Dear Santa

Dear Santa,
I've been a very very good girl all year. Mummy and Daddy are witness to that. Please come fast. I need new toys because my Lala and other toys, mostly and preferably books, have died the horrible death of drowning in the bath tub which has absolutely only very little to do with my throwing them all in with a passion.


Dear Santa, I also quite liked this rather big wauwau. But don't worry if you can only afford a smaller one, maybe like this little one.

Yours with love,
Tara Olivia

PS.: Dear Santa, only kidding. Tara doesn't know about you yet. But boy, does she know what to do with a present when she spots one. And boy, is she good at spotting! So when out and about, please bear that little brown eyed dolly in mind that we talked about.

Yours sincerely,
Mummy

And Who Are You?!

It's all very confusing. If only travelling was all about putting all your friends, favourite people and toys in a basket and moving about!

Great, says Tara. I'll fit Baby in, and this little book, too!

But ah, unfortunately things are a bit more complex. Lots of people everywhere that need to be understood and named. Take grandma. Tara called her Mama for a few days, and then learned to call her Amma (Oma). Grandpa (Opa) is so much more confusing - of course he isn't Papa, but he's the only man around, so is he Appa, or Papa now?
Tante Claudia, Mama's sister. Amma? Caudilja (!)? Or Amma Aia?
Babay Lia? BeBe! But is that the same as BeBe for baby, or is it more like BeBe for Püppi (dolly)? Now Nirit, Lia's mum. Mama or Amma or what?
Tara is clearly pleased to find that so many people are her friends&family. She cries for them all when they leave her company. Wrinkles her forhead, and calls for amma, regardless of which amma-or-other has just left her, in woeful tones before she adds a pitiful bye-ya!

I stand by and marvel at the great social intelligence of my baby girl, and wonder what goes on in her little head when she sorts, shifts, classes and names people.
Three days to go, and the whole exercise gains another dimension when there's a new set of ammas and other folk that are called abuela/o and tia/o!

Diagnosis: Excema

TARA (a week ago): Hello, you tasty penguin that my friend Tilly gave me! You look a right old sweetie! I'll have a bite or two of you, and then I'm going to eat you all up when we come back home from our Christmas holiday, yum yum, and I'm looking forward to it, HA HA!


And then the following happened: Over night those awful dark bags under her eyes, along with the red patches on her eyes, and - let's admit it - the torn dry skin under Tara's left ear that mummy thought nothing of, turned all very red and itchy and flaky and looked, well, awful, and, well, just like excema.
Which in a way was a nice thing cause I had already considered all sorts of horrible diseases that could be behind dark eye bags and permanent tiredness (poor kid rubbing her eyes all the time) that... but let's not go into that, it's slightly embarrassing.
So, Tara got taken to the local German pediatrician, who referred to Tara as 'THIS CHILD', had his diagnosis ready in seconds, gave us a swift lesson in genetics (mother's got a skin condition, look, chil's got it off her, thanks), then still ranted on about the rip-off idiocy of alternative medicine and homeopathy for an additional ten minutes, lectured THIS CHILD'S mother about sugar and sweets in a child's diet (she had a selection of RICE CAKES, BREAD STICKS and organic health biscuits sweetened with apple juice, for God's sake!), banned sweets, and finally prescribed steroids and ushered us out with a Merry Christmas.
Now I know why I had ab-so-lute-ly no memory of the man, who happens to have been my own doctor until only just 17 years ago. It now makes perfect sense that my only memory was of running from the man from one corner of a small room to the next when due an injection.
I did have fond memories of the waiting room, where there are still the exact same toys as 20 years ago. Tara did like them very much too, though somehow I don't think she'll be given a chance to grow fond memories of the set-up as long as there is another doctor in town.


I did, however, put an order in with Santa for the nicest dolly I think he could afford! And bought Tara a nice puzzle pull along toy to make up for the bad genetic material that's MY fault.

