I joined AA

The flat we put a bid on seems like it will be really hard to sell when that time comes, and the owners want more than the market value for it, so unless they take our second low offer today, we'll pull out and formally keep looking for new places. So, in anticipation of this, last night Simon, Marius and I went to check out two flats. One was fairly nearby, and I loved it, the second was by the beach, and I was not totally in love with it. The first one was a ground floor (meaning first floor in the US) flat and it has a bit of private garden in the front and a huge shared drying green in the back that is dying for some tender loving care. The bedrooms are miniscule, but manageable. The living room is nice and roomy with high ceilings and original crown moulding. The kitchen is a huge dining kitchen with brand new counters and cabinets, and a huge walk in cupboard. The bathroom is a shower room, which will make bathing the kid for the next few years interesting..... But new and lovely. The building is an old red sandstone tenement and in a nice neighbourhood close to Simon's work and walking distance to a great park and duck pond.
The second flat we looked at is by the beach, which I love. But it's in a newer (probably 1930's as opposed to the 1880‘s/Victorian buildings we have been looking at) building with no real character on the outside. It needs some modernization and upgrading, is on the first floor (that's really the second floor in the US), has NO parking nearby. But is has ocean views and overlooks the elementary school's playground and field giving it a really open feeling, and it's a lot cheaper than the other places we've looked at - meaning we could afford to buy a used car if we get it(this becomes important further down). So, we have a lot to think about in the next few weeks. We'll still keep our eyes open though to see what new comes on the market that we'd be interested in.
Right, well, so we were driving back home from looking at this beach flat and about a quarter mile away from our flat in one of the busiest intersections in town when all of a sudden the car died. It just stopped completely in the middle of a turn. Cars were honking like we were idiots and zooming around us giving us dirty looks. I just held my hands up, like "what am I supposed to do..." So, Simon got out and pushed us onto the main street in the bus lane. Thank goodness a car with two young men stopped and asked us if we needed a jump. We had no clue if that was what the little car needed, but tried it anyhow. And it worked! For 20 seconds that is. Then the car died again. They jumped it a second time and it died a second time. So, then we (Simon and the two young lads) just pushed the car onto a side street and it is still sitting there as I type.
I was reluctant to have these two kids give Marius a ride without his car seat, so we told them that we could walk home just fine. Marius was in his orange snow suit, so I wasn't worried about the cold. We got all of half a block, when we walked past a house of one of the professor's in Simon's department. This is the guy who let Simon stay with him for the first 2 weeks while he was setting up everything for Marius and me, so he knows them pretty well. And I thought, I could walk home in the cold, or we could knock on their door and get a lift in their new Jag... Needless to say, we had a very short ride home in a super nice car!
Oh, and the AA part, no, I wasn't drinking and driving. The AAA equivalent here is call the UK Automotive Association, or AA. Since we'll need a tow, I figured joining now would just about make up for the cost since the price of a tow will likely be about the year membership with AA. So, Tuesday I will call AA and get my first tow to the garage. I hope it won't cost too much to fix, as the car is a heap of junk and we don't want to spend anything on it. But since it was given to us for free we can't complain too much. We just want a "real" car with 4 doors. But first a flat, then we'll have an idea of our budget and can buy a car or not afterwards.

Running and Talking

Marius is feeling much better now. Unfortunately his parents aren't though. Simon and I are still battling the pink eye and a cold.
On a more pleasant front.... Marius just did this above today!!! I was totally expecting him to slowly walk down the hall, or stand there and make me coax him. But when I pressed the record button he just came flying at me. I had to film it about 3 times before I actually had time to set him up, run back down the hall and hit record while he still had some hall to run down. He had a 3 hour nap this afternoon, so perhaps we was just resting up for his big development spurt. At any rate, I'm pretty excited! Although, it was a lot easier to take care of him before he was so mobile.... Where does the time go? I swear it was just yesterday we came over here and he was starting on solid foods. Now he bites chunks out of cookies with his top and bottom teeth! While I have not heard any identifiable or repeating words yet (sure he can say mama and baba, but he hasn't a clue what they mean yet) he is making lots of sounds these days. The video below has some of his chatter and funny hand gestures. When he gets really happy he does the hand moves. Every time he gets a cookie he stretches his arm up in the air like he's He-Man.
Well, I hope you enjoy the baby videos!

