babyblog

Forgive the lack of entries

But my computer is still boxed up somewhere, we are swamped with 40,000 boxes which need unpacking, and we have so much to do that it's completely daunting and has left blogging somewhat at the back of the list of priorities!

We have the living room looking nice! It's about the only one that is. The boys rooms are halfway done, need pictures and bookshelves putting up. Our room is a disaster and the bathrooms are hideous and need ripping out. The kitchen took 2 days to unpack and put away and also needs ripping out.

I went downstairs today for the first time...... argh. Don't even go there. I suspect we'll be unpacking forever.

Oh, and Happy Birthday to me!

Moving

So the wood floor has been going into the new place all week and is still some way off being finished. G has had to call them twice so far to point out dings, scrapes, and cracks in the new boards going in. Not particularly impressed about this. We're hoping that they don't end up in a pissing contest with the moving company about who is actually responsible for the damage.

After the skirting board incident of choosing between various heights and types of wood, we agreed to pay these guys to paint them rather than do them ourselves. Arriving at the house last night we discovered them laid out on the garage floor and painted extremely badly. Another phone call to complain. At this point it feels as though all of this will never be finished.

The stuff begins to arrive today, to complicate matters further. And of course we have to pack up this rented place. I cannot wait to leave the sound of the 405 which has accompanied every waking moment for the last month and a half. I also can't wait for my own bed at last. I do, however, have to despider the place first as several massive fuckers have moved in while the house has stood empty. Urgh. Shudder.

J A Jance

On Tuesday night I went to hear a talk given by J A Jance. I discovered this author a couple of years ago when scouring the Brampton Library for something to read and very quickly devoured everything of hers that I could lay my hands on. She's written 2 'series' of books, one about a female sheriff in Bisbee, Arizona and the other about a male police detective here in Seattle. The latter are wonderfully descriptive of the area I'm now living in and I look forward to re-reading some of them as a result. The talk itself, which took place in Borders in Redmond Town Centre, was funny and entertaining, and at times bittersweet as she talked about her families fight with cancer.

Harry - 13 months

Dear Hazzie / Haz-Mat / H-y Baby on your 13 month birthday

Big month little guy! You've learned to crawl properly, you've learned to kneel up (preferred position), to stand with support, to climb stairs, to take a few shaky steps with assistance, you've learned all sorts of sounds and noises, you've learned to drink through a straw (tonight!), you've learned to offer a drink to mummy and daddy, you've learned to strum your lips making a funny bubablubba sound and you've become cuter and cuter than ever.

You have the most beautiful look about you, young man. Your face is so expressive that you are able to convey every possible mood with a raised eyebrow, a pursing of the lips, or a narrowing of the brow. Mostly your mood is one of contentment, you are nearly always happy and smiling, content to do whtaever it is you're doing, content to be wherever you are, and very ready with a smile for anyone that wants to offer one to you.

At the end of the week we are moving into your new home, the first you'll remember I guess, and this weekend we spent alot of time preparing it for you so that it's nice and welcoming from the moment you move in. I painted it the same colour as your hero's bedroom, that'd be Dylan. Butter couldn't melt in his mouth as far as you're concerned. You'll happily crawl after him wherever he goes, you are so very ready with a smile for him whenever he looks your way, and if he should choose to play with you well there's nothing better, is there? In the morning, if you wake up after him and I bring you downstairs, you immediately start to look around the room for him and frown until you've spotted him. When you do, you give him a big beaming smile and wave, I put you down and you crawl over to him shouting loudly. It's a joy to watch.

Keep up the good work little dude, we love you so much and we're cherishing every moment of your baby days.

As always,

Mummy & Daddy

Where even my blisters, get blisters

The boys rooms are finished after another day of painting. I have 6 blisters on my right hand and one on my left. They look good, so it was worth the pain and suffering.

I idly picked at some (hideous) wallpaper in what will be my bedroom earlier because I wondered if I'd be able to get at the bottom edge where the skirting boards will be fixed on. The entire sheet came off in my hands so within 30 seconds I'd stripped every wall in the room - result! Nothing scary underneath either, another bonus.

G spent the day doing what he does best - appearing to be extremely busy (but what did he actually achieve other than bugger off to Home Depot for 14 hours?). To be fair, he did manage to empty the hot tub, fill the hot tub, heat up the hot tub, add some monty amounts of chlorine in the hot tub, run the hot tub, and then drain the hot tub again (having then killed every organism known to man). Tomorrow he'll fill it again, heat it again, and then add the appropriate chemicals so that it can be used! Can't wait.

We also came across most of the spider population of the Pacific Northwest today too, I think with the place having been empty for 3 months they've decided it's a good place to move in to and breed. SCARY. Made G kill several. Dunno what I will do if I come across one when alone ... go out until G is home I suspect, nasty terrifying hairy horrid things!

