Comedy Gold

Okay, so Dr Faff and I are actually fourteen years old. We still think poop is funny, and fart jokes are funny, and there is nothing funnier than fake puking. I wish it were different, but since we are who we are, we celebrate our sense of humour. I hope the following videos make you all kind of pee your pants you're laughing so hard. And for those 'mature' grown-ups who are watching and don't think these are funny, to you I say, "How are we still friends?".

It all started when we were bathing Eliz, and Matthew realized that the foamy soap with the ducky dispenser kind of looks like the duck is puking out the soap. Hilarity ensued.

Then Matthew took it one step further.

Then I was making banana bread with black bananas from the freezer ... I simply could not resist.

I'm pretty sure most of you are still proud to know me, right?

Plan: Fail.

Hawkeye has a pretty sweet gig here in Cambreej - his lab has no set start-time, or set lunch-time, or set home-time. And there's no one checking his hours, making sure he gets 8 hours of actual work done per day. Except for him. Matthew has an incredible sense of duty and a strong work ethic. What a guy.

So it follows that if he gets into work early, he can leave early. This is really important to Matthew, because the good part of Elizabeth's day is over by about 6:45pm. After that, she starts winding down and her mood can be unpredictable, especially now that she's trying to drop a nap, but isn't quite ready for only one nap per day. So Hawkeye likes to leave work at about 5, so he gets at least a happy hour with Eliz in the evenings.

Usually, we get up when Elizabeth wakes up - and she is usually a little alarm clock, and wakes up between 7 and 7:30 every morning. So normally we get up, go downstairs for breakfast together, and then Matthew showers and gets ready to leave. But that meant he was leaving at 8:30, so not getting to work til 9. And apparently, other science dudes arrive at 9, but when 5 o'clock rolls around, those dudes are still working. And Hawkeye feels guilty about leaving before all the other little scientists. But who wants to get home right at their baby's witching hour? No one. So he hatched this great "plan" to get up and shower and be ready to go before Eliz wakes up, so he could get to work early, and leave early with no attached guilt. It sounds crazy, I know.

So this morning, the alarm goes off at 6:30 am. Snoozed once. Then Hawkeye rolls out of bed, grabs his clothes and gets in the shower. Goes downstairs. Makes coffee and his breakfast. Jammy gets out of bed, kinda grumpy at being awake early. Goes downstairs. Drinks coffee. Hawkeye & Jammy have a little quiet time on the couch, drinking coffee and internetting. Then Hawkeye makes his lunch. Then packs his bag. Then unpacks his computer, and sits down on the couch and starts working. It is currently 8:25am, and Elizabeth is still snoring away up there. And Mummy and Daddy are both awake, and have been (unnecessarily?) for almost 2 hours. Plan: Fail.

Budablog

Okay, so we were in Budapest for 5 days. Here is what Budapest looks like:

It's a very pretty city, full of great architecture, and the beautiful Danube sweeping through the city, dividing Buda & Pest. There are, of course, lots of bridges (including one called Elizabeth Bridge), and they have a really amazing Parliament building.

Budapest is famous for its gorgeous coffeehouses (complete with delicious pastries - Hawkeye was in heaven):

Can you believe that's a coffee shop? It's in a bookstore - compare THAT to your average Chapters + Starbucks!!

There are oldie churches and monuments to St Stephen (who accepted Christianity for Budapest) but we took photos of us reading "The Paperbag Princess" and one of a woman stuck in 1986 photographing her family in front of the statue. Check out those Mom Jeans!! And she had that awesome sweep-up bangs look going on. Added bonus: fanny pack. WOW.

Budapest is also home of one of the most amazing & complete zoos I've ever been to. In the same zoo, they have: giraffes, zebras, lions, leopards, rhinoceroses (!!! I had never seen one before!!!), peacocks & birdy birds, gorillas, those giant tortoises, seals, dolphins, brown bears, POLAR bears, lemurs, monkeys, orangutangs, a full aquarium, degus, a tapir, hyenas, marmosets, you stinking NAME it, it's at the Budapest zoo.

Dr Faff is looking for the Polar Bear while Eliz was watching the seals swimming.

