Julie's Boggle

Jonathan (20m) having the best time ever on a bouncy castle at a toddler gym yesterday morning.

In just 6 days time – yikes! – we are travelling to Australia for a three-week holiday.

It all seemed such a good idea at the time, but on reflection, it’s easy to gloss over certain things (like the prospect of having a little one sharing your seat for a 24 hour flight) when they’re still comfortably far away!

I’m now into a phase where one part of my head is working on quietly blotting out all thoughts about actually being ON the flight, while the other part is doing its level best to work its way through every minute of it, with a view to not missing anything on the baby-packing-list.

After some thought, I’ve come to the conclusion that about the only thing the airline can be guaranteed to provide, where Jon is concerned, is bottled water and fruit juice.  Which leaves a seemingly endless array of items that supposedly need to be fitted into our carry-on luggage, to feed, clothe, entertain, nappy-change, and (in an ideal world) persuade him to sleep.

As a brief taster on preparing this mammoth list, consider the travel tip that most parents offer, which is to try to follow your home bedtime routine as closely as possible.

• Getting changed into night-time clothes: pack PJ’s
• Bedtime bottle: pack bottle & milk (not provided by the airline for “security reasons” :zipit: )
• Teeth-cleaning: pack baby toothbrush & paste
• Story: pack bedtime book
• Into “bed”: pack muslin, soft-toy, and baby sleeping-bag

That’s NINE items, excluding the obligatory nappy change. Not to mention the stress of trying to get a 500ml bottle of milk through airport security!  (Most adults wouldn’t hardly bother packing one item for going to sleep on a plane, unless perhaps it’s a neck cushion.)

The airline have offered us a “child meal for infant” but I’m reserving judgement on this one and planning more familiar pots of baby mush (lucky Jon) just in case.  (Not to mention lots of snacks, preferably ones that take ages to eat.)

With any baby food that we take, it’s hit and miss whether the quarantine authorities on the Australian side will let us through with it, even if it’s sealed.  So the idea is to go lean and hit the shops down under before the jet-lag wears off.

Anyhoo, we’re getting there.  Slowly.  And planning a bigger carry-on bag every time I re-pack it in my head.

And the part of my head that is trying unsuccessfully not to dwell on the flight (or jet-lag, or any other complications), is reminding me that we DO really want to do this.  Catching up with family and meeting our nephews for the first time will be great, and -big bonus- Tom and I are planning to do some diving too! 

So there is much to look forward to!  And if I don’t get a chance to blog while we’re there, watch this space for some holiday news in 4 weeks time.

After three months leave and one week’s unemployment, Tom re-joined the workforce on Monday.  That in itself is worth celebrating because the job market has been exceptionally dry lately and he hadn’t had many bites in those three months. :party:

However, it wasn’t without a pang of regret that I bade farewell to the comfortable routine that we had fallen into.

Even though Tom has been keeping himself fairly busy over his notice period, there was definitely an aspect of taking it easy. We tended to wake up that little bit later (and got a lie in after the alarm went off), Tom would make breakfast on days when Jon and I needed to get out early, we had family meals whenever we were all home, Jon slotted in as many daddy-interactions as he could, and – most particularly – I had a morning off once a week.

I’m really going to miss all that.

Admittedly, the strictures of the working day is something that the majority of families have to adjust their lives around.  So it’s probably unfair to complain about our days feeling that much longer, or our ability to get things done together being slashed back to “weekends only” – but we’ve definitely been been spoiled!  (And that’s with only one of us going back to work! )

Anyway, after that long break from working life, something to look forward to (now that we know we can afford it) is the overhaul of our bathroom.  Specifically to deal with the profusion of holes left after our little plumbing advantures, and more generally because we don’t think the current layout maximises the opportunities for having a spa-bath installed!

Many years ago in South Africa, we met the idea of an espresso machine and milk frother when visiting someone with a rather posh kitchen. The concept of coffee prepared especially under high pressure sounded so marvellous that we bought ourselves a machine, but really had no idea how to use it. After coming to the UK, we began to realise from visiting high-street coffee shops that the world of espresso is far larger than we’d imagined. So I went looking on the internet to find out more about this kind of coffee. Thus began my love affair with the art of espresso.

I learnt how espresso contains the most aromatic parts of the coffee, leaving behind the less tasty stuff. And how espresso has only about half as much caffeine as filter or instant, so you can drink twice as much without getting wired. I learnt about the art of preparing the shot, grinding the coffee to just the right fineness and then tamping it with just the right pressure to make a puck of coffee grinds which will allow water through at just the right speed for a perfect extraction.

Too coarsely ground or lightly tamped and the puck lets the water through too quickly, resulting in a weak espresso. Too finely ground or heavily tamped and the water travels through too slowly and you get all the oils and caffeine you wanted to avoid. I learned about steaming and frothing milk to a chiffon fineness and the delicate, wonderful coffee foam known as crema which accompanies the perfect espresso shot.

Excited by this wonderful new world I started making plans. Julie has already reported on the subsequent purchase of a proper coffee grinder. And I’ve written about my burgeoning barista skills. But I very soon discovered that our decidedly cheap espresso machine was just not up to the task of preparing the best espresso or the best frothy steamed milk. In fact it’s a bit of a bust where steamed milk goes and for a while we used battery-operated hand frothers, but these turned out to be unreliable and didn’t produce milk as good as that made at best high street coffee shops.

So there we were with a perfectly functional espresso machine which flawlessly performed its function of making sub-par espresso and steamed milk: how could we justify throwing it out and buying an expensive machine while it still worked? We agonised over this for a long time and eventually adopted a wait-and-see attitude, hoping that the machine would wear out.

