Still waiting

Well the due date came and went, and we're still waiting.

Wriggle

It's really not long to go now until our baby No2 is due. When I am at
work, I find I am thinking about it all the time. A quick call to Cat is
not always reassuring as she will sometimes complain about a pain
or niggle that I instantly take as signs of early labour.
On the one hand, I want him to be born so we can get on with the
business of looking after him, but on the other hand, it's been really
lovely having the time to just enjoy our new home. anyway, bubba No2 is busy kicking away and I always love feeling him wriggle under Cat's tummy.

My sister in Thailand is doing well with her little boy, Oscar. After a
short spell under the UV lamps due to jaundice, he appears to be in
rude health and breast feeding like a natural. It's funny to hear from
Sylv about her ups and downs, as these brought back memories of
our first few weeks with Aimee. Funny how time flies and how
quickly we have forgotten the trials of those early days.

Aimee can now recognise hundreds of pictures. As soon as I draw
one small part of the animal, car, plane, tree etc she names it before
I can finish. I thought this morning I would try my luck with alpha
numeric characters and she guessed correctly the number 5, 3 and
2, but stalled on the other numbers, making words up, like tortoise
instead of number 6 etc. A bit more practice and it may be she could
end up being a good early reader. She certainly loves books, more
than TV I would say and I'm definitely trying to encourage this.

Great balls of fire

16-10-07
One of the perils an active toddler faces is injury within the home.
Since we are trying to ween her off telly, we now spend most of the
time running after her and stopping her from falling, bumping,
smashing, slipping etc against ordinary home objects such as
furniture, bins, tvs etc. She is not as bad as some stories you hear
of, mostly boys, leaping off settees and pulling heavy objects onto
themselves, but she's pretty, shall we say 'curious'.
So it comes as some relief that there is one place in Borehamwood
that is a sanctuary for ballistic toddlers everywhere - the B'Wood
leisure centre Playzone.
Here, over three storeys, are floors, stairs, climbing frames, balls etc
all covered in tough wearing foam. Youngsters can run around like a
demented loon with little danger of harm (although you still have to
supervise by following closely). Aimee of course went mental at all
the physical stimulus. She spent most of the time sprinting from one
floor to the other, jumping, skidding, sliding and bouncing off things.
If Carlsberg made toddler zones, this would be it.

Teebee, Teebee

11.10.07

Cat, Aimee and I took a little trip back to Hackney’s finest – Homerton Hospital – for an ECV. As me and Aimee waited in the ‘birthing partner’ room, Cat was in the delivery room getting checked over.
Luckily, Baby No2 had managed to turn into the ‘correct’ position of head down without any manipulation necessary, so Cat was out after only a brief period. Aimee was on pretty good behaviour whilst we were waiting but I did have alarming visions of Cat going into labour and me having to entertain and control Aimee for several hours in the same tiny room. Anyhow, the news that unborn has turned has come as a welcome relief and Cat was very happy.
So, the rest of the day turned to me looking after Aimee at home while Cat took a well deserved rest and I tried very hard to avoid using the TV. Aimee has taken to nagging and nagging and nagging for us to play her favourite Postman Pat or In the Night Garden videos and when we relent she just stands there like a zombie for hours. At first I think, this is great - I can get some rest or do some of my own work. And yet, I get an enormous sense of guilt whenever I resort to the TV, partly fuelled by having read several articles about the harm that excess TV can do to a young child’s language development.
Regardless of the harm it is alleged to be doing, I think that it is my parental duty to join in with as much as I can with Aimee, and encourage her to play and draw, and dance and sing and do all the things a toddler should be doing, except for standing there like a Pompeii statue absorbing nonsense on the flickering screen (like us adults - oh the woes of double standards). So, I invented a new game of belly flop onto the giant beanbag cushion. Aimee loved it. After my initial demonstration, she belly flopped onto it for ages, never tiring. Then we got creative and drew animals together. Or rather, Aimee would call out the animal and pester me to draw one – usually birdies, but sometimes monkeys or cats. After a while, the page had a lot of very similar looking creatures in the menagerie, as I exhausted all the permutations of birdie, monkey and cat. Soon, she completely forgot the TV and stopped begging for ‘Pat, Pat, Pat’. Another top purchase was the pink mini-stroller. She runs around with that, with dolly sitting in it, for hours – upstairs, downstairs, all along the coridoor – everywhere. That thing cost about £5 and is played with more than any £50 quid electronic ‘educational’ toy.

In the Day Garden

8-October-07
So, almost a week after we move home and more boxes were unpacked, but more boxes remain stacked – ready to be shunted into the loft. Clearly our lives have collected too many ‘miscellaneous’ items. But we have tried to recycle. And it is here that I succumbed to my latest B’wood experience – the recycling Nazis.
Currently, the council only collect rubbish fortnightly, the other week belongs to recycling.
(Hackney was both rubbish and recycling every week.) So if you have excess rubbish that won’t fill the green/brown/black/blue wheelie bins, you have to take it to the Elstree recycling centre. And that, my friends, is where you encounter the dreaded recycling Nazis. Here, a man in a fluorescent yellow vest who clearly detests all the middle class suburban folk that queue patiently outside the centre, will quiz you endlessly about your armful of junk until you relent, sobbing like a naughty schoolboy until you admit that, yes, the bag did contain one item of non-recycleable wax paper and that, yes, I will sift through the entire lot again and report back next week with the correct boxes for correct skips. Bizarrely, the rather smelly and trashy site sits right next door to some of the poshest cottages in green Elstree – how the local residents must be delighted.
Oh and that’s not all. Every Monday, you must roll your wheelie bin out onto the pavement. Ain’t nobody gonna hike up your sodding path to collect rubbish, oh no. So there they stood this morning, all up my road, like sentries standing guard to each semi-detached house driveway.
For the kitchen waste, you have to use the council approved compostable bags, not the cheaper and more easily obtained Tesco ones, no the hard to find Hertsmere ones. Hmm, I have yet to even get hold of a green caddy, so all my kitchen waste goes into the bin I’m afraid.