poor little sicky poo

So imagine waking up to this face in the morning and saying to yourself.... oh good he looks better! Well, the little booger has been having a terrible week. First he caught a cold on Friday and it's been running it's course on him. He's still has a snotty nose and started coughing yesterday - although no fever thank goodness. Then he got conjunctivitis and has been getting progressively more eye goo since Saturday. But the worst of it seemed to be Sunday and Monday because our normally active and wiggly little baby was just laying down all day and didn't want to play or crawl or turn over while getting his diapers changed. We're happy to report that he was actually smiling this morning and more active - despite the horrible state of his eyes and nose. He's still not back to his normal self, but he does seem to slowly be getting better or at least running through the symptoms.
We went to the Dr. on Monday but she said it was likely viral and so antibiotics wouldn't help. But everyone else I know gets drops for the eyes with the conjunctivitis so I might try for a second opinion. I caught the pink eye from Marius and am using an old tube of antibiotic gel in my eye and it is nowhere near as bad as Marius's. I told myself I'd go back into the Dr. today if the eye didn't clear up, but since his temperament seems better, I think I may give it another day.
Simon and I also caught his cold and are going through it with him, the poor kid. So far I just have a sore throat, but I'm sure the snot and cough are only a day away. Simon's loading himself full of cold medicine, but I'm not supposed to take that stuff while still breastfeeding. Although perhaps since Marius is sick too, he'll get the right baby proportion through me? Yeah, I'd still better not and just tough it out sans medication with him.
On another front, our house search may have to begin anew. We're getting a little scared off about the flat's structural issues (not that we feel unsafe but the resale will be a nightmare) and may fully back out of our offer unless the sellers come down a lot on the price. We're going to look at a few other places in another part of town tomorrow evening and then another place by the beach on Sunday. Hopefully something works out soon so we can finally start getting settled. We're really both sick and tired of renting.

Recalled toy in Marius's crib!

Oh my God! I am so furious I can barely contain it right now. I was just surfing the web and happened upon CNN's list of recently recalled toys from MATTEL.... And to my horror, one of them happens to be attached to Marius's crib right now. It's been there for the past several months too! Thankfully Marius is safe and asleep at the moment, but you can bet your bottom dollar that I'll have that thing ripped off first thing tomorrow. It's a little Ernie toy that makes music and lights up when you press a button. Mars loves the thing. But the paint on it has a high lead content. Lead! Great, my son's toy is laden with a chemical that can cause sever damage to his nervous system!!!! It's a good thing that Marius has never taken to putting this thing in his mouth, as it's stuck to his crib and not laying around where we can sit there and gnaw on it.
Well, I had toyed (no pun intended) with the idea of banning all Chinese made toys from the house. But that is not an easy thing to do these days. Well, "ease" really isn't my main concern anymore, so the Chinese ban is now in effect. So, if any Christmas presents of questionable origin are headed over here, you can kindly donate them to charity (right, poison all of those underprivileged kids...) or return them. To be perfectly honest, Marius prefers half filled water bottles and empty cereal boxes to most of his other toys anyhow, so save your money. I tell you, it won't be easy though, as it is very hard to find toys that are NOT made in China, and if you do find them they're quite expensive. Luckily Simon's mom still has tons of his old toys, which predate China's rise to export king of the world, so we have plenty of wooden toys made 30 years ago in Sweden which will make it over here in good time.

What's a little subsidence...... right?

Well, our offer on the flat was accepted (our solicitor wanted us to bid less than the asking price but we didn't want to risk it), and the survey on the flat has already happened. Most of it has happened I should say... Our solicitor called back and said that the tenement (that's what they call the older stone 3-5 story apartment buildings here) has had lots of underpinnings and a steel plate put underneath it. She said all this as if I should be freaked out, but I was like "thank goodness because it needs it in this area." We know someone next door and had heard all about the subsidence problems in this block due to an underground stream - how at one time the whole block was scheduled for demolition - but that a lot of the buildings had sunk several pretty pennies into reinforcing the buildings - yada yada yada. Our concern was not that it had structural issues, because we already knew that, we just wanted to make sure that the work had already been done so that we wouldn't need to worry about paying for it. But like I said, the solicitor was all cautious about the fact that the work had needed to be done and said that lots of customers back out of the deal as soon as they hear that any structural work has been done on a property. Maybe it's just because we're from California and structural work on buildings seems like a standard thing? Maybe it's just because we already knew about it and so were expecting to hear it? But I'm really not worried about the walls falling off or anything crazy like that. I am a bit worried about the resale of the flat when the time comes.... If our solicitor tried to flag us away, will the next lot of potential customers be shooed away too?
Oh well, we won't worry about it just yet. Once we get the full report from our survey I guess we can decide if we want to bail on this flat (and loose about $1K on the survey - ugh!) and continue looking or if we are happy with it as is and will continue with the sale. I'm thinking that we'll end up taking it. It's really nice! The kitchen is HUGE and living room is likewise quite large. There's a separate study with lots of built-in shelves for our books and CDs and it's only one flight of stairs. No private garden (there was not chance we could afford a private garden in this posh of a neighborhood).... but there's a shared garden, well they call it a "drying green" (aka grassy lawn) since most people hang their clothes to dry, even in the summer when it's raining! It's a snap in the winter because you just lay them on the radiators and they dry quicker than in the dryer and for no extra energy - but I digress!
So, to make a long story slightly less long... We get the full survey result on Monday, once the guy has had time to review the engineering reports that were obtained for the building. I'll let ya know how it all plays out!

