Banged up

Maybe Anna isn't that cautious after all. Recently, I had written about Anna being cautious at gymanastics. But, today when I picked Anna up from school, I found her with a bloody nostril, scraped cheek and fat lip. Yikes! Her teacher informed me that she had taken a tumble off on of the bikes when she was outside playing. She told me that Anna loves to go really fast on the bikes, and I guess she got a little carried away. Poor little one.

My house is abuzz with activity. I have someone here painting the interior -- hopefully transforming our house from being all beige all the time to something more colorful. I've also got someone coming tomorrow to hopefully resolve the drain problem. I'd really like to have the kitchen sink back in working order and reall really want my dishwasher back. I've also made a claim under my homeowner's insurance to see if I can get some help repairing the water damage on the floor. Fingers crossed.

Down the Drain ...

that's where my money is literally going. I'm still trying to resolve the kitchen sink drainage problem and on Friday I had a drains specialist here with a camera in the pipes trying to figure out the problem. He discovered that the main drain for the house is smack dab in the middle of my family room, and, here's the kicker, it has been covered up by our floor. Yup - no access without cutting a hole in our hardwood floors. What the f**k? Who builds a house where you cover the main drain for the house in concrete and put the dining area/family room over it???? I'm so annoyed. I know my house is old and has had many incarnations -- first a single family home, then a divided into two apartments, then a single family home and extended out the back, then the attic was converted into livable space. But this just makes me boil. It is just stupid to cover up this drain. Now, I have a 3 foot square cut out of my floor to reveal access to the pipe that drains water from the kitchen sink -- which, by the way, had bubbled up and leaked water into the subflooring, but that's another story. I have drain people coming again on Monday to see if they can't fix the problem with what we've already done. Hopefully they'll be able to fix the problem just just accessing the pipe and not the actual drain (that's buried in concrete further below the floor).

On a lighter note, I was smiling today about some of Anna's funny speech patterns. She calls skating "scaping" and sweeping "sweeting". Also, when she asks for help, she says: "Mamma, can you help for me?"

Pardon the bad pun, but I'm drained.

Nothing But the Truth

I just got home from an outing with the people that I work with. The director of the organization has treated us to tickets to a play at the Hampstead Theatre called "Nothing but the Truth". You can read about it here. It was amazing. The best play I've seen in a really long time. The play is about the transition to democratic government in South Africa and the process of coming to terms with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission process. It is written by John Kani, and he also stars in it. He was truely incredible. What a performance. I was completely blown away by him. The play itself was also so interesting because it involved a storyline which showed the interplay of the personal and the political in the people's lives. If you get a chance to see this --GO.

Francesca Pig

Meet Francesca Pig. This is Anna's latest best friend, favorite toy, constant companion.

The pig was actually a gift to Elsa from our lovely friend Kelly, but Anna seems to have appropriated for her own use (as she has done with a number of other things that Elsa has been given; just wait till Elsa's a little bigger!!). When we returned to London after our Christmas trip, and Anna started school again, suddenly the pig was named Francesca. I thought where on earth did she come up with that name? It turns out that there is a girl at her nursery school that is named Francesca, and it seems that she is the "alpha" girl in the class. She's among the oldest, has long blond hair, etc., etc. I can't believe it starts so early, but one of Anna's teachers told me that all of the younger girls are completely enamored with Francesca.

Francesca (the pig) has quite an extensive wardrobe. She's pictured here dressed as Tinkerbell with a string of pearls. Usually, her outfits are pulled from Elsa's closet. At one time or another, I think Francesca has worn most of Elsa's clothes, and some of Anna's.

Following the success of Francesca Pig in Anna's stuffed animal menagerie, Anna now has recently named her beloved stuffed hippo, Violetta Hippo. And guess what? There's a girl in Anna's class named Violetta, and she's friends with Francesca. What a surprise.

Valentine's Chaos

Happy Valentine's Day!

Picture my afternoon -- Anna and Elsa had cute outfits, had just eaten a good lunch, and were both in good moods. It is a nice, sunny day. What a perfect time to take a picture of the two sisters. I don't have very many pictures of the two of them together. Who could have imagined that it would be next to impossible to get a proper picture of the two of them together.

This is what I took before I gave up.

Erratum & Dumb-dumb

Elsa actually has four teeth now. The second front tooth up top has popped through.

Figured out what was wrong with the digital camera -- it needed new batteries. Duh. I thought I had put new batteries in it, but I guess I put in old, dead batteries. Double duh. Now, the girls are asleep in bed, so no pics. Maybe tomorrow.

Back, 11 months & cautious Anna

We're back from Barcelona. Yayo loved seeing his two little grand-daughters for his birthday, and the girls loved seeing their grandparents. Anna loves the extra attention, and Elsa loves the extra food. Elsa is turning into a bottomless pit at meal times. I swear, I think she would eat an entire roast chicken if I let her. Mind you, she only has three teeth.

