Tales of a Trainee American

Firstly a belated Merry Christmas to all of my readers!

To answer my own question, we ended up going into a not-too-busy Cribbs Causeway on the way down. No queues to get in, not packed out, and we managed to buy presents for everyone (except my present to Alexis).

To suzylou, okay, I know you really really want to drop as soon as possible, but hanging on 'til the 5th would be acceptably cool.

We now have a far more confident little girl than we did a week ago. She's learned so much (though not talking or walking, but walking can't be far off now!), most importantly my dad taught her to blow raspberries. She probably thinks it's an advanced form of communication. She also has New Toys, including a generic Box-o-Wooden-Blocks which the adults had more fun with than she did. She can feed herself (with her fingers - messy and not totally effective but it keeps her happy and busy!), shows off, cruises and crawls everywhere.

We have various DVDs (BSG season 3, Bourne Trilogy - just watched Ultimatum, yep, agree, excellent, please end the series now thank you, HP&tOotP, seen too, amazing how the worst book with the worst bits taken out makes the (second?) best film so far, and some odd Japanese kids' cartoons), calendars, and other bits and bobs.

All a bit disjointed as reports go but it's been done piecemeal over the course of several hours so I'll just hit 'Post' and be done.

Okay, so it's not really his birthday, but it is the birthday of three English cricketers, one of whom is currently touring Australia with England, and two who I'd dearly love to have seen out there, not least because we'd have had a far better chance of winning with them than without (assuming their best form, etc).

But I digress. This is my first Christmas I've not spent with my parents (and I'm the last of their three children to do so, despite being the eldest - Kathryn has done Christmas in both Canada and New Zealand, and Sara went to her in-laws last year). However, certain traditions have been kept alive. For instance, pains au chocolat for breakfast. And buck's fizz. Except I'm the only person in this household who drinks alcomohol, and there's a whole bottle of Cava to get through. Rather, was. There ain't much left right now. Hic!

I'm playing Guitar Hero some, too... but it doesn't half knacker up your fingers (and I'm only playing on Easy!) So I'm taking a break and typing instead: how sensible of me.

It was my 33rd birthday on Friday. It was a quiet one. We did our food shopping for Christmas Day*, and went to a local Italian restaurant for dinner.

Yesterday was lazy, until Alexis remembered/discovered she didn't have any breadcrumbs. This is a problem: the breadcrumbs she likes are only available on import, and only a few specialist/ex-pat store stock them. The nearest such store is in Hampstead, which I hate driving to and parking in at the best of times. Nevertheless, on the second pass around, I managed to get movie-style parking: right in front of the shop. I should've known; the trip back involved 3, possibly 4, London boroughs (Camden, Islington, possibly Haringey, and then Barnet). The problem with Hampstead, y'see, is turning around to point in the direction you want to. The discovery you can't turn left at a certain point onto Kentish Town road, thus requiring a 2 or 3-mile detour to do the quick, less than a mile as-the-crow-flies, trip between Kentish Town and Tufnell Park.

Today would've been lazy as well, except for:
* Apart from stock, milk, and a few other bits and pieces. Turns out that whilst Waitrose was still opening at 11am, they had a half-hour "browsing" period from 10.30am. I mean, a department store I can understand. But a "browsing" period in a supermarket? Any road, that meant it was already jammed solid. In the end, it wasn't such a bad run, but annoying nevertheless.

Oh, and some tidying up: piles of bit of paper relating to this, that, and the other. I did find a birthday card from my Nan, though, which had a nice surprise tucked into it :-) And I arraned our presents around the "tree" (which is actually a tall lamp in one corner of the room).

Now, maybe, I can relax a bit.