D and I went to see a movie tonight at his request and that I managed to drag myself to, blisters and all. Saw Valiant - a British made animated film which was extremely excellent, about homing pigeons during WW2. Ended up attempting to explain the concept of WW2 to Dylan after the film so that he understood what these pigeons actually did in real life, and explained there was a bad man in Germany called Hitler who hated alot of people, especially Jews. Dylan immediately piped up with "'I'm glad he didn't get Grandma Andy!!!"..... which floored me as I had no idea he knew a) she was Jewish or b) what Jewish was!

painting is bloody knackering

I painted 80% of Dylans new bedroom today and I'm buggered. Couldn't do the top part of the wall because I didn't have anything to stand on (doh), and, despite a trip to Home Depot during which we managed to return without the thing we went for (ladder), gave up in favour of a fresh start tomorrow. Still have Harry's to do too. Got a nice blue colour going in the room though, and with the wood floor it'll look good.

Weird paint effects they have on walls in these West Coast houses btw, forget a flat wall it's all textured and blobby. Makes for hard work to paint as you have to do 2 coats otherwise there are places where the paint is doesn't go on quite as well.

Both G and I are rather daunted by the amount of work that needs doing to the place after spending the day there today. Upstairs is first on the agenda which merely requires painting throughout, wood floor laying, new skirting boards painted and attached, wallpaper stripping from 2 rooms and then probably fixing the drywall before painting, a kitchen ripping out and replacing, more wood flooring laid in the kitchen, 2 bathrooms ripped out and replaced, bug screens attached to every window, locks put on some windows which H could theoretically open and climb out of, one window removing and being knocked out and replaced with a door on to the deck and some sort of sealing type thing doing to the kitchen doors which open out on to the deck. So, not alot to do.. (!). I won't even touch on what needs doing downstairs because that's about twice as big a job again.

Having said that, the flooring is being done, the skirting boards are being done, and it won't be long before we get the upstairs looking pretty good, I think.

Homeowners!

We are now officially Homeowners again (I GULP at the size of mortgage payments to come)! We were given the keys yesterday and I guess it's Hard Work City from here on with all the decorating and renovating that needs doing - daunting!

The wood floor guys arrive this morning to begin whatever it is they need to begin to lay the wood floor on the upper level of the house. Also there's a washing machine and tumble drier arriving which I can use my new PERSIL with... did I write about the Persil Incident already? No? Oh well there's a shop somewhere in Bellevue that sells Persil laundry soap. I fancied my clothes smelling like 'home' so I went to buy some. Grabbed a couple of bottles of the stuff from the shelf, went up to the counter, the guy started ringing up my invoice and waffling about how Persil is the bees knees in the laundry industry and I was just thinking yeah yeah shut up already..... I handed him over my debit card and he processed it (weird thing about debit cards here is there is no security process involved whatsoever, you hand them the card and they hand it back to you - transaction complete). He handed me the receipt and I glanced down to discover I'd just spent $55 on 2 bottles of Persil - nightmare!

All Persil Parcels gratefully received... it does smell very good even if it's not worth 55 bucks!

Yesterday we went to the Zoo with some friends which was an excellent day out - particularly in the heatwave as for the most part it's completely shaded with plants and trees. The kids loved it, running around looking at the animals, and I had a good time chatting with friends. We ended up going back to one friends house and having dinner, G joining us there later! Stopped by the new place on the way back to see it, as it's now ours, and this morning we have to go and start decorating the boys bedoroms. I want them to be 'ready to move into' when we do move in next week for Dylans sake really, more than anything. He's finally settled down here, seems to be enjoying himself, not so scared / nervy, and I want him to have as little upheaval as possible when we go including going straight into a lovely bedroom.

Coldplay Gig

Scuse the crapness of this mobile-phone-taken shot but it should give you a pretty good idea of how FRONT ROW we were! Excellent gig too, btw. The White River Amphitheatre has to be the worlds most difficult venue to get to - 100,000 people all trying to drive to the same place meant we finally arrived an hour and a half after the official start time.... this after also getting horribly lost, driving up a mountain, and come back down a dirt track, to avoid the stationary traffic. Fortunately I think the band must've been stuck in it too as they hadn't come on yet. The venue was *massive*, but we had managed to swing special access passes to the front standing area and managed somehow to get right to the front.

Despite the size of the place, rather than a giant theatrical extravaganza which most bands will put on these days at venues like that, Coldplay came on and played music. If you didn't turn around you could've been at the Brixton Academy listening to a decent session of pure music. Love 'em or not, they performed amazingly well live and Chris Martin is definitely an extremely talented musician switching between Guitar and Piano and occasionally leaping around the stage while hitting every note spot on.

All in all, thoroughly enjoyable, even including the detour and the traffic jam afterwards as 100,000 cars attempted to leave down the same small track.

