My Daughter, harvest moon

It’s been exactly 2 months since Lily was born. I have spent the last 2 months getting to know my daughter, getting to know her face and her body, her needs and her moods, getting to know myself as a mother.

I trace the outline of her little face and nose with my finger. She is perfection: she is the absolute embodiment of innocence and helplessness. Yet she is fused with a will and a survival and a strength that surprised me. Suddenly through her I felt part of the human race and she was carrying me forward – suddenly I had a sense of belonging. I’m no longer trying to fit in. I am Lily’s Mom.

Nothing could have prepared me for the magnitude of love that washes over you when you first connect with your infant.  It has been my experience that on this earth that there are different kinds of love – the love you might have for a parent, for a lover, for a long time friend or for a stranger, all different, all something we call love. We experience it early on, but we are too young at the time it happens and do not take note of either commencement or occurrence. It is simply part of the fabric of ourselves.

The love for your first child, it is unlike anything you will have experienced before. It is an ecstatic fearful sort of love, immediately: you are aware of it and immediately: your priorities are forever tilted towards this tiny moon that landed next to your planet and you are forever changed, affected forevermore by the tides of this tiny new and powerful entity.

Lily was born on 20th of September 2013 under a waning gibbous moon, after the harvest moon. In the few days after a full moon, you’ll see a waning gibbous moon in the west in early morning. And in the days before electricity, farmers depended on that blue moonlight to extend the day, to get things done. The full moon closest to the autumnal equinox is known as the harvest moon and it was always a welcome sight.

I gaze in wonder as on her very first day on this earth she struggled on my belly to find food, and somehow knew where it was and what she was supposed to do.  After 3 days of labor, my little one was indeed - a welcome sight.

My new moon

Mommy, I was this big!!

Home, at last

Not a good fit

I'm not sure at the time why it wasn't immediately clear to me that I should apply for veterinary school, or zoology or open a florist.
And I can't remember where I saw the advertisement, but I think it was in the local job applications office. If my memory serves me correctly,  in my last year of college I was having doubts about finishing my degree and someone had told me that there was an online quiz you could do in the job office that allowed you to check what kind of career you had an aptitude for.
This was back when the internet was still relatively new. Public computers did not always have GUIs and their black screens made it even easier for me to feel like a failure in my choice of degree. To this day I still find a command prompt daunting.

Anyhow this is how I came across the advertisement taped to the glass door of the office.

Kittens free to good home.

This was evocative of how I operated at the time - I was there about my future and got distracted by a bag of kittens. And this is how I ended up owning, for the best part of 10 years, a mean old white cat called Mau.

It must have been as a result of feeling disconnected, in the wrong place somehow, that I decided to get a cat. Owning a cat - well that was something. It symbolized stability. It meant I knew what I was doing. At least it meant I probably knew what I was doing later. From that day forward, later meant I was going home to feed my cat.

The lady who was giving the kittens away met me in the car park of the same job centre which was on the way to the university. A beautiful stretch of the river Corrib ran behind the building. I got into her car as she pulled the cardboard box out of the car boot and let me take my pick. Some of the kittens were black, some were white and some were black and white. There were 2 all white ones. They were the fluffiest things I had ever seen, pure white and innocent. One in particular seemed strong and intent on climbing up to meet me. The books always said take the brightest eyed of the bunch. I made my choice and the lady drove away with the rest and there we were, suddenly belonging to each other.

Now Mau didn't start off mean. I vividly remember those halcyon early days, when he was barely bigger than my hand, walking across my chest and jutting his little face into my neck, purring like a well oiled motor.
Even today I still see him, in my mind's fish eye lens; he's so close he's distorted as in a christmas bauble; basically just purring into my face.

He was barely 6 weeks old and a joyful kitten. When my friend Sally came to visit he joyfully sank his claws into her leg and climbed. And in those days it was cute because he didn't have any idea that his claws could hurt some.

