Not Giving Up Yet.

I think I’ve pretty much given up everything I have started my entire life – the blog appears to be going the same route. So I’m adamant come hell or high water that I’ll continue it. I’m just so tired right now, really really tired. More on that later, but hey this counts as a post right??! Sigh.

One.

A year ago today…….

Someone placed this tiny pink squishy thing in my arms.

Today she is one. And I’m 32, by the way.

Happy Birthday Love!!!

New Shoes

The recent change in temperature warranted a trip to Stride Rite to purchase Seren’s first pair of proper shoes.

Squeeeee!! I was excited. Unfortunately, Seren didn’t feel the same way.

 

(taken on Mr’s iphone)

She was not happy about standing on that cold metal thingy, nor was she happy about the pleasant-but-impatient sales assistant who was trying to ram her foot in it. I hope she doesn’t work on commission.

Once we ascertained her size (4), I politely asked where all the cute shoes were – I mean, they were all clumpy boyish things.. Where were the patent Mary Janes? The ballet pumps? The skate shoes? Nope. First rule of toddler shoe-shopping, it’s function over fashion. Oh and you will have to pay about $50 for the ugly shoes too. Bummer.

Anyways we finally chose the least fugly pair in the store, which also go with most of her Fall/Winter wardrobe so all was not lost.

                                                   

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We decided to try out the shoes at the Caniacs Festival over the weekend at the RBC Center in Raleigh. The weather had taken a dip into Fall momentarily so it was time for the trench coat to make it’s debut!

 

 

 

Oh, I forgot to mention, sista can move now!! Time to up the shutter speed.

 

 

The place was packed so I was a little nervous about letting her run around like a crazy child, but we managed to find some spaces for her to explore without the risk of being caught in a stampede.

 

(I did say the dip into Fall was temporary. lol)

Traditional picture with Stormy the mascot

 

Shortly after posing for this picture she had a huge fit and wanted to be on the ground. She hates being carried now, she just wants to run and run.

Then she found herself a cornhole set which had her intrigued for a good 5 minutes (or was it 5 seconds? I can’t recollect).

 

Then I told her that these were the things that out neighbors play with into well the night hours that wake her up and she promptly lost interest. Good.

 

So that was our weekend in pictures. Since then it’s been all hands on deck getting things finished for her BIRTHDAY PARTY this Saturday!! Seriously though, what happened to my newborn baby and who is this toddler person in my house?!? Here’s a snippet of what’s been going down in our house –

Yeah, we’re having a Yo Gabba Gabba party!! But it’s still girly, lots of pink and orange. And I would like to admit to eating 6 gummy worms during the production of these favor bags. Will post more about party stuff on Sunday. Not long to go!!

Christening: Part 2

Two blog posts in one week?!?! I must have pics to share.

HAHAHAHA yes I do!

Guess who’s mom this is?? lol.

 

And the cream of the crop -

We’re Back.

We survived. We lost a paci clip, and about 40 years of our lives, but we survived.

First of all, a few lessons were learned en route:

1) There was no point in taking the Britax Boulevard car seat on the plane. It was almost too big for the seat, some fat guy sat in front of her (he had the choice of 3 seats in his row and chose this one. Nice) and moved his seat back so she was pretty much dangling from the harness. Thus she was not comfy. Plus that thing is heavy to carry through Departures. Aside from taking off and landing, she was in our arms the entire time.

2) The loss of said paci clip was catastrophic. She was throwing her paci at people walking past, at the staff, heck at anything that moved. I would have chewed my right arm off for a paci clip at one point. That and a very large bottle of Pinot Grigio.

3) Heathrow airport seem to be lacking in baby food testing machinery – when departing from RDU the Security staff ran her food (6 x 8oz bottles of RTF formula, 3 jars of food – all unopened)  through some sort of machine that detects tampering or any general dodginess going on. At Heathrow, we had to open and taste the food. When I say we, I mean the husband, who incidentally squirted a considerable amount of Ella’s Kitchen Prune Brekkie over his arm and face (I forgot to remind him of air pressure lol) so I got it in the neck for that.

4) On the first day back after a British Bank Holiday, American Airlines see it fit to run their check-in department on a skeletal staff basis so be prepared to wait almost 2 hours in line to check-in. Be prepared to miss out on all the duty free chocolate shopping and 3 for 2 books in WH Smith. You’ll have enough time to beg a café for a cup of hot water to warm a baby bottle then peg it to the departure gate (the furthest one away in the entire airport), where you will be expected to wait in line yet again. Your baby will then refuse to drink the bottle you so frustratingly warmed for her but will be crying for food 30 minutes later after you have boarded your plane.

 

Would we do it again? Probably not! It wasn’t really as hard as I expected, but we were so very tired and drained from a week of constant activity and the baby was definitely overtired and overstimulated. But we got through it as a family, and maybe when she’s ten we’ll consider doing it again. Maybe. Right now my knuckles are still pretty white. God I hate flying.

