step on the career ladder. As an F1/F2 there will be no way that she will have the time to study. Who knows where she will end up. She likes where she is and would be very happy to get a training place there. If not the house should rent easily and perhaps one day she will have enough equity for a deposit on a rabbit hutch in London.

When we started on this journey, it was so hard getting a place at uni that I don’t think it was on our radar at all that there would be such high hurdles later on!

Dd did an FY3 year this year, they were generous with study leave and between that and annual leave she managed to take 2 weeks off before the exam which really helped I think. Can’t imagine it would have been the same outcome if she had come straight off a shift into an exam.

Does your dd know what she wants to specialise in yet @Needmoresleep ?

I am happy to carry on and hear how everyone does as in a sense all these professional careers of law and medicine above are just starting not ending....

Good luck with the house purchase with the bomb shelter. My sons took over their older brother's house and another one whilst at university so have one each (let out). I managed the lettings and paid any expenses until this year so now they are dealing with that stuff themselves - they just had to pay to replace a washing machine which is all good experience for them for when they move out of my house. One had a car breakdown last weekend on a trip to the university city and we expected him home at midnight. The AA instead too him and his friend and car to a service station; then they waited. Then they were told they were being taken home but were instead taken to Reading service station at 4am and then told they would be collected at 8.30am. in the end he got home on the recovery truck at 11am (wisely finding a local to us garage to take the car en route) with no sleep for a whole night. he had rung the AA about 2pm the day before. It was as if he had flown back on a n ight flight from New Zealand given the length but anyway at least he's back. He was only about 2 hours late for work (from home) on Monday and his boss was nice about it and he did work all day despite having been up all night.

I hope everyone's children are doing fine. The twins seems to be in their solicitor jobs (in-house) - the last to start has done 3 weeks now and he seems to be doing fine. After the car breakdown above we got that car back last night so that's all fixed now and first time the twins have paid (as from 1 Jan they are just about self supporting other than living at home).

One just works one day a week in the office so that is quite a lot of days working from home so just as well we have two separate internet connections and separate rooms for work. The other in theory is 3 days a week in the office but last week was 100% from home and this week was in the office for one afternoon only. So this new working from home style is wonderful of course for the worker, comfortable (IF you are in a nice house), no 2 hours a day commuting, few travel costs for work; but in terms of even just things like when I clean the house there is much more use of the home. On the other hand it is like the old days when doctors on Harley st lived above the consulting rooms and farmers worked from the farm and children saw parents working (and I have been working from home since the 90s anyway). It certainly means I am much more involved in their working lives as the working life is here at lot of the time.

However the more exciting news will be when the 4th grandchild arrives in a few weeks' time....

@Decorhate I have no idea how DD will manage. She is admirably strict on work life balance so copes with 80 hour weeks by going off and playing sport or cooking for friends. Though she is very resilient and will make a good hospital doctor, to get ahead she needs to be willing to give up a big chunk of her spare time to study. (My cousin's daughter and her boyfriend both went to live with them for 2-3 years whilst they worked and studied. Home cooked meals, cleaning and laundry provided, and at the end they both got and passed the training places they wanted and had saved enough to buy their first home.) Good luck to your daughter.

DDs own house purchase is progressing, though we have concerns about higher up the chain. Mortgage offer in and searches and surveys all fine. She is coming home the week after next and we will load up the remaining contents of her childhood bedroom and deliver it to her current flat. We will then run round and identify what in the way of beds and white goods are available for quick delivery. The vendors are willing to leave once their purchase is secure, even though he people up the chain don't want to move till June.

It is very exciting when they buy. One of mine moved last year and another in February - both children had a sale and purchase on the same day.
If the Need daughter's vendors will move once their own purchase is secured that is very helpful of them, in effect to break the chain and will make it a bit simpler at that end of the chain.