Somewhere along the line, Mau changed, probably when he was about 3 to 4 years old. It was probably my traveling that did it, I somehow finished my degree (we were never a good fit), worked for a couple of different IT companies and eventually ended up working for my last company.
At one point I was repacking a suitcase every month for work and leaving him with my boyfriend at the time.
Even when that relationship was on the rocks Mau would go to stay in his second home, and hang out with my ex, who kindly looked after him but who couldn't really hide the distance, not just between me and him but between him and the cat. Or maybe I was reverse-anthropomorphizing my relationship into the cat.  Anyway the cat somehow absorbed all of the stale energy from the relationship. Not a good fit. I felt guilty leaving Mau for long periods of time, I even multiplied the weeks by 7 in order to feel worse about it.

Either way, my cat went bad.

Anyone who knows me knows I'm a huge animal lover. When I was a kid I used to hand out antivivisection leaflets and postcards about battery hens. Aged 8, I considered my greatest achievement getting my picture printed in the Blue Cross magazine for kids. I love animals. And I loved Mau. Even though he scratched the bejesus out of me and often let out blood curdling meowls before attacking my arm, using his hind legs to essentially attempt to rip the living flesh away from my bones.
And later when I met my husband and we made arrangement to live together on another continent, I literally said to him 'I come with a cat'. And before moving to the states, Mau was issued an Irish European pet passport - I used to joke with the taxi drivers in Galway that even though I wasn't able to get an irish passport, my cat was.

James tried to befriend Mau for an entire year before finally giving up, after the umpteenth scratch betrayal. He soon learnt that the best way to get on with Mau was to ignore him completely. Mau would come to you if he wanted something - and that part wasn't hard to figure out - Mau just wanted 2 things: food and freedom. Given enough of both he would bring home little presents of appreciation, a squirrel head here, a mouse tail there. Once he even brought back a live hummingbird - which gave me such palpitations my heart almost reached hummingbird speed itself. (Thankfully, we were able to make sure that that one got away thereby solidifying Mau's believe that we are completely incompetent hunters and his bringing us various body parts in a misled attempt to get our bloodthirstiness going was not going to change that).

In Boston our vet announced that Mau may have hyperesthesia. She wasn't sure about it and as the article states 'There is no specific test that can diagnose this problem, so this syndrome requires diagnosis by exclusion'. This is an odd disease and descriptions range from a neurological/nervous system disorder to obsessive compulsive behaviors. Mau only ever ticked some of the boxes - twitchy rippling skin, an aversion to being touched, lashing tail. At times, it was frightening - he was the feline version of Jekyl and Hyde, doing dolphin leaps for a cuddle that ended up with him sinking his teeth into your leg. What made me sad and love him all the more was the dismaying thought that maybe he wanted cuddles - but then when he received they they hurt him. I was tortured by the thought that maybe all he wanted was affection and that he didn't understand why it hurt him so. It was an analogy in the flesh. 

The same vet also prescribed him prozac. As in, for depression. I have to admit, I didn't cash in that prescription but I wish I had kept it now as proof that cats are sometimes prescribed prozac.  

Then, much to James' dismay, one day the cat blocked. His tummy got hard and barrel shaped. Something was awfully, terribly wrong. Mau tried to pee but there was no pee, just sad little drops of rust colored liquid on a tile floor. We brought him to the vet and she deballooned him with a catheter. Later he blocked again and although the catheter treatment was expensive, the surgery which followed was even more so. As James' put it, the cat had outgunned his vet bill quota for life. His treatment ran into the hundreds and later the thousands. The surgery was a success, Mau no longer had the urethra to block, I made sure he stayed hydrated and as so often is the case with chronic conditions, Mau would let us know the pain was back by peeing in the sink. 

When James' Spanish assignment came around, we packed up our little family into crates (Mia and Mau in one big crate, Bizy in the other). In meticulously planning our journey from California to Georgia to Virginia to Spain and Rota and Granada (James planning for us, me planning for the pets) I had overlooked one minor detail. The crates that I had ordered, the biggest size there was so that the pets would travel comfortably, would prove to be a nightmare for us. Torn between not spending a fortune and having a big enough vehicle to transport the gigantic crates James was on a constant merry go round of renting various sized vehicles. Each line of our journey needed a van, and when we stayed somewhere for a few days, we downsized to a car to keep the costs down, then upgraded to a van again once we were on the move again. It was a logistical nightmare. When we finally got to Norfolk Naval Air Station in Virginia, the counter agent told us that we would not be able to fly with our current configuration - 2 cats in one crate and a dog in the other. Turns out its a lot easier to travel with 2 pets in the military.

