A pox upon your house

Is this the kind of thing you want to see the night before you move?

Do you need a close up?

Yes, those are chicken-poxy looking spots. And no, it's not what I wanted to see either.

Goodbye garderie, hello stranger

Today is the boys' last day at the garderie. I am a bit sad. It may look a bit grey and dull on the outside, but it's not really. I love this place.

I was so apprehensive about putting T-boy there when he was 10 months old, but I quickly lost all my fears about institutionalised care. In fact I lost a whole heap of them the first time I went there to meet the director. It was a stinking hot day, and she greeted us in bare feet. This may be completely normal in Oz, but it seemed a big deal to me over here. I have never seen anyone outside without shoes on. And even inside it's rare. Maybe I am over-symbolising this, but to me it meant the garderie was run by someone who was sensible and practical, who adapted as necessary to different situations, who wasn't overly formal or concerned with procedures.

My confidence grew as I came to know T-boys carers. They have all been fantastic. Warm, kind, and even loving.

They do great things with the kids. Inside of course, there are all sorts of toys and things to jump on and activities. The garderie is at the edge of a huge park, and they often take the kids to the play areas, or just let them run around outside. They also take them further afield on the bus - to other parks, to the pool, to watch the trains at the main station, to the weekly market in town. I so appreciate this effort that they make.

I also appreciate their efforts to help T-boy with his social skills. Not that he has any particularly worrying issues, just the regular ones for a kid his age. But still, his carers make the effort to help him with his personal set of regular kid issues. I know this is standard procedure for childcare these days, but that doesn't mean I take it for granted.

But what I appreciate most of all is their fantastic relationship with T-boy. Not just the carers, the cook and the maintenance guy too.

There's so many examples of this, but us leaving has really highlighted it. All his carers, even from previous years, have commented on how much they have enjoyed working with T-boy - one even told me he had been looking forward to working with him after getting to know him a little bit last year when T-boy was in another room. They have all said he will be missed. They are throwing him a party today. (With chips - T-boy is very excited). And it's not a small garderie with just a few kids.

So I am sad that T-boy is leaving this lovely group of people, as well as his friends there. And that Little-L won't get to experience it.

----------------------------------------------------

The new garderie in the town next to our village is much smaller and not in a park, but I have heard very good things about it. However T-boy and Little-L won't be going there any time soon - there are 50 other kids on the waiting list.

I have thought and thought about what to do - I want to keep working, but I also want my kids to be in good care.

There's a very cheap option where you pay $5 an hour for someone, a maman du jour, to look after your kids at their home. Some people have wonderful things to say about their maman du jour, and maybe if it was just Little-L I'd consider it. But I don't think it would be good for T-boy to be stuck inside someone's home the whole day.

I'd be happy to have a babysitter come to our home, but we haven't found anyone.

So we're pretty much left with an au pair. There's heaps of these looking for work, from all over the world. The cost is pretty similar to the garderie, and there's the added benefit that we could choose someone who speaks English, as this is what we speak as a family.

But although we can give an entire floor up to an au pair, I don't really want someone living with us over the weekend. Especially not someone we've brought over from another country who would be very reliant on us. And all these au pairs stress how they really want to be part of the family. Umm, no.

So then, we looked for local au pairs willing to go home on the weekend. Nada.

Finally, last week we found someone from across the border, who will be our au pair over the summer and who will go home on the weekends.

We've never met her. She arrives at 8am on Monday morning, three days after the move. I'll let you know how it goes!

Paying for him to sleep

Little-L has never been the best sleeper. He's a lot better now, but still, he often has naps that are only 30-45 minutes long.

Unless he's at the garderie. He routinely has 2 and even 3 hour naps there. Twice a day. In a light room. That is not 100% quiet.

I was wondering wtf they put in his milk to make him sleep so well. But last week I figured out what the real secret is.

On Fridays he stays home with me, but T-boy still goes to the garderie. I work while Little-L is sleeping - but 2 x 45min doesn't give me time to do much.

I have quite a lot on at the moment, and what with the move this Friday, I organized a babysitter for last Friday so I could work.

