September 2002

Went round to Doron and Antonia’s for brunch this morning, and then Dave dropped by for a visit in the afternoon. He’d come down to London for the peace march, which is thought to have been the largest public demonstration ever in Britain, with an estimated 500,000 people on the streets. Nova was a little bit shy at first, but within a few minutes she was yakking away to him, and bringing him book after book to read.

Things got a bit lively on the subject of education. A couple of the moms attended church regularly although they weren’t religious to boost their kid’s chances of getting into St. Michael’s (our closest school, and affiliated with the Church of England). Another drove her seven-year-old 45 minutes across London to attend a particular school she’d wangled him into. One woman had engaged a private tutor for her daughter to help her get into a good high school (apparently most middle class kids have tutors nowadays…) And these aren’t private schools they are talking about. There is this much bullshit, inequality, and hassle involved in getting your child a decent education through the state school system. I found the whole thing quite depressing…

Jenny’s a great cook, and the food was terrific: homemade samosas; baked monkfish coated in a sundried tomato sauce and wrapped in pancetta, mash and roast cherry tomatoes in balsamic dressing; fruit crumble with custard or cream (most had both — those English and their cream). Stayed until midnight, which is a bit late for me these days, and had three glasses of wine, which I felt this morning…

The pictures show a slender, expressive little girl engaged in all sorts of complicated activities — drinking from glasses, putting on her shoes, looking at books. It’s most noticable in the photos with both Nova and Ben. There’s not much difference in size — Nova is a bit taller, and I think Ben’s a bit heavier – but it’s their expressions and posture that tell the story. It’s all going by so quickly…

Nova slept through both car journeys, and subsequently was feeling much more alert that her exhausted (definitely middle-aged today) parents. I managed to rustle some lunch together, then Adam headed straight off to an afternoon party in Hazlemere. It was a two-hour train journey each way, and not something he particularly felt like doing after all day’s travelling, but it was the 43rd birthday of a colleague who’s recently been diagnosed with motor neurone disease, and he wanted to make the effort.

I was really hoping Nova would go down for a nap, but she kept toddling around, dragging things out of bags and cupboards and bins, and thrusting books in my hands. In the end, I had to put her in her cot and listen to her bawl for a half hour while I lay with my eyes closed, until guilt outweighed exhaustion.

Eventually I succeeded in tiring her out with endless rounds of a new favourite book, “Do you like ketchup on your cornflakes?” and the two of us hand a couple of hour’s sleep in our bed. Mercifully, there was a Teletubbies double bill on at 6pm, which kept her happily engrossed while I prepared her dinner. Adam was back at 7pm to help with bath and bed…

September 20, 2002
Last day of our Spanish holiday, and we took it even easier. There’s been a floating idea of a day trip to Granada, about two hours away, but for various reasons it’s kept slipping off the agenda, and when a phone call this morning confirmed that all the pre-booked tickets for the day were sold, that settled it. Instead we travelled two minutes to the pool, where I finally tried egg and chips.

Apparently it’s important to break your yolk up so that it coats the chips. I wasn’t crazy about that idea (I’m not really a fried egg person), but it was alright. I think it helped that it was a good quality egg served with homemade chips. (The English cafe equivalent doesn’t really bear thinking about…)

I wanted Nova to have a good nap with tomorrow’s busy travelling day, so I stayed back and napped with her while the others went to the beach. (She rewarded my motherly instincts by producing a massive poop in her sleep that burbled out of the top of her nappy, soaking her tummy and teeshirt, required ten wipes to clean up, hand laundry, and room airing… I was wishing I’d sent the little beggar to the beach with her daddy…

Had a nice dinner at another local fish restaurant. Not quite the fine dining experience of the previous place, but they had a gorgeous clifftop balcony, two highchairs (instead of the usual none), and a fantastic house white. Nova ate like the family honour was at stake: half a potato mashed with tuna and cheese, a pile of green beans, some rice and seafood sauce, several chips, a hunk of bread, cucumber slices, a handful of corn, a box of raisins, two dinosaur biscuits, a third of a creme caramel (I guess she freed up a lot of space with that massive poop). Dina and I shared an enormous squid that had been grilled with garlic and parsley and sliced across like a loaf of garlic bread. It was truly impressive…