In the end, with the new baby, James and I decided it was safer to ask my Mom to take Mau back to Belgium with her. I couldn't take the chance of him taking a swipe at our little girl. There would come a day where she would walk and with walking would come the risk of a tail being pulled.

At my Mom's, he would have a garden to roam around in and in my mind I pictured Mau as Black Beauty, happily shaking his forelock in a retirement paddock, with fillies and oats unabounded. I imagined Mau chasing butterflies and chewing dandelions. It would be a better way to end his days rather than here with us in Spain where he has a terrace without grass, a view of the sky without trees and a family without friendship, just belonging to each other because we did, we do and we always have done.
It's true, Me and Mau were no longer friends. I was heavily pregnant when he decided he would take another swipe at me, and I don't know if it was my protectiveness as a mother to my unborn child but it hurt my feelings this time in a way that I was not prepared for. I stopped petting him. He in turn stayed away, perhaps sensing my hormones, the change in me and the change in our relationship. It was no longer 'Me and my mean old white cat' but 'Me and my newborn baby'.

I mentally started preparing for a life without Mau. I called the airline to check what size carry case my Mom could bring on the flight. We went to the vet to confirm the paperwork. At the vets, Mau did his best to appear abused, flattening against the edges of the case where moments before he had been skulking around the house. The vet almost got his fingers chewed off, I could see out of the corner of my eye as Mau's tail was dangerously lashing and I tried to warn the vet in my broken spanish, the vet who was young and cheerful and talking non stop, not listening, his fingers dangerously close to the equivalent of 10, maybe 11 sharks. In the end, I even got him vaccinated again, in order to bring the european paperwork (that darn pet passport) up to date. I thought about how easy it would be next time we travel back to the States. I got positively excited when Mom mentioned she had bought a litter box. Mau was going to live with my Mom!

Today, I puttered around the house while Lily, our newborn, slept. The house was peaceful, my husband was at his desk reading, the dog was asleep in his bed. Mia was a little curl of a snowshoe, asleep on her favorite chair. In the kitchen I realized that it was past 6. I did the usual call 'Mia, Bizy, Mau! - Dinner time!'.

And that's when my tears fell. I'm sorry I couldn't fix you Mau. In the end you didn't finish your journey right here beside me. I've failed as your human Mom. But as I transition into real Motherhood, I know you will be happier there with MY Mom, her garden and that freedom you always wanted. 

Angel kisses

Yesterday after leaving the hospital for my weekly check-up I decided to turn right instead of left, which is where I usually walk after a hospital visit, up along the river and through to the park on the other side. This time I was in an ‘explorery’ mood and decided to meander back into town slowly and visit all the interesting things along the way. I passed by the Garcia Lorca park which was to my left and then doubled back up a side-street and finally came out at the base of Calle Recogidas. I had already done that pregnant thing I do, which is to call into a café and ask for the menu, and as seems to be quite often the case here in Granada if no printed menu is available, and if I do not have the chance to run through the available items and imagine them with my pregnant taste-buds, and there is no chalk board available which to sit beside, then I have to admit defeat and return to the street with the waiter scratching his head behind me. I have made a couple of married waiters grin and nod knowingly in this way, as if they too had loca wives who couldn’t make their minds up and didn’t know what they wanted.

In the end I popped into the most generic café I could find and joy! When I went to use the restroom it was clean! The toilet paper was stocked up and the soap dispenser was full. This is a rarity in many of Granada’s restrooms. Someone had just tended to the bathroom and I was the first to use it in all of its gleaming glory. It was almost as good as in the Naval lodge at Rota, where they actually wrap the toilet with a paper strip and a kind word printed on it to let you know it has been cleaned. I duly unwrap those toilets like they were presents.

