Bugs, bugs, bugs

Well we've discovered several types of bugs while here in the UK. First this summer there were these things that looked like giant mosquitos. They seemed to fly all over the place and I often wondered if we were getting bit throughout the night. They don't believe in screens on windows so there's now way of keeping the icky things out and you need to have the windows open because there is no air conditioning. Secondly, the spiders here are bigger than Volkswagons (well maybe not that big), but they are huge and hairly looking. I've had a few run ins while in my laundry room and a few times in my bathroom and I haven't screemed like that since I was a little girl. Another day I was cleaning up in our "extra" room and as I moved over Kevin's ties a huge bee came swarming at me...where the heck did that come from. I grabbed the first thing handy and squarshed it and let it out the window. Well the most bugs Addie and I have been dealing with are so small you can't see them. Today we went to the GP because we had noticed Addison had been quite irritable with a horrible cough and runny nose for a couple weeks. Well it seems that our little one had bronchitis...the cold she had a few weeks ago moved into her lungs. What an amazing difference it made the day after she started taking her medicine. She was happy and crawling around all over the place. I felt horrible that it took me so long to get her into the doctor, but there is that overlying fear that they wouldn't do anything for her. Well about too days later a microscopic bug got in me and knocked me off my feet. After waking up with Addie in the middle of the I felt like my spine had horrible shooting pains in it and I was cold but with no fever. The next day we ran some errands up town and I couldn't hardly get myself home because I was so feverish. I don't care much for driving through lots of round abouts when I'm feeling good, and when you are sick it's about 100 worse because the last thing you want to do is think and you have to be on your A game when driving around those things. Well I ended up with 101.5 F temperature and completely helpless. They had an opening at the doctor that night and he told me I likely had an infection that caused the high fever but he was afraid I was developing bronchitis as well so I was put on an antibiotic. Needless to say, Kevin played "mom" that night and I think he quite enjoyed it. Addie had a hard time understanding why he kept her away from me. I went to bed early that night and woke up in a pool of wet when my fever finallly broke in the middle of the night. Later that next night I felt much better...it was so weird how quickly it came and went. I felt hopeless though because I couldn't do anything. You could say I am about sick of bugs!!!

A Week in the Canary Islands

This week we set out on our first big "holiday" trip to the Spanish Canary Islands off the western coast of Morocco, Africa. Sounds exotic but it's the equivalent of some in the US going to the Caribbean. Things started out pretty interesting for us about 4 hours before we were going to leave - Kevin discovered in the small print that Addison didn't have any baggage allowance. Funny thing was that the "stuff" we needed for her ended up in one suitcase and both of our carryons, so Kevin and I had to skrimp down our stuff into one case because we had pretty strick baggage allowance rules. We took a 4 hour flight our of the London-Stanstead Airport to the tiny volcanic island of Lanzarote. Stepping off the plane we felt like we had stepped onto the moon or a giant rock pile. There are over 300 volcanoes on the island and several of them are still active. We hopped on the coach to our hotel and the weird thing was that they drive on the right side of the road there and we were freaked out since we'd been driving on the left side for such a time. Even though they drive on the right side, all the speed limit signs are in km/hour and everything is in written in Spanish so those two years of high school Spanish had to be recalled in a hurry. We stayed at the Playa Flamingo resort which is set up as villa type apartments. The weather was amazing. It was sunny and hot...about 34 C each day...I think that's in the mid-90's F. We loaded up on SPF 30 and put 50 SPF on Addie and kept her in the shade as much as possible. The first day we went to the beach and floated in the cold Atlantic Ocean. After Addie ate most of the sand and tried eating a few volcanic rock pieces we felt that was too stressful so we stayed up around the pool for the rest of the week. We sat everyday and soaked up the sun. We took Addie for long walks twice a day to get her to fall asleep for her naps. We ordered take-away Hawaiian pizza everyday from the Beach Club for lunch. Kevin played very competitive water polo matches each day and later on in the week I ventured to do the water aerobics sessions in the pool. We attemtpted to do the trivia but everything was British trivia since the resort was owned by Thomson a British company. A nice thing was that the Canary Islands utilize the Euro for currency so our dollar went a bit farther. The biggest treat was that they had Oreo cookies at the supermarkets onsite and we ate them like they were going out of style because you can't find them in the UK. The staff was amazing at the resort and it was very family friendly. Addison did pretty well. We all had to sleep in the same room so the two weeks of sleeping routines all went out the window when she would wake up in the night. The only downfall of the accomodations was that there was no air conditioning, but we did have a ceiling fan and an oscilating fan. The Canary Islands' infastructure was built by tax contributions from the EU so all the roads and such were almost brand new, but because of the strain on natural resources they don't utilize A/C to conserve electricity. Since we were trying to keep Addie's bedtime to around 7:30 we had to keep ourselves entertained. We did so by watching Sky News and EuroSport TV because they happened to be the only English speaking channels and by playing cards. It was a great vacation for all of us to be together, but we learned that 7 nights is a long time for a vacation and we were excited to finally get home and sleep in our own bed.

