Ghosts, Grizzlies & Getting up

Originally posted June 20, 2013

Well it’s not quite a 9 week gap, but we have a good excuse this time.... honestly we do.  We are now officially a full-time working family.

That’s right, finally after 3 1/2 years a company took a chance on employing me FT, ok it’s via an agency and technically I could be let go tomorrow.... but part of the reason for my successful application was my willingness to commit to a long-term stay.  Which I consider a good sign for a long stay. It’s for Booz Allen Hamilton, so basically I’m doing the same job as Jessica just for a bigger & better company.  Early days so far, but I’m settling in nicely and it seems a good set-up, so now we get up, drop Ryan off at day care and work hard, and get to spend evenings & weekends as a family. 

Ryan is proving quite a master at adding new words to his vocabulary, his current new favorite word is “Ghost”, and he draws them as well.  They have arms & legs.... I think he “sees dead people”..... which would explain the many disrupted nights where he either refuses to go to bed, or launches into a crying fit - one time we found him huddled under his bed cover!!!!! - this leads to him often either spending time staying up with me, or jumping in the bed with Mommy and leaving Dad the sofa..... wonderful!  Dad gets his revenge by telling him he’s a “baby” and is met with “Not a baby, I Boo!”, he’s also talking about a “Yellow School Bus” and “White Bus”.  These can be added to “airplane” as part of the many sights on the way to & fro from daycare.

Jessica still has to upload the birthday photos, but she may try to blame their absence on this Mac... which is apparently showing it’s age (she’s a fine one to talk).  Anyway, we shall see what Santa brings..... in 2015!

Assuming this doesn’t drop down, maybe another update will follow shortly.

Have fun

JJ& R.

Time flies when you're old

Originally posted May 14, 2013

Well did I say it would be a short absence?  I lied.  Can’t believe it’s been nearly 9 weeks since our last entry, Jessica is really slacking!!!!!

So, we’ve all moved on, Jessica is now 28 (again), I’m still short of 40 and Ryan is 3!  We all had good birthdays and got plenty of time together to enjoy food, fun & presents.  As a group present we went down to Williamsburg to stay at Great Wolf Lodge, a water park with a few other activities to enjoy. Ryan had a great time in the water enjoying the slides and avoiding the showers (mostly).  I’m sure as he gets older he’ll get even more fun when we return.

Colin managed to scoot across the Atlantic for a long weekend, not disrupted by seeing any karaoke singers this time. We introduced him to Japanese Steak (He ate the rice, but viewed the noodles very suspiciously) and the incredibly rare delicacy of Potbelly’s - you may not consider this that weird but consider he was 35 or so before he ever ate pizza!

We fitted in a visit to the Air/Space museum where Ryan picked up an inflatable shuttle, and also to the Baltimore Aquarium, which unfortunately is undergoing a refit and the shark/ray pool is currently unavailable.  We did however get to see a Ray being fed in the Aussie section which was very cool.

Ryan is undergoing several update tests for his speech, sadly his original teacher, Lisa had to let him go as her commitment is only till 3, but another teacher will soon slot into place and continue the good work.  Ryan’s vocabulary has really increased, so now we can enjoy hearing “Moose” (I feel a success as a Father now - Julia Turner knows what I mean!) “Robot” - from his new favorite film - Wall-E and many other phrases which you can see give him pleasure to be able to communicate.

Photos from his 3rd birthday photo-shoot and his party will soon be up I hope, and maybe we can find a video with some speech as well.

We’ll do our best to keep the gap between entries a shorter one!

Soccer, Rain & Train

Originally posted on March 12, 2013

Just a flashback picture to a time when it did actually snow.... to be fair we did have about 10 hours of snow last week, but it was so wet it became slush instantly and within 24 hours had virtually vanished.  Didn’t stop many colleagues calling out totally unnecessarily though!

Ryan has been enjoying soccer, or more accurately throwing the ball in the net and sitting on a parachute.  Still he’s not as bad as the kid who clearly is the “next Ronaldo” and by that I don’t mean the talent, I mean the cry-baby!  Honestly this kid cries when a blade of astroturf touches him, I have no idea how a child becomes so hysterical over the smallest thing... fortunately Ryan shows evidence of only complaining at the large knocks or Daddy saying “No cookie” (which let’s face it, is a major trauma!)

As for the words well he’s showing uneven progress at the moment, not that’s a bad thing, just strange that he can’t control “Moo” but can get “Yellow” or “Turtle”, however he did begin to say “Choo-Choo” for a train so it’s not going to be too long before he gets onto “Moo”, “Moon” etc. 

He seems to be enjoying Day Care, at least that’s been a few weeks since his last absence. One or two of the kids there are a little heavy-handed, one might even suggest a little too physical, but until Ryan snaps & launches a “BooSlap” I suppose it’s all under control!

