Thoughts and Words Ill-Sorted

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

Last night a bunch of the young people from Sydney’s community got together to play volleyball.  As I learned last time we visited, there is apparently nothing that gets me more excited than the possibility of playing volleyball.  I don’t think I was this excited when I played in 7th grade, but team sporting events can be a bit rare in adult life, and I’m not so bad that I get in the way of my own fun.  So, after two hours of very tiring sand volleyball, Nelson, Sydney, and I creaked our way home (Sydney wondering whether his sore back was really up for this, and me discovering that my hips were suddenly protesting all of that crouching and lunging).  We haven’t been getting our usual Ithaca exercise, so we were probably a bit out of shape 🙂  But I had a great time, and am looking forward to another opportunity, whenever it might come.

Katherine, by the way, very much wanted to play in the sand (I didn’t know it was going to be a big sandbox!  I thought we’d be on grass!), but with enough helpful babysitters and room to roam she soon tuckered herself out in un-volleyball pursuits.  We all slept hard.

Erin

This morning I drove Katherine to the farmer’s market, half an hour away, where her grandmother was selling vegetables and her uncle was serving up cheesecake and salad for the Tastes of the Valley culinary competition (which he won!).  We were going along quite smoothly, but I suddenly realized that my neck and shoulder muscles were really tense.  I finally figured out why: I was driving roughly 70 mph on an undivided highway!  I haven’t seen any places in the US where undivided highways allow for more than 55mph, but here the signs showed what amounted to 64 mph, with traffic definitely pushing that closer to 70.  I also notice a bit more road rage, since there are fewer opportunities to pass slow drivers, and a number of long trains of cars behind particularly slow vehicles.  So I find myself longing for a median . . .

Erin