Upon opening his first present, Oskar fell on his knees and shouted “My first wish has come true! Thank you! Thank you God for making Santa!!”

Oliver opened up all of this presents and of course has been playing with one of the smallest and cheapest items all day. Parents always go just a little overboard when it comes to Christmas :)

While we woke up to lightning and rain, the skies cleared for lunchtime and I took Oliver for a walk. He slept for an hour and I enjoyed the quiet streets.

We arrived home just as lunch was ready and the afternoon has been spent half in food coma, half on FaceTime with various family members in various other countries and continents.

MrB is making pavlova now and since I’ve already had a bit of sugar today in the form of gingerbread cookies, I think I might have some pav as well – we might not be in Australia this year as initially planned, but we can always eat some Aussie food :)

And I leave you with some photos from last night and this morning. It’s been a good day but I’m looking forward to tomorrow when everything is open again and I can take the kids for a play at a soft play centre and go for a run – I go a bit stir crazy when I’m inside all day long.

10 days until Christmas – life’s still busy but showing signs of slowing down… I even took my ‘rest day’ today seriously and had a long afternoon nap :)

MrB has been coming home before the kids are in bed and it’s been so nice. Sadly I had almost forgotten just how nice it is when he comes home in time to do the boys’ bathtime and bedtime with me. I feel total calmness come over me as soon as he walks in the door and I love when all 4 of us are cuddling in our bed and reading books. It’s visible and palpable how the kids love having him home during workday evenings and I feel a lot less frantic when he’s around (I can be a bit of a stress head, especially when I have to jump straight into homework/bath/books/bed routine after a day in the office).

So one more week of work and then 2 off. It’ll be a quiet Christmas here in London – we couldn’t go to Australia this year but we’re looking forward to just slowing down, catching up with friends and remembering that life’s not all about work, work, work.

Having applied for a place as well, I joined in the excitement and called my mother and asked her to read out loud the text of the letter. Her English is not the clearest but I only had to understand one word: unsuccessful.

Ughh… not a good feeling.  When I got home it only got worse though, the letter said “SORRY! YOU have been unsuccessful at… “  I knew what I read but I heard it as “Sorry, YOU are a looser, everyone else got a place!” (they should not have capitalised that YOU and I would have been fine :).

By the following day I had mostly calmed down, I knew that a lot of people apply for the ballot places.  I had also signed up with a couple of charities so I still had hope.

Two weeks ago both charities told me they didn’t want me either.

Game over.

I fumed and moped for a few hours. I knew that there were still charities that were looking for runners but I was being selfish – I had really wanted to run for a charity that was personal to me, not one that I didn’t know anything about or whose cause was alien to me.  Selfish, like I said.  I think though that since every charity demands a minimum of £1500 to be raised, I would feel confident in being able to do that IF the charity’s work was close to my heart.

I fumed and moped for a bit longer.  I vented to those around me how the charity application process is all about “agree to tell the world your sob story and we might consider you.” Why else would they want to know how many Twitter followers you have, how many FB friends you have, what is your blog’s monthly traffic, whether you’d be willing to talk to media about your story, etc.

In hindsight it’s no surprise that I didn’t get picked because I didn’t go to town with the show and tell – I simply filled in the application – minus a detailed sob story.  I simply want to run and whereas I didn’t mind the idea of raising the minimum required, I did not plan to become the Fundraiser of the Year and harp on about my sob story to everyone and anyone in my vicinity from now until race day.

So there’s no London Marathon for me on my birthday on the 21st of April. It sucks but one could have bigger problems in life.

A day after venting, moping and fuming, I got online and signed both MrB and myself up for:

If London doesn’t want me, Paris welcomed us with open arms and I’m excited!!!  I’m excited that there is a marathon in my future, I’m excited that now I get to choose the charity I want to raise money for AND raise as much as I can and not be pressured with a minimum amount.

That said – if any Estonians know how I could raise money online for an Estonian charity, I’d greatly appreciate the info!

Oskar calls them conkers, I call them chestnuts, Oliver calls them peanuts :)

My children sound British, although this little one likes to play with accents and mimics my occasional American pronunciation!

My first experience of living in an English-speaking country was America, 1993 until 1999. After surviving massive culture shock my brain unfroze after about 6 months there and in a few years I got hang of the American accent – new people I met after that never asked me “where are you from?” and when I moved to DC and someone did ask me, I’d just say “Missouri” and that was the end of it.

Then I lived in Australia for 6 years and found that my originally tongue-tied tongue really appreciated that I was able to now drop the very round American r-s from my speech – Aussie English is nice and lazy :) And cute – I don’t mind at all calling Christmas Chrissie, a present pressie and a bbq barbie. Despite picking up all the cute slang (and saying ‘bloody hell’ all the time instead of my American equivalent of ‘f*cking A’) I never really got hang of the Aussie accent though… or the masterful way they make every sentence sound like a question :).