Back at the ranch, Adam headed straight for the balcony to continue his endless backgammon tournament/drinking session with Eytan, while I got Nova to bed and did the packing. With our 4:30am start looming, I piously went to bed at 10:30pm — and spent the next three hours tossing and turning, because:

• it was hot and sticky
• my bed was full of fine-grained sand
• the neighbours were having a drunken party, accompanied by a CD that could only have been called “Whiny hits from hell you thought you’d never have to listen to again… they’re baaaack!”
• I had an espresso after dinner and a cup of tea at home
• poor Ben is getting his first teeth

I’d worked my way through all 50 American states, and was busy dredging state capitals from my memory in an attempt to bore myself to sleep — Augusta, Maine, anyone? — when Adam came to bed at 12:30am, commiserated briefly about the noise from the party, and within minutes was snoring smugly from his side of the room.

From that point, Eytan trying to saw through the bedroom ceiling with his snores could be added to the above list. I drifted off some time after 1:30am when the party broke up, but at 2:30am Nova let out an enormous howl. I went into her room to rub her back, but as I reached down she sprung up and clung to me, and I had no choice but to bring her back to bed with me. I

I tried settling her on my tummy, but it we generated so much body heat she kept flipping her little face back and forth like a burger on a grill, so I shifted to the very edge of the bed and let her lie down. After about 20 minutes she was sleepy enough to be transferred back to her room, and at last I settled down to an hour or so of sleep before the alarm went off.

Stopped for ice creams on the way home. Nova has got past the cold thing, and is now definitely a convert. Adam thought perhaps she shared his indifference to ice cream, but I think that’s unlikely…

Dinner in tonight, followed by a wine-fuelled discussion on whether it is justified to bomb Iraq. Eytan and Dina are for it, Adam and I against. Dina is Israeli, and Eytan has family there are well, which gives them a different perspective on the Middle East. Eytan and I tend to disagree on most things, although in some ways we are very similar. My understanding of his arguments:

• he trusts Tony Blair more than Saddam Hussein, Blair has access to information we’ll never see, and why would he lie about Saddam’s military capacity
• whether Saddam has weapons of mass destruction or not, he’d like to have them, would use them if he could, is seeking to destabilise the Middle East
• look what happened when Hitler was left unchecked, better safe than sorry
• the Americans can only do one thing at a time, and Saddam is the biggest threat on the horizon
• it has nothing to do with oil.

From my perspective:

• I don’t think any politician worries much about telling the truth, I don’t trust Blair or Saddam
• I haven’t seen any convincing evidence that suggests Saddam has weapons of mass destruction (according to that weapons inspector who’s been speaking out, any weapons he’d managed to hide would be past their shelf life and no longer effective, and it would be impossible for them to produce new weapons without the Americans detecting it through their constant monitoring)
• Saddam is no greater threat than he has been for the last ten years, and I find the timing suspicious to say the least
• Saddam, while a brutal dictator, is not Hitler; Milosevic fits that argument better, and the allies (eventually) did act
• Saddam is not the biggest threat on the horizon — if they are genuinely concerned about international terrorism both Pakistan and Saudi Arabia seem more threatening (if politically inconvenient) targets
• it has a lot to do with oil, and the potential benefits to America of a regime change in Iraq.

I don’t think any minds were changed, but it was certainly a lively evening…

Phone call from my parents, with dad playing “Happy Birthday” on his accordion while Mom sang. Adam and E&D gave me cards, and weirdly, Nova came toddling in and present me with a folded playing card. (I don’t think anyone put her up to it either — no one ever mentioned it…)

After our usual breakfast of fruit, bread, cheese, cold cuts etc, we headed off to Frigiliana, a lovely white, hillside village about 15 minutes drive away. Spent an hour or so climbing the cobbled streets, with Nova riding high in her backpack, then stopped for a drink at a terrace restaurant with wonderful views of the valley, surrounding hills, and distant coast.