But this was by far not the biggest thing that happened to me in Café Generica. And this next thing made me cry like Madeleine. An elderly gentlemen came up as I was polishing off a Panini and green tea and pointed to my bump. He said a couple of words I didn’t understand, I can only assume were along the lines of Enhorabuena and I smiled at him and asked him to repeat, more often than not the andalusian accent obscures some of the Spanish that I do know. He asked me if I spoke Spanish, was I here as a tourist or working etc. I told him I was here with my husband who worked here at the army MADOC headquarters in town. As I was telling him it suddenly struck me he was about the same age as my Dad – the Dad that lives in my head, the Dad before he got sick, the Dad who could still charm women and who loved nothing more than to meet a stranger.

Suddenly, in that very moment, the loss of my father filled the universe, not just my universe but the entire god-damn black of it. Everything came back to me at once, my system was flushed with every memory and moment we ever had together, the good (when he was well) and the bad (when he was sick).

My first ever memory of my Dad is of both of us lying in the sun, the sensation of my Mom being somewhere nearby but out of sight. I think I was about 2 or 3 and we were both laying on white plastic deck-chairs with a small white table between us. Both of our hands were on the table and Dad had fallen asleep with his hand on mine. Even today, I can still feel the strange sensation of not being able to get my hand out from under his; it was too heavy for my 3 year old hand; I remember his breathing was slow and rhythmic and I didn’t want to wake him nor disturb how peaceful everything was, but I also wanted to go find my Mum. I was torn and it was a place of love and my biggest problem in life and at the time was how to get from one love to the other. It is a beautiful memory, and I received a second gift from it too – my Mother one day handed me a photo of the exact moment, there we are asleep on our deck-chairs, I am sucking my thumb, Dad with his hand on my hand. Indeed my Mother had not been too far away – she had had the foresight to take a picture, as we were on holidays at the time and that is what people do when they are on holidays. And so, of this most precious memory, it turns out that I have a viewing point from both inside and outside of the moment.

My last ever memory of my Dad is a phone conversation, which was the second worst one of my life. Panicked, my family called me and told me not to say anything, about the hospital, about the doctors, about how he was really feeling, but to ‘here, quickly, talk to your father, say positive things’.The conversation was awkward, as I tried to be upbeat, knowing that that ominous feeling I had carried in my heart for weeks was almost upon us, wanting to scream and beg him to wait, to hang on, to fight, to get better. Instead I was made to make small talk as if we had just met on a cruise somewhere and were about to break for dinner. He could barely speak then, this great oak tree of a man, and I hope he knew how unnatural it felt for me, to talk this way on the phone when he was in such pain, how I just wanted some time with him alone, the two of us, to think about living and dying honestly and truthfully, the way we had always tackled other things, the way we had always been with each other. He tried to say something, and I didn’t understand and then the phone was taken away from us. That was the last time we ever spoke to each other. Me, hysterically vapid and he, trying to impart something that I just didn’t, couldn’t catch. An even worse phone call came later, at about 1AM when my brother called me to tell me that Papa had died. An animal, a horse maybe or some kind of large injured cat passed through my lungs and made a mortally injured scream and I collapsed on the floor, blinded by tears and sadness and rage. Later that night I spent hours outside, hurting my neck, looking at the stars, wondering where he went, feeling as small and weak as I had when I was trying to get my hand out from under his when I wanted to go find my Mom, except now I was trying to get out from under the blackened sky to find my Dad.

So, some of this fractured and painful event came flooding back to me as I sat in the café and spoke with the old man. It wasn’t the first time either, a few weeks ago as I was standing at my front door, looking up at the street, I noticed the back of an old man sitting on the street bench. He had a very similar hair cut to my father, and was wearing a navy sweater which was almost a uniform for my Dad. It made me catch my breath: old men kill me.

It all finally boiled over in the space of a few seconds, this man in the café smiled at me, I briefly and enormously thought about my father and suddenly the man leaned over and kissed me on the hand just as I had seen my father do countless of times. The same everything. The same bow of the head, the same acted out reverence of the hand and the same kiss but not a kiss, no lips touching, just a gesture, as if everyone was at an Austrian ball and the waltz that was playing had just ended. The old man left and I was cast into a vacuum where slowly and one by one, big fat tears formed under my eyelashes and I was blinking them away, trying to return to the present moment.