I certainly remember with my older son loading up the contents of the childhood bedroom - we rented the largest van I have ever driven and he has all his stuff at his house in Oxfordshire now (as indeed have my daughters). Despite that we seem to get more and more stuff from the twins in the house who since Jan when they buy their own food have 2 huge containers of tins etc out on the utility room floor., If we could have foods when 7 of us lived here fitting in the cupboards I don't know why they need all that and one loves buying bargains at charity shops so has even had to box up spare clothes for the garage and still has a crammed wardrobe in his room and another in the room upstairs where he works from home where his computer is. I am not going to let it spared any further. When my mother died (who loved buying designer clothes in sales even down here in London) she had clothes in the bed room, in another 2 bed rooms and even on racks in the loft top floor.

Good luck with the move.

Nice to hear how they're all getting on being " grown ups".Dd1 is enjoying working in max fax atm

We've had an enjoyable weekend finally getting to DDs graduation!

Graduation sounds fun. The twins said they might go to their solicitor admission ceremonies (their sisters didn't but I went to my own) but I don't think they have chased that up and not been sent anything so I suspect we will just leave it - entirely up to them particularly as we had about 20 family members to a nice lunch in January when they qualified so that is enough for me.

Before the 2017 thread drops off the cliff face of MN as an old thread, I just wanted to add that this week one of my daughters had her second baby. It seemed quite fitting that on the night I went to a reunion at the law firm where I started in 1985 I am called to her home (where the gorgeous 2 year old resides.....) for duty whilst the parents were otherwise engaged bringing child 2 into the world. He is a a very lovely baby and they came home today, now a family of 4 (they live near me). So she started her maternity leave from her solicitor job about a week early.

My oldest son came to stay yesterday and has a job interview next week - just an initial telephone interview; so I hope he gets that but in a large family I suppose there will always be some children moving jobs or babies coming etc.

Both twins are enjoying their first solicitor jobs and one had to give a presentation last week to the whole company in person but it was only for a very short time period and he is glad that is over.

I hope all the others on the thread - the young medics etc - are doing well. My daughter met some very nice ones at the maternity unit.

Congratulations, @xenia, that's lovely news.

Mine was off to a big trade show in Germany last week which she very much enjoyed and I think is making contacts who may be useful in the future. As a rare young woman in her field she's likely to be memorable!

Big trade shows sounds like useful experience. I think once they are all in first jobs things get easier (it is getting them that can be so hard) and then they build up experience. One of mine who has never been too interested in money said last week he is glad he is in this job and that it is nice to get the money. I don't need my children to be materialistic but real life can be very expensive so a reasonable salary definitely helps.

I saw my latest grandchild yesterday at his home (they live near me). He is really really lovely and he and my daughter are doing very well. It will probably be a long time before any of my 3 sons has a child so I will make the most of this new baby.

DD had a few days off so came home and loaded the contents of her childhood bedroom into the back of our car. She and I drove up and DH joined us for a lovely sunny weekend and a long drive back.

Papers are signed and hopefully she gets a completion date this week. Some essential bit of paperwork to do with sewage is missing further up the chain. We got to see the competent but cynical estate agent roll his eyes about people leaving things to the last minute. Mattresses and white goods are ordered, ready to be delivered. DD had a bit of a Pavlovian reaction to the children's section of IKEA, till remined she was there to do grown up things like take measurements of furniture she liked. She has had enough of grey, whilst for me brown will always be 1990s office furniture. I am intrigued as to how the house will look, once she has free rein - though it may be strongly influenced by what is available in the Cancer Research furniture store.

Babies, conferences, all sound brilliant.

Need I hope she gets a completion date this week. My daughter (who has the new baby) went through this and they completed early this year (although only 2 properties in the chain so not too bad in her case).

Loading the contents of an adult child's room which I did with jy oldest son at one point who had a very full bedroom is a big stage and a relief... although others of my children then kept returning from university so I have never got an empty nest so far - all 3 sons are here today - 2 working from home and the other on a visit and he will be here when he does his telephone interview tomorrow so he and I just had a look through his CV, he got Teams going on his device and sent a polite email to the recruiter as they had had no contact since the time was set up for tomorrow. If he gets that job (given the others now all have jobs) it will be the first time all 5 adult children are in full proper employment at the same time... actually one is on maternity leave now but I think we can count her as in employment as has the job.

Thats a milestone @Xenia ! DD sitting her professional practice law finals this week , if she passes that's the end of exams for the DTs , thier older medic brother has many left to do