First Tooth

It finally happened...Addison's first tooth broke through...it's about time. We've been waiting for almost a month for something to happen to our cranky little princess. I rubbed my finger around on her gums and I could feel her bottom right tooth was poking through.

Our Baby's Eight Months Old

Wow...eight months has gone by so fast! Our little baby is growing up and she is the most beautiful thing in the world to her daddy and me. Having a child has certainly changed our outlook on life so much. Movies get me teary eyed when some sentimental scene happens with a parent and child. Kevin looks forward to getting home from work to give Addie her bath and play with her before she zonks out for the night. Tough thing is is she starts to get fussier about that time of night when he gets home so he doesn't get to enjoy her happiest times of the day like I do. She is starting to give hugs and she even gives wet kisses. One little amazing thing she does is now if you put your hands out in front of her, she will actually grab your hands and brings them together to clap like she's teaching you how to clap. She's so adorable. She crawling everywhere and will pull herself up on anything she can - we don't have the house "Addie-proofed" yet. She likes going after the recycling bin so I told her a story about a little girl who got her finger cut off by reaching in to a bin with empty soda cans in it. My attempt to teach her a valuable lesson fell on deaf ears and she still goes after the bin. Kevin certainly likes hearing the story which of course is completely made up, but I thought it was a better approach then nipping "NO" at her all the time.

First Encounter with British Health Care

Today Addison had her first visit with a "Health Visitor." Over here your child's development and growth up through kindergarten age is monitored by health visitors which are usually nurses. You only go to the doctor (General Practitioner - GP) when you are sick. For babies, they usually come out to your home for the initial visit, but since Addie was more than a few days old we had to make our made way up the big clinic in Market Deeping (that's the nearby village with the big medical practice is). Paddi was very nice and she had worked in the States for 15 years, so she was very familiar with how I was used to things in America. We sat in a room that they do the weekly "check up" clinics in to visit about immuninizations and general develop things to know about Addie. It was pretty cold in the room so when she asked me to get Addie down to her birthday suit to weigh and measure her I felt pretty bad for my baby. At Dr. Carlson's office they used to heat up the room and lay down heated blankets when Addie would come in. She fussed but she's tough. She weighed 9.4 kg and was 68.5 cm long (that's 20 lbs and 27 inches long) so she's in the 91st percentile in weigh still and 50% in height. She's starting to slow down in the growth spurt. There were a few things that I was advised to start trying with Addie now that she was 8 months old. In terms of food, we could start mashing up food from our plates at dinner for her to eat. Hard thing is that she's hungry at 5PM and Kevin gets held up at work until at least 6:30 each night. Paddi recommended that I start feeding her whole milk in her cereal in the morning, "Greek" style yogurt and mixing fruit with it (not the sugar loaded kid stuff), and try to get her eating a Wheatabix biscuit for breakfast. (Wheatbix is like a Shredded Wheat biscuit type food). Well I still had Addie on Stage 1 foods which means everything is finely pureed and any kind of texture usually freaked her out. She was doing just fine but I didn't want her getting behind on food I guess so being the over anxious and bought it all that afternoon. Needless to stay she revolted on me and decided she didn't want to eat anything for the next few days. Duh, Corrina - baby steps on changing our routine! The nice thing about it all was that she got so mad about the solid foods that when I gave her the bottle she grabbed hold of it and fed herself for the first time. She even did it one handed (I think she gets that bit from her dad)...no double gripping for this little girl! Overall the first health visit was okay, but for my first child it's probably good that I don't know any better about the way things are suggested in the US because it seems like some things could be quite different here.