I will have to eat that penguin all by myself.
What can I say. I'm very sad for it.

A Eulogy To Chocolate (in three pictures)

Which door can we open today, mummy?

Great choice! I'll have... em... THIS one!

My! Mummy! This is such a tasty one! The best of all*!
(* All the ONE that you'd left me)

Mummy: *sniffle* (And yesIknow it's not life threatening!)

Reunited, Yeah-Y-Yeah*

(Mummy's Entry)
* Singing to a tune that Tara will probably never know cos she ain't old enuf!

Ah! The novelty of having a best friend with a kid the same age (roughly), and actually being in the same country at the same time! With, can you believe it, the same agenda, too! Which read: fun, coffee, milk foam for the kid/s, then off shopping, sweet compliant rice cake munching darlings in tow, possibly ideally asleep.

Introduce your babies...

... and raise your babies! A toast! A toast to friendship!

I'd sing that song about being reunited if only I knew the lyrics, but possibly I'm not old enuf either.

Coffee house fun with two kids. Great, great, great!

What WILL Papi Do?!

OFF TO GERMANY!

His girls got in the car (Tara: Kaa! Kaa! sounding clearly different from Ka! Ka!), had themselves treated to a trip to the airport, and went off to Germany! Now just WHAT will Papi do, all by himself with a freezer full of food and treats but NO-ONE to share them with?! Who is going to chase after him with a book in the left, and a book in the right hand when he comes home tired?
Who will serve him cake and eat half of it should he not be fast enough tucking in? Hugh?
Poor poor Papi.

As for Tara, well what will SHE do?! She asks for Papa in her sleep, she asks for Papa when she wakes up, and once she's woken up, she asks for Papa at 20 minute intervals, peeps out the window, and points to the door.
Granted, she also asks for doggies aplenty, and Ba Ba (sheep) too, which could easily be mistaken for her Pa Pa's, but a mother knows...
Life with mummy can't be that thrilling, about time we got a foot in the door at mummy's chosen nursery.

As for mummy, what will she do? Patiently tell Tara that daddy is in England, at work, and feel guilty about it. Then palm the kid off on the grandparents and possibly have a shower, uninterrupted. Ha ha ha! Then, looking decent, scruffy kid in tow, meet friends, and sail off to the various farmer's and Christmas markets that are going on everywhere. Those are somewhat bigger than the 5 (FIVE, yes, that's FIVE!) (maybe six, but certainly NOT seven!) stalls huddled up in some tea house backyard in Ramsgate, and closed due to poor weather.

And should the going get tough despite these various attractive attractions, we'll just have a coffee and milk foam somewhere nice, remember daddy fondly, and have some girly chat. That should remedy every woe, especially of the miss-my-favourite-guy heartbreak kind.

Aaaah this milk foam sure is tasty stuff!

Let me dip into your milk foam, Papi!

OK, I'll stick to sipping my own, but only cause you say so.

Naane!

Tara's True First Love? That of the banana, which she lovingly and greedily calls NAANE! She loves it so, she tries to eat it whole!

She loves it so, she knows exactly where to get it at the supermarket, and should we choose the entrance that gets us to the veg section first thing, she'll be pointing and clamoring for her NAANE NAANE until I've fetched one, whizzed her through the check out with an alternative treat to bribe her into letting go of the NAANE so the check out lady can weigh it. Ten pence, thank you, and we can shop for real while Missy is munching away.
Actually, she's so well aware of where to get her NAANE we only need to go down the road towards the supermarket and she'll shout, though I'm not all sure whether she's saying
1. NAANE ("I shall surely perish if I don't get a banana RIGHT NOW"), or
2. NAANE ("There's the shop let's buy tons of treats!").
Either way. NAANE! YUM!

PS.: This entry has absolutely nothing to do with that entry!