Happy Haggis Hunting

Well, it's that time of the year. You know, Haggis season! I can't wait to hunt me a nice little haggis for Thanksgiving dinner! You can hunt your own haggis too at http://haggishunt.scotsman.com/ I think the streets of Edinburgh have the best haggis, so that's where I'd look personally. But I am an American, so perhaps I'm not the most qualified to hunt them.
I've been a busy little house hunter lately too. We just went to see three flats this evening and one of them looks perfect!!!!! I'm going to call our solicitor tomorrow to see what she says. I'm not sure we have our finances quite ready to put in a bid, but we'll see. The one we like was just put on the market this week and I'm sure it will go VERY quickly! Keep your fingers crossed for us, or if you're religious say a prayer to God, Buddha, Mohamed, Krishna and Lobstroro!!!

Soliciting in the dark

OK, so the title is a bit misleading. I saw a solicitor (a lawyer in American) this afternoon to talk about buying a flat. The UK doesn't have real estate agents or title companies. They have special property lawyers who handle the whole thing. Scotland in particular makes you use them to put in a bid on a house, so there's no "for sale by owner" here. Basically she told me pretty much what I had already read up on, but it was reassuring to have our thoughts confirmed by a pro. Basically, we want to buy in the city and in an old building, as the more modern buildings (which we just think are ugly for the most part) don't appreciate in prices over time.
As of today all of our US $ are being transferred over here and into UK £. So now I just need to talk to a bank and see about the loan portion. Loans are also totally different here. There are no "fixed rate" loans here. They all fluctuate with the Bank of England (similar to the Fed in the US) rates. There are also a lot of things we need to be wary of, like penalties for paying the loan off sooner than the time period. So, hopefully the whole process won't be too confusing. But we bought a book on the subject, called "Buying a home in Scotland," and we have grilled just about everyone we have ever met about the subject. So, I feel fairly comfortable with the process. It's not quite as stressful as our first home buying adventure in Tallahassee.... Oh, I still miss our old garden there! We sure as heck won't have anywhere the size that we had in that little house. We won't have a house for one thing.... Oh well, it's exciting European living! That's what I'm trying to tell myself!
Perhaps you're still wondering about the whole dark thing. Well today at 5:30 the power went off on our whole block, perhaps more, but I looked out the window and didn't see any lights anywhere on our block at least (although Simon had power at the university so it wasn't a huge outage or anything). Since it's already totally dark here by then, I had to make it to my bedroom where thankfully I had just placed a flash light this weekend. What luck! I would never have found the matches without it. The power was out for an hour, and Marius was starting to freak out a bit without the lights. He didn't even settle down much when I lit a bunch of candles. (Thanks for the X-mas present Paula! Thankfully I opened it early and could use it easily.) You know, perhaps it's because I now have a little one, or perhaps it's because I am still not 100% comfortable here yet, but I had a little nervousness during the whole outage that I never used to get when the power would go out in the states. My first reaction, was "Oh no, I have no clue what's going on, and no clue how to find out what's going on." I guess I could have walked downstairs and turned on our car radio if I had really thought about it, but that didn't occur to me and my nerves were calmed once I called Simon and heard that he was all light up and working at the university just fine. In the states I just figure that the power will be up and running soon enough and never worry. But things here never run as smoothly as I think they ought to, and I half expected to find out that if the power goes off after hours, then they don't fix it until the morning. I don't know, how am I supposed to know how things operate here? The light bulbs don't even freaking screw in, so you never know. Luckily that's not the case, which would have been terrible since we have an electric water heater and our radiators wouldn't have worked.

Like Mother Like Son... first word recognition!