Daddy/Addie Day and First British Baby-Sitter

Today was pretty momentous for me because I left Addison twice in one day and was away from her for the longest amount of time since our house hunting trip. I was asked back on our house hunting trip to attend the local production of "High School Musical" and I of course agreed, but I didn't realize it was going to be on a Saturday afternoon and that it wasn't going to be appropriate for me to bring her with me. So it was an Addie and Daddy afternoon while Mommy went off to the show. I did have a great time but I thought about my two kiddos the whole time and had to text message home to see how things were going. Later that evening Kevin and I had plans to attend a get-together at a friends house. My friend had offered that I could bring Addison and have her babysitter watch her, but since we had Addie on this new sleeping regiment we wanted her to be in her own bed. So we had the daunting/scary task of finding a babysitter for the evening. We asked around to some other ISE's and we got Abbey's name. She lives only 5 minutes away in a neighboring village and she was super sweet on the phone but we were about to leave our baby with a complete stranger....we were so nervous, but all went well. We let Addison met Abbey but then I put her to bed before we took off because she had been going through some serious "mommy withdrawl". We had a lovely time at the party and surprisingly we didn't call home...mostly because we didn't want the home phone to wake up Addison. Abbey reported that Addie did end up waking up about an hour or so after we left so she brought her down to play and then she went back to sleep. The really interesting thing about hiring a babysitter is that the going rate for their services is 5 pounds/hour....so if you are gone for four hours that's 20 pounds and that translates to $40 for 4 hours of someone sitting at your house while your daughter sleeps upstairs. Crazy you say...but well worth it!

Hardest Night as a Parent so Far

Well after serveral weeks of giving Addison the benefit of the doubt that she was probably teething and that was what was keeping her up at night we decided to set down a new regime in the Dea household. I had looked up some things on the internet about sleeping problems with 8 month olds and I finally felt that we needed to do something different. Either we could let Addie keep us up every 1 1/2 hours each night or we could start taking back our evenings. It seemed so harsh but we lowered the matress and we put Addison in bed at 7PM and let her scream it out. It was the most heart wrenching thing ever to hear your child scream, and to top it all off it was the first time I had ever heard her call out "Ma-ma". After about 20 minutes she finally fell asleep. When I went to check on her and she had her face buried down in the sheets and her butt sticking up in the air. Needless to say she woke up at midnight and screamed again. It took about four nights before she would sleep through the night and wake up around 6:30. Addison and I (and Kevin) hadn't slept that long through the night in ages and it felt wonderful (for all of us).