KAKA

Tara kann ihren Namen sagen, und tut das mit zärtlicher Hingabe. Genau wie Mama & Papa, wenn sie nicht schimpfen. "Kaka," sagt sie mit Enthusiasmus.
Das kleine Mädchen in der Kamera und Fotos im Computer? Ka-ka!
Die süße Maus im Spiegel? Ka-ka!
Bilder von Babies, zu denen ich ihr gesagt habe, "So klein war Tara auch mal"? Ka-ka!
Wer verteckt sich da unter der Decke? Ka-ka!
Grossartig.
Kaka ist das erste sichtbare Ergebnis vom Unzug in eine Höhle mit Papa, der es ja bekanntlich ein wenig mit der Sauberkeit hat. Innerhalb von zwei Tagen wusste Tara, dass das, was da klebrig in der Windel steckt, KAKA ist.
Papa: Das ist KA-KA.
Tara, kleiner braver Lernschwamm: Ka! Ka!
Das Zeug, was so grün-gelblich im Taschentuch hängt, dachdem der protestierenden Tara in die Nase gekniffen worden ist?
Papa (kneift, wischt und demonstriert): Das ist KA-KA.
Tara, kleiner braver Lernschwamm: Ka! Ka!
Jedweder Fleck nach einer Malzeit, auf Wischtuch oder Kleidung?
Papa (wischt und putzt): Das ist KA-KA!
Tara, kleiner braver Lernschwamm: Ka! Ka!
Alles, was sich im oder auf dem Weg in den Müll befindet?
Papa (schmeißt weg, Windeln und anderes): Das ist KA-KA!
Tara, kleiner braver Lernschamm, beugt sich mit respektvollem Abstand vor uns späht in den Mülleimer: Ka! Ka!

Mama: Jetzt hör aber mal auf, ist ja hier nicht ALLES Kaka um die Maus herum!

Und siehe da, zwei Tage später zieht sich Tara zum Versteckspielen eine Decke über den Kopf und deklariert aus ihrem Versteck: KA-KA!
Noch zwei Tage später dekodieren die verwirrten Eltern Bedeutung und Herkunft dieser Variation von Kaka wie folgt: Bei Versteckspiel Variation Decke über's Kopf rufen Mama und Papa immer laut in Spanisch, Deutsch und gelegentlich Englisch: Papa, wo ist die TARA / donde esta TARA / TARA where aaaaare you?! Tara hört anscheinend den gemeinsamen Nenner raus, TARA, und, kleiner toller Lernschwamm, kopiert so gut sie kann.
KAKA!

Unsere tolle Tochter! Stolze Eltern!

KA!KA! HA!HA!

PS: Kaka just loooves riding shopping trolleys!

The Saga of the Move

has finally been told and slotted in here!
Don't miss it, for there are LESSONS to be learned from it!

Found It!

After two weeks of play and hard work, we are pleased to announce the re/dis-covery of our living room! Tara had quite happily settled into living in a box, but we are somewhat happy that's over. It just didn't look good.
So mummy has the first banana cake in the oven, Jose has the shredded boxes in big thick bin bags, and Tara has a new toy stand to help her maintain some order.
Great stuff!

Boxes to ashes,

dust to the bin.

The battle of boxes
we finally win!

Voila! Living room from the same angle as two weeks ago:

Get Out!

Said mummy, to Tara & Papa, for else I shall succumb to severe mess depression. So get out of my way to give me a chance of finding that living room which I've been trying (without much luck) to a) find, and b) live in for the last week!

So the child gets wrapped up and exits the mess, complete with car, snack, and daddy.

JOSE, YOUR BLOG! WRITE SOMETHING! NOW! Or else I'll find myself forced to report my side of last Saturday, and that would include the underside of the heater in that messy living room of ours, and that would, looking like this,

make for a far less appealing narrative than your story about the dog-hunt along the seaside!
WAH WAH WAH (that's Spanish barking, not crying)!

Where's Tara?!

So where IS Tara?!

