kate and graeme

It started off well, in that we sold the car last Thursday night. The car had been a bit sick and sorry for a while and we had got used to not using it. So it was good to get some money for it and not have the worry any more. We sold it to the first guy that came to see it also, which meant a lot of hassle was also avoided.

However things took a turn for the worse, as you know on Saturday morning we woke up to a sick Lily and ended up spending the day worrying over her, including a trip to the local hospital (we’ve done it once now, got the story, no harm, so never again). Luckily Lily was over the worst of the stomach virus pretty quick and by Sunday morning we were sure she was on the way to full recovery.

Not to be out done by Lily, first Kate (Sunday afternoon) and later Graeme (Sunday night / Monday morning) came down with the virus also. We both got it much worse than Lily I might add, both remarking on not remembering when we were last that ’sick’, if ever at all. Monday, therefore, wasn’t the greatest day ever and we were both glad to see the back of it and begin the road to recovery. Graeme was home from work Tuesday and Wednesday as we all recovered (albeit slowly) and Kate recovered a bit slower as she was doing the recovering for two.

So basically the week was a bit of a write-off and you might get your Christmas Cards a bit later than we wanted. Though it was good it was last weekend, as this weekend we are off to Copenhagen to enjoy the Christmas Markets there, and rack up Lily’s 5th country already.

Oh and a big Congratulations to my Mum for finishing her degree!

Want to have actual conversations with us, but get thrown by the whole time-zone difference and the fact we have a baby and you don’t wanna wake her by making the phone ring? Want to talk to us over the internet for free? Want to see Lily in real time?

Go here, download Skype, then add kate_and_graeme to your contact list (uh, and if your username isn’t going to make it obvious to us who you are, please include a message - we are unlikely to add any random person). You need at least a microphone and speakers, plus a webcam is good too (these days, a lot of computers, especially laptops, come with both - ours did), but otherwise it’s just a download and install deal. We even have a spare headset/webcam set we can send to someone, assuming Graeme knows where he put it - email me if you’re interested.

We’re trying to keep it turned on if we’re anywhere near the computer and able to take a call. Plus, we’re planning to definitely be on a fair bit around Christmas. You know you want to…

So, we had grand plans to get a bunch of stuff done today, including, but not limited to, updating the blog. None of this got done.

Instead, we spent 3.5 hours in Accident and Emergency, plus the hour or so it took us each way to get there by public transport, since we no longer have a car. Basically, Lily had vomitted a couple times this morning and I rang NHS Direct for advice and in the process, remembered the nasty knock she’d taken to her head when she momentarily forgot how to sit up yesterday. The nurse pretty much said that it was unlikely the two were related, but we should take her in to get checked out in person - better safe than sorry and all that.

Of course, while we there, she perked up immensely, didn’t puke once and was generally having a great time. So by the time someone finally saw her, they came to the same conclusion we had about 2 hours earlier - that she must have some sort of virus/stomach bug. This has pretty much been confirmed for us since coming home, as she’s still in a fantastic mood, but just happens to explode out one end or the other every now and then. Our only worry now is keeping some fluids in her - if you’re the praying type, please say one for our little girl. We’re lucky, in a way, that we’ve made it to almost 6 months without any real illness, but this is far from a fun experience for these new parents…

(apologies for the massive silence and then the not so exciting news, we’re really going to work on that, promise)

For the August long weekend, we decided we should go away for the first time in forever. Since Lily doesn’t have a visa yet, we couldn’t leave the country, for fear that they wouldn’t let her back in, so we spent 4 days driving around Wales.

I wrote my notes of what we did in point form and if I spend too long lengthening it out and such, this post may never get finished, so notes and photos…

Saturday morning, August 23, we woke up, finished packing, and were soon out the door and on the M4 headed west.
Crossed into Wales.
Tintern Abbey - fed Lily in amongst the ruins, very cool thanks to Sharon for the suggestion.
Headed to Cardiff which wasn’t all that exciting but we grabbed a few things in the shops and wandered through the park near the castle, deciding that the castle itself wasn’t worth the entry.
Bus back to the Park n Ride.
Drove to “Llanelli” for the Travelodge which isn’t actually in Llanelli at all. Considered going into an actual town or something for dinner, but too exhausted so just went to the Little Chef at the motel.
Lily slept great - about 7 1/2 hours, so no issues with the change of environment.