Weekend In London

This weekend we decided to take our first trip to London as British residents. Kevin and I had spent two hectic days there a year ago and saw a lot of sites but our goal was to "take it easy" since we had Addie this time. We decided to back pack it and take the train from Peterborough to King's Cross Station in London. It only took 1 hour and 20 minutes and was very relaxing not having to drive. Addie had a great time on the train and even took a short nap. We brought Addison to Trafalgar Square, Piccadilly Circus, to see the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace, Big Ben at Parliament and Westminster Abbey. We made our way up to Nottinghill in search of Portabello Road, but got sidetracked when I wanted to find Kensington Palace (former home of Diana). Well after an hour of walking around we couldn't find it (it really pays to have a good map of London to find things). Kevin had about enough walking and said "I need a pint." We turned around and went into a Tex Mex place. It was a good rest. We finally found Portabello Road and it was chaotic...so many people, but some really cool stuff. The street was loaded with vendors selling antiques to brand new Wallace and Grommit memorabilia. We made our way to the Holiday Inn in Camden Town which we didn't realize must be the tatoo and piercing capital of the UK. When we went to get dinner at 5:50PM the restarants would not allow children inside after 6PM because they were all considered bars, but we could sit outside. We finally ended up eating at some sushi restaraunt, which was really good, but we didn't eat sushi though. The area was a bit rough for a young couple with an 8 month old and only after we made our way through the market area to end up surrounded by "goth" looking people and Asian food vendors yelling to us that all their food was on sale for 2 GBP a plate. The next day we walked about 2 miles to Regent Park and to the London Zoo. Addie loved the zoo and all the animals. I think her favorite was the gorillas because they would come right up to the glass and make faces at the children. The train ride home was so much nicer than driving, but the train was pretty busy. When we go to the station the exit gates were open which we thought was weird. The car park was one of those pay based on how long you stayed there. While other people stood at the machines paying their 5 pounds a day for weekend parking we passed by and snuck out the gate....I hope that wasn't illegal, but why would they keep the gates wide open going in and out with no one around. Lucky us, we saved 10 pounds (that's $20).

A Quest to Find Conservatory Furniture and the Cyclone/Hawkeye Game

Well to start things off you have to realize that yes in the UK lots of people have conservatories...just like in the game Clue, but our is more like a 4 seasons room. Also when it comes to British vocabulary...you pronouce conservatory all jumbled up like "con-serv-a-tree"...sounds kind of like conserving a tree. Anyway I started with the yellow pages, which is almost impossible to find anything in because they call everything something different. So being the techno junkie I am I went to the internet to look for places that sold such furniture and I found two that were close by. My first place was called "Wicker World"...to me it sounded like that RV place in Pontiac, IL - "RV World". It took me a while to find the place because it was out in the middle of no where and my Sat Nav put it next to a pig farm, but I actually ended up calling the place and found it down the road. From the looks of the place I didn't know what to expect, but they had some really nice and modern looking pieces and the sales chap was very nice and helped me load up Addie's push chair (stroller) in the car. I checked out a second place that was hidden back in a scary looking building. What they had really reminded me of one of the "Golden Girls" sitcom episodes. I told the salesman that looking at wicker furniture reminded me of Florida and he asked me "Why?" in a curious manner. I said it reminded me of old retired people who live in Florida that have those tropical prints on the super light and shiny cane type furniture. I don't think he really understood since most Brits seem to think of Florida as sandy beaches and Disney World. Kevin went back to Wicker World with me on Saturday and we picked out a pretty nice set which should be in around 3-6 weeks. When we got home from shopping we fixed up some hot dogs and taco dip and sat around the computer to listen to our favorite Iowa State Cyclones beat the tar out of the Iowa Hawkeyes. It was great to listen to some familiar sounds of home and listening to the commericals was even weirder...an American accent instead of British...it was great.

Guess Who Got Married???

We were in for the biggest suprise when our friends Brad and Jaye came for the weekend. As we strolled to the pub Thursday evening they filled us in on the biggest secret of all...they were planning to get married in Peterborough on Saturday night and we were asked to be a part of it. This was bigger than Bush's "shock and awe" and we were so honored. So on Friday we went to Warwick Castle (one of the greatest castle's in all of England - a must go for everyone) to get some English sites in. We got to watch and participate in the shooting of the largest working trebuchet in the world...yes we walked around a big hamster wheel type thing to wind up a rope to pull over 6 tons up in the air 5 meters to then hurl a 15kg ball that was lit on fire. It was sweet. Addison slept through the whole thing but we got it all on video so we'll show it to her later.
On Saturday we helped Brad and Jaye get things ready for the wedding and of course Addison and I needed new outfits for the occasion so we ran into M&S and I got a new black dress and Addie got a new pink sweater to wear over the same dress she wore in Auntie Crystal's wedding. The ceremony was beautiful and it was so wonderful to see they two great people finally get "hitched". They told us they had been planning things ever since they knew we were moving over here. It was first of all great to have visitors so soon but to be a part of their wedding was spectacular. After the ceremony we went to the Sessions House for a few pints and then off to Tuscanini's...a fabulous Italian restaraunt in Eye. Then on Sunday we dropped them off at Luton Airport so they could head out on their honeymoon in Amsterdam and France.