Tara must be wondering herself, to a degree. This strange place without a single squirrel (the neighbours claim there are loads, we've not seen a single one yet), absolutely NO children that play with her (yet, Tara, I promise!), the sky full of screeching birds, and Papa comes home every night, but is always gone in the morning (NOT GOOD!).
Mummy is a bit baffled by the whole deal too. The only people who phone are a bank that wish to speak to the owner (and keep ringing for her TWICE A DAY even after they've been told the 7th time that said person does not live here any more, I mean, really! Can I have their manager's job?!), and the only people that offer to speak to us on the street or in the city centre are old folk with dogs, which is kind of nice but a bit disturbing when they tell us, ah, yes, their second to last dog was called Tara, too... The good news is, a one hour walk about town, right next to the harbour, cures mummy and the chicken of a wretched cough.
So well well, we'll give it a chance. Here are some of our very first impressions of our new home Ramsgate (not Sandwich, but near):

This is what I get in return for my beloved Leicester market?!? One little walk through shop full of Dutch vegetables. I buy 4 potatoes, one banana, and six mushrooms and eight chestnuts per day. "Pound a boooowl"... na, not here.


A bleak wintery view of the centre. We'll get a better shot on another day, or perhaps with the Christmas lights on some evening soon?


A back alley. Suggests a merrier Ramsgate that the city centre at present. Note: People don't look at me, but they do look at each other. There is hope.

Ships. Or rather, boats, aplenty. Which reminds me, Tara loves playing Row Your Boat. Especially the bit with the crocodiles when you get to scream. Aaaaaaaah! No crocodiles here though.

Our first sighting of the sea. Actually only three minutes from home (yes, truly, THREE). If you make it to the bottom of that street, a high-up promenade gives you the full view of the ferry harbour, which is right there. Off to town and the boatsey harbour to your left, five minutes by foot. All very close by.

Ooopsy-daisy. Seeluft macht müde! A bit of a stiff breeze at the right time, and Tara folds forward, and has up to THREE hour long mid-day naps! Those do compare favourably to a meagre one hour naps at nursery!

I haven't looked very closely but it seems that Ramesgateners (Ramsgatees? Ramsgaters?) like a good choice of their dinners. I didn't look too closely intentionally - I'm still in mourning for my Revolution meals, and can't afford to upset my hungry heart. Palate.

Now here, our claim to fame! The home daddy chose NOT to rent. It is still empty, I've noticed, hehe. Maybe good old Vincent should have left behind some furniture and some white goods, not just letters from the sea side and some sketches!

And on the way home, we spot Van Gogh's skeleton too! Or maybe it's not quite his. Maybe Ramsgate is just a town very very full of old old people and their dogs?

Aah, here we are on our way home to the place daddy did chose to rent. Little cutie-pies of relatively new houses, and one of the end ones is OURS for now:

...a bit of a homely touch, and a house is a home! And yes, did I mention the THREE TELEVISIONS? I have? Oh, never mind, lets just mention them again.

So. There we are. Ramsgate, home.

There

is

Tara

(PS: Blue bedrooms, and we've very nearly found the living room too!)


MUMMY NOTICE BOARD:
@ Janet. By God, the POWER of baby bottom wipes! It IS very worrying, if you think about it, but also very useful. Is there a stain in this world that does not succumb to baby bottom wipes? Excellent stuff of gas oven cooking kitchen grime! And yes, the phone has indeed resurfaces. Though with a view to the absurd calls we get from Sainsbury's bank (whose call centre manager's job I want), it should have stayed in one of the boxes!
@ Ann. Oh, Waitrose, I'm singing their praises too! They too let me buy two bananas and one tomato, and oh yum, have you tried their strawberry scones? Worth every penny they cost!
@ Nirite. No no, we were home when you were trying to treat us to our first not-absurd call. We were just napping. For hours.
@ Julie. I cannot possibly eat those Hotel Chocolat chocolates! What will I do when they are gone?! FAR to precious. Maybe I can SMELL them all year long?!
@ all my (Leicester) friends with mobile phones: Thanks for keeping me virtual company on the way down (before the crying and puking started) and throughout the week. I mean, speaking to old men with dogs is somewhat satisfying too, but not quite the same.
@ M&K. I did not repeat the mistake of not introducing myself to the neighbours. And they are lovely and helpful, too! So! And now go and book your flights or a ferry!