Well, today I really noticed that Marius knows the meaning of at least one word. You might think it would be Marius, momma, daddy, or milk wouldn't you.... Yes, one would think that. But my son, doesn't truly seem to know the meaning of those words yet. However, today, when I put Marius in his highchair and asked him if we wanted a "biscuit" he started smiling and bouncing up and down in his seat. He had previously only done this after I asked him if he wanted a biscuit as I signed it and then pulled out the crinkly biscuit wrapper. But now it appears that now he knows the word before I sign it and before I even go to the cupboard to pull out the biscuits. Oh, and in case you're wondering why he would get excited about biscuits and gravy... in the UK biscuits are the same thing as cookies. And since we learned the sign and words for "biscuit" in our sing and sign class, I say that instead of cookie. But before you go and think that I give my son tons of junk food....just know that I call rice crackers biscuits, and he gets equally excited about them as he does the more sweet organic baby biscotti that I also call biscuits.
I bet biscuit will be his first proper word too. As long as he says momma before daddy, I'll be OK with that!

Walking Adventures

One of Simon's coworkers just gave us her children's old push cart with blocks yesterday. I am so excited because they are not cheap and I was really wanting one for Marius anyhow! It is taking Marius some getting used to though.... At first he didn't want to touch it because it kept moving and dragging him forward. Then after lots and lots of positive reinforcement from Mommy and Daddy, he warmed up to it.

St. Andrews

Yesterday we went to St. Andrews, which is about 1.5 hours north of Edinburgh. The drive up was gorgeous, and Marius slept the whole way which was an added bonus! The town is pretty small, about 18,000 people and half of them are students at the University. As you drive up to the town, you first drive by the famous golf courses located right on the coast. The town itself is adjacent to the course and lays slightly higher up on a coastal bluff giving it great views out to sea. The university is one of the oldest in the UK (third to be exact) so it has a prime old town location in the heart of the town and along the bluff. In typical UK university style, the buildings are mostly stone with slate roofs and many of them are super old. Gorgeous! Our friend is lucky enough to be renting a HUGE flat that is literally across the street from the university. The place is 3 stories and has 3 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms!! And he lives by himself, can you believe that? So, needless to say, I think we'll end up visiting him often! If only Simon liked and played golf, he'd be all set, right?

Oh, and the street that our friend lives on is called Butts Wynd! Too funny huh? I'm sure they pronounce it "wind" is in to wind up a toy and not "wind" as in to fart. But I took a photo anyhow!!! I love how the old street "sign" or rather stone block is still visible next to the modern one. I hope that detail comes through in the photo.
So, anyhow, we spent the day just walking around the golf course and town. It was a lot more cold than I had expected, and I didn't have Marius's blanket in the car... So I had to do some quick shopping to get him some warm coverings. The little kids shop I popped into was on the shi-shi-foo-foo side (like most of the shops in St. Andrews as it's sort of like a Santa Barbara in that there is a lot of money floating around the place), but luckily they were having a sale on snow suits!!! So, I got Marius the ridiculous orange outfit you see in the photos! Simon loved the thing and insists that I come visit him at work with Marius in it. He looks like a giant carrot in it!

Happy Guy Fawkes Night!

It's the 5th of November everyone! Tonight the fireworks are going off all over town, in such a display. It's way more than any 4th of July celebration I've ever seen. The Scots certainly know how to light things on fire and shoot off fireworks.
The 5th of November is called Bonfire Night or Guy Fawkes Night. It commemorates the failed attempt, (or attempt for us northern rebel-type Catholics!!!) to blow up the English Parliament 400 years ago. Fireworks have been going off all week, but it's been non-stop tonight for the past 3 hours or so. Crazy! And I'm not talking about the little Piccolo Pete's, these are the full blown sky exploding cannons that just random people are lighting all around the city! I can see fireworks in the sky as I type in fact.

Tomorrow we're all driving up to St. Andrews to check out the town and pick up our friend who just got a job there at the University. For your info... St. Andrews University is where William, Prince of Wales, graduated. Interestingly, the department our friend will work in is the same one (Geography) that the Prince majored in. Apparently he received no favoritism, and in fact they had all of his classes graded blindly so that no one would ever suggest he was given preferential grades.
But the city itself is supposed to be quite pretty and comparable to an Aspen, CO, in that it's a vacation town for the super wealthy. All of you avid golfers out there will be jealous, as St. Andrews is the home to "The Old Course," which is the most famous course in the world. Not that I'd know, but that's what I hear. I don't think we'll be going to visit the course, but I may pick up a postcard for Mr. McMorrow!

