Recently in Cambridge Category

A fast edit for a fast baby — here’s another crawling video:

Another 9:15 haul out of King’s Cross, I’m afraid, though I played hooky for a bit this morning - took the 8:45 in, and spent my early morning with Em. Very well worth it, as she decided to crawl about the living room, in a patently-undeniable-this-time-round manner. Crawling, for real. Still a hint of the elbow-shuffling ‘commando’ style to her movement, I’ll admit - but it was nevertheless honest-to-God hands-and-knees crawling, from point A to point B. I don’t know what other adjective I can use to make the point, here, other than ‘veritable’, maybe. So, yes, it was veritable crawling in Cambridge today, and we’ve got video, below.

Emelyn was 8 months, yesterday. That seems absolutely ridiculous to me, now. We all hear certain phrases ad naseum our whole childhoods, with “They grow up so fast, don’t they?” being one trope I’ve always loathed, and yet here I am, suddenly horrified at the blatant truthfulness therein. Because, honestly, it seems only yesterday that I was plunking British Pound coins into the Kenco™ coffee machine at the Rosie Maternity; now Em is suddenly 8 months old, crawling dangerously towards the fireplace, and I find my own self clutching a free-sample-size can of “Pepsi Max coffee Cino - low-calorie coffee-flavoured soft drink” and riding a commuter train out of London. Mon Dieu! Where does all the time go, anyways? (And why do I keep accepting these awful drink samples?)

Anyhow, as much as I could praise the beauty and joy of The Kid for hours, I figure it’s more fun to leave with a description of something shudderingly annoying. In this case, it’s teeth grinding. Sure, Emmie’s only got about 4.2 teeth, but she’s become literally obsessed with grinding the bottom two against her still-erupting front teeth. To me, the noise is worse than scratching one’s fingernails on a chalkboard - it’s improbably loud, and horrifyingly grating. And then she’ll up and do it again, not three seconds later.

Without exaggerating, I’d guess Emelyn does this about 10-15 times an hour - I can only presume it feels good, since she’s teething - but hoo boy, it gives you the willies. Can’t wait for this little trend to stop. EEEEE?

This week has been an awful one, work-wise, coming right on the heels of us choosing not to move to London. Ironic only in the Alannis Morissette sense.

It’s launch week on a new site that was supposed to go live, like, two weeks ago. Azure’s therefore put up with late nights and lousy conversation for five straight days and then, come Friday, I pop off and have a round with co-workers on St. Paddy’s.

Not a mortal sin, or anything, but then I miss train, to boot.

So it wasn’t until 9:30 that I pulled out of King’s Cross. That also meant dining at the station’s disreputable Burger King on a night that Az cooked a great dinner. Clichéd salary-man tale if I’ve ever heard one, no?

Emmie’s been about as helpful as myself, lately. Of course, three of her four front teeth just broke through her gums, so she has a good excuse for her terrible mood. As a result of which she’s also been making this non-stop EEEEEEEEEEEE noise all day long. I only deal with 30 minutes or so of it before I’m out the door in the mornings; Azure on the other hand, is getting 40-hours-a-week worth. Yikes.

Anyhow. There’s a million-and-one ways anything and everything could be worse, so I’ll leave with a silver lining: I stayed at home late this morning, so I could see a bit of Em. I was trying to do whatever I could to stop her aforementioned whine, so I started a little waltz, holding her hand in mine; Blue Danube and then some. She loved it. Az came and watched, and Emmie just kept smiling, and for a brief, spinning moment, it was Friday morning in Paradise.

As a kid, I loved reading books that talked about sweets. Desserts and treats always make a memorable appearance in good children’s literature, or at least, they do in every book I regard as good.

Nobody, of course, is better at this than the Brits. English stories always featured some dessert I’d never heard of, which sounded so good and exotic that I never quite knew if it was real, or utterly fantastical.

Narnia, for example, had Turkish Delight. Dickens rambled on about flaming Christmas Pudding in A Christmas Carol, which I adored. I know a few books that mentioned treacle, which always sounded good, though I had no idea what it was. Tolkien wrote a whole story about a baker’s quest to make the world’s finest ‘fairy-cake’. And nevermind Roald Dahl - Fox and Badger’s stores of fizzy cider, plus the scrum-dilly-umptious universe of Mr. Wonka & co.

It’s still going on. I bet half of J.K. Rowling’s global success is due to the inclusion of Bertie Botts All-flavour Beans and frothing mugs of butterbeer in every Harry Potter book. Who wouldn’t want a taste?

Now that I actually live in the UK, I obviously go bonkers when I come across one of these fine-sounding treats. I have to have it. Like on Sunday - Azure, Emmie, and I went out for tea to Auntie’s. Azure ordered Lady Grey and apple pie, but I had “Hot Ginger Bread drizzled with warm maple syrup, topped with whipped cream”. Never heard of such a thing, but boy, it seemed straight out of the storybooks.

It was awesome.