Things seemed different when we got ‘home’. Maybe it’s a combination of not visiting for almost 3 years, getting used to the American way of life. Who knows. But when we lined up at the International Border for our security check I looked around and couldn’t believe how European everyone looked! I know that sounds daft, but I didn’t feel like we had come back to the people and place that we knew. It didn’t feel like home anymore. So I guess we don’t really know where our home is right now. I am The Littlest Hobo.

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The Christening (Part 1)

I call this Part 1 because I’m waiting on family & friends to send me pictures so I can do a proper christening-related post. I had no opportunities to take pictures of the day due to one incredibly clingy child and one moderately sheer and majorly uncomfortable christening ensemble (I am penning a letter to Jessica Simpson to inform her that her shoes are not at all comfortable as you read this). So here are my only pics, courtesy of my brother-in-law who incidentally has not held a digital SLR camera in his life (can you tell?).

I deliberately cropped our feet out, to remove said brother-in-law’s head shadow!! lol.

She was an angel the entire day, didn’t even cry when the Vicar took off with her to pour water over her face (seriously, she thought she was having another Daddy bath!). The weather held up, allowing us to have the bouncy castle at her party afterwards (which our child-ridden friends could not thank us enough for). My sisters cupcakes went down a storm. My mother-in-laws’ car got smashed in the car park outside. It was an eventful day. More details to come.

4 Days Until My Transatlantic Breakdown

I am in the crux of organizing, of list-writing. My mood swings pendulously between excited and terrified. Gone are those days of fun travels flying first class (alright, premier economy) enjoying a $5 glass of wine and listening to the latest movie droning from the in-air entertainment screens. Now we have a baby in tow, and I’m scurrrred, people.

To keep you up to date with our travel situation, here’s a heads up:

* I have one dress for the wedding, plus shoes, but no accessories. I have shoes for the christening but no dress.

* Seren has one dress for the christening (obvs), plus socks and hairband, but no shoes.

* Daddy has a shirt, tie and jacket for the wedding, but no pants. God knows what he’s doing for the christening.

When the frigg did we start forgetting how to dress ourselves?!? We’re the regular odd-bod family now.One last weekend to search for the missing articles of clothing, or else we’re screwed. And what kind of idiot throws away a pair of pants and keeps the matching suit jacket eh? Men, I’ll never understand ‘em.

The good news with all this failed planning is that I haven’t had the chance to start hyperventilating over the real issue that will be my travel terror. Flying itself. I’m terrified of it, wholly and truly terrified. Look, here’s the deal or at least as I see it:

- New planes = Safety with me. American Airlines have old planes. American Airlines recently announced they are buying 460 new jet planes (200 Boeing, what we’ll be flying on). Therefore American Airlines have really old planes. Really old planes = fly at your own risk cos you might end up swimming in the freezing Atlantic at 3am (Titanic-style), and you better hope your whistle and flashlight work. I’d rather not end up like Jack, know what I mean?? Translation: We are all going to die.

- I absolutely MUST have a seat on the wing; when I board a plane I sit next to the window on the wing and I meticulously check the wing for a good 30 minutes for scratches/dents/wear and tear and make an assumption of how safe the flight is going to be on the basis of my findings. A clean and tidy wing = Safety. I also watch when the little things come out of the wing (I don’t know what they’re called for chrissakes!) to slow it down when you land to make sure they are not wobbling too much and/or are too rusty (if you don’t believe any of this, ask my husband. He has been the unfortunate spectator on countless flights and he takes the mickey every single time). I also watch the wings when we hit turbulence, just to check they haven’t fallen off. I have huge problems, I know. Anyway I don’t think we have wing seats, so we are all going to die.

- Flying at night is a completely different ballgame than flying in the day. Flying at night is more dangerous because the pilot/s can’t see a damn thing outside of their matchbox-sized windscreen and they therefore have to rely on sleeping Air Control staff for direction. Yes I still believe they navigate out of their windscreen, I’ve seen them cleaning it for gods sake! Why would they bother if they don’t look out of it? Think about it people. I can handle turbulence during the day, at night it is not an option. When there is night turbulence, we are all going to die.

 

I’m hoping Seren will surprise me and be an angel on the plane, but I’m trying not to kid myself too much. At least the night flight, through all its faults, should warrant a sleepy and (god willing) sleeping baby. Then there’s the almost 3 hour enjoyable journey of driving to Wales from Heathrow after we have landed. Oh and I almost forgot that we land at gate #3,265 so we have to walk the length of the airport before we even get to Customs. How exactly do we navigate Seren through the International Customs aisle and ourselves through the EU??! This, my friends, should be very interesting.

But let me change the tone by saying we are incredibly excited to see our friends and family again (and I know I shouldn’t start a sentence by saying ‘but’). We haven’t been home since 2009 and I haven’t seen my sister since last July.  It’s going to be great to spend some time with everyone and for them to meet our newest addition to the family, Seren is going to be so excited – gosh I hope she sleeps at some point.

I guess I should finish up tonight with some pictures. Behold, Seren in her christening dress and hairband.