Ate lunch by the local pool. I flirted with the egg and chips idea, but went for the mixed salad instead. Nova and I went for a dip while we waited for the food to arrive. She’s getting so relaxed in the water, and will quite happily topple forward off the edge for me to catch her with a splash. Back to the villa so the kids could nap, and the adults have coffee and the “birthday” cakes E&D bought, then Eytan and I went for a leisurely swim in the sea. It was a bit choppy, but the temperature was perfect, and the mountain views fantastic.

In the evening, Adam and I had a meal at the fish restaurant while E&D babysat. It was warm enough to sit outside and watch the moon rise over the sea while we ate: roast pepper and anchovy salad, followed by the grilled fish and seafood platter — huge mussels, rings of juicy squid, barbequed fillets of dorada (gilthead), salmon, sea bass, prawns and langoustines — fresh bread and white wine. Walked back to the villa in the moonlight. Always feels illicit and exciting to be out without Nova, especially at night…

Nova and I went to a swim, then she toddled about on the lawn in her little red swimsuit, nattering away to herself. Her talking is really coming along — in fact, a non-baby person might say she never shuts up. She makes a huge range of sounds now, and is starting to say some recognisable words like ‘up’, ‘gone’, and ‘Dipsy’ (Ben’s brought a Teletubby on holiday).

We went to the fish restaurant for lunch, and had their fantastic fish soup, which they bring to the table in a great big tureen. It is packed with fish, prawns, mussels and clams, and is delicious. The restaurant’s on the beach, and after eating, we hired loungers and sat digesting. I took Nova for a little splash in the sea. Her eyes were round as saucers as the waves rolled over her feet and legs, and she clung to me pretty tightly, but I think she found it exciting. Ate a little less sand today too, so there’s progress…

In the course of another wine-fuelled conversation, it came up that I’d never eaten egg and chips (two sunny-side-up eggs on a plate of french fries). According to Adam and Eytan, it is practically the English national dish, and is equivalent to a Canadian who’s never eaten pancakes and maple syrup. Fortunately for me, the cafe by the pool does a great egg and chips, so I’ll be able to remedy the situation this week.

We’d planned to eat at the local fish restaurant, but it was closed by the power cut, so we headed to a pizza place in Nerja. Nova was tired and fractious, and managed to drive my stress levels through the ceiling with her whining, slapping, writhing and swiping objects to the floor. She spat out the veggie purée Dina had made, and clamoured for steak knives and wine glasses, and any other fragile/dangerous item in sight.

Happily, the pizza improved her mood no end, and she managed two good-sized slices, plus a few favoured veggies from our mixed salad. It was a bit challenging doing the bed routine by candlelight, although the bedtime story wasn’t a problem. I’ve committed most of her books to memory by now, and did Dr. Seuss’s ABC before tucking her in.

My impending birthday was the prompt for a wine-fuelled discussion about middle age. I think the whole spectrum has shifted (“Well, you would,” said 36-year-old Eytan). People live longer, do things later, and while it varies from person to person, I think you’re a young adult from roughly 20 to 30, some other category of adult (responsible adult?) from about 30 to 50, and middle-aged from about 50 to 65. There should be another category after that as well, active retirement or something, for 65 to 80 year olds, before you reach “old”.

In Eytan’s view, it’s things like mortgages, kids, responsible jobs that define you as middle-aged, but a couple of generations ago that would have meant classifying most 25-year-olds as middle-aged, so that doesn’t work for me.