Nearly New Madness

I had heard lots of mothers talk about these "nearly new" sales that the Nation Childbirth Trust (a nonprofit mother and babies group) puts on. All the talk was that one should get there early and that people literally ran to get to the items they wanted. I imagined the old Mervyn's commercial where the woman was tapping on the doors, saying "open, open, open." So, today there was one for the NCT group in East Lothian (the county just east to Midlotion, where Edinbourgh is) and I decided that we should check it out. The sale started at 2:00 pm, which meant that we needed to leave the house at 1:30 if we wanted to get there at opening.
We ended up getting there at 2:05 or so, and there was a HUGE line (or as we say here a queue) of people around the block, literally waiting to get into this auditorium type place. I decided to hop out of the car, while Simon found parking and brought the boy in. It was such a zoo in there! Women running around with huge bags, shoving items in them and running on to the next. Mothers and fathers rummaging through tables of clothing and toys and grabbing anything and everything. The feeling in there was so frantic, I had totally forgotten what I was thinking about getting. I felt the urge to grab up tons of stuff and punch people out of my way! It's amazing how the power of mass hysteria works! And that's not too far from how this place was!!!
I had originally gone there to look for this sleeping bag type thing that people put on the strollers to keep babies warm while pushing them around. Well, if there were any of these footmuffs as they call them, I would never have known. I walked over to the stroller section, but there were only a few actual strollers and some mothers frantically looking them over to see if they wanted them. I couldn't have exactly gone over and looked at the item in another mom's hands, and I didn't see any muffs just laying around. So, I though to myself.... Well, Marius does need some more long sleeve clothing and perhaps a jacket. He's got plenty of clothing right now, thanks to lots of friends and family who have given him stuff. But, his current jacket may not fit in another month, so I thought I'd better just look to see. Since clothes is so expensive here, I was shocked at how cheap everything was. I ended up getting a thick warm jacket, 4 sweaters, and a long sleeve flannel shirt. I'm kicking myself for not getting any pants, but it was just so loud and crazy, I couldn't hear myself think in there.
On a whim I picked up a toy with lights and buttons for Marius too. In the end I only spent £9.50 (about $20) for the lot of things. Amazing! I'm never going to buy Marius anything brand new again! Except for the odd diaper (Oh, did I mention that I've made the switch to cloth diapers??? I'll save that story for another blog) and wooden (not "made in China" with toxic lead paint) toy.
Once all three of us got out of that place, Simon made us all sit down to gather our whits about ourselves! He was way more stressed out than I was, and he just walked in late, found me, and told me to get out of there. I was the one doing the looking and trying to think of what me may need in the next few months, while trying to look out for "the good stuff." Well, luckily there's another sale in Edinburgh next month. I'll totally be prepared then! Plus, my local NCT chapter is looking for a volunteer to organize their nearly new sale in April. One of the perks is that you get the pick of the lot before the mad rush.... That's incentive alone to put in the hours of work needed. I'm going to email the chapter president and volunteer my services!
Once we caught our breaths, we decided to head over to Tantallon Castle, which we have been intending to see for months. The place was spectacular! I swear, there are castles every 5 miles or so in Scotland, and they are all SO cool! This one has perhaps the best setting though. It's right on the coastline on a bluff. The views of the Forth were spectacular! And the castle itself was super cool! This one was complete with a moat (although not filled), pit prison, and spiral staircases. The stairs always freak me out a bit, since they're SO narrow and in the shape of wedges, so the step goes down to nothing in the inside of the spiral, if that makes any sense...
Well, even though I will still need to use blankets with the stroller to keep Marius warm for now, it was quite a nice day. Tomorrow we'll probably try to check out some more flats/houses for sale. Thursdays and Sundays are the open house days to do this. Who knows where we'll look tomorrow. We're still waiting for the freaking dollar to go up before we transfer our down payment dollars into pounds, but since the Federal Reserve just lowered interest rates again in the US.... The dollar has plummeted in value much more sharply than it had been going before. So, we're hoping that things will bounce back up a bit in the next week. NOT BLOODY LIKELY if you ask me.... Thank you George W. Bush, for putting the US into a huge debt of a black hole and making the US dollar worth slightly more than toilet paper!!!!!! But really, I'm not upset about my life savings disappearing before my very eyes..... I'm just waiting for the US to issue new dollars like Mexico had to do with the peso once it got to be too worthless.... OK the US dollar won't get THAT bad, but it is super crappy at the moment.

OH... P.S. Happy Birthday Paula!!!!! Today my lovely sister has a grand total of 40 years under her belt! Let's just say that she's less than ecstatic about the monument.