Did She Just Crawl???

We're in trouble now, Addison is mobile. As we were hanging up some shelfs in the living room tonight, Kevin shouted to me to look as we watched her move forward about 3 crawls and then flat on her tummy. "She's crawling, she's crawling" Kevin was extatic...I said "We're in trouble now." She really enjoys moving around and had been pretty stable on her arms and moving backwards lately but never moved forward until tonight.Kevin also likes to get her to stand up and here he's got her to hold on to the couch and stand for a while on her own. I guess I would prefer her to climb up on the couch versus her always heading towards the fireplace...I can tell that's going to be our toughest challenge. We are so proud of her though. We couldn't wait to get her to replicate her efforts in front of the grandparents on Skype the next day.

Our Sea Shipment Made It - Feels Like Christmas

Our sea shipment showed up today and it was wonderful seeing our own furniture after it was packed up almost 5 weeks ago. It only took them three hours to unload all of our belongings into our house. We quickly found out that there was no way we were going to be able to use everything we brought so as soon as we unpacked we repacked several boxes. As you can see Addison wanted to help out when she could, but unwrapping boxes. She worked so hard though that she zonked out for a nap after they brought in our living room furniture. The biggest issue for me was unpacking my kitchen things because my kitchen here is about 1/3 the size of the one I had before. I got through being frustrated after realizing that I really didn't need to have all of the things I brought, I could do without I guess. Alot of my "fun" stuff got put back into boxes and will have to wait 3-5 years to either be used again or sold at a sale. A big life lesson I have learned over the past month is that we can get by on much less than we think we need, although some of the little extras are nice we survived for 5 months without it. I slept like a baby that night on my very own bed with my new bedroom furniture. Addison didn't do so well back in her own bed in her own room. Poor thing has forgotten how to be on her own...she used to sleep so well through the night and now she's all mixed up. Her room is so much smaller than before and we have no closets so we are going to have to be very creative throughout the whole house on where we can put things. It can be very frustrating, but I'm sure we'll make it all work.

Our First Bank Holiday

Well I'm still not sure what a "Bank Holiday" is other than an excuse for the country to have a long weekend break. August Bank Holiday seemed to come the week before Labor Day, but it sure doesn't seem like Labor Day should be here either. Where did the summer go? We decided to spend our Monday off at Nene Park...along with hundreds of other Peterboroughites (???). It was another beautiful day, around 20 degrees C (around 70 degrees F). Nene Park is a large park trust in the middle of Peterborough which has lots of different lakes, playgrounds, and walking paths. We did lots of walking and looking at the ducks. Mom and dad even bought popsicles for fun and Addie got to taste as well. We headed home after a couple of hours and to our wonderful suprise, one of our neighbors invited us over for a British cookout. He was emphatic to tell us that it wouldn't be like the huge BBQ's we have in the States. We had a lovely time meeting Sara and Simon. I tried Pimm's with lemonade (their lemonade is actually carbonated lemon flavored drink like Sprite) with limes and cucumber mixed in...it was actually quite refreshing. They made a ton of food and the highlight was the pavlov dessert that Sara made...it's an Australian sweet with fresh whipping cream and raspberries on top. We got a lesson on "football" because I accidentally called it soccer and Simon showed us that he was a bit NY Jets fan after telling us that we would be able to get NFL coverage on Sky TV so we were pretty pumped. Sara is a teacher and did a teacher exchange with a gal who lives outside of St. Louis but here parents live in Germantown Hills which is just north of where we lived in Washington, IL. She talked about how much she enjoyed visiting the States and loved to shop for clothes there and how she brought back little satchels of some drink - it was actually Kool-aid packets. Our friends Danny and Min where there as well so it was a great day!!!