I sent dad a birthday card one year that said something like, “If you didn’t know your age, how old would you think you are?” It varies from day to day (some days I feel about 90), but usually I’d say I feel about 33…

So far the weather is sunny and gorgeous. Applying sunscreen to a twisting, thrashing, bucking baby is a bit hit and miss, but we tend to sit in the shade anyway. Not that Nova sits anywhere for long…

Seven-month-old Ben’s just mastering sitting up, and is pretty pleased simply not to be lying on his back anymore, but Nova’s constantly off and doing something: picking up leaves, climbing the low brick wall around the grass, clinging to the bars of the fence around the pool, staggering up to sunbathing strangers and taking things from their beach bags. She’s broken the ice with lots of our fellow sunseekers…

Had lunch at the beach, at an open air restaurant that mainly serves paella. Over a roaring fire is a massive pan, maybe six feet across, where they cook the paella, adding first the chicken, then the veggies, the rice, and the seafood. The cook walks round and round the dish, stirring the paella with a big wooden paddle. As soon as it’s ready, it’s shifted off the fire, and another pan immediately started. They give you a good sized portion, but you’re free to go back as many times as you want.

We were belting down the motorway to Luton with Nova gurgling away in her carseat, when Adam looked over his shoulder and said, “She’s been sick all over herself.” Indeed she had — her front was covered in upchucked porridge and raisins. It’s illegal to stop on the motorway, but I mopped her up the best I could.

By the time we reached the airport she’d thrown up twice more and I had nothing left to clean her with. She sat there quietly, looking sick and miserable, while we found a spot in the longterm car park. I stripped her down to her diaper, rolled her filthy clothes in an old piece of plastic and dressed her again. She still smelled of sick, but at least she wasn’t bathed in it.

Adam gave the car seat the once over, but I’m not looking forward to opening it up in a week’s time. I was a bit concerned about jetting off with her if she was coming down with something, but she seemed to feel a bit better once she was out in the fresh air, so we put it down to motion sickness.

Met up with Eytan, Dina and baby Ben, and once we’d checked in I spent twenty minutes in the loos washing Nova’s clothes and drying them under the hand dryer. Getting porridge vomit out of a moss knit sweater… say no more…

Things looked up from that point. Nova slept on the plane and amused herself with a box of raisins the whole 70km drive from Malaga to Nerja. Eytan’s parent’s house is in a little village/holiday community just outside of town, and after dropping our bags off we changed into our swimsuits and hit the private pool. Nova loved splashing about so much that we stayed in a bit too long — her nails and lips had a definite blue tinge afterward…

Once the babies were settled for the night we made a supper of spinach salad, bread, cold cuts and a bottle of 70p white wine (nice enough too), and sat on the patio watching the sea view fade to gray.

Yesterday, I was lying on the livingroom floor after a long, exhausting day of childcare listlessly playing stacky cups, when Nova made a break for the kitchen. Not wanting to get up and follow her, I said, “Nova, can you bring me the letter ‘O’, please?” (we have alphabet fridge magnets). After about 10 seconds of silence, I heard the patter of her little feet, and a few seconds later there she was with an ‘O’ clutched in her hand. She succeeded in bringing back the letters ‘K’, and ‘M’, but fell down on the letter ‘X’ (and brought me a pair of ‘I’s unbidden…)

It must come from her Doctor Seuss’s ABC, which Patty gave her when we visited Canada last September. I must have read that book 500 times by now. Adam and I both know it so well, that we recite it from memory when she’s getting a bit fractious and needs distracting. It’s so well used that a number of the pages are a patchwork of cellotape, and the T-Z section has come unstitched, and can be read as a separate pamphlet. I thought she just enjoyed the sound of words like fiffer-feffer-feff and goo-goo goggles and zizzer-zazzer-zuzz, but I guess she’s actually been learning from it as well.

We’re off to Spain for a week first thing tomorrow, so I won’t be updating the site until we get back…

We overran by an hour, making me half an hour late for my 6:30 leg waxing appointment in Highgate Village. I phoned Adam just as I got there, and he ordered pizza for dinner. I met the pizza guy at the door, and had just 15 minutes to scarf it down before I had to meet Pascale for our regular cinema date.