Elsa, or the Chubster as she is known intra-familia, is 11 months. No pictures, I'm afraid. Our digital camera seems to have died on me. I need to figure out how to revive it. Elsa is growing and changing so fast these days I feel like she's going to be a completely different person by the time she turns one next month (I know, next month, can you believe it?). Elsa's decided that crawling on all fours is definitely not her cup of tea. She scoots around on her bottom remarkably fast. The scarey thing is she always scoots her bottom over to the stairs (going down) and thinks it is incredibly funny when I tell her no and move her. What a fun game. Other than scaring her mother, Elsa is clapping, waving bye-bye and generally being a jolly baby (and, dare I write it, sleeping better).

Yesterday, Elsa and I got to observe Anna again at her gymnastics class. She's really funny to watch. Unlike her daredevil sister, Anna is a cautious one. She's finally feeling comfortable on the trampoline and doing some jumping there, but she doesn't like jumping into the foam pit. The foam pit is at the end of the trampoline and about the size of a small swimming pool. Most of the kids in her class jump into the pit as if it were a pool, but not Anna. Anna will go running full speed toward the pit, only to stop at the end, sit her bottom down and slide in that way. Bless her cautious little heart.

Anna also has decided that band-aids (or plasters as they're called here) are solutions to everything. So much so, that when we were watching March of the Penguins the other day, and one of the penguins was eaten by a seal, Anna told me, "Oh no, poor penguin. I think he needs a plaster."

New Toy

I've got a brand, spanking new toy -- a new laptop!! Hurrah for my job! My old computer was giving me so many problems it almost wasn't worth using. However, that is now a thing of the past. I'm just whizzing around the internet today with tons of applications running, and not a problem in sight. Fantastic!

We're off to Barcelona tomorrow for Yayo's 80th birthday.

The Midas Touch

Everything I touched today turned to crap. Boy, what a day. I feel like I'm living in the Money Pit. First, the kitchen sink got clogged, and I went off to get the horrible chemical stuff to clear it up. Didn't really work. I'll try again tomorrow. I'm trying to avoid calling in a plumber. Then the toilet in the girls' bathroom wouldn't stop running. The water tank wouldn't fill up and water kept running into the toilet bowl. I opened up the tank to see that toilets in the UK look different than toilets in the US. I didn't really know what to do. Argh -- if it were a standard US toilet, I'd know how to fix this (believe it or not). Then to cap off the day, I blew a fuse that caused a lightbulb to burst and all the lights in the upstairs part of the house to go off. Double argh because this confirmed something that I already knew, but didn't want to acknowledge -- the electrics in this old house totally stink. At some point I need an electrician to come and fix it. For now, I'm taking the ostrich approach.

By the way, I was supposed to be working today, and I didn't finish what I needed to finish. This means I'll be up late.

Also, I agreed to host playgroup tomorrow. Why????? This means I'll be up even later to clean up and go over the toy boxes to make sure there's nothing disgusting (i.e., petrified raisins) in there.

In other news, Elsa has definitely taken to walking around if you hold her by the hands. It is amazing. She's figured out the one foot in front of the other thing. She still doesn't crawl on all fours, preferring to do a very weird bottom scoot.

Resurfacing

Happy New Year!

At last I'm getting my act together and posting. How sad that it almost the end of January.

We woke up to quite a surprise this morning -- SNOW! And, in London, that means that everything goes nutty. They're not so used to snow here. But, Anna, Elsa and I are having fun. Anna thinks snow is just the most fun thing she could play with. I've posted some pictures from our back garden, including a picture that demonstrates how crazy the weather has been. It has been really warm in England all winter -- we've barely had any frost, and the plants are quite confused. So I took a picture of one of our plants (I don't know the names of anything) that has started getting flower buds and now is covered with snow. That's global warming for you.

We had a great time with Amma and Afi over Christmas, but we've been so busy since we returned. And for the last week we've been dealing with a croupy Elsa keeping me up all night and now we're dealing with a stuffy, red-nosed Sif. Ick.

Just in the (St.) Nick of time

We made it out of London just in time. There has been horrible fog in London that started the day after we left and tons of flights out of Heathrow have been cancelled. It would really stink to be stuck in Heathrow with lots of cranky holiday travellers.

We're at Amma and Afi's house have loads of fun and seeing old friends. Anna couldn't be happier -- lots of attention and a Christmas tree with a number of ornaments to rearrange.

Christmas came early!

I just found out that the grant for my work has come through! Hurray!!!!

P.S. We're off tomorrow morning to spent Christmas with Amma and Afi in DC. 8 hours on an airplane with Anna and Elsa (and Carlos). Fingers crossed that we arrive in DC with our sanity intact.

9 Months ...

and sitting pretty. Elsa still doesn't seem interested in crawling. She just wants to stand or scoot around in circles on her bottom.

Am I in Kansas??

