Thoughts and Words Ill-Sorted

I’m emerging from the deep.  After several weeks of spending most of the day in my pajamas, trolling apartment listings and calling agencies, we finally have a house.  Yes, a house.  There’s room for Katherine to have a bedroom and us a study, plus a little conservatory out back.  It’s within 1.5 miles of campus, and about a mile if you cut through the university’s extensive parks.  Access to parks for Katherine was high on our priority list, having seen what she’s like when cooped up inside for too long.  And having ready access to Sydney’s work was important, both to make it easier for him to navigate the needs of work and home and to make it easier for Katherine and me to worm our way into Oxford life.  Most importantly, we feel sure that we’ll be safe there, something that became a lot more important now that we have a family.  We won’t be able to move in until November, so we’re currently sorting out short stays and whether we’ll all be going over at the same time, but the most important thing is secured.

Erin

We’re hunting housing.  The big drama, of course, is whether we will get visas so we can even enter England, and whether we’ll get them in time, but since we had to send Sydney’s diploma away to be translated (yes, we are cursing Yale’s decision to confer degrees in Latin right now, and no, though Sydney knows Latin he cannot translated it because he’s not “certified”) that is currently at a halt.  So late night, nap time, and every moment Katherine doesn’t scream for our attention has been spent looking online and calling about Oxford flats and houses.  We run into three walls:

1) most places hate children (no one says this in the listing, so you have to call to be rejected by a real person)

2) most places are taken before we even call, though there’s nothing on the listing to indicate that (so much for up-to-date web access)

3) most places are reluctant (if not out-and-out refusing our pleas) to rent a place to someone without the person visiting the place in person.

Plus the usual ones like a far from expansive budget and some hope for personal safety.  With those hurdles we’ve knocked out several dozen listings and alternate between elation and despair several times a day.

I don’t think this is what I had in mind by looking forward to an “exciting” globe-trotting period in my life . . .

Erin

Yesterday Sydney and I celebrated five years of marriage.  A lot has happened since we were married the summer after college, including our first post-college apartment and car, learning to cook, five years of graduate school, a great deal of hiking and gardening, a daughter, and another child on the way.  Our recent months have been somewhat grueling (visa applications get sent in this week! Katherine’s on another round of teething!), and we decided we could really use a bit of time away from it all to relax.  Sydney’s mom, Dora, very kindly took Katherine from Saturday afternoon until late Sunday evening, leaving us free to run off for the weekend.

First we drove to Halifax and loaded up on food at a specialty grocery: guacamole, salsa, cranberry salsa, and chips; apricots, tangerines, papaya, and dates; baklava and fudge; smoked gouda, Irish cheddar with porter beer, and olive bread.  We’d planned to go out for dinner, but Sydney was taking me to a rather rural location and there weren’t a lot of restaurants around (especially for non-seafood folk).  Instead, we ate at the cabin Sydney rented on the northern coast of Nova Scotia, where we had a view like this:

Then we took a walk on the beach below those yellow chairs and enjoyed a sunset that looked like this:

Really lovely.  Of course, rather than sit and enjoy the romantic sunset we were busy exclaiming over the crabs that were trying to eat each other.  But that was quite fun.

Today we enjoyed sleeping in (no child waking us at 7:00!) and then took a leisurely hike through what Sydney had warned me might be swamp.  I, forgetting to bring my sneakers, was walking in dress sandals.  But when we arrived at the place we discovered that the majority of our walk would look like this:

The birch trees chaperoned us for more than a mile.

After a really lovely lunch at a cafe in one of the cute harbour towns we took another hike and then headed home.  We have plenty of grand excursions ahead of us, and we were glad for a relaxed, happy weekend that needed little planning and that rewarded us with quiet, mild exercise, and lots of good food.

Erin

Erin

I finally screwed up the courage to call about a property we were particularly interested in in Oxford.  I’m new enough that calling England is still rather exciting–and nerve-wracking.  After several good signs (still available?  yes.  floor plans available?  yes.) I thought to ask, “Do you allow children?”  A resounding no.  This is probably going to be a problem with most of the places we’re interested in.

In other child news, yesterday we had an ultrasound so that we could get a more precise due date for our baby.  In the process we learned that he or she is approximately the size of a lemon and has a huge head and a beating heart.  And he or she waved at us.  I might note that Katherine’s just mastered that within the last month or so . . .