Sunday 24th
Woke up earlier than planned by a hungry baby. Fed her and decided to just start moving, so slowly got sorted while Lily played.
Drove to St David’s, the smallest city in Britain (a city because it has a cathedral).
Too late for church and felt weird walking in halfway through, so admired that and the Bishop’s Palace from the outside. Again fed Lily in a beautiful outdoor setting.
Back up the hill to the town - much busier now - then headed to car and on the road again.
Aberaeron for lunch - apparently the best fish and chips you’ve ever tasted… not convinced but probably the best I’ve had in Britain, a walk along the Cardigan Bay, some world famous icecream (according to our guide book) then back into the car.
Longest drive of the day saw us arrive in Holyhead at precisely the right time to feed Lily.
Room mix-up (as in, someone was IN the room we were given a key for) quickly sorted
Total vege - all very tired - Graeme went and got takeaway and we ate it in our room.
Watched some tv and sleep.

Monday 25
Out to South Stack, a reserve run by the RSPB. Main place to see puffins in Wales, but we were too late in the season for that. Very, very windy. We were able to use the binoculars in the viewing tower to see some birds sitting on the water below but determined that it would be good to come back in spring, if possible.
Drove on to Caernarfon, where we went into the Castle. Impressively situated on the water. Where Prince of Wales are invested. All in all, interesting - they had a medieval band and re-enactments but overpriced for what was there. Graeme climber to the top of one of the towers to take photos of the view but the weather turned for the worse, and we didn’t stay long after that. We left Caernarfon and headed up to do a drive around Conwy and Landudno (beautiful old sea side resort). We also took a scenic drive around the head, which was a nature reserve though the weather wasn’t super by this stage, so we didn’t get out of the car - the views were good though.
Went on to Bangor where we stayed the night.

Tuesday 26
Turned out to be a more eventful day than we anticipated, as the car overheated 15 minutes after leaving the hotel. By this stage we were in the middle of the Snowdonia National Park. AA guy turned up and said car was risky to get back to London, but should be OK if we stop every hour to refill the water and avoid motor ways. By this stage it was nearly lunch time, so we changed our plans of stopping in a few places to just stop at a place called Llanfair Caereinion. It was a small village but has a steam railway (that went to the nearby Welshpool) and more importantly for Kate a wool factory, where she purchased some bargains from their sale bin. From here we had a long, and slow trip home stopping regularly to keep the car cool, thankfully making it home in one piece in the late evening.

OK, here’s the photos…

So obviously Graeme has done a great job of letting you all know that Lily is here.

(part of me says we should stop referring to this as a ‘travel blog’ since we haven’t done much travelling lately and definitely haven’t been posting about anything like travels)

I want to write out a proper account of the whole birth and my thoughts and whatnot, but for now, I’ll give you some basic details that should serve as an explanation of why I am going to take awhile to get around to much.

It seems I was basically in labour all weekend. Contractions started on Friday night, varying in intensity and timing throughout the weekend. Turns out my body had done too good a job of protecting little Squishy (yes, I still call her that sometimes) and by Monday morning when I went in for my 41 week check, I was already 4cm dilated and her head was fully engaged, but the membranes holding everything in were still thick. I was told to go home, get my stuff to come back and be admitted to the antenatal ward until there was a midwife available on the delivery suite to break my waters. At 4.10 pm my waters were broken and 6.5 hours later Lily was here. I didn’t get back onto the postnatal ward until after 2.30 am, had a pretty restless night and then a busy day on Tuesday with a constant procession of midwives, paediatricians, physiotherapists and assorted others checking on me and Lily. Sometime in the evening (I was finally asleep for the first time in the day) they decided they were sending me home, which is not unusual here, since most people only stay 24 hours in hospital, but was a bit of a surprise since earlier in the day I was told it’d be another night. I was happy to go, knowing I would be able to sleep in my own bed and not in a room with 3 other women and 4 other babies (one had twins), but then it took some time for my drugs to come through from the pharmacy (a nice cocktail of antibiotics and pain killers for the minor tear as she came out and iron for my newly-developed anaemia which makes me look funny) and we weren’t home until after 10pm. And then, of course, we had our first night of sharing our room with a newborn who had missed a feeding in the craziness and didn’t want to settle. Basically, 5 consecutive nights of very little sleep surrounding the minor task of pushing a 9lb baby out of my body, coupled with an iron level so low I’m kind of embarrassed and I am beyond exhausted. Last night was much better, but it will probably take me at least a week to get back to any semblance of normal… whatever my normal is going to be now that I have a baby, anyway. Still can’t get over that whole ‘I’m a mum’ thing…

Thanks for all the well wishes, emails, messages, gifts, etc.  It’s all appreciated if not immediately acknowledged at the moment.

see here

Also check out the gallery of extra photos.

About time we did an update it seems. You may have noticed we finally (kind of) wrote up our Italy trip from last November. You might have also seen that we have been working on our website. So what else have we been up to? Not much and quite a bit all at the same time.

While we were home in Australia last September, we found out that I was about 5 weeks pregnant (most people who read this should know that already, but since we haven’t actually written it anywhere on the site yet, it seems the logical place to start our recap). We headed back to London and promptly packed up and moved house, a whole 2km away and even on the same bus route, but it has more space and is better suited to our needs.

