Rocking the Suburbs.

Dear Rocco,

It has come to my attention that in the nearly 6 months you have been on this earth, I have not blogged about you. In typical first-born fashion, your brother not only outnumbers you in photos, but you have the added misfortune of a blogging mother who once upon a time did monthly Fred blogs. And in this respect you have indeed gotten less. And it’s sort of indicative of this place in life that your father and I look at each other in shock at how extraordinarily quickly you have become the size and maturity that you are. You brother had our undivided attention for 20 months there and each miniature milestone was met with gasps of delight and demands of repetition. Yours largely goes unnoticed, indeed when you started walking this week we had a heated argument as to who noticed you crawling last week.

Because unfortunately you happen to be second-in-command to the household’s ruling 2 year old, whose character and demanding nature lie at the other end of the spectrum to yours. But we appreciate this fortuitous synergy, particularly in that it gives me someone to exchange an eye-brow raise with when Fred has an apocalyptic melt-down over being unable to free his thumb from his jumper sleeve. I’ve been told that the second one is usually easier, which given the character of your brother and the fact that your dad and I know a few more tricks, was probably inevitible. However the degree to which you are relaxed and content is startling, you fit as though you had always been here, the final piece to the puzzle.

In character, you are a delight. And absolute delight and a gift from all the Gods I never believed in, but now give props to each time you smile. Which is a lot. Whilst Fred required a knock knock joke whilst juggling to elicit a faint smile, you simply need our attention. You sit the re quietly, staring with absolute love at me… waiting… waiting…until I look at you. And when I do, you are beside yourself!! You coo, you giggle, you smile, and you poke out your tongue and flap your arms. I melt. You melt. We cuddle. Bliss. You are my fat little nugget of cuddling, giggling, delight.

If someone had told me I was going to have the perfect baby, I would have smiled and said that all babies are perfect. This is essentially true - I would have thought - until I met you. I struggle to find ONE thing that could possibly be improved on, one trait which I can mock (as I will tend to do on here). You offer nothing. NOTHING. You are as bright and easy and as willing as a little thing can be. You sleep like an angel at the designated times, you eat with a passion. For two people who have struggled for almost 2 years to get their first child to have a solid meal, you can not underestimate the joy that your desperate baby bird mouth – wide open, ready for more the second each previous one is swallowed - gives us. It is heaven. You are focused on your toys and everything around you, quietly and consistently beating those milestones of physical and mental growth. You laugh and engage without provocation and have gentleness and openness of heart which I know will give me, your father and brother such pleasure for years to come. I swoon over you each and every moment I have with you, which being in love as we two are, is every waking moment. To have a kid like you is beyond my wildest imaginations.

But the thing that surprises me the most (and least) is the love. Before you were born, your father and I spent hours wondering how it would be possible to love another kid as much as we love Fred. How our hearts could possibly have room to do that without bursting. And yet they did. The moment I lay eyes on you, my heart broke into a million pieces then regenerated into the biggest, strongest, most love-thumping heart this world has ever known. We are so blessed and rich for having you and your brother in our lives. It is most certainly the reason I was put on this earth, the answer to all the questions. To know that you are in my future makes the prospect of those upcoming 30s, 40s easily most exciting and rewarding time of my life.

My Favourite Moment.

OK. I cant find the exact clip from BBC news that had me and Dave in hysterics. So if you can imagine a posh English voice in the midst of detailing Bush's exit from the White Hose saying as an aside '...and Dick Cheney was forced to leave the White House in a wheelchair after injuring himself trying to carry his own luggage' (and the appropriate pictures of the rifle-toting man himself, hunched over pathetically in a chair). Mwah ha ha.

This sort of relates the point, and particularly like how the phrase 'End of an Era' sounds uncannily like 'End of an Error'. How pithy.



Nice day, poignant day, good speeches, feeling quite hopeful.

San Francisco: Mill Valley with the Jamiesons

So the Jamiesons live(d) in Mill Valley, a lovely area across the Golden Gate Bridge that had a pretty Adelaide Hills vibe to it. We spent a few days hanging about this area doing a bit of shopping (dear GOD did we shop) the outlet malls and seeing the sights (GG Bridge, Sausalito, Costco) and a couple of day trips out to the Napa Valley and downtown San Francisco itself.

Below are some of the pics we took. In order to travel light (not easy with 2 babies) I didn't take my camera (its enormous) so the majority of photos below were taken by Chris.