And what did Little-L do? He had a 3 hour morning nap. Instead of his usual 45 min. So the babysitter arrived at the time I had predicted he would wake up... and Little-L kept sleeping. And sleeping. And sleeping.

So clearly, the way to make him sleep is to pay somebody to look after him.

So who's the blonde??

When C and my brother first met, they bonded instantly in a discussion about my various ineptitudes. And wondering how it was that, in my work life, I managed to convince people that I was capable. This wasn't the most pleasant moment of my life, being picked on by both of them at the same time, but hey, at least they were getting along. I guess.

Anyway, whenever I do anything a bit dipsy, C still rolls his eyes and wonders how I manage in life. But the thing is, I AM NOT NEARLY SO BAD ANYMORE. Honestly. But more importantly, he has no right rolling his eyes as HE is now the chief dipstick in the house.

For example, who has left for the airport three times in the past four years without his passport? Not me, HIM. (One time I had to drive to the airport 65km away in 20 minutes to bring it to him; another time he had planned to spend the night with friends 2.5 hours away before catching the plane from their city in the morning... he realised he had no passport just before going to bed and so borrowed their car to drive home to get it, slept for like 2 hours (during which time I woke up to find an unexpected person in bed with me), then drove back to catch the plane; and the third time he was issued an emergency passport at the airport.)

There are many other silly things he has done, but seriously, it really is my turn to roll my eyes bigtime after a phone conversation we had this morning (with me working onsite at an organization today, where I need to be able to use my email via the web):

- Hi sweetheart, have you changed the password for web access to our email accounts lately? Because I can't login.

- No.

- Well I've rung tech support and... (I'll spare you the details of my conversation with tech support and what I tried to do to get a new password, which was then sent to C's mobile phone, but which didn't work when he tried it)

- Hang on, let me try to logging in with the old password. [Says password out loud while typing it in] It works!

- But... but... that's not the password I used.

- Really? Oh...well...yes...maybe I did go through all our passwords and make them have the same style.

- So when I asked you before "Have you changed the password", the answer was actually "yes"??

- Ah ... yes.

Honestly.

überwoman

I have these visions of being some kind of überwoman once we move to the village. I daydream about freshly baked cookies, a beautifully tended flower-filled garden, homemade bread, a spotless Vogue-like house, gourmet meals, endless sunshine.

Ummm... yeah. Because that has always been my dream, to be a 1950s housewife. And I'm so close to being one.

Because, you know, I already manage so well to prepare a wide variety of multi-course home-cooked meals. And our few surviving pot plants look so happy. And we always have everything we need to make cookies, and never have to make an emergency run to the bakery downstairs to buy eggs. Or flour. Or bread for lunch. And it never, ever, takes us three trips to the supermarket to remember everything we need for the weekend. So moving to a village with no shops will not be a problem. And because I'm going to have so much time on my hands once we move, what with a bigger house, a garden, and still working 70%.

The country air is clearly going to need to be very strong if I am to turn into the überwoman in my head. But the thing is, why is she there at all?????

Starting to say goodbye

There are many things I will miss about living in this apartment. Like how we have 2 supermarkets, 2 chemists, and a post office just 1 minute walk away, meaning I don't have to be that organised when it comes to shopping for essential things. Like how everything else I want is also within walking distance. Like how small equals quick to tidy and easy to find misplaced items (a daily activity). Like how I can hear what's going on in the other rooms. Like the view:

And while the apartment is getting a bit cramped, this town is actually great for kids. There's heaps of lovely parks, a free pool just down the hill, the lake a bit further down, and on our way to and from the garderie we routinely see small planes flying low, trains, diggers, assorted trucks, street cleaners, and sometimes even tractors. T-boy is in heaven.

But there are 66 things neither of us will miss:

Move the boxes? Nah, let's just chuck 'em

We're now 10 days from move day, and I would say about three-quarters of our stuff is now in boxes. Maybe even more. And so far I am not missing a single thing. No, that's not true, I'm missing my winter coats since summer decided to disappear last week. But that's all. All that other stuff, well, apparently we don't really need it at all.

In support of this, having so much packed doesn't seem to reduce the frantic tidy-up-the-night-before-the-cleaner-comes one little bit.