Hopefully this will not be a long absence, I’m sure some very good news could be just round the corner.

Tuesday, March 12, 2013

Soccer, Rain & Train

 

 

Winter, Words & Bleurgh!

Originally posted February 5, 2013

He speaks! 

That is all.

Ok, it’s not all, but YESSSSSSSS! <-- That’s one of his words - the lisp is correct as well, though I think that’ll fade away as he continues to speak. 

It’s also the correct response to the question “Is this a pathetic winter?”  Honestly.... hardly any snow, you know it’s bad when the UK gets far more than you.  Strange though to have days when the temp is down in the teens, yet the air is so dry, there’s no frost at all.  Of course even a light dusting gets all the numpties out on the road driving in 1st gear at 10 mph.  Look it’s quite simple if you can’t drive or don’t know how, park the car, stay indoors and stop causing more trouble. 

So, we have had a fun January... last time I spoke about Ryan being ill, and us both taking a trip to the emergency center, well since then Ryan decided that he liked the idea of this Norovirus, he announced that by having a technicolor yawn over Jessica & himself as well as the sofa..... then the floor... then Jessica.... and stayed up with me till 2am.  Jessica decided to join in the fun on the Sunday, though she went for the advanced “Shomit” option.  I’d seen all this and feeling rough decided my best course of action was to not eat or drink anything for 24-48 hours.  This seemed to work, but it did re-ignite the flu symptoms I’d had the week previously.  Cue 1st ever set of work call outs by me, and Jessica somehow being more effective at home that some of her colleagues at work!

Anyway, this led to us investing in “Tide” stock, and hoping the washing machine didn’t break down (it hasn’t yet!)  At the time of writing we’re all back to sort of normal, Ryan is back at daycare and we don’t need super packets of Charmin anymore.

Right back to speaking... Ryan’s taken one of his regular “steps” and had begun to show lots of interest in “No!” (gets that from his Mom - clearly) when he was being changed he responded affirmatively to a question of “do you need a change?”.... cue mad excitement from Jessica and a suggestion to calm down we’re not making an issue of it from me... of course we were happy & proud to see the progress, as was his speech tutor yesterday when he greeted her with his new word.

Top news of course and we hope to bring advanced vocabulary soon.  Oh, no news on an accent yet.....

Enjoy.. and avoid the norovirus if you can!

Presents & Passports

Originally posted on January 9, 2013

Huge gap between entries, principally because we had so much going on, but first of all Happy New Year!  Let’s hope 2013 has much of the good stuff from 2012 & none of the crap.

So, we survived Christmas, nobody got poisoned by the turkey and I think over-indulgence was kept to a minimum,  Of course it’s now over a year since we were in the UK but we were still able to enjoy a phone conversation and joke about the weather.

Amongst many presents, Ryan got a train set.... then he got a replacement because the first one was, being polite... fairly crap.  He likes the new one much better, though it does often seem to have a collision with an Angry Bird or 6!  He also got a T-Ball set (baseball for beginners basically) so far he’s not broken anything nor chased after Poof with the bat - I doubt either of those claims will last too long!  Oh, he loves his Octonauts DVD.... except it’s a British series and the British versions of it have different accents to those he knows from US tv....

Ryan has begun “school”... well barely, because as I type this, he’s coughing his guts up.  Only had the 2 1/2 days so far, but he settled in well and hopefully once over this bug will be back for a good stint.  This of course means I need to foxtrot oscar and get a proper job, resume’s are currently spamming recruiters, hopefully something worthwhile will turn up!

Speaking of bugs, we’ve gone through a spell of bad health recently, we ended up at an emergency care facility where it turned out Jessica was making a fuss over nothing and I had enough of an intestinal issue that I ended up on a 2 week course of tabs - since then I think what I actually had was the norovirus, but as that seems common I’ll claim it was something more sinister.

Hmm, oh yes, Jakey thug decided we needed an early call on Dec 26th by eating string...emergency vets req’d where he was sedated and giving medicine to induce vomiting. It didn’t work till he came home, rushed off, ate some food, walked into our bedroom and vommed over the floor.  “Great Jake, you asshole..... oh look, string..... good work!”.  So that worked out well, but it was still expensive so he remains an asshole!

Finally, well not finally but this is getting extensive so I’ll not bore you much more.... The number of US citizens in our place went up by one on Dec 18th, as I finally completed the long task put in place since I arrived.  That means I can now vote and have to decide who annoys me more, Demotwats being commies, stealing my families money and having no idea how to curb spending or Redumplicans who seem intent on shooting anything and seem socially stuck in the 1900’s.  Sigh.   Ryan will soon be able to consider those options in due course as we’re getting him tied into UK citizenship, not for any big reason, but it will make any travels/study or work in the EU (as it stands now - but of course it’ll be bankrupt by the time he’s 21 anyway) far easier.