Moving Tara, Moving House, Moving Town

And moving county, too. 'Cause some towns, they're actually close to each other. Not so these two. There are 4 hours by car between them; 3.5 if you're lucky and not as heavily packed as we were.

Obviously, INITIALLY we had some fun moments! Below you can observe Tara feeding the empty kitchen cupboards lots of raisins, helping greatly with the packing of the CDs, and riding the hover to new heights of performance.


The very best of all, I should think, was riding the office chair (which sadly had to stay behind, though when the picture was taken we did not know that yet) up and down the corridor with mummy and...


...making best friends with the hard working washing machine. When all your other toys are packed you just make do with what's there.



So up to here, we're laughing!

HA HA HAAA! Fun-ny, this moving business!

Note: Waste of space, centre pic!

Ha ha ha ha! And then we stopped laughing, squished lots of boxes into a van, had a bit of a shouting session with BT (as you remember, that's Brit...), said our sad good-byes to darling Leicester, and squished the remainder of our things (the volume of which we had badly underestimated) into the car (did we mention we got a car?), along with Tara and mummy. Now, I'm not sure whether 'squish' is the right verb. Does it convey misery and the inability to move even an inch? Does it imply the following packing order: stuff - Tara - mummy - more stuff jigsaw puzzled around and on top of mummy? Does it imply Tara's chair surrounded by stuff like a sinking wombat in a swamp?

Let's get a tad more visual on that one:

Pic on left: Swamp! Pic on right: child, given up and sunk, child's position indicated by fat white arrow. Asleep for a bit, thank God.

Pic: Anonymous mummy in state of receding amusement and onset of state of mild shock , ashamed of awful bargain buying and hoarding habit unhappily married with inability to bin stuff. Big bag of half dried washing between shins and back of seat, big unshapely bag of unidentified COLD objects on knees, some other unidentified square object poking into ribs; both remain unidentifiable due to other stuff on top of them. The idiot who thought to place the remaining kitchen stuff in a Sainsbury's bag in perfect fly-upon-braking position was NOT the same idiot who thought starting loads of loads of washing on moving day morning was a good idea, though the latter idiot remedied the former idiot's mistake by repositioning said bag while dreaming of the space wasted in the original load in the van (see above pic). Well, well.

This is how the trip went (and luckily not only all good things end, but all bad ones too!):
At first Tara slept for an hour, then woke up and ate some pasta.
And then Tara cried, for an hour.
No picture.
At some point she understood that mummy was not going to pick her up nor get her out, no matter how much she wriggled or stretched her little arms out, and took to only holding one little hand up to hold a mummy finger for support. Heartbreaking.
No picture.
Then, without warning (except more crying), she puked. Pasta, undigested, and some extra bits & bobs.
No picture.
Then she puked some more.
No picture either.
More crying (but less than before the pasta deja-vue), some sighing, and more holding of finger.
Eventually we got there and were unpacked. The inaccessible cold stuff on my knees turned out to be the contents of the fridge/freezer. (And then and there I was GRATEFUL they'd made me throw out the last two eggs!)

And the lesson we get to learn here?
Well.
Everyone is welcome to suggest one. Everyone is also welcome to use the words *DON'T* *BARGAIN* *BULK BUY* *HOARD* *CHARITY SHOP* *TRASH* *(random expletives)*
Tip: It is NOT "Don't ever leave out an opportunity to bulk buy and hoard bargains at charity or any other shops without ever trashing any b*** thing."