We drove down to the Holloway Odeon and saw the new Pedro Almodovar film, “Talk to Her”. My brain was still running in high gear, and I found it a bit slow at first, but gradually relaxed into it. It was a provocative film, and Pascale and I drew different conclusions about the ending, although she managed to bring me round to her point of view.

I really didn’t want it to be that way though, and actually had a dream last night, which was an additional scene of the film that provided conclusive evidence that the nurse guy was innocent.

So far, I can’ t say that I feel any different, but it’ll be interesting to see if I notice anything different when my period arrives. Conventional medicine has had no success in treating (or even explaining) our situation — they’ve done a number of tests that all confirm everything is in perfect working order, and are inclined to put it down to “bad luck”, a diagnosis I just don’t accept.

The homeopath questioned me about every aspect of my physical and emotional health, diet, and lifestyle, and listened carefully when I explained what we’ve been through. Just being listened to properly differentiated the appointment from a typical doctor’s visit. At one point, she said, “You seem like a very laid back person. Are you?”, which I thought was an interesting question.

I’m forever being told how laid back I am, and while it is largely true, I don’t think I’m as laid back as I must come across. I can be a real worrier, I hate losing things, I’m easily hurt, am a confirmed list maker — none of which I consider laid back traits. Aside from the homeopathy, we’ve also sent off hair samples for analysis to Foresight — an organisation that deals with pre-conceptual health, correcting mineral deficiencies and detoxifying your body before trying to conceive. I’ll be interested to see what they have to say…

Went round Pete and Pascale’s on Sunday evening to meet her dad, who’s quite the character. He must be in his early 70s, and was dressed rather rakishly in a cream suit and hot pink shirt with white slip-on shoes. He’s an inventor by trade (or at least inclination) and gave us a thorough explanation of his latest effort, something to do with projecting sundials vertically onto walls instead of as a shadow on the ground.

I would have found it very interesting, if I hadn’t been so distracted by the storm brewing between Nova and Fay (something to do with a small piece of gold chain…) He’s also an active member of a Republican pressure group, that seeks to make Britain a “genuine democracy” by abolishing the Royal family. Pasc refers to it as his “Hang the Queen” group. Nova spent the whole visit distributing the crisps to people one by one, usually sampling them first…

It had gone noon by the time I was heading home and I hadn’t organised anything for lunch, so I stopped in at the deli, and bought a bagel, some cream cheese and smoked salmon. We each had half a salmon bagel, cucumber slices and a cup of gazpacho. It struck me again as we were sitting there with our identical lunches how quickly she is growing up…

In the afternoon we went to Sam’s first birthday party. There was one other baby besides Sam, and for the first time Nova was actually the oldest kid there. The rest of the party was made up of Bob and Tracey’s adult friends: the guy who led the baby massage classes and his wife, and Leon, a psychoanalyst colleague of Bob’s and his wife Krista.

Leon and Krista were in their late 50s, with three daughters in their thirties. Within a few minutes Krista said, “Your daughter has a lovely nature — I can see it in her face. You’ll have a friend for life with her.” She said that Nova reminded her of one of her own daughters, who had a lovely nature from the day she was born, and apparently she never gave them a moment’s trouble. I can only hope…

I’ve lost count of the number of times people have said things like that about Nova. I’m sure people always say nice things about your baby, but with Nova it’s almost always comments about how sweet she is.

Went round to Freddy and Beulah’s for Rosh Hashanah. It was only us this year, because Doron and Antonia are off on holiday, and Jeffrey has shingles and didn’t want to risk exposing Nova. We settled Nova upstairs, and proceeded to have a wonderful dinner, as always: apples and honey (to ensure a sweet new year); challah with two spiced oils for dipping; tomato-avocado mousse with sour cream-chive sauce; cheese soufflé and green salad; summer pudding with cream; and an incredible honey cake and coffee.

Freddy served an excellent bottle of Lebanese wine that he’s discovered. After dinner we watched a video of F&B’s recent trip to Alaska and Siberia, but we were both so exhausted that we had to stop part way through.