The last things Budapest is known for is meat-based meals. Elizabeth is truly her Daddy's daughter, and was happy with this diet. I prefer the liquid diet of beer. So much more refreshing, no?

lunch on the go.

And finally, here is one of my favourite picture of Elizabeth & Matthew:

Oh, and PS, I realize that some of these photos are kind of blurry-ish. I'm not positive, but I think this might have something to do with it:

Waterpest?

We went to Budapest for 5 days last week. It was glorious. The best part was five whole days with Matthew and Elizabeth, and no work! And no one else - no friends, no family, just us 3, with no plans and no obligations. Can you say heaven?!

It was unseasonably hot while we were there - upwards of 30°C everyday - and our wee babe gets pretty red-cheeked and sticky-hot pretty quickly.

This was Elizabeth about 20 minutes after we arrived at our hotel. I took her hair out, and she ran around in just her bottoms, eating cheerios and looking totally crazy. I love this crazy photo of her. She looks like she's saying, "Whaddya thinking, bringing me here?? It's so hot!!"

 You know that feeling when you are cooking a turkey, and you open the oven door to check how it's going, and the heat hits you in the face? It was that kind of hot. One day was 38°, so we spent quite a lot of time in water - fountains, pools, bath tubs, you name it. 

We saw this lovey-dovey couple at this fountain, and he took her picture sitting like this, all 'pretty girly' like. So as soon as they left, I told Matthew he should want to take my photo like that.

Elizabeth loved the thermal baths. Calling them thermal baths makes it sound like they were hot springs. Not so much. They were more like "outdoor swimming pools surrounded by cool architecture" and were incredibly refreshing and delightful.

I look at this photo, and can practically hear her singing to herself, "doo dee dooo dah dee daaah!".

Right now, I am kicking myself for not taking any sneaky shots of the many, many wrinkly old people in their bikinis and speedos. Budapest = banana-hammock heaven.

We stayed at this beautiful apartment hotel, called Mamaison Residence Izabella, we averaged about 4 cool baths/showers per day. Elizabeth was in heaven.

 
For those of you with kids, self-catering apartments are totally the way to go when on holiday, because:
          (a) when your child wakes up, completely hypoglycemic and crazy, you can have your breakfast right away.  They also come with coffee makers, so when your child wakes up, completely hypoglycemic and crazy, you can have your morning coffee right away.
          (b) when your baby needs to go to sleep at 7:30pm every night, you can put her in her little bed in the bedroom, and then have a living room to hang out in. This totally beats being held hostage in your tiny B&B room with only just enough space for a bed and a playpen. As an additional bonus, when it's still stinking hot at 10 pm, and you don't want to wake your child by having yet another cool shower, you can stick your head in the sink to cool down.

What does £36.21 look like?

It looks like this:

Or maybe this:

 Or even this:

Because when you want this stroller:

 Mothercare will charge you £35, but the canopy and essential rain cover are an additional £20. So you check the British equivalent of kijiji to find if cheaper. And you do - someone is selling it for only £15!! Only they live in a neighbourhood called Cherry Hinton, which is either an hour & a quarter on a bus, or 35 minutes on a bike. So, you get on your bike with an empty backpack, get your cones over to Cherry Hinton, and strap that bad boy of a stroller in the bag and on your back. Oh, and on the way home you get a little bit lost, and start thinking, "I'm sure I didn't go past an uncontrolled railway intersection..." or "Hmmm, I would probably remember passing an airport, wouldn't I?". Luckily, you have your map, and as you're quickly checking where you are at the next crossing, you realize you're really quite far away from where you should be. In fact, you've ridden around half the perimeter of Cambridge airport.

While you're looking at the map, realizing that the streetlights are all coming on, and starting to feel a little bit bashful, a helpful driver stops and asks you through the window if you're alright. You respond that you're fine, and just taking a different route home (i.e. you lie). He looks at you and says, "You have a pushchair. On your back." and you respond, "Yes. I know." and he drives on. You do a u-turn and get on the right road this time.

And that's when you decide: it's time for beer. Alas, you know there's none at your house. So you stop at the store by your house, and as you're locking your bike up (which is a real challenge with 2 feet of stroller behind your head), you overhear two teenagers who are looking for a bootleg talking about you, saying, "Nah, she's got a pushchair in a backpack. She's not a good choice." Ha! So you get your beers, and get yourself home, the whole while congratulating yourself on (a) getting the stroller at least halfway in the backpack, (b) not falling off or getting hit by a car, and (c) sacrificing £3.79 of the "saved money" for two celebratory Budvar beers.

