A Noteworthy Room

Chris walked through the flat with a letting agent before the kids and I flew over, so he was the first to see everything in person.  As he was telling me about it that night, he mentioned the washing machine.  I said something about it being in the kitchen, which is where they often are located, and he stopped me.

"Oh no, it's not in the kitchen.  It's under the stairs!  Yeah, it's like a little Harry Potter room under there.  There's a door that's like, up to my knee, and the washing machine is back in there.  Maybe we'll get Jayce to shimmy on in there to do the laundry or something."  

So this is what I have in my mind.  And then we arrive,

and we make fun of Chris a LOT about the whole door up to his knee thing.  Because it's a lot bigger than up to his knee.

Like, I can stand in it.  And try to take pictures to show that it is basically just a half an inch taller than me.  If I'm standing straight, I fit perfectly.  If I have my hair in a ponytail on the top of my head, it hits the ceiling.

And I'll make the pictures black and white to try to minimize the non-shower non-makeup-ness of the day.  Which works like a charm.

So yeah, this is our little laundry room/closet area.  

It has a slanted ceiling, so I can only stand in the part that is right in front of the dryer, 

I keep my sorted dirty clothes in these little wire racks, a variety of random things on the shelves in there, because it's also serves as a hall closet for us, so shoes, umbrellas, my camera bag, toiletries, etc. all live there.

It's not much, but it works.  I have to do a load every day to stay right on top of it, because it all has to line dry, which takes part or most of the day.  So I can't let it get backed up, or there will be so many "washed but not all the way dry" clothes draped all across random furniture in the living room.

Hannah always comes in with me while I'm doing the laundry, and attempts to put on everyone's shoes, or starts emptying the laundry basket contents onto the floor.  Or on days when I'm taking an extra long time because I'm standing in the laundry room taking pictures, she does both.

This is random, but I forgot how small laundry bottles are here.  It's concentrated, but of course you use even less when you have a small capacity washer in the first place.  My detergent and fabric softener bottles are smaller than most bottles of ketchup.  Kind of funny. Very random.

And if you're wondering how difficult it is to take a picture of your hand in between a few bottles to show the size of something, while stepping back far enough to show the whole picture, but not have your whole arm in the picture, and keep your wrist from being at a strange angle, let me just say, this is pretty difficult.  Consider yourself warned.

Happy laundry day!  That is, happy Wednesday.  And every other day.

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A New Flat: My Favorite, The Kitchen

Welcome to our flat.  We are #21, and yes the 1 is slightly larger than the 2.  

When you walk in, to the right are the steps upstairs to the bedrooms, and just a step past it is the hall to the kitchen.  We're starting there because it is probably my favorite room in the house and what drew me right in when we looked at it online.

Ooo, it's so pretty!  It's bright, with big windows on the left and right side that let sunshine and fresh air blow straight through while we're cooking, eating or hanging out.

To the right.

Pretty blue, green and white dishes displayed in clear cabinets.  Under-cabinet lighting, if necessary.  A pretty view of the brick-lined streets and sidewalks.  Two spouts, and two handles, drinking water and washing water.  (I honestly don't know if the water flowing through them is exactly the same or not, but the water that comes out of the smaller spout has a contained trickle that fills my water bottles just right, so there's always that...)

To the left, our little dinner nook.  Yes, we actually have an eat-in kitchen!!  I was amazed by this when we were checking the listing because almost every flat had the dining room table in one half of the living room.  So, in my mind, not only does this present us with an eat-in kitchen, but it also presents us with a living room to use AS a living room.  I can't even imagine the damage Hannah would do to the carpet if we ate our meals at a table in the living room.  She is such a little food thrower.  

Hannah's sweet new high chair, flowers Chris had waiting for me when we arrived at the flat, Chelsea doing dishes, and the other big bright window overlooking some beautiful flats with the river behind them.

So come visit, and we'll fix you some tea.  I'll make you try it with milk if you haven't before, because it's so much better that way, and Chris always tells me that I make a mean cup of tea.  And we can call it a cuppa if we want, but not in front of any locals because that will only reveal just how lame we are. :)  But it really is good tea.  

More soon, again.  

(I think "more soon" is becoming an accidental tagline for me these days.  Oh well.)

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How's It Going?

As of nearly 2 weeks now, we officially live in London.

I have so much to say, so many questions to answer, and so many thoughts to process.  Where to begin with such a task?