 

I promise I will take some decent pictures during our trip, I might even edit them.

If only I had more time on my hands.

Been a while (sorry!)

So the laptop finally died on me around 3 weeks ago. I have to say I’m not surprised as I don’t think we ever really fixed the problem. We contemplated replacing the hard drive and battery but without any certainty that this would even work we decided to buy a nice new shiny one instead! Well, it’s not as fancy as the one we had but we have to get what we can get.

Windows 7 is taking a bit of getting used to, and I still haven’t uploaded everything from my old PC (incl. PSE and all my pics/documents) – and actually my pictures take up half the memory space on this thing so I guess we need to get an external hard drive as well.

Anyways the little madam turned 10 months while this was all happening.

Best shots I got!

What’s she up to these days??

* She has 8 solid teeth now and I think she is working on no. 9 up top. omg. I should have bought shares in Motrin. She likes to randomly chew my stomach and arms from time to time which is nice.

* She doesn’t like to eat many finger foods, in fact she’s incredibly picky about the texture of things. She currently has a repertoire of Graham crackers, Cheerios and puffs, Anything remotely soft of squidgy gets a big thumbs down.

* She can eat the entire innerds of a sweet potato in one sitting however. So this has become her regular dinner

* She has started taking steps – up to 4 so far – and I’m surprised at how good her balance is. She is saying ‘dah-dee’ a lot but I don’t think she knows what it means yet (she called the dishwasher dah-dee the other day, ‘aint no similarities there). She does understand ball, daddy, mommy, ‘no’, TV (lol!), duck, blocks, puppy, teddy bear and a few others I cannot recollect right now.

* She loves reading books so much that she has started to rip and eat them. Grrreat.

* She has discovered toilet rolls and the endless fun there is in pulling them from the holder and running down the hallway; she also eats the paper when I’m not looking (I think I have a future Cindy Crawford on my hands).

* Her sleeping is still atrocious but we occasionally get the odd good night. Rich thinks its teething but I sense we are being played somewhat.

 

Anyway, in other news the Christening planning is well under way. Invitations are addressed and ready to go:

This is the template, obvs.

My sister is kindly making the cake, my ILs are helping with the food. It should be a great day, the headcount is at around 100 at the moment!!?? Now I just need to get outfits for all three of us and we’re set.

Speaking of outfits, I finally found a dress in Macy’s of all places for the wedding we are attending (sans baby); I also found some cute nude platform pumps and am just waiting for them in the post. Whether I’m going to be able to stand up or even walk in these babies is still up for question. I hope to do my first fashion-related post when they arrive! Yay. And maybe one for Seren also lol.

I have a ton of pics to upload and post (after editing them of course, cos we know they all suck) so I’m off to go get started.

Happy week, y’all.

American Girl

Yesterday we celebrated our first ‘proper’ Fourth of July – proper, being that we now have a little American citizen in our family and as such we must rejoice every American holiday and tradition in her honor. Well, actually she will be a dual citizen – once we’ve finished the mountain of paperwork that goes along with it. But for now, she’s our all-American girl.

We headed to our Capital Building downtown to join in with the celebrations.

 

 

 

Luckily there was a decent amount of cloud coverage to make the 97 degree heat more bearable (and to stop my dad’s head from burning).

 

 

There was a Naturalization ceremony taking place, which was moving and special. A window into a world we may venture in one day.

 

 

 

And the applause. The applause made me even more proud to be linked to this Country – even if that link is a 9 month old baby. People cheered and congratulated these new Citizens and I wondered how each of them felt to be surrounded by such warmth.

 

 

Pretty special, probably.

 

 

I forgot to mention that I had dressed Seren for the day in a pretty demure patriotic outfit – t’was Ralph Lauren so she needs to be able to wear it more than once to get its worth lol!! I was looking very festive, but then no-one ever takes pictures of me.

 

 

The husband decided that Seren should join in the Liberty March and ringing of the Liberty Bell, a potential annual ritual may be in the running here. I let him go for it, puffing and panting behind them all the way.

 

 

Still puffing/panting/stropping.

 

 

At this point I was wondering where the eff this Liberty Bell was, how close it was in proximity to our parked car, and where the nearest Sonic was. 

 

 

Ah there it is. Now, Sonic………

Oh nevermind.

 

 

 

This dude got some serious evils from me, it was effin’ 300 degrees and he wanted to talk forever. I get it, I do, but this was for kids and kids need hydration. They need Sonic. It’s Raleigh law don’t you know.

Anyway he finally got to it and the bell rangeth. 13 times.

 

 

It only took 4 times to realise we were way too close to the bell and Seren was none too impressed with the noise. Commence major baby freak-out. So we had to leave, before North Carolina was rung in, and headed to the car. Which was only 7 minutes away BTW. Phew for that. But we enjoyed ourselves and got to experience something new, something that feels less alien now that we have just cause for celebrating it. It felt good to know that if someone were to ask, I could say “yeah, we’re here, but we’re a part of it now”. We’re a part of the family, in a roundabout way.

Happy Fourth everyone!