Home and back again

I looked back at the blog and noticed that we have not been there for awhile. I suppose that it is time that we do that again.

First thing is our trip back home. We had such a great time. We felt like minor celebrities. Everyone seemed happy to see us and there were parties galore. We sneaked in a cabin trip, played poker, spent time with family in Red Wing, had a couple of baby showers, and attended a party for Beth’s nephew Sam who joined the Army. The problem with this is we feel like that is what is happening all the time and that we are missing out. To contrast, we come back to Melbourne and the phone never rings. I guess we will have to survive on the memory of the fun filled two weeks that we had home. Thank you again everybody.

We are back into winter now. It is not the cold that is a problem here, (I am sure that Beth might argue that) but it is the lack of daylight. The sun doesn’t really come up until about 8AM and the shadows in the afternoon start to get long about 3pm. It makes for really short days and lots of TV time in the evenings. Now that the winter solstice (remember we are in the southern hemisphere) has come and gone we can look forward to the days getting longer.

It was a rough first week back. On Tuesday I found out that the company that I was working for lost a big contract. So we had a big meeting about that. On Wed Beth took a fall while in the operating room. Normally it wouldn't be so bad she is pretty tough and can take it but:
1. She is pregnant.
2. She is wearing double lead suits to protect the child from radiation (I am still not comfortable with this, it may come out glowing).

She banged up her knee and elbow, broke the computer, and snapped a pen in half. To top it all off she was like the "help I've fallen and I can't get up" lady. There was too much weight for her to get up by herself, so people had to peal the lead off of her in front of the patient. The person having heart surgery even asked if she was OK. I think that it was probably more embarrassing than anything else. It was traumatic for her but she is still in amazingly good spirits. Go pregnancy hormones.

After she relayed this tale to me, it was my turn to tell her my news....I got laid off.

It wasn’t unexpected. I was the last one to start and I was working on a casual contract basis. Now it is back to the job search, and the whole banging your head trying to think, "what should I do"?

Any thoughts?

It has now also fallen to me to get day care sorted out. Day care here is governed by city councils. Even though we live in Toorak which is an inner city suburb of Melbourne, the city council is Stonnington. Huh? I have received the child services literature and have started calling and visiting different day care centers. We are looking for part time care for a four month old then full time a month after that. The problem is there is a two year waiting list for some of these places. I am trying to reason through that math. Did I need to get on a list last year for my four month old next year? If I take my spaceship and slingshot around the sun with enough speed can I still get on the list?

In filling out the paper work at one of the centers there are certain ways to get bumped up the waiting list:

1. Already having a child at the centre.
2. being of aboriginal descent

There were many others. Somewhere around 15 was “socially isolated”.

We are not sure what this means or what it does for us but Beth checked it anyway. We figured without friends and family around we fit into this category.

We have both been reading baby books and are starting to get prepared for the new arrival in a few months. It can all be very confusing. We have the pram… do we really need a cot?.... and what is a baby capsule? The good part is I think that I have figured out what “nesting” is, it is Beth making chocolate chip oatmeal cookies.