As we’ve gotten closer to the baby’s due date, it’s increasingly the case that any social events with friends and family have been subtly (or not-so-subtly) redirected to ours rather than going out. So there’s been quite a roll call of visitors over the past month or so, starting with Kim, who kindly managed to squeeze in all the Selfs on her recent work trip from Australia! We started at Nonna Maria for dinner before retreating back to our flat, where I learnt all about Australia’s stressful auction process for purchasing homes.
Next we had Alix, Adam and Austin, who came to drop off a wide selection of baby essentials (thank you!) and stayed for a slice of my patented cheese-on-toast. (It’s not patented, and it was only for Austin. But it went down well.) Ross – a volunteer on the Midlothian election campaign – arrived with cheesecake, and after Randi’s tasty chickpea pasta we walked him to Train Station #1, said goodbye, realised all the trains were cancelled, reappeared and walked him to Train Station #2 instead, whereby Randi confused us with two random strangers and walked all along the platform having a stilted one-way conversation about the frequency of service at Crofton Park.
Matt and Laura visited a few days later with their kids for a Sunday strata and Magna-Tiles construction session. It hadn’t felt like that long since we last saw them, but long enough for sleeping baby to be replaced by something much bouncier and livelier! But this was nothing compared to shakshuka with Oliver and Abi a week later, whose daughter came to our wedding as a tiny newborn but now appeared at our doorstep as a walking, talking and counting (lots of counting!) delight of a person. (Dear kids: sorry, I always found it really, really annoying when adults greeted me with some observation about how I was bigger than the last time they saw me. I’m going to try really hard not to do this in person.)
Occasionally we have ventured out: for example, to the Mayflower for a wonderful evening with AJ’s business partner Matt, his partner Julie and their two sons on a family holiday to London from Chicago. Their boys are both massively into Doctor Who, amongst many other interesting topics, and I very much enjoyed their deepdive into various Whoniverse facts even though I’m a little scared that they actually knew more than me. In return, we introduced them to sticky toffee pudding and tried to inoculate their young minds against Hershey’s.
With Matt and Julie, we also heard first-hand stories of the bizzaro trade-offs in American hospital births, e.g. the difference between arriving at the hospital at 11.59pm and 00:01am, or being born on 31st December vs. 1st January. (In case you’re wondering, pick the latter and then the former.) Oh, and they also gifted us a model CTA train as a baby gift! A truly lovely family, and we now bear a grudge against AJ for withholding them from us for all of these years.
It’s been so long since my last post that in the intervening weeks we also started – and then completed – our entire NCT course. I know the big joke about NCT is that it’s mostly just a way to make friends, and in fact we did try to win brownie points with the other couples by bringing our big fan along on the hottest days. But it was also incredibly useful as a learning exercise in its own right, with a nice open-minded atmosphere balanced by some strong guidance where our instructor felt it was warranted. Would recommend.
But the main event over the past few weeks has been Randi’s parents staying with us. As usual they were incredibly generous guests by doing a whole lot of cooking and shopping for us – thanks, guys! Their stay coincided with the grand reopening of one of our closest pubs: The Foresters Arms (formerly All Inn One), which now features an exciting array of tacos and side dishes in addition to drinks. We even ran into Jordan & Michaela from NCT there on opening night… see, we’re making friends already.
Speaking of pubs, we also took them to one of our favourites, Perry Hill, and observed another giant NCT group out in the garden with their new babies and spectacular array of prams.
Our other big outing with Beth and Stu was to Battersea Power Station, where we took Lift 109 up in one of the chimneys for a great panoramic view across London. The weather was perfect for it, and although the view of the trains snaking around at ground level is somehow not as captivating as what you can see from the Shard (sorry, Victoria) we still very much enjoyed this perspective over the city.
Other recent adventures have included: leaving drinks for Annie’s last week at work (boo!) which devolved into an intense quiz on US state capitals, pizza with Bronwen, a visit with Tash to my Grandma’s for probably the last time in that flat (the end of an era) and an evening at Mercato Metropolitano with my mum, who pointed out that back in her days working at Elephant & Castle they had no such fancy food options. (Oh, and that buzzer I accidentally stole on my last visit? The guy was surprisingly grateful to have it returned.)
But the other big news is… (drumroll)… we’re also moving! I haven’t blogged about this yet as ever since we started doing viewings back in March we’ve both been mentally prepared for the whole process to fail – which would have been fine, as we do really love our current flat. But, now that we’ve exchanged contracts I think it’s fair game to say that we’ll be in a new house by early September. We’re very excited to be getting it done before the baby arrives, and won’t have to balance that with any sadness about leaving the area because, as it happens, we’re not even leaving our street. Which did make all of the local area searches feel a bit redundant, but we love it here, so it’s great to be able to stay and move at the same time.
Finally, a massive thank you to furniture heroes Tash and Cormac, who came over yesterday after a Lazy Chef brunch to manoeuvre our giant IKEA NORDLIs around some very tight staircase curves! Randi definitely feared for everyone’s lives, but I’m happy to confirm that it got done without any visits to A&E, with just some minor trouser damage and a casualty drawer.