That said, I do strongly feel that Tara ABSOLUTELY NEEDS a toy box and a book shelf to make this house a home, that I ABSOLUTELY MUST buy a chest of drawers (since Jose has hogged ALL available drawers to himself, minus the kitchen ones), and that the kitchen would benefit greatly from a cookie jar and a LARGE bread bin (and I HAVE seen a NICE & CHEAP one in a charity shop, although I luckily don't recall which!)

Please note entry below the last

I'm blogging out of order. Blame BT.

Wir haben...

Wir haben eine kleine Maus versteckt. Findest du sie?

(Ein Wohnzimmer haben wir hier auch versteckt, aber das haben wir selbst noch nicht gefunden!)

We've hidden a darling little mouse on this picture - can you find it? (We've also hidden a living room on it, but we've not yet quite managed to find that ourselves!)

En esta foto os hemos escondido una ratica chiquitita, la podeis encontrar? (Tambien hemos escondido un salon pero hasta ahora nosotros mismos no hemos conseguido encontrarlo...)

A Cute PS - Goodbye Leicester

Well then. Recovered from The BT Grump (a strange but not unheard-of disease), I'll post Leicester a Goodbye, for she deserves it.

Leicester darling, you've been good to us! You gave us friends, you gave us curry (you gave us Revolution far too late), you gave us a PhD and a job, you gave us a gym and some tone and tough tummy for at least a while; and you gave us, best of all, a big fat upgrade from two single people with some 5 suitcases full of stuff and one open return ticket, to a family with an incredible and beautiful Tara (pictured here on her last New Walk walk back home)...

(picture slightly blurred due to fatty baby finger prints on lens)

...and (f*** SH*** D***IT!) a van AND a car jigsaw packed with stuff.

So it's time to say goodbye, and we take a final stroll across Townhall Square, we chase some birds, and Tara takes her hat off to Leicester too.

And then, after 4 years, 1 month, 2 weeks, and 2 days, that's it.*
Time's up.

Good bye, Leicester, love.

(Mummy, slightly hysterical: "I'm going to miiiiissss ya, LestA")

* "That's it"? Of course that's not quite it! There's packing boxes, and packing vans and cars and lots of puking (Tara) and crying (Tara, too. Mummy gets a grip, and thinks, as instructed, of the benefits ONLY) on our way out. But that's a different story which will be told!

No Last Cute Goodbye

Why? Because, BT (that's British Telecom) have taken the liberty to process out internet move three days earlier than requested. Thanks again, BT. We remember how it took you 10 days to transfer our internet line from one flat to the one right next to it, and in the end the 'engineer' pressed one button and went, oops, forgot that.
Now, thanks to your efficient services and employees, we can't blog, I can't monitor the ebay auctions for a car seat for Tara, will loose the bargain seat near home, and I'm spending time in an internet cafe in town to get crucial details like the van hire details or phone contact and pick up details for the cot we got Tara and have to pick up today, while we have the van for 24 hours, and need to go across the country in it and back. Thanks also, BT, for keeping me waiting in your queue for 20 minutes before I was allowed to speak to someone in the first place.
I can't make calls on the internet to friend abroad that I'd wanted to make urgently. And all that on a day that's so packed I haven't really got the time to blow my nose.
Thanks, BT, I hope you're looking forward to my formal complaint.

And to all that have wished us a smooth move, well... COULD have worked, but it ain't looking good just now! And let's just repeat why: Yes, BT's (that's British Telecom) incredible service.

SHOULD they manage to get us reconnected in Kent, you'll hear from us soon.

PS (Living in a Box II)

... and if you've tried to call us recently, well, that ain't possible. Tara played hide and seek with the telephone a few days ago, I've been quite unable to find it since, the batteries have died since and it won't ring now to give us any clues as to its whereabouts. Well.

Living in a Box II

Wondering why we're not blogging?

...coz we're PACKING UP!