I decided that I'll give a brief rundown of the high points, and then I'm going to go back and dedicate a whole post to a lot of these things to fill in the blanks and attempt to process it all.

Chris came a week early to get a head start on getting the flat ready and started setting things up.  This was incredibly helpful because there is so much to do in a move like this.  

"Get things set up" may sound like, "moved furniture in and around," but it was more of things like, got the bank account worked out, set up utilities, bought random things so that we could start living here right away (pillows, sheets, towels), bought appliances (microwave, tv, alarm clocks), started hounding the letting company about various things that needed to be fixed in the flat (lighting, dishwasher, railing), started hounding the council about Jayce's school, and many other things that I am leaving out.  

He also got a good lay of the land, an idea of which buses we needed and where they would take us, and set us up with bus passes before we'd even arrived, which was supremely helpful.

As I said in this post, the kids, Chelsea and I flew over a week later.  Chelsea and I set up the flat, unpacked everyone's clothes, organized (tiny) closets and cupboards, moved furniture to the garage (okay, Chris chipped in on this), shopped for furniture and other niceties, washed lots of dishes and laundry, assembled stubborn furniture, and got the place feeling homey and comfy.  There is still plenty to be done, and purchased, but we made a whole lot of progress in only 4 full days.  

How's the flat?

We really like it.   I'll write more on our flat, probably a few times, because I promised Chelsea some before and afters, and this place has some funny quirks that are worth sharing.

We don't LOVE the area, but we like it, and it will certainly do for the time being.  The surrounding area would be less of an issue if we had a car and were driving through it to get where we need to go, but we're walking.  The bus stops that we use, the parks, Jayce's school, the library, the grocery store, etc. are all on a pretty busy road and I don't love walking alongside it with the kids in the stroller.  There was already one day where both kids were crying, I was carrying Jayce and pushing Hannah in the stroller because it was too loud and it scared them.  So there's that.

Jayce and school.

Most of the schools started on Tuesday or Wednesday of last week.  At that point, we were still waiting to hear if Jayce had been accepted into any of them, since you are supposed to apply BY JANUARY and we obviously did much later than that.  We found out that he was accepted into a really wonderful school that is fairly close to the house, 0.5 miles, and it starts next Friday.  When I went to meet his teacher/see the classroom/get the final paperwork last week, I discovered that his class does not meet for 5 mornings a week, but for 5 full days a week, which is standard for 4 year olds.  So I'm feeling a bit overwhelmed by that, to say the least.  It's a great school, and a play-based learning environment which is exactly what I want for him, I just wish that there was a more gradual step for him into full time school and there's not. 

How are the kids doing with jet lag and the new place and everything?  Great.

Our plane left very early in the morning and was a fairly short trip, 9ish hours of total travel time.  This meant that once we got back to the flat, we basically brought our bags in, bathed, and went to bed for the night.  The kids slept in the next morning, but have had no trouble with jetlag at all.  I've heard that it is easier on kids since they are already napping during the day anyway, and this helps their bodies get into the new sleep cycle.  This seems to have been the case.

Jayce has been a pretty happy camper throughout all of this.  He is fairly accustomed to sleeping in different places with the traveling that we do to grandparents houses, the farm, vacations, etc, so he's had no problem settling into his new room, though it is pretty bare at the moment.  We have been exploring the many different parks that are in the area (we want to make sure those naps are good ones!), and there seems to be something that he is looking forward to each day.  

He has asked for his old friends on several different times this past week and it really breaks my heart!!  This is one of the reasons that I am looking forward to school for him, it's a place to make new friends and play with kids his own age.  Because no matter how fun Chris and I are, we obviously can't meet a little boy's need to play with other little boys his own age.  But other than missing his old friends, he seems to have taken to our new life just great.

Hannah is the same.  In this picture she's saying, Yeah, I already took off my shoes even though we just left the house.  What are you going to do about it?

She eats as though we don't feed her, chatters all the time, has such a fun personality, is into everything, naps like a dream, and night sleeps like a nightmare.  And don't even think about suggesting to me to give up one of her naps and see what that does for her night sleep, because I don't know what it will do for my sanity.  She is such a little busy body right now, and she wears us out, but man is she sweet.

Chris' job is great.  Truly.