I’m glad I had the foresight to go up to the man behind the counter. A butchery man, he had his sleeves rolled up and a kind face. I asked him if he knew the gentleman who had just left, he looked a little concerned and almost imperceptibly nodded yes, I could sense a certain protection for this customer. This customer was a regular and he was well liked. I better not be some silly young woman about to make a ridiculous remark. I asked him if he came in every day and if he knew his order. Surprise and pleasure registered on his face as he understood what I was asking for – he drinks Café Cortado which is Espresso with a drop of milk. I paid for his next one and walked out onto the street, blinking in the hot sun.

Our Granadina oasis!

James spent all last weekend getting the plunge pool ready for summer! One of the main reasons we chose this house during our intense 2-day morning-sickness-infused house hunt was for the terrace. It is an awesome little getaway. I know that if this was in Galway I would have a lot of visitors on sunny days! For now, it's our little oasis (Visitors always welcome!)  

Notice the terrace has lots of wooden boards and 4 kind of weird elephant tables on it. Our landlady left behind a little more than I bargained for in terms of plants and tchotchkes. She asked me if she could leave a few of the larger plants behind. She left ALL of them. This is a small percentage of them. They all require watering at least every 1-2 days to remain alive in the Granada heat. But I don't mind! It's worth it, no? This is why I have a 'Plant Survival Plan (PSP) document taped to the fridge. I put a check mark on it every time they get watered. It helps keep me on track. I love plants but instead of a 'green' thumb I have a 'black moldy plague' thumb. 

After!!! Notice all the boards are gone! The elephants are in the basement!!! I wish I took more pictures of the before as James was working - he had to separate all the boards, lower them off the balcony with rope (I was waiting down below to untie the rope and stand guard). He also had to go to the hardware store to get pool cleaning stuff and Chlorine and PH strips and then clean the pool from top to bottom because it had not been used in years. Then we had to learn how to use the pool filter system, which is basically a big engine-y looking steam-punk thing down in the basement. Apparently the water is filtered through a big box of sand. Lovely clean blue and fresh! Perfect for a hot day!!

That is the splash of one very tired happy man! 

First dip! 

"Ahhh YEAAAAAAAA"

Happy James! 

View from the other side. Notice more plants!

It's Hammock-time! 

My gorgeous husband

Huh? Huh? We live in Spain!!! 

We had just noticed that the towel design matched the edge of the pool. 

Darken leather cowboy boots!

These are my new cowboy boots! I have always wanted a pair.
When they arrived the color was a bit paler than I expected, so I aged them a little with this really cool product by Delta Ceramco. I originally bought this product to age polymer clay, but with a little faith and a lot of guts I applied it to my brand new boots and am quite pleased with the results!

Here they are 'before'. Actually I think I had already started to paint the toe in this one. 

This product is kind of like a gel, first I started applying it with a paintbrush but that was taking far too long and also you have to work quite fast so it was better to just accept that the teal thread would also darken, and work simply with my hands and a dry cloth. 

So as you can see, it didn't darken them too much - just enough to give them more of a Mid-west vibe as opposed to a Las Vegas vibe. 

I really like how they turned out! The left is the before, with toe and the right is the after. Yeehaa! 

Upholstery!

I did this a while back but I forgot to upload photos. I updated our chairs with some nice fabric I had.

They really needed to be recovered! 

You will need: a little cat, just in case there is not enough cat hair on the fabric you wish to use. I happened to have this fabric because I had bought it for curtains but didn't realize at the time that the packet only contained one panel. 

You will also need upholstery tacks. Don't do what I did and think you can get away with using normal office thumbtacks! The ratio of successful thumb-tack entry into chair is about 20 to 1!

You will also need scissors and a hammer. Basically I just kind of did it - one tip is to folder over the edge of the fabric so it does't look scissored. 

Thumbtacks - you will be sick of these by the end! 

Perfect for a first time upholstery! Much better. Now repeat for all chairs - somewhat thankfully I remembered we only have 3 chairs Ha haha! 

4th July Cupcakes

Making 4th July cupcakes, I realized I didn't have any blue or red sprinkles. I mentioned this to James who decided to try his hand at decorating. He sort of hand-painted them with a new kind of cupcake decoration technique - Introducing the Morris family Custom Watercolor Painted Cupcakes!