Aimee loves the new house. Especially the garden. I spent close to two hours assembling her toddler car which she wheels around like Fred Flintstone, but it’s the inherited Wendy House she loves the most. It’s a filthy old thing, that looks more like a bacteria and death trap for someone so young, so we’ll need to clean it out and fix some rubber mats. The garden also has some sharp stone steps which is just asking for Aimee to slip and split her head open on…or am I being too paranoid?

Cat will undergo her ECV tomorrow. WE have sneeking suspicion that unborn has indeed turned already as Cat felt some kicks into her rib, but we will find out tomorrow.

B'Wood - First Impressions

B’Wood – First impressions
Borehamwood is a fairly small to medium sized town nestled in green belt Hertfordshire. I am not sure of my exact reasons for choosing it, but several people we knew lived there and mentioned that it was ok. We did make several day visits and it seems exactly that – ok. Someone who was unfamiliar with the ‘Wood may be cruel enough to label the people and the high street as quite chavvy and a little down market but the shopping centre is bright and modern and the transport is pretty decent. So far I have yet to meet a rude or impolite person here – in fact the very opposite as people are only too willing to chat and help with info for newcomer such as us.

Nicer still are the villages of Elstree and Radlett Cat and I have already sampled country pub grub at the Cat & fiddle in Radlett and it was A-mazing.
One of the interesting points to note about B’wood is the huge number of schools for such a small catchment area. At about 4pm, the high street is awash with kids wearing different coloured uniforms. Cat and I have been making a mental note for future reference for our kids.
There seems to be a lot of kids wearing black sweaters and shell suits. These kids like to hang around in huge gangs after school. Then there are the navy blue uniform kids, I think this is a rival school if similar repute. The kids from both seem to don their uniforms in all manner of interesting variations – anything apart from the standard required by the school. Then there are what seem to be the posher kids. All wear blazers of varying colours and all are accompanied by their parents after school. I guess these are posh as they don’t seem to hang around in gangs and seem to act quite politely. Who knows? I could be very wrong and dissing quite good schools. I guess we will find out in a few years.

Our Big House Move

4-10-07
Oh boy what a really crazy past couple of days we’ve just had!
On Monday night, Cat and I toasted our last night together in our Hackney flat with a small glass of wine to celebrate. It was weird sitting in the empty flat. All day the Pickfords boys had diligently and expertly packaged all our belongings into the removals lorry. I never knew we had so much stuff, seriously, we had tonnes. And at one point I worried the lorry was not big enough to hold it all.

By Tuesday mid-morning, the lorry was fully packed and not a pin was left behind. A totally empty flat, and by chance, our solicitors had just called to say the money was in and was now being transferred to our vendors. Before we left Hackney for good, there was one last hitch. Not really a hitch for us, but the new owners asked if I would sign for their new fridge. So I did but it was too big to fit through the flat door. I decided it was not really my problem and let the delivery boys go. I called Ali to explain and she seemed non plussed about it. Still, it seems a big oversight not to make measurements before ordering sucvh a bulky and expensive item.

On to Borehamwood. The Pickfords boys were ready and waiting and I met with the Leggetters at the house to pick up the keys. They bid us congrats anf good lucks and themselves were off to their new dream house in the countryside.

Well, if I thought the packing was a huge task, little did I realise the unpacking was an even greater job. Every room was stvked to the ceiling with cardboard boxes. Most were labelled simply the room from which they originated. Some had helpful info such as cutlery, or CDs, most were labelled by the room with the extra helpful retainer: ‘misc’. Oh dear, now the hard work began and just trying to find an important everyday item amongst the 1000 or so less important, and even junk items took ages. But after 3 whole days, we are getting some semblance of a home. Already I am enjoying the feeling of much more space and having two floors and a garden is such a luxury.

Some really annoying hiccups surfaced during our first few days in B’wood so far: first, my car finally died and I had to pay for an emergency recovery call out. The engineer simply turned the key and it started immediately. Duh! But the car has been sent packing off to the mechanics anyway. The other really annoying thing that has happened is the fact that Tiscali cocked up majorly with my transfer of address notification and failed to remove a ‘marker’ from my new telephone number. Meaning another week’s delay in getting broadband – down time for which I am paying for by the way. The final annoying thing that happened, and this is arguably the most annoying – is that after spending what seemed like four hours erecting Aimee’s cot, I realised that a very vital piece of connection is missing, presumably left behind in action in Hackney. The whole cot is unstable without the piece, so it is either a case of contacting Mamas and Papas and hoping, or trying the local pram shop. Oh, and did I mention there was a post strike?

Hopefully, if my car gets fixed, then we can go pick up Aimee, who has been bravely looked after by a very worn out set of grandparents and co. She seems to be missing us from the daily telephoned reports, or she could be having a whale of a time. We’ll find out tomorrow when we pick her up.

Ok, very tired now. But lastly, a report from far flung Thailand and my sister has named her newly born son, Oscar James Yang. What a great name!

More on Aimee and our life in Borehamwood soon.