Erin

Why so quiet around here?  On Monday we got the go-ahead from Oxford to apply for our visas.  This has now consumed pretty much every free minute.  It seems the UK has outsourced this process to private contractors, and apparently none of them can form a clear, unambiguous, grammatically-correct English sentence.  So we’re scratching our heads over just about every question.  If you have questions, you can call the 900 number listed for a fee of $3 per minute (!!!).  And, once we’re done jumping through online hoops, paying them handsomely for this pleasure, we get to trek to either Halifax or Ottawa for a five-minute scan of our faces and fingerprints, then mail it all off to another Canadian office with more fees for expedited processing so that we get our passports back in time to return to the States.  Ahhh, just lovely.

But in the meantime, Sydney’s also reformatting my computer (it was definitely time), so we’re slowly getting that back up and running.  Much griping by him about installing Microsoft software, but I’m not sure I want to learn one more new thing right now.  Seems we’ve got plenty of that coming up.

Katherine turned 16 months old yesterday.  She celebrated by grabbing the diaper cream while I was changing her, eating a fair amount of it while I wasn’t looking, and throwing up in the middle of the night.  Repeatedly.  The lady at poison control was very helpful (especially for 1:30am), though she laughed when I described the contents of my diaper cream (aloe vera, lavender, and lots of “natural” goodies).

And I’m trying to pursue real estate in Oxford from afar.  They need to make a dictionary to help Americans decipher the cryptic terms in those apartment listings . . . white goods, anyone?  All I care about is a washer/dryer.  Okay, okay, and a second bedroom, access to lots of green space outside, and price.  And a few other things . . .

Hopefully some good things to come at the end of this week, though we’ll probably be under the cloud of the visas for another week or so.

Erin

This afternoon Sydney’s mom and I took Katherine blueberry picking.  To my great surprise, we actually picked a fair number of blueberries while Katherine entertained herself.  She ran the rows, carefully selected blue berries from the lower branches, and was astonished to find herself confronting apple trees when she reached the end of the field.  By the time we got home from picking at two different farms she was shaking her head when I offered blueberries (apparently there is an end to the appetite)–and her blue outfit was covered in blueberry essence.  A happy girl means a running girl, and a running girl means the occasional fall onto blueberry-covered ground.  I need a blueberry-colored outfit for her . . .

Erin

After watching me waver between another nap and reading, Sydney ushered Katherine and me into the car and on a tour of some of the area’s beaches.  We took Katherine out on the sand (no mud this time), where she delighted us by playing happily in it, and horrified me by crushing small clams and then tasting them.  Yuck!  We’re wondering if her teenage rebellion won’t come in the form of declaring a love for seafood.  We then watched the tide slowly reclaim the beach, which fascinated Katherine.  She insisted on wading right in, promptly losing her footing and then crying where she sat, so I had to take off of my sneakers and reclaim her.  We’ve got to get her to come when called . . . a skill she had several months ago and then mysteriously lost.

On another beach Sydney was delighted by seeing thousands of sandpipers and Katherine learned to point and say something like “Oooooh” as the gulls wheeled overhead.

I was simply grateful for the fresh air and distraction.  And the root beer float I procured somewhere in there.

A really lovely evening out, after which we did everything possible to keep Katherine awake on the ride home (hoots, screams, growls, and glares, all of which made her laugh).  Bed for her, and soon sleep for us.

Erin

I am quite sure that most people don’t wait until their first child is out of the house to have a second.  But how are you supposed to give the first child anything when the second limits you to one of three activities: sleeping, desiring to sleep, and sitting still?  Our life is currently very small here, with much of it comprised of me lying down.  Hoping for better soon . . .

Erin

Clapping her hands is a new and favorite activity.  Usually because she wants us to imitate her and say, “Good job, Katherine!”

She happened to be both clean and in a fantastic mood (two things that rarely go together).  But yes, we bribed her with blueberries.  She apparently loves them.  It’s a good thing we have a ready supply.

Christi’s mom, Nancy, made the yellow dress for her just before we left Ithaca.  Katherine’s finally old enough to maneuver the skirts, and she was a big hit in it on Sunday.

Erin