James using a knife to brush on the blue

Notice the 'Mr Fixit' t-shirt.  This is his second favorite around-the-house T-shirt. 

The street sign in the background was given to us for our Wedding by one of our very good friends. It is also where we had our first kiss!

Now for the - ahem - red. For some reason the red coloring would not turn darker than pink. I feared for our safety using any more of the stuff so - cheerleader pink it was! (Next time I will get Gel food coloring or add some black, I think it will give a better color).

Happy 4th July! I'm wearing my new navy sundress with little white dogs on it. I thought it worked well with the stripy scarf! It is OK as it is stripes on one thing and dots on the other.

Kisses for my little moose! 

Look how handsome I am!

Happy 4th of July Everybody!

Freedom, patriotism and following your heart

Happy Birthday America! A few years ago, when I first moved to the States, I did it for love. Not for the country - because that didn't matter at the time, I would have gone to live in a capsule by the moon. I was just following my heart.

Everyone has their own America, and I grew to love mine. After serendipity and passion had brought me to the States, I fiercely fell in love with it. Now I believe that I would live in America no matter what. And I hate to hear anyone who has not experienced first-hand the good in the States, criticize the bad. (I have heard people make highly generalized and throw-away comments especially in random acts of facebook scorn).  Maybe it is because I am an outsider, who has adopted the States, with all its good and bad, with all its apple pies and NSA, that I feel the sting just like I believe an American would, except without the convictions which come with generational patriotism and home-grown pride.

Perhaps it is because I'm not all that patriotic about my own Belgian roots that I analyze it a little more and delight in it when I see it in others, I love it when the Irish get excited about a football match or St Patrick's day (Aside: Don't call it St. Patty's day, I believe this just came about because of the American habit to pronounce T's as D's and is an incorrect spelling of Paddy and drives the Irish mad!!), I'm sorry to say I have yet to see strong Belgian patriotism - unless it comes out collectively, reactively to something negative, for example a crime or a wish to linguistically prevail or conversely as a microcosm - locally, for a youth football team perhaps. I may be wrong and I hope I don't offend my fellow Belgians out there. This is a Belgian person who has never lived in Belgium, who grew up in Ireland and loves Ireland just as fiercely as I love the States. So here's to Freedom, Patriotism and Following your heart!!

"It is easy to take liberty for granted, when you have never had it taken from you. "

 ~Author unknown, sometimes attributed to M. Grundler

Freedom is never free. 

~Author Unknown

I wish that every human life might be pure transparent freedom. 

~Simone de Beauvoir

What is the essence of America?  Finding and maintaining that perfect, delicate balance between freedom "to" and freedom "from." 

~Marilyn vos Savant

Tweetie's room

Last week James and I went to Rota to get all the large ticket items that we need for when Tweetie gets here. Later on I'll write something on what we all got in terms of stroller and car seat and maybe I'll do a couple of reviews once I've had a chance to use them! There is a really nice US Naval base in Rota and it's about a 3 hour drive from Granada. Generally when we go there we stay at the Lodge and spend the day getting all our commissary items and ticking things off a tattered old list that we'll have been adding to for weeks. This time around, it was a baby gear run! 

We had decided that rather than ordering to the PX and risk it not being there when we got to Rota, we would simply choose from what was there. It was actually a lot less overwhelming that way because we only had a couple of choices for each thing. Who cares if we didn't get the absolutely best, most perfect and absolutely THE most 'bang for your buck' stroller? We will have our little perfect daughter to put in it, and as long as it was good value for the money in general, safe and functional, and not a complete disaster to use, I'm happy! (I did however google all product recalls and reviews on the fly just to make sure.)

The one thing we didn't get at the PX was her crib. There were 2 to choose from, one large white one and a smaller cherrywood one. The cherry was quite dark so the really helpful guy at the PX suggested we visit the IKEA in Jerez which is only about 15-20 minutes away. It was my first time EVER at an IKEA. Thankfully it was open till 10pm because I was in..wow, I don't even know - an IKEA trance! We walked around for 2 hours taking it all in. I'm surprised we didn't fall asleep in one of the display rooms afterwards Ha haha!