Then I decided to mess with my brain a little more – we moved to England! Yikes. They sort of sound like Aussies, meaning they definitely don’t sound like Americans (unless they’re Irish, in which case I always think they’re American :|) but it’s been over 6 years now but I honestly still can’t figure out how I need to pronounce my words here.

The good thing is that I can still say ‘bloody hell’ and it’s totally acceptable here. I’m sure I’ve started using lots of British English words in my everyday speech, it’s become so natural I cannot even come up with a list right now :) BUT – I will forever think though that pants are trousers and cookies are cookies and NOT biscuits; I will equally always say vitamin as vahy-tuh-min and not vit-uh-min, and say ketchup instead of tomato sauce. From Oz I dearly miss the word ‘daggy’ and I’m undecided still whether I want to spell ‘authorise’ or ‘authorize’.

And now I come to the few phrases that actually totally rub me up the wrong way. As many times as I hear them, they just don’t make any sense to me:

Nr1 – Washing up.

Washing up WHAT? And why UP? Well, if you’re new here in the UK, remember that it doesn’t have nothing to do with the direction of washing and that it only means washing up one particular kind of thing – it simply means “washing the dishes”. Why on earth someone would say “I’m washing up” when they could be just saying “I’m washing the dishes” is mindboggling to me :)

Nr2 – Tea.

As in “dinner”. As in “what did you have for tea?”. As in “I just had lasagna for tea.” That stuff’s confusing!!!! After 6 years here I cringe every time I hear “I had x for tea”, to me it sounds like “I had apple for banana”. Don’t.Make.No.Sense. :)

Nr3 – You alright?

As in “how are you?”, or in shops “how can I help you?” “You alright” is not a sentence – it has no verb! AND – it just sounds rude :|

Nr4 – Crisps.

The most difficult word to pronounce. And it just means chips… which is confusing as chips here mean fries :)

On a positive note though, I really like saying “lovely”. Something you’d never hear in the States or even in Oz.

And before I start rambling some more about weird words here, I’m going to stop and ask YOU – what kind of English are you used to and what phrases/words do you love and which ones make no sense???

Haapsalu, my hometown

We arrived back in London last night and the muggy heat that welcomed us made me so happy (I’m a sucker for nasty hot weather :). Today, however, after mucho unpacking and cleaning and tidying and errands, I’m tired and a bit blue.

I guess that’s what happens after holidays, the post-holiday blues. I know it won’t take long before I’m over it, but right now I’m going to go and have a nap and just not think about life for a while :)

I blew the interview but the sun is shining and I will not complain.

As I was basking in 23°C yesterday (I don’t work on Wednesdays, remember? :), I realised how I managed to fend of depression for so long (from my 1st episode in 1998 until 2010) – for most of that time I lived in Australia!

My survival plan for next winter therefore includes a long Australian holiday and a SAD light. Citalopram will be my backup but I’m hoping to be off of it by the height of summer…

• Drop off your kid.
• Tell them what his name is.
• Pick him up in a few hours.
• Repeat the next day.

Nursery English style:

• Drop off your kid for his first settling-in session.
• Everyone already knows his name, where he was born and when was his last immunization.
• Grandma is not allowed to leave the premises during settling-in sessions.
• After begging the manager to let grandma wait upstairs and not in the same room with the child, it is finally agreed.
• Receive a list of items he has to take with him every day (gumboots, rain-jacket, toothbrush, toothpaste, etc).
• Receive a note that every item he brings has to be labeled.
• Purchase a uniform. ?!?!
• Hand over photographs of every person that might ever pick him up.
• Receive a list at the end of each day indicating what/when/how much he ate, what/when/how much he drank, when he went to the toilet and what activities he participated in.

I’m a little bit overwhelmed at the moment and amazed that I had to buy him a uniform. And the shirts are those annoying little polo shirts that I never buy because the collars get all funky after washing and given that I don’t own any clothes that need to be ironed, I am not happy that I now have these teeny little collars to flatten every week.

On the positive note, the facility and people are really nice and there are 4 other bilingual children in his group.  I’m hoping he’ll learn some English soon, but if he picks up some Spanish along the way as well, I won’t mind.

Plan from now on: Monday/Tuesday another 2 settling-in sessions and from then on it’ll be 8-1pm, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday.

Going home at night is sad. The house is too quiet. If only the TV was working so I could have some background noise and wouldn’t think about the little munchkin who’s in Estonia.

Four weeks is a long time. I hope Oskar doesn’t feel like we’ve abandoned him. I hope 2-year olds don’t have that sort of sense of time yet.

So we sit at home in the evenings, just the two of us and look at Oskar’s photos on the web. Pathetic little non-parents that we are at the moment.

I looked into getting some theater tickets for a few Friday nights, but looks like we should have booked a few months ago. Only those seats which are behind a post or next to soundboard are available.

Did I mention that we’re almost definitely going back to Canberra in January 2009?  That makes me feel a little better. About everything.