Boot Sales and Belvoir Castle

Today we decided to do some local siteseeing and headed north through the country side up to Belvoir (pronounced Bee-vor - yeah it screwed us up also) Castle. On the way we noticed some unusally high amounts of traffic in Stamford and then as we passed a sign that said "Boot Sale Sunday" I told Kevin we had to stop. I had seen something about boot sales on a channel that would be equivalent to TLC and they are like garage sales except out the back of your car...they call a car's trunk a "boot" over here. We saw lots of interesting things old, new, odd, and just wierd. Our goal was to find some new toys for the Addster and we made out like bandits. We jumped right in and bought some books for 30 pence each (60 cents) which we thought was good but the going rate books on the other side of the grounds was only 10 pence each so we loaded up over there. We found a cool block set, a Playskool farm and a Weebleville town all in perfect condition and we only spent 6 pounds ($12). After we loaded up our car boot with "bits and bobs" we headed north through some very beautiful villages and finally made it to the castle which is out in the middle of nowhere. The castle is still lived in by the Duke and Duchess of Rutland so parts of it are inaccessible, but we got to look around a lot of the rooms and the gardens. The only way to take pictures on the inside of the castle is to by a photography license for 2 pounds...we passed on that. They had some British soldier re-inactments going on that day so we got to watch them march and shoot at each other and shoot off canons...pretty cool. We brought a picnic to eat, but forgot our blanket so we had to sit on a stone wall underneath a several hundred year old oak tree...not a bad alternative. The castle was pretty neat but probably only worth visiting once for us. We agreed that we had been spoiled by seeing Warwick and Windor Castles that this couldn't compare, but we would recommend to others...the drive up to it is worth it wether you like the castle or not. We found that our stroller is a bit challenging to manuver because of its size. Also they didn't really thing back in the 13th century that they would need to make castles "push chair" accesible. We ended up having to carry Addie around and she gets pretty squirming in new places and wants to grab everything...even 200 year old swords and stuff. Also we had to haul the stroller up and down steep flights of stairs in the garden.

Improvising

Well since we no longer have our nice 4 door pickup truck we have learned to improvise. We had ordered a new refridgerator and freezer for the house since all we had was our "integrated" fridge (it is the size of a dorm fridge). I had picked out the models and had a friend help me pick up the fridge with her mini van on Saturday, but we were determined to pick up the freezer on our own. It was truly the principle of not having to pay 20 pounds to have them deliver them at some unknown time. So we did what any good engineer/farm boy would do...buy some rope and strap that sucker in the trunk. We asked the guy at Curry's if this was the first time he had seem someone do this...he had actually seen people strap matresses to even smaller cars. We only had 3 1/2 miles to get home so Kevin eased around the round abouts and we got it home just fine. We squeezed in the fridge and freezer underneath the counter in the laundry room and we had about a half centimeter to spare on either side and on top. It was certainly nice to finally get my Brita pitcher cooled down in something. I think I had been drinking more Coca-Cola over the past two weeks, that water is so refreshing.

Look at Me!!!

Addison is having fun playing with her musical tool and learning how to get up on her knees...is she getting ready to start crawling?

Grrrrrrr and Green Beans

Today Addie started making the cutest noise....she's growling. I don't know where she learned it but she has this sinister smile as she does it. She's also taken a liking to green beans. I have a food grinder that I've been making up beans and peas since I can't find any baby foods with green veggies in them. She loves the taste and the texture, but I've found that her tummy's having a tough time with them.