Emmy meets Rocco. Love happens. Dave and I have decided that if something unfortunate should happen to us, Emily is the person best able to look after him. It was not uncommon for me to turn around and see Emmy watching him expectantly, dummy ready in one hand, wipe poised in the other on the off chance our bubbly baby made a noise or dribbled.

Phoebe meets Rocco. Love also happens. An altogether different character from her big sister, Phoebe did amazing looking after the two boys. A lot of time was spent in the car and the girls would fight for the right to sit between the boys and tend to their every need. Which is amazingly brave, I'm not too sure I want to be responsible for keeping Fred from being outraged (oh wait....). Anyways, Emmy (of course) was amazing, but it was Phoebe who surprised us all, fighting off tiredness to turn the cabin light on and off and on and off and on and off in order to keep Fred from melting for hours on end. She also played beautifully with him over the week, enthralled by being the bigger kid, never hesitating to run and tell us when Fred was acting up or to tell Emily when he had started playing with her toys.

Whilst Edwina worked and the girls were at school we spent our first day in the Napa Valley where Jamo took us to eat the Worlds. Best. Hamburger. Unfortunately no pics of much else from here as the day was so miserably wet, it seemed for too much hard work to keep dragging the boys in and out of the car. We went to one place for a tasting, but as the big boys went inside to wax lyrical about wine, I got left in the car doing a double nappy change, each of a serious matter. F-U-N. After this we went and did some Factory Outlet shopping which was... totally awesome. Neither Dave or I went to America with the plan of doing much shopping - i thought maybe i would try to find Fred some cute American PJs was the extent of my plans - but low and behold we shopped for the whole of England. And it kicked off here, particularly in Barneys of New York where I bought and awesome handbag and gloves.



The next day was spent having look around Mill Valley and it's neighbouring Sausilito (former artists/hippy commune-y place, now home of the millionaires with it's stunning views of downtown San Fran). We drove up around the surrounding areas, stopping for a few choice pics as per below v(Rocco sleeping in the car).

Naturally, every evening was all about the wine. Jamo must have opened 30 or 40 bottles of incredible wine in the 10 days we were there, he and Dave spending at least an hour each night blind tasting and analysing them (much to Dwines and my annoyance as we were forced to do the hard shifts of cooking, feeding, bathing and bedding the kids all by ourselves whilst the boys made love to a bottle of 82 Cos.... this theme of male selfishness was visited numerous times on the holiday,most evident on our trip to Pebble Beach, but more on that in the next blog)

Red, definitely Red.

Yes. There are 4 different wines in those black tasting glasses.

On one of our last days there we caught a bus into downtown San Francisco, and had an awesome day having a look around and doing a bit of shopping (I got some sunglasses and a hat and Dave and I cleared out Abercrombie & Fitch of jackets and polo shirts. Now, on an aside, I'm not a label slave and to mention it embarrasses me somewhat, but I bought a grey hooded parka at A&F, and if it could talk I would ask it to marry me. It is seriously warm - I can go out in London -3 degree temperatures and wear only a tshirt underneath and be perfectly cosy )

Where was I? OK. so we landed in downtown San Fran. walked up Market Street, had a look at union square and then proceeded to make our way up to Hayes St, a street Dwines suggested we might like. And she was right - it was an awesome little street full of locals, cafes and boutique stores. HOWEVER what we did not realise was that it was a pretty long walk there and a taxi would be the best way to get there. And that this walk would be right up there with some of the scariest of my life. Because one moment we were looking at an Andy Warhol in a gallery, we turned a corner and lo and behold were surrounded by drug addicts and screaming prostitutes. It was 10.00 in the morning. As we kept walking in the direction of Hayes Street it was obvious that were were going further and further into the Hood and no matter which way we turned, we would inevitably come across shady gangster-types and homeless people with obvious and quite threatening mental problems. It came to a point that for block after block we did not cross one person I would feel comfortable asking the time. Seriously shady. Not somewhere I felt comfortable taking my two babies, that's for sure. Even the normally unflappable Dave became somewhat tense and moved quickly. That being said, we survived and can boast a tale from San Fran that your average tourist doesn't have. Sorry there are no photos of this bit of the journey but - are you fcking crazy? an obviously well-to do white family taking photos of the prostitutes??

San Fran City Hall. The light at the end of the shady. Where the action in the upcoming Milk film takes place.

Top of Hayes street. Low on Shady

The nice end of Market Street. Outside Ferry Building which housed a lovely food market.

Oakland Bay Bridge. Dave blinking.