Finally, a few weeks ago we had our chance: the glass collection vessel received one too many hard knocks and broke. Immediately we packed Jonathan into his buggy and headed out to Westfield, the super-sized shopping centre which recently opened on our door-step. We had no trouble finding espresso machines, but there were a few drawbacks, one being price (especially given my out-of-work status). But the major difficulty was that collection jugs seem to have gone out of fashion and none of the espresso machines available come with them. So much for our excuse to upgrade! We agonised again and finally purchased a De’Longhi Café Treviso.

This turns out to have been a very good plan. The coffee comes out wonderfully, with a beautiful crema. With a little practice, you can froth milk up to towering foam, or a silky smooth body (my preference). The boiler’s head of steam is plentiful, allowing the milk to be warmed from fridge temperature to the perfect 70°C.

So now it’s just a matter of learning latte art, no mean feat if the last few week’s fruitless practice are anything to go by.

One of 19-month-old Jonathan’s current amusements is playing in the shower.  Where he delights himself by closing himself inside, and shows absolutely no concern for the fact that he cannot actually open the door again for himself!

A curious thing that one tends to hear when you live in London, is people saying “it doesn’t snow in London any more”.  And having lived here through 7 winters, I have to say that this comment is patently false.  Admittedly, we’re not talking New-York-size snow drifts or the Thames being frozen over, but with the occasional exception, we have been witnesses to a pretty white dusting over everything at least once a winter.

However, after this last Monday, I think we can safely say that we’ve now seen Proper Snow in London.  Not just a centimetre-thick layer that only lasts a day or so, but a deliciously thick coating that, several days later, is still quietly defrosting in the drizzle outside as I write.

We were bracing ourselves for cold weather this week, but the forecasters don’t always get the snow predictions right so I didn’t get my hopes up.

But as Sunday rolled around, the cold was definitely coming in, and Sunday evening brought the first scattering of white that had our fresh-off-the-boat antipodean neighbours upstairs getting very excited.

By Monday morning, it was clear that this snowfall was going to be something special.  Already it was a thick layer all over our garden and it was still coming down in flutters of white.

Not wanting to waste the opportunity, we got ourselves dressed up warmly and headed out for the closest park (Shepherds Bush Green) just as soon as we’d finished breakfast.

Outside we discovered that the stairs had been prettily decorated with a thick snow pillow on every step (that sadly had to be cleared before we could proceed), and at street-level, there was a layer about 6 cm deep.

Jon was already not too impressed by how long we’d taken to dress him in all his bulky gear, and when Tom sat him down on the snowy ground, the first thing he did was burst into tears.  Poor little fellow, I don’t think he appreciated the fresh, white world at all.

Pushing the pushchair through the snow was not easy-going, but on the plus side, it did provide something solid to hang on to when things got slippery.  For each step onto a layer of virgin snow, the grip was reasonable as the crunchy white crystals compressed underfoot. However where the compression had been done by someone else, the footing on the squashed down layer was treacherous!

On the streets and up on the Green the atmosphere was quite festive.  With most of the public transport experiencing difficulties due to the snow (buses weren’t running, and lots of train lines had delays), many people couldn’t get to work and as a result were out enjoying themselves with their families instead.

We walked all around the Green, enjoying the winter-wonderland feel of the bare, snow-covered trees and the vast white lawns; tennis nets and playground equipment alike etched out in white. The footing was easier on the grass than it had been on the pavements, and there was something luxurious about stepping onto the thick but fragile blanket.

On our route we also found some rather impressive snowmen, and took a break from walking to pelt each other with snowballs.  Through all the frivolity, Jon remained rather sombre, but we took the fact that he wasn’t crying to be a sign that he wasn’t too distressed.

Walking back home we discovered the inevitable black slurries of ice, water and grit lining the major roads, as well as large patches of pavement that had become slick and uneven ice rinks.  Signs that it can’t be pretty and frosty white forever.

Anyway, while I think we are all grateful that the UK doesn’t see snow like that for weeks at a time, for a little while it brightened up a lot of lives and made February seem a little less drab.

(Most of the above photos are clickable if you want to see larger versions.  To see additional pictures of our snowy day, have a browse through this album.)

One of the aspects I find most rewarding about having Jon around, is watching how delighted he is by some of the very ordinary things in life.

Top 10 things that especially please him at the moment, in no particular order, are:

• Switching on / off any light at our request
• Climbing up onto any surface for the first time
• Anything falling, or being dropped, doubly so if there is an accompanying crash!
• Pulling the plug out of the bath after getting the okay from us (this goes with pointing at the little whirlpool over the plug hole and putting the bath plug back in)
• Being boosted up onto our bed for a little impromptu bouncing
• Pulling himself up using us as a support, on his unstable change mat
• Being able to point something out when we ask where it is
• Successfully acquiring anything that he pointed out for us to get for him
• Discovering an unattended item of technology (e.g. remote control, cell phone, open laptop)
• Being allowed to push the shower door open once the water’s stopped

Any one of these seemingly mundane activities – and there are dozens of others – are enough to bring on grins and even chortles of glee in young Jon.

(Of course, I should note that this is when he is well-fed and/or rested, he is still very much a regular toddler in terms of being quite out-of-sorts when either of these two criteria is not met.)

Jonathan’s full-on enthusiasm for life’s minutiae is a poignant reminder that he is on an intense voyage of discovery.  Where so much is still new and interesting, untainted by the weariness of repetition that dulls the senses of us grown-up folk.

And while I find it difficult to summon up any real excitement in flicking a switch (even if someone has asked me to!), getting to watch Jon’s little face light up at the opportunity is the best way to catch some of this vivid joy while it lasts.