Laundrymat Lesson

We had ordered our brand new washer and dryer from Curry's, but in true English fashion they couldn't locked in a date to deliver so I was feeling pretty hopeless. We had been experimenting with new foods and she had been spitting them up all over her clothes. I had a fear that stains would set, so I hand washed everything in the sink and it took over a day to let them air dry. After a week without a washer I was getting pretty desparate and looked up local laundry mats...well over there what we would know as a laundry mat is really called a laundryette. I packed up Addison and our five bags of laundry and headed out to what I thought was close by in Werrington and to the start of my luck it happened to be that the only time this place was closed was on the afternoon I show up. I went to the store next door and asked the lady for the yellow pages to find another place...in the meantime I called Kevin to look up any places for me online. By the time he called back I was beyond myself. He gave me the address of what turned out to be a dry cleaner in the Werrington Center and they gave me the address of a laundryette on Lincoln Road. I found the place but it took me two times around the block to find parking that didn't look too scary. I pulled out the stroller, loaded up Addie and grabbed up a few bundles of laundry and walked into the scariest place I've ever been. I guess my greatest sign that I was in the wrong place was the carboard sign up on the wall saying that each load was 4 UK pounds each. I was not going to pay $8 to wash a load of laundry. I turned Addie around and we jetted out of there...later Kevin told me he would have never sent me down into that rough of a neighborhood. Once I got home I immediately called a friend and asked it was okay to run to her house to run a couple of loads which she graciously let me. Tough thing was that her washer took 40 minutes to run a load and she only had a condenser dryer so it literally takes 2 hours to dry and then you still needed to air dry the clothes. I washed and dried one load of Addie's whites and Kev's tee shirts and she let some of Addie's other clothes dry after I left. The next day after I picked up Addie's clothes and called up Curry's to get an ETA on my washer and dryer...still no definite answers...ahhhh!!!

I'm Losssst!!!

Today we were finally going to be moving into our house...a long awaited day, but first we needed to head up to Lincoln to pick up our car (finally). It rained pretty much all morning and it must have been an omen that this day was going to be turned upside down. This was my first solo flight in driving a car on the other side of the road and the hour ride home wasn't too bad other than Kevin had gotten pretty frustrated with the insurance company trying to get someone to pull up the right quote we were given. I lead the way with the Tom Tom in the rental car and Kevin drove the new Passat. As we got near Peterborough, I heard "Jane" (our Tom Tom's alter ego) tell me to exit and after that the powers of the universe cast down a spell on "Jane" and she disappeared. With no navigation system, I instantly started to freak out. Since it is illegal to talk on your cell phone without hands free, I pulled off on the exit and tried find a place to pull over so that I could have Kevin lead the way. I instinctly pulled through a round about and jetted off into a petro station, but watched for Kevin, and I watched and watched and no sign of him. I was in so much trouble now. I finally called Kevin and he was cut off on the round about and lost me and then he got horribly lost trying to find me. By now we were 10 minutes from having to be at the house so I looked for signs pointing to city centre. I knew how to get to Glinton if I could make it to city centre so I drove and drove with nothing looking familiar and then I crested a hill and finally saw the Queensgate Mall...I knew where I was! So I jetted north and finally made it to the house. They were unloading the rental furniture and Peter was there checking things out and then we had to rush back into our apartment to get our stuff packed up. We stuffed our seven suitcases, our food, and our child and headed back to our house...our home. We ended up having to do a hard reset on the Tom Tom but it was one of the worst and best days we've had so far.

Carrots and Sweetcorn

Well it seems that we've found the magic combination. We found some babyfood finally at Sainsbury's that had carrots and sweetcorn mixed together. We tried it out on Addie on Saturday and she shunned it a bit but ate a few bites. We tried again on Sunday night and she did a little more, but tonight she actually ate about a half a jar and she really seemed to like it. Looks like we'll stick with this for a few days. I also found some apples that we'll try later as well. I'm hoping that I can mush up some peas and beans once we get our air shipment on Wednesday. Tomorrow we go to pick up our car and move into our house...finally! Our air shipment comes in on Wednesday and I'm so happy to get my own pots and pans and Addie's rocker glider and bath tub. We are going to be without internet for the next three weeks until our phone line gets hooked up and our internet will be another 21 days after that. We are finding patience is a virture over here...everything takes a long time to get through. We sat on the phone for hours on several occasions to find out our phone line was to be hooked up on the 4th and they are still working on a "small bit." I may have to borrow's someone connection to do my updates...talk to you all soon!