(Dave is guaranteed to blink in 75% of photos)

LOOKS angelic, but we know better. Only 5 minutes from a meltdown of epic proportions. Time to go home.

http://www.patrickmoberg.com/november-4-2008.jpg

Fred minus the head-smacking

Behold: A List of Good!

Whilst I appreciate that there are a numerous holidays, kid-related stories and thousands of pictures that require urgent blogging, ive been inspired by this so will instead write a few plans I have.

I’ve never done resolutions before, and I sort of loathe to think of these as such a thing, as they are simply things I would like to do now, in 2 months time in 2 years time. Things to work toward, things I would like to one day do. So lets begin.

- Blog more. Duh.

- Detail exactly what I've got on the 30 hours of video footage I've taken over the past 10 years and do something with it. This is directly related to:

- Get christmas presents organised early.

- Watch more movies. Between juggling two babies and a boyfriend who refuses to watch anything longer than 45 minutes, I’m lucky to watch two in a month. I love them and the list of ones to watch is spiraling out of control.

- Enjoy being a mother more. This dependency is brief and inimitable. Quit bitching over the daily five sinks of dishwashing and inescapable double-action crying sessions. It’s all good.

- Cook more. Impossible you say! True. Maybe cook better. From cookbooks. At least once a week use one of the 261 cookbooks you own and enjoy creating something you’ve never done before. Oh. And cook a roast at least once a week. Easy as fck and probably the nicer than anything from the fancy cookbooks.

- Be less reactive. Be ‘Slow and Low’ in how I answer back when Dave is annoying. Which is 87% of the time.

- Take more pride in wrapping presents

- Be tidier. Which means keeping those cupboards and the utility room in order.

- Do photo albums and put a few pics up in frames.

- Be more attentive to those I love outside this little house. Remember their birthdays for a start. Happy Birthday Buff (yes, it’s today) Happy Birthday Lachy (yes, it’s his birthday already in his corner of the world).

- Buy less crap. Or if you are going to buy crap, give the other unused crap to the charity shop.

- Listen to music more. In our current house, and with two babies sleeping at various times, this love has suffered these past 6 months.

- Do more stuff one-on-one with Fred. Find someone to hold Rocco and do amazing things with him like swimming, the library and soft-play gyms. Get 15 hours a week help to achieve this.

- Finish the Spitfire cross-stich (to be explained in an upcoming blog about the week we just spent in Deal, Kent over the New Year)

- When Dave asks if he can go and play golf (again) – don’t frown and make tutting noises. He’s going to do it anyway, you just lose brownie points.

- If one of your friends or family has a baby girl, don’t go too nuts in the girls clothing section of Mothercare.

- Get Fred to brush his teeth without nuclear fall-out.

- Train Fred to walk calmly next to you when out in the neighbourood. Avoid those face-smacking (can a 2 year old self harm?) flat-on-the-asphalt meltdowns when you dare to stop him stepping into oncoming traffic.

- Get Fred potty-trained.

- Teach Rocco to put himself to sleep in his own bed.

- Engage in some sort of regular physical activity in order to get back into clothes which are not maternity clothes. God knows that 3 years is long enough.

- Less reality tv, more documentaries.

- Remember to water the cactus. The only plant I’ve managed to keep alive for longer than 2 months (how is that possible with bothe parents and a sister who are garden obsessives?)

- Plant some flowers and herbs for summer. This time don’t let Fred pull them up.

- Finish the baby books.

- Deal with the masses of seemingly singular socks.

- Get better at understanding wine.

- Learn Golf.

- Deal with the ankle I rolled at the Fringe Opening in 2006. It is still giving me daily grief, it’s probably something that time is not going to heal.

- Get out of the house, sans kids more than once a year. Specifically with Dave, seeing amazing plays and restaurants in London

- Get into a TV series that is slightly more respectable that The Apprentice or Heroes

- Read all the Man Booker Prize winners. Yes, it’s still happening.

- Make Dave read Shantaram.

- See more than just Pete’s show at this years Adelaide Fringe (although obviously see Pete’s show. Twice)

- Get a job. Use brain.

- Less Perez, more bbc.co.uk

- Tell as many people as possible about the BBC iPlayer. There be Little Dorrit on there.

- Get the camera on my computer working and Skype till they are sick of you.

- Figure out how to get movies/tv onto my iPod

- Watch Warnie’s come out of retirement and help Australia win this year’s Ashes. Seriously. Potentially the only solution?

- Get hair cut different to the one of the past 15 years.

- Take note of the fact that at some point we will no longer live in Europe and we should madly try to see of much of it as we can now.