He's a professor of New Testament and Early Christianity, and the director of the Centre for the Social-Scientific Study of the Bible at St Mary's University College.  Due to the crazy nature of our passport/visa situation, (which is, that they lost our passports while we were applying for our visas), and not knowing how long the visa application process was going to take, he was not assigned any classes to teach this semester.   But he's excited because he can dedicate this whole semester to the Centre and to writing.  He spent last week getting his feet wet a bit, meeting various colleagues, and was in central London at the end of the week at a conference, so he is off running!  We have already been invited to dinner with a few of his colleagues, including the Principal and Head of School, so I'm looking forward to meeting these people that I've been hearing so much about.

Also, the campus is lovely.  Pictures to come soon, but the buildings are old, the grass is green, and it's totally charming.

I think that is all for the moment, but there will certainly be more soon.

What am I leaving out?  Please tell me.

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Hannah and Dice

Right now, you are our little imitator.  You have so many words that it will be impossible for me to list them.  Most things that we try to get you to say, you will say.  You always get the inflection, though obviously you can't pronounce every word just yet, but you're trying.  You are much more verbal than your brother was at this age.

You love to unpack the wipes whenever I am changing your diaper, but will always grab a spare (or two) and use it to wipe off your hands, and then go wipe off the table, some nearby furniture, or your toys.  Sometimes you will even wipe off your mouth.  

A few weeks ago I let you play with this little glass and a dozen or so dice.  I put your pacifier in and stayed right with you the whole time, but I was surprised that you played with this for almost 45 minutes non-stop.  You would put the dice into the bag, or the lego, or the cup.  I don't know if you were so enamored because you don't typically play with something so tiny, or because of the little tinging sound the dice made together in the cup, but observing your concentration was precious.  

You have started to imitate little things that we do.  You were playing with Chelsea's compact the other day, took a brush and started "dipping" it into the mirror like it was makeup, and then brushing the brush against your cheeks.  You also pick pick up your babies and snuggle them between your shoulder and chin, hugging them, swinging them back and forth, and sometimes patting them on the back.  You also pretend to write on paper with any writing utensil you get your hands on, and "answer" anything that looks like a phone.

You LOVE patty cake, particularly the "roll it" part.  You roll and roll and roll, as soon as I start clapping at the beginning of the song, with a huge smile on your face.  We did this many many times on the plane as it was one of the few things that made you happy.

Whenever you hand us things you say, "thank you!"  Today we unpacked a bunch of little toys from a box, and you would take each one out, hand it to me and say "thank you" for each one.  There were maybe 15 toys, but I just kept sneaking them into the box so that you would keep doing it over and over.  It was so sweet.

You are a little dancer.  You will dance if someone is tapping a beat on the table or even if I just am humming a song.  The baby bounce has gotten a few new moves added to the mix, including the shoulder shake, the upper body sway, the head shake, and some foot tapping.  Clapping is always a possibility as well.

You give kisses and hugs.  You started blowing kisses recently too, though kiss blowing can quickly turn into the "Indian call" sort of thing.

You took your first steps towards your brother who was playing on the sit n spin.  You took 6 steps, then 5 more later that day.  Then you did sort of a pivot, where you would take a step, and then just spin on that foot.  But now you are pretty much completely back to crawling.  You've spent a lot of the last week in the stroller as we go here and there to get things done, and there is so much new ground to explore in our new flat and in the parks that you just don't seem to care much about mastering walking.  Not that you've ever been interested in walking.

You still aren't sleeping at night.  You've had to cry it out in each new place: both grandparents houses and now here.  Just sleep already for crying out loud.  We love you anyway, but let's work on that sleeping thing.

15 months already?  Time does fly when you're having fun.

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Flying to London

Last Wednesday, at 3:00 am, I got both kids up and loaded them into the car to drive to the airport and begin our move to London.  

It was the start of one of the worst days ever.  I'm not going to elaborate in any detail, but generally think about anything that you might have problems with when flying, with a 1 and 4 year old, on 2 international flights, while moving you and all of your possessions, and beginning your day on 3 hours of sleep.  Almost all of those hiccups occurred.  

I could not have done it without Chelsea, who was tireless in her enthusiasm, never complained, and kept me from unravelling on what was truly one of the most stressful days of my life.

But now that day is over and we are here.

 These are a few of the pics that I would have been instagramming if it were still an option to do so.

More soon.  We JUST got a reliable internet connection and I am eager to share pictures and happenings, particularly now that I am caught up on my sleep a bit. :)

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