A tornado touched down in northwest London this morning. Yup, you read correctly, a freakin' tornado! What on earth is going on? Thankfully, only a few injuries and no fatalities. By the way, I'm in southwest London, so just some really really crazy weather here this morning (torrential rain, hail, thunder, lightning and whiplash-inducing winds).

By the way, I just looked at the earlier post. When I said that Anna was a little star in her Christmas show, I meant that she was a little star like in the sky rather than the star of the show. Of course, I thought she was a star, but the reality is that Anna was a bit overwhelmed with so many people watching the show. She had her back to the audience a good bit of the time. I got a number of pictures of the back of her head.

Three

Miss Anna is 3 years old as of Monday. What a busy week we've had!

Sunday: Anna's birthday party. Her friends (and their parents) came over for a lunch-time party. They all had fun decorating paper crowns with stickers, and eating potato chips (who knew that Kettle chips can keep six 3 year olds quiet for 30 minutes!!).

Monday: Anna's birthday and observation day at her gymnastics class. Carlos took the day off of work and he was able to spend some extra time with the birthday girl. We spent 45 minutes laughing at observation day at her gymnastics class. There is a little girl named Olivia in Anna's class that is very taken with her. She's one of those little girls that has the mother hen instinct, and Anna is her little chick. She always wants to hold Anna's hand and help her with the activities. Anna doesn't seem to mind, but a couple of times it looked like she'd had enough.

Wednesday: Christmas concert at Anna's school. Anna was a little star in her school's Christmas concert. The whole thing was super cute, but I'm not not interesting for anyone who doesn't have a child in that school.

Phew. Now I need to get ready for a meeting on Saturday with the organization I work for. Hopefully, I should find out if the grant has come through that would allow my job to be expanded and paid! Woohoo. Fingers crossed.

Waiter, there's a fly in my soup, or

in Anna's case, "Mamma, there's a stegasaurous in my Cheerios." Pause, then she added, with an explanatory tone, "a dinosaur." Glad that Anna thinks her mother is a little slow.

All I can say is, way to go for her nursery school. Her teachers are teaching her so many new things. Some mornings, they have a whole collection of plastic dinosaurs out for the kids to play with, and Anna must have learned some the names. She's also started correcting me when I say "yea" instead of "yes" (which I do all the time).

By the way, there wasn't a stegasaurous, or any other kind of dinosaur, in her Cheerios.

We had a good night with Elsa last night, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed for tonight.

8 Months (already?!?), Breakthrough #2 & Anna's New Friend

Elsa has reached the 8 month mark (still no crawling, but she stands like a champ). On one of the pictures you can get a look at the first tooth. Tooth #2 has just broken through, and Elsa is finally starting sleep better.

Miss Anna has made a new friend at school. She informed me on Friday that she played with "Julie-fish" at school today. Turns out that "Julie-fish" is called Julius by his mother and father.

Breakthrough!

Elsa's first tooth has finally made its long-awaited appearance! Hurray! Maybe I'll get some sleep tonight. Hey, I'm ever the optimist.

Random thoughts

• Will my stomach ever stop feeling like a squishy marshmallow?
• Will Elsa ever become a good sleeper again? (please, little tooth, just come out already)
• Am a scarring Anna forever by reading silly fairy tales for her? (she is currently obsessed with Cinderella and Rapunzel; it is the "and she married the prince and lived happily ever after" bit that worries me)
  
• Will Carlos be home for more than two days at a time? (I think the answer to that is no. At least not until Christmas.)

By the way, no trick or treaters. That means I'm left with lots of candy. Oh dear.

It is the simple things

There are small things that just can make one's day. For instance, I just finished folding some dry laundry. The key word here, folks, is dry. Yes, I have a dryer!! Most people wouldn't get too excited about having a dryer, but I haven't had one (or one that worked properly) since August 2003. The lovely Bosch dryer arrived today, and I wasted no time setting it up. Dry clothes in under an hour -- woohoo. At our last house, we had a horrid contraption known as a washer/dryer. Basically, that means the machine neither washes your clothes very well, nor dries them very well. Talk about frustration. I can't wait to wash my towels and have them be all soft and fluffy. I realize it isn't very environmentally friendly of me to get so excited about something that uses up so much energy, but London just is not a dry enough place to hang out your laundry to dry.

Enough about that.

Elsa is still working on getting over her stuffy nose. Part of the problem seems to be that she's working on her two first teeth and I remember that teething always gave Anna a runny nose. Maybe the same is happening to the Chubster. She really seems rather miserable. Poor little one.

Other simple things that make me happy:
- hot, milky tea on a rainy day
- biting into the perfect apple - crispy, juicy and a bit tart (rather than mealy, dry and sweet - yuck)
- when Anna and Elsa sleep until 8:30 (this doesn't happen very often)
- Elsa's bear hugs
- reading bedtime stories with Anna

I wonder if I'll get any trick-or-treaters tomorrow?