In November, we went on the trip around Italy that we’d been eyeing for awhile, figuring that it wouldn’t be an option once a baby was thrown into the mix. On his first morning back at work after 2 weeks off, Graeme found out that his development team were all being made redundant. There was a period of a couple weeks when we didn’t know how long he’d have a job, but they decided to keep him and one other guy on for a few extra months, which gave us time to apply for new permission to be in the country (since we were here on a work permit tied to that company). Luckily, being a big international company, they offered him much more than the statutory payout (which would’ve only been about £900) so we were able to make the decision for me to not return to work, which with my dragged out ‘morning’ sickness and the unpredictability of being in a room of unknown London teenagers, reduced a lot of stress.

We had our first Christmas in London. The weather was horrible, but the day turned out pretty good. We had a very long lunch with a group of other Australians who came together because a bunch of them worked together at Graeme’s first programming job and are now living in London. We also got to spend some more time with one of the Aussie couples we had met on the Italy tour as they were doing a bigger trip around Europe. We spent New Years at home, mainly because I wasn’t up to doing anything.

In January we went to Telford. Yeah, I’d never heard of it either. But Graeme got sent out there to do some on-site client work and I went with him. While he hung out in an office, I checked out the area, including seeing some of the flooding that had recently hit and the oldest iron bridge in the world. Also in January, my morning sickness finally disappeared and we got to see Squishy actually looking like a baby on an ultrasound (as opposed to the strange-looking blob that it was at 11 weeks). We call the baby Squishy because we decided not to find out the sex and ‘it’ seems very informal - it’s kind of a reference to Finding Nemo when Dory names a baby jellyfish, but also a somewhat natural progression from Blobby, which was the first nickname Graeme gave the baby.

In February, we went to Anfield and saw our second live Liverpool match, which this time they actually won and scored goals at the end we were sitting. Since then, we haven’t really left the bounds of London, as I got bigger and slower, Graeme finished up at work and started the job hunt and we waited for the nice weather to hit (which it seems to have finally done this week). We’ve spent some time in our local park, which just happens to be Gunnersbury Park (a fairly well-known, very big green space), including playing in the snow on Easter Sunday. We finally got around to seeing the dinosaurs in the Natural History Museum, even though it took a second trip to see them because there was a 45 minute wait the first time we went. We’ve also become ‘Friends’ of Kew Gardens, some very old but cool botanical gardens, which means if you come visit us we can take you for the day and you won’t even have to pay entry.

We’re now on the final few weeks before the baby is born (due June 2), getting everything sorted and wishing it would hurry up and be over with. Graeme starts his new job on Monday.

Yeah, we’ve been slack and never got around to typing this up. So now, we’re just going to do a quick rundown and include a bunch of photos for you to look at.

The trip primarily consisted of a tour around Italy with Contiki. I was going to give a rough itinerary of what we did, but figured it’d be easier to link to the website, so click here if you want to see it. Thankfully, the tour was not full of 18-21 year olds intent on getting drunk every night. I mean, there was plenty of drinking and I saw Graeme under the influence of more alcohol than he probably should’ve consumed for the first time ever (he’s hilarious when he’s drunk too much), but people were still interested in seeing the sights and doing some of the more cultural stuff. There were quite a few other couples our age and plenty of Aussies. Basically, we had a great time.

On the final day, while others were getting up at stupidly early times to start making their way home, we slept in, spent a leisurely day seeing more of Rome and then headed to the airport to fly to Vienna, Austria. The highlight of Vienna was the traditional Christmas markets, where we sampled the warm cider (I had the non-alcoholic kids stuff) and enjoyed just soaking in the atmosphere.

OK, here’s the photos…

aka: We had to go all the way to Glasgow to see an Aussie score a hat-trick

October 26-28

From the same competition that we got tickets to the football in Plymouth, we were also able to get tickets to go to Celtic Park to watch the Scottish Premier League match between Celtic and Motherwell. Glasgow being a not insignificant distance from our place, we split the trip into two legs, the first on Friday night took us as far as Warrington and then on Saturday morning we went the rest of the way to Glasgow. We parked at our hotel, not far from the city centre, and then set about exploring this city that we’d not actually visited yet. The weather was pretty dreary and our time available was restricted by kick-off time, so we didn’t really get up to much other than looking at buildings from the outside and eating some lunch.