A Little More British Everyday

Sometimes you just get busy livin' and forget that you're livin' in another country. I "talk" with all my Canadian friends via Blackberry Messenger, Skype, Facebook, email. The family sees Elizabeth a reasonable amount via Skype. Sometimes I kind of forget that we are in England, and that we're far away. And then, I notice something and think, "Yep, we live in England now." For example:

Our house keys look like they could open a Treasure Chest.

I own a rain cover for the stroller, and it actually gets used. PS this photo was taken in the middle of summer. Another example of the fact that we live in England.

And then there is the kitchen. Here are a few things that remind me at least 3 times a day that we live in the UK:

We have the big box of tea bags, and Matthew actually drinks it on a regular basis - usually after riding his bike home in the rain.

Since we don't have a dishwasher, it feels like there are always dishes to do - and lately I've been getting chapped hands, like they talk about in dishwashing detergent commercials. Truth: I never believed those commercials before now, and now I wish I used Palmolive.

Our fridge isn't big enough for a 2L bottle of pop (which means that a large proportion of the country's fridges aren't big enough, because we have an average fridge) so you have to have ice all the time because no one wants to drink warm "Lemonade" (which is really "Sprite").

We now buy Branston pickle - only for Matthew. He likes Cheese & Pickle sandwiches now. I think he is more British than I am, and I'm the one with the UK passport!!

 And then there are things that I think are just dumb - like windows with no screens:

which don't seem like a really bad thing until you look in your kitchen sink and see this:

Gross, gross, gross. England doesn't have flying bugs like mosquitos, but they have the sickest and biggest and grossest creepy crawlers ever. I find them everywhere, and it freaks me right out. Gross. I am an expert spider killer, which is probably why it rains so much (isn't there some Old Wives Tale about killing spiders leading to rain??). I don't care about that though, because I have my trusty rain cover, and Eliz doesn't mind being in her little tent:

Breakfast Reading

Elizabeth gets bored really, really quickly. Especially when doing things that have to be done - like having her hair brushed, getting dressed, or eating. Especially eating. My sister suggested she have a couple toys or books at the table to keep her distracted from eating happy. It really works! She has designated books to read at the table, because now that she is feeding herself, everything gets pretty gross and caked up with banana and cereal, and she sometimes does finger painting with drops of milk. It's pretty gross, actually. Her eating-books have to get washed after every meal, just like her dishes. As a result, some of her favourites are all scratched up and the colour is fading from frequent wipings, and we've had to tape up the bindings on a couple. So chavvy!!

Lately, Elizabeth has been like a sponge for new words and new signs, so she can actually tell us what book she wants. She does the sign for book, and then signs & says "fissssssssssshhhhhh" for the dolphin book. And she says "puuhhhhpppppppyyyyy" for the dog book, and if she says "baybay" it is either 'Me Hungry!' or 'Tickle, Tickle'. If she puts her hand on her head, she means 'The Paper Bag Princess', because they all wear hats (crowns).

'Tickle, Tickle' was a free book from the Cambridge Public Library when Elizabeth got her library card. Eliz's favourite page is obviously:

because then she 'gently, gently' brushes her own hair, and gets peanut butter and jam in her hair. Nice.

My favourite is 'Me Hungry!' because  Eliz can actually read most of it on her own. It was a gift from Auntie Ali, and is the story of Edwin the caveboy, who wants a snack, but the Daddy and Mummy Cavepeople are too busy, so Edwin goes hunting on his own. Elizabeth does the signs for rabbit, and says 'rawr' for the tiger, and does the sound of an elephant when he runs into one. She also mimics the little boy's expressions on each page.

Matthew's favourite book is 'The Paper Bag Princess' for a couple of obvious reasons: (1) The Princess' name is Elizabeth (!) and (2) the other main character is a dragon, and when Matthew reads it out loud, the dragon sounds like Jabba the Hut.

Just imagine Dr Faff saying, "Go away! I will eat you tomorrow!" à la Jabba

Happy Eating Baby!!