BC Velly Nice!

We decided to take a quick weekend getaway up to BC seeing as it's the last w/e we have before becoming homeowners with shit loads of renovating to do. It's only an hour and a half to Vancouver from here.

Experienced our first non-Canada-permit-holding border crossing, which was very different to the Buffalo entry point where we had previously mostly just sailed through without having to show any documentation. This time we handed over 3 British Passports and 1 Canadian (Harry's, hoping it'd make life easier) but the humourless border guard made us pull over to the immigration office where they frowned at us for 10 mins and finally allowed us entry when they realised we weren't as dodgy as the 2 Chinese people behind us who tried to make a run for it and set sirens ablazing.

The landscape very strangely changes as soon as you cross over. It goes from picturesque tree covered hilly and populated beauty, to Ontario style barren bleak industrial-ish looking flatness (Mountains on the horizon mind you!). However, within a short period of time you're in Vancouver which is extremely beautiful, vibrant, lively and picturesque. We liked it ALOT. We parked up by the harbour, walked a little, had lunch, and then ended up renting bikes and doing a 10k ride around a bike trail along a coastal peninsula. G and D had a tandem which D absolutely loved, and I had H in a trailer behind mine which he loved too! It was very hot but great fun, a lovely way to spend the early afternoon.

Hotel time - swam in the pool, had dinner, watched Star Wars, went to sleep.

Sunday morning - up early and across to Vancouver Island on the ferry from Tsawassen (or , as Dylan read it, Tissawissawissen). A car ferry very similar to the Dover-Calais type boats, takes an hour and a half. Noted the majority of passengers on the ferry were Chinese. We drove off and down to Victoria which was cutesie although I didn't think it was anything like as stunning as Vancouver. We had lunch and walked around the harbour - wished we had time for a Whale Watching expedition but that will have to wait for another free weekend , then drove around a scenic coastal road stopping at a beach for the boys to have a splash in the water. Caught the 4pm ferry back (once more full of Chinese people!).

Border crossing back to USA was unlike any border crossing to the USA I have ever had before 'off you go' without so much as a blink of an eye! Such is the power of the work permit.

In conclusion. BC is mostly populated by Chinese people, and there aren't many Tim Hortons ( I commented on this to G and he said there are so many in Ontario because there's nothing else to do there (lol)). Vancouver is beautiful and I will definitely go back soon. It's an easy trip from here provided the borders are not busy (can be extremely so).... tip from Britpack to use the Truck/Commercial Vehicle entry point very valuable!

Still alive

And not, I believe, a stroke or TIA or anything particularly sinister that happened last night. I did feel really odd though. I kept sitting here after it happened, typing (touch/blind), sort of like an anchor to stop me falling off the chair... quite odd.

Dad said 'I've been warned many times by my many chiropractors that neck adjustments can cause problems like that. Never had one myself though. One of my chiros would only do a single neck adjustment in any one session, for that reason' so I guess it's normalish. Anyway, I go back tomorrow morning and I'll tell the guy what happened & hopefully he'll take precautions not to induce another. I think I'll walk there mind you, don't want that to happen behind the wheel of the car on the way home.

The weather has actually turned coldish here today. Well, 68 or thereabouts, which isn't exactly cold, but it's been overcast and a bit drizzly today. I mostly took it easy after last nights odd spell, although I did take the boys to get their haircut at a childrens hairdresser in Redmond Town Centre. The woman didn't half take forever though ... Harry lost it before his was through and Dylan got really cheesed off and said afterwards 'I preferred it when Joanne did my hair' (friend/neighbour/hairdresser back in Canada!). After the hair we went to a diner for lunch where H kicked off and D didn't eat (you can imagine what a joyful experience THAT was).

Anyway, bed time for me, still feel a bit sore and strange and need some rest.

In which H learns to kneel

As it says on the lid, H is now kneeling at every opportunity (with a gleeful look on his face!), sits back on his heels, no hands, and grins. He's crawling properly (although still prefers the 'commando' style for speed), pulling up on everything, pulling to standing against stairs, climbing stairs, grabbing everything in his reach, and generally being completely full of mischief (in a loveable way, of course!). If told NO he looks around with the biggest smile and continues anyway!

There's definite speech attempts too. MAMAMAMAMA (me, obviously). DIN DIN (dylan), DADADA (daddy), TAAAAAAAAAAA (thanks), DOYDOYDOY (not sure), MMMMMMM (give that to me NOW!) and lots of amusing squealing across several octaves to see what his voice can do.