Our walk to Celtic Park took us past many pubs packed with football fans and a LOT of green. We queued to collect our tickets and then headed into the ground, past the many policemen and women (and horses) that must spend at least one shift every week supervising the crowd at football matches. It was quite weird to use a modern ticket barcode scanner and then still have to squeeze through the old-style entry turnstiles. We had great seats behind the goal - we were a long way up but hardly any distance from the actual field. There was a great atmosphere, due just as much to the way the stadium was built as to the crowd - the noise just reverberated around the thing. They had some really cool songs that they clearly sing at every match and all went crazy when the team went into a huddle before kick-off. The match itself wasn’t too close, as Celtic were always that much better than Motherwell, though it was exciting to see Scott McDonald (an Australian striker, who played for Motherwell last season) score a hat-trick. The official attendance was 57,500 but I suspect a few thousand season ticket holders never quite made it. Also while the crowd were obviously not as into it as they could have been there was still a great atmosphere and you could imagine the wall of noise once they really got into it (vs Rangers or in Europe). All in all it was a great experience to go to the biggest ground in Scotland.

After the match we followed the crowd back into the city, caught the underground back to where we were staying and got some dinner. We didn’t do much more than that as both of us (Kate especially) were very tired.

The next morning we decided not to just blast back down the motorway but enjoy a bit of a drive through the Scottish countryside to get to Dumfries before rejoining the motorway to head into England. It really is a beautiful and quiet part of the world.

At lunch time and with the prospect of 5 hours of motorway driving ahead of us to get home we decided it would be nicer to go the longer way through the Lakes District and rejoining the motorway lower down. The lakes district is very beautiful, it is not too dissimilar to the Lochs area in the North of Scotland but not quite as impressive. We had fun winding our way around and stopping to eat our lunch on the bank of one of the lakes while watching some locals attempt to fish. Considering it wasn’t ideal holiday weather it was surprising to see the big towns in the area (Windermere especially) so full of people and we could imagine how busy the area must be in summer when you could ‘possibly’ do things like swimming.

We left the Lakes district in the middle of the afternoon and swiftly joined a traffic jam near Preston on the M6, with it taking us another 6 hours or so to crawl our way back to home (our fault for coming home on the last day of school holidays).

Last weekend we travelled down to the south coast of England to Plymouth.  The main reason for going to Plymouth was that I had won some free tickets from Coca-Cola to a football match.  Coke sponsors everything in England and Scotland bar the Premier League, so when choosing tickets the best matches to see were either in the Scottish Premier League or the Championship.  We are doing the trip to Glasgow to watch Celtic, so thought picking a Championship match somewhere interesting where we hadn’t been before would be the best choice.  The result was Plymouth vs Coventry at Home Park in Plymouth.

The difference between going to Anfield and Home Park could not have been more different.  It felt like the difference between going to Homebush or Penrith Park.  The Plymouth match felt like attending a suburban NRL match.  We turned up, parked in the free car park, saw a few players in suits in the car park and got some cheap food from the food sellers outside the ground for lunch. There was a solid crowd (11,000ish), free car parking outside the ground and an easy going feel to the whole afternoon.  The match itself was fun, technically it wasn’t super but it was end to end and there was no lack of excitement.  It also helped that Plymouth won 1-0 and we had no one sit in front of us so we could stretch out a little (how did people ever fit in seats with so little leg room in front of them?!).  Overall it was a very enjoyable experience.

After the football finished (and we got out of the car park free for all) we checked in to our hotel and went looking for a place to have dinner.  We ended up in a inn style restaurant by the harbour side.  We had a bit of a drive around the City after dinner but anything that looked a small bit interesting was closed or wouldn’t have been worthwhile at night.  We were also tired and in need of a ‘crash’.  We ended up having an enjoyable time watching the 2nd half of England losing the World Cup final.

The next morning we started at a huge Sainsbury’s Supermarket to get some Croissants and juice for breakfast before driving a short way from Plymouth to a small town that had a Glass Works Factory with a Marble Museum.  The marble museum was terrific.  They showed you loads of different types of glass marbles, how they made them and a guy was there showing off how they did the glass-blowing on the factory floor.  The best bit was they had all of these machines which dropped marbles from the top and they followed a series of paths down to the bottom through all sorts of contraptions.  Anyway my description doesn’t do it justice, I’ll need to make sure some pictures of them are put up.

Following from the marble factory we made a stop off at Wells near Bath on the way home to see it’s well talked about Cathedral.  The amazing thing about Wells, is that it’s not a very big place, really only a small country town but it has a huge Cathedral that stands out over everything.  As we were there on a Sunday at the time they had a service we couldn’t see all the areas of the Cathedral because of an Evensong service but we saw enough and were very impressed.  After finishing at the church we had a bit of a walk around the area surrounding it with some ponds, gardens, Bishop’s castle and the oldest unchanged street in the Country.  This street, and all its identical houses was built in the 1400’s and is used by those in the Church still today. The impressive things is they are all in the same external state they were in when they originally built.  As it was getting dark, and we were tired when we finished up in Wells we made the trip down the M4 home from another good weekend away.