So - we finally got her crib and James worked all day Saturday to put everything together for me so that I could finish decorating!

What I love about the room is that it is teensy - just a couple of metres across and wide, but we managed to fit everything what all we needed in there. I think it's completely cute and functional. I also love that there is evidence of our friends and family all around her room - little tokens of love!
The crib itself is my Momma's present to us. It is just so beautiful for a little girl's room. James was the Daddy-mastermind behind the netting which was 15.99 EUR from IKEA.

This is basically what you see when you walk in the door. We took the doors off of the closet to open the room a bit more (James and my Mom were initially against the idea but I really like how it turned out). I took one of the shelves out and replaced it with a hanging rod, which James attached securely by drilling some tiny holes on either side to hold it in place. Afterwards he even put her little outfits back in order of size! <3

We ended up getting a changing table after all, which I'm really thrilled about! Initially we weren't going to get one because I figured I would be mostly changing her on-the-go but the storage space underneath is really valuable, especially in such a small room! 

Right of the room with my new gliding chair! I have it covered
with a blanket because of our naughty kitties! The room must
have a nice vibe to it as I keep finding Mia curled up asleep in there! 

Left of the room

The room has a tiny shelf running along the top of the closet which is so handy for little things like this. The little lacy edging is from Grandma in the States! (as are pretty much all of Tweetie's hanging outfits underneath!) 

Little teddies that I don't think are kiddie safe are going up top on the shelf! 

I made this little box - or rather I bought it as nude pine, and painted
it pink and green and glued the hedgehogs on it. My sister will recognize those! 

My friend Muriel made the necklace for us on the occasion of our wedding. She wrote a virtue on
each little bead as reminders of what makes for a successful marriage.  What an amazing idea! We loved it.
Definitely a burn-box item. 

The little porcelain house at the bottom of this picture is something my sister gave me many moons ago.  It reminds
me of a little cottage in Ireland. I bought this book 'Fletcher and the Springtime Blossoms' many moons ago in Boston because I thought it was so cute! 

A little inspirational meditation from Sally! 

James had some adventures putting up Mr Sun but it was all worth it in the end 

New buddies

More Goodies from Grandma!

Just look at all this cute stuff!!! Another parcel arrived today!!! Look at how cute these little outfits are.. Sylvia said that these outfits came from a friend of hers and they will be perfect for our little pumpkin when she arrives. (That's right! She will be a September baby so calling her Pumpkin is quite appropriate. James and I have were calling her Tweetie while we were picking out her name and the name has kind of stuck, even though we have finally decided on her real name. We think it's more fun not to mention what it is though until she's here! It's our little secret for now!)

Anyway, I'm totally in love with these little outfits, and I must check with Sylvia who her friend is so that I can send them a BIG Thank you!

So cute! Ladybugs!!

Yesterday was Bizy Bathtime so I'm uploading a few photos so you can see his sad little face! He is always really chipper afterwards though. 

We do need to buy more of his special shampoo that we get from Dinovite in the US. It is literally the only Shampoo I have found which doesn't make him itchy! I think mini Schnauzers in general can have small sensitivities in their skin but Bizy is insanely sensitive to shampoos. Even if they claim that they are gentle and for puppies. If we don't use this particular shampoo, he walks around for days afterwards using his back legs to scratch at his belly as he walks. He got really bad when we were living in California (I think this was due to the different grass and insects in combination with his sensitive skin) and Dynovite was the only shampoo that he could tolerate. It even seems to add condition to his dry little hair but without leaving it greasy - it actually leaves a squeak when you are rinsing. 

The link to the Dynovite website is here. The shampoo is called Dynovite DogOSuds All Natural Cleaning Shampoo and we got the Essential Oil Blend. It smells really good and clean without being 'floral' (think the opposite of that white puppy lavender smell, which I can't stand on dogs because - let's face it, dogs don't tend to smell like roses on their own!) This is a nice, earthy, clean, fresh smell that lasts for ages. The other cool thing is that this company is based in good ol' Kentucky so it's nice to see a successful local business that's also doing things online. I might even show them this review lol! 

Yes, I have a dirty little beard! 

I'm so sad. 

Please Momma let me out.

I'm a pirate!