We have had a busy week thus far with trips out with the Britpack. It's funny ...I feel more British here than I have in a long time. In Canada we were foreigners amongst locals and basically had to adapt alot of language and attitudes to if not fit in, at least make ourselves understood without having to go back over things multiple times. Here I'm hanging out with tons of Brits which is strange - but so nice! Everyone's in the same boat, everyone's there to help or offer advice, and everyone's excellent and a great laugh. I have been at home approximately 5 mins all week which is not enough! I need to take some time out at some point because there are things to be organised in preparation for becoming a home owner again at the end of next week.

Speaking of which, I can't wait to get out of this temporary place. It's free and all, but I'm tired of not having my own space or my own things around me. I'm tired of it being too hot at night - although one of my new brit mates told me of a neat trick involving a window and a fan and we had our first comfortable night last night - and I'm tired of the clutter and mess involved in being somewhere temporary. I can wait, however, for the bills to start streaming in!

We get the house at the end of next week but we're not actually moving in for another week after that because we are having the wooden floors laid, and then the stuff delivered over a 2 day period, so it'll be the following friday before we get in there.

I just had the oddest 'I'm going to faint' sensation. The whole room suddenly seemed to swing sideways and now Im dizzy as fuck. Weird.

Maybe something to do with going to see the Chiropractor earlier? My back has been really sore for the last few weeks and getting worse so I had to get my finger out and find one. He took X Rays and did some adjustments.

Wow that was really strange.

I'd better go offline.

Stairs! and Standing!

H's new thing is to stand or kneel up against everything he can find. In the case of stairs this has led to his climbing up 3 or 4 so far! He's also learned to stand up in his bed and shout at his brother (currently sharing his room) for an hour or so at bed time. Too funny! Last night he was yelling for so long that I went up to him and picked him up. He immediately pointed at Dylan (asleep) and shouted with a big grin on his face DERE, DERE, DIN DIN!!! So cute!

In other news, I have a new computer! Mine blew up / gave up, and to replace the Hard Drive and the other bits that needed replacing ended up going to cost more than a whole new machine so I've now got a super fast powerful new puter and am very happy indeed with it!

Children

I met a few people (Brits) who don't have kids and there's such a world of difference between my life and theirs. They were nice, one of which has invited us over for a BBQ next week, but it's so odd for me to contemplate life where you can go to watch a movie in the afternoon, or sit in a bar and get drunk, rather than have the rugrats to look after!

On another note, the friends I've met who do have kids (most of them thankfully) are very geared up towards child-friendly activities and very keen on getting their kids out and about and doing various things every day of the week. Something that was lacking back in Canada really..... kids here are always busy with this camp, that class, this activity, that playdate, etc, and it's the summer hols! It's nice, it's exactly how it was back in London. Hubbles - if you're reading - you would identify! All the little Brit kids are in Montessori too which I did with D from an early age........we all share same horror at the thought of our kids not leaving the house until age 5 or 6 to go to school.

D is bored, however. Too late to sign him up for anything really.... all the summer stuff is booked up. Still, we've been out and about daily doing various things and seeing various things so he's not doing too badly. Once September comes I'm planning to get him into a few things as well as school. Swimming. Karate and Tennis to be exact. We have a tennis court opposite our new place and he's keen to learn.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince - J K Rowling

Pop

Had the opportunity to see my dad today - who is here very briefly passing through on a vacation tour of the West Coast. Good to see him - we managed to drive him and show him the new place which he liked. We have discovered a little boy next door at the new house who is going also into 1st Grade in September (exactly the same age as D) so D is thrilled and can't wait to go and play with him properly. The mother seems really nice too.

Dylan is also have a bit of a freak out - earlier while in Seattle he and Andrea and Emily took some stairs while Dad, G, H & I took the lift (stroller issues). Unfortunately we came out in completely different places on completely different roads and it took us ages to find them again. He was upset, and now won't sleep because he's worrying about the fact that he got lost - poor guy!

Oh well, I must go to bed, finally got around to reading the new Harry Potter and it's calling me to go and read for several hours instead of sleeping.

The next stage of crawling

H has started pulling himself up on his knees against furniture / stairs. Yesterday he also stood up beside the stairs. He's still doing the funny commando crawl for the most part but is on all 4's properly alot of the time while stationary and I don't think it'll be long before he's completely unstoppable.

This w/e we went out and spend an horrendous amount of money on hardwood floor for the new house. They're installing it before all the furniture arrives, except the kitchen which will have to wait until we've bought a new one before we bother flooring in there. Also bought a new washer & dryer which will be delivered on moving day!

Yesterday was the 'MS Company Picnic' - a name which in itself is a large understatement. Imagine 20,000 ppl out in the country at the base of a very striking mountain with all types of activities, food, things for kids, etc to hand. We ended up meeting up with a bunch of our new Brit friends and had a great time.... although it was bloody hot!

I also managed to fuck up my PC over the weekend by installing Longhorn WITHOUT ANY DRIVERS (thanks G) and it's now in a very unstable state! I need a new graphics card because this one is struggling.