Well as I mentioned politics it’s time to move on, should be a more regular update once we avoid silly times of the year.

All the best for 2013 from us all.

Weather, Wandering Cats & Wheels

Originally posted November 26, 2012

Hoorah! We survived the hurricane, as did my parents!  Thanks to them for bringing shitty weather..... you may think that’s harsh, but the fact they went away at the weekend down to the West Country in the UK and it had torrential rain makes it clear that it’s them and no “act of God”!

Of course the bad weather played havoc with their trip, we spent Monday & Tuesday virtually cocooned inside seeing if the power would go out.... it didn’t - be thankful for the derecho that hit us in June and made the power companies improve all the networks here.  

Dad even got to check out a Home Depot - managed to stop the saddo comparing bricks and composition of sandbags though.  Seems it wasn’t enough to keep him “retired” as I’m informed he’s gone back for a week or 2 of consultancy work.  At least that’s what I’ve been told, I think it’s more to pay off the latest holiday vacation.  Overall I think it was a good visit, not quite what we had planned of course on many levels, but they got to see Ryan for the 1st time in 10 months and a lot has happened in that time.

What else is new? Oh, some bastards went round the neighborhood on Saturday and slashed tires.  At least 75-100 vehicles were affected, we were among them.  The best I can say is that our “puncture” warning light works fine on the car, but I didn’t really want to spend $400 to find that out.  I hope the shit(s) get caught before they consider it a good idea to repeat, I know I won’t be alone in administering some “street justice” if I encounter them.  Given we’ve had stuff nicked from our doorstep recently, this region is becoming a “security” issue... n

Jet escaped!  Big news.... she decided to go on a day trip last week.  Later evidence proved she snuck out the front door when Jessica was posting a rude message about the thieving scum.  I only noticed Jet was missing when I returned about 3 hours later, having searched I collected Jessica and we did a search outside.  Finally I suggested she check upstairs in the apartments..... and up popped Jet.... sitting morosely right on the top level.  Dumb cat.

She was pleased with herself, less so than Poof who gave her a slap for being dopey.  But at least she’s back and ok.

Hmm, oh yeah... we had Thanksgiving of course, the food turned out well, decent Turkey, Ham and even the potatoes worked nicely.  This year I didn’t have to work until the Friday night, I think it’s a shame that corporate greed makes the holiday worthless for a lot of people.  Yes, I know “if you don’t like it, don’t work there” etc etc, but that’s a short-sighted view and symptomatic of the things many countries are getting wrong imo.  Today’s society needs to take a long look at what our legacy will be.

More progress to be reported on soon hopefully, maybe even before Christmas... We’ll be in touch!

Day Tripping

Originally posted October 25, 2012

As I write this little insert, Ryan’s grandparents are halfway across the Atlantic ready to catch up with him & see how much he’s grown since Xmas when they last saw him.

They clearly can’t handle the heat as by the time they leave here it’s going to be dropping into the mid 50s and there’s a slim chance of a hurricane edging by! 

Anyway, moving on to things Booster.  The big news is he now sleeps in his bed - this has made his parents very happy.  Oh, don’t worry about my writing about it being a jinx, Jessica did that already by posting on Facebook, which duly led to Ryan refusing to go to sleep till Midnight last evening.... sigh. (At least I could watch the Baseball!).

We removed his crib entirely on Saturday and hoped he’d enjoy the additional space in his room, since then he’s been great at keeping to his bedtime routine and going off to sleep.  When he wakes he even sits quietly in his bed waiting for us, not sure he’s quite worked out he could just get down and play with his toys, let’s hope that stays a secret for many more months!

Speaking of Baseball, we had the luck to win freebie tickets to some of the Nationals games in September, they won 1 and lost 1 of those games, but they were both good fun to be at, and for once it wasn’t freezing cold or boiling hot.  Sadly despite having the best season record, the Nats fell at the first stage of the playoffs with inexperience playing a large role..... next year they’ll be back better than before and could be a force to be reckoned with for many years to come.

We did our usual pumpkin picking expedition a couple of weekends ago, Jessica managed to extort some cash out of some Liberals (oh the irony!) by forcing them to go to Butlers Orchard.  It’s quite a big “festival” there, but you do pay a price!  Still, a good selection of pumpkins was available and Ryan enjoyed seeing the pigs, sheep, goats & rabbits.

On Sunday we went back to Fairfax Hospital as it was the memorial service for child loss, it was a well attended event and quite respectful.  We got a rose for Nathan and lit a candle in his memory.  Not sure if we will be looking to attend again, but we’ll at least get an option to do so.

The next week will be a busy one for sure, I think there’s a Zoo trip booked and I know a Japanese Steakhouse will be on the agenda as well.

Till next time.

James, Jessica & Ryan