It’s pretty close to the tube, so it would be reasonably convenient for me to pick her up on my way home. It’s in a converted house and has a little garden for the kids to play in. They divide the kids into three groups: 2-3, 3-4 and 4-5 year olds. Pascale’s two-year-old daughter Fay attends three mornings a week, so I mentioned that Nova has a friend currently attending who is a year older, and asked if kids of different ages have a chance to mix.

My guide said not really, although they wouldn’t prevent two kids who wanted to play together from doing so, and asked who Nova’s little friend was. I was a bit reluctant to mention Fay’s name in case it counted against us, as according to Pascale she’s regularly lectured about Fay’s behaviour when she goes to pick her up. Apparently Fay has been slapping other kids, and when they tell her to say sorry, she rattles off a blatantly insincere “sorry” and immediately gives them another slap

Eytan and Dina round for dinner: miso-marinated grilled salmon with stir-fried pak choi and shitaake mushrooms, and fruit salad with the last of the vanilla terrine. Dina brought some homemade peanut butter cookies, which were delicious, and a special treat as you don’t come across them often in the UK.

We had a couple of bottles of white wine with dinner, and then Adam got out our bottle of rye, which he and Eytan polished off in shots. We are off to Spain with them next weekend, so there was a bit of planning around that, but needless to say the conversation degenerated pretty rapidly once the guys started on the rye. Eytan is one of those drinkers who just seems to soak it up, but Adam was actually slurring by the time they left. He did do the washing up, run the dishwasher and hang up a load of laundry before bed, but claims to have no memory of doing it…

The NY idea came up last time we visited, and I thought it sounded like a terrific idea, but didn’t really expect it to move past the “wouldn’t it be great” phase. But amazingly it has, and we booked our tickets two weeks ago. I’m really excited about it. Manhattan is such a great city, with so much energy that it hums like a hovercraft about to take off. It actually manages to make London look slow.

It’s going to be very strange leaving Nova for four days– we haven’t spent a night apart since she was born, and I’m sort of glossing over that part in my mind. That being said, when I was about nine months old, Mom and Dad left me with the Kelowna grandparents (and their three much older other grandchildren) and went to Vancouver to attend summer school at UBC. They’d have been gone for eight weeks at least, and in fact they took a motoring holiday to California before coming back to get me, so we all must have coped with the separation okay…

Usually we take turns cuddling and settling her on nights like this, but for some reason she wouldn’t let Adam near her. She was bucking so violently in his arms he had to sit on the floor for fear he’d drop her, and screamed so loudly she was nearly hysterical.

She’d quiet right down as soon as I held her, but there was no way she was going to sleep. In the end, we ended up in our bed with her lying on her back with her head on my stomach, and her feet against Adam’s body. She finally fell asleep about 2:30am… I toyed with the idea of leaving her in our bed, but Adam’s snoring was loud enough I was scared he’d wake her again, and managed to transfer her to her cot without incident.

Needless to say, I was feeling pretty grim when it was time to go to work a few hours later… Nova, on the other hand, woke up bright eyed and bushy-tailed (and besmirched from belly button to knees in poop, giving strength to the tummy ache theory). She ate a big bowl of porridge, a respectable lunch, and completely charmed some friends of Pascale’s who thought she was the most delightful baby they’d ever met etc etc…

I, on the other hand, left the house late without eating breakfast, worked through my lunch hour, left work with a pounding headache, and nearly slept through my stop on the tube, before trudging up the hill to start my evening shift.

We had Ben, Michaela and their daughter Aphra, and Pad round for Sunday lunch this afternoon — salad nicoise with fresh grilled tuna, and vanilla terrine with fresh berries. We were hoping Nova would have a morning nap, and Adam took her out in the car when he went to the bakery because she often falls asleep in the car, but it didn’t happen in the end.

She was pretty pleased to see Aphra, and the two of them played really nicely together. It’s great that she’s getting to an age where she can play with other kids… At any rate, she was Nova-no-nap again today.