Emelyn also dined out at Auntie’s, having some carrot-zucchini-butternut-squash puree. I’m tickled to report that she was perfectly behaved. One old Englishman went so far as to wander over to our table, pause, and say, “Well she certainly doesn’t shout much”, with a nod of approval.

I caught Emelyn’s cold over the weekend. So yesterday I spent the day at home. I’m actually pleased about the whole thing, now, because Emelyn managed her first crawl yesterday, and I was around for it.

As you’d imagine, Azure and I began hoopin’ and hollerin’ in the heat of the moment. She crawled! She crawled! Having since watched the instant-replay footage on our videocamera, I’ll now grudgingly admit it wasn’t the most spectacular display of infant mobility ever seen. Let’s just say that Emelyn’s short program was decidedly cautious, forgoing the triple-axel jump and the lutz for the time being. Still, she did propel herself a good 16-18 inches from her starting position, clearly using both her arms and her legs. You couldn’t exactly categorize her motions as a roll, pivot, or push. So I’d call it a crawl. (Tiny detail: she can only do this going backwards. But that counts, right? Kind of?)

Yesterday it snowed on me as I cycled to the train station, and the fields I pass in the train were all covered in white. Didn’t last, of course. Looking out the windows today, it’s almost hard to tell it’s winter, save for the smoke rising from passing chimneys.

Here is what our mornings are like.

Emelyn starts her day with a DVD (not really - she always spends a half-hour in our bed, first, getting fed and changed and pawing at our faces). But most days, while I’m running in circles trying to get ready, Azure spins a few minutes of Baby Bach while she quickly prepares breakfast for Emmie and herself.

It’s too sweet a scene to leave: Emelyn’s in her pajamas, still, wearing her tiny fleece vest and sitting upright on the living room floor. The boppy pillow is behind her. There’s a toy in her hand, of course - lately it’s been the birdie from her ‘Are You My Mother?’ book. And, yeah, she’s watching TV with absolutely huge eyes. Today when I left, the screen was showing a closeup of a lava lamp, with some sonata playing in the background. She loves it.

I never get out the door without saying ‘bye’. Emmie shoots me this “Where do you think you’re going?” look. So I wave, and she grins back. Azure walks out from the kitchen stirring baby’s breakfast.

And then I’m on my bike, going to the train station.

I know I promised a video about Em eating sweet potato, but here’s a clip about a rattle, instead…

Hi!

Weekends go by fast. I’m still not sure how this one is over, already; last I checked it had barely started.

At least we made it out briefly on both days, an accomplishment which, considering the cold, was no small feat. The highlight Saturday was a quick visit to see 5-day-old Sofia, another MBA-year baby, and a particularly cute one, at that. Emmie’s not heavy, obviously, but newborn Sofia just seemed so very light.

On Sunday, we pushed out a little farther, to the other side of town (through Midsummer Commons, past Jesus Green, and over the Cam) for a birthday get-together at Jan and Elsje’s. Emelyn’s wee friend Tabitha was also present — and Emmie actually squealed with delight upon seeing her. (Az and Em saw Tabitha again today, but I’m told that Emelyn hardly seemed interested, and was instead completely preoccupied with Tabitha’s Marmite sandwiches. Go figure.)

All my other equally-gripping tales from Babydom revolve around sweet potatoes - baking them, pureeing them and serving them to Emmie. Rather than narrate at length, I suppose I should just point to this video.

And there you have it. Happy Monday evening, and to all a good night!

I’m thinking I should take up blogging, again. Some things seem too precious not to share.

Case in point: Yesterday, I saw a man in a coonskin cap. I wanted to laugh, but this guy wound up being the scariest-looking dude I’ve ever seen on the streets of Cambridge.

He was tough enough without the hat. For starters, he was real weathered-looking. Like a big mean sailor. Something about him conveyed (and quickly) that this gentleman had already ‘been there, done that’ when it came to speedy resolution of conlicts. Pub fight, street fight, prison fight - check. Fists, beer bottles, butterfly knives - our man was clearly familiar with all the above.

And, as I have mentioned before, he was lumbering around Cambridge, England wearing a coonskin cap. Now, that’s a disconcerting choice of headgear on anyone, but here the effect was downright chilling.

I mean, where does one even procure such a thing? What haberdashery still stocks this item? The souvenier shop in Frontierland, for one, but that’s back in Anaheim, and I’m convinced this man had not been. He wasn’t the Magic Kingdom type, in so many words. Plus, his wasn’t a costume-shop racoon hat, it was gen-u-ine mammal. I think.

This was not a fashion statement. Nor an anachronistic affectation. This coonskip cap was, quite simply, one of Nature’s Little Warning Signs; a distinct cue for other members of the species (human and raccoon, in this case) to keep walking ahead, eyes fixed forward, never looking back.

Or laughing, either.

It’s been awhile since I’ve had time to edit and upload any video here. Nevertheless, Az and I figured we ought to post something — anything, really. So here’s a few short snippets, in no particular order. All done very quickly, nothin’ fancy:

Tonight was my first ‘night out’ in London; I took leave of Azure and Emelyn to join my co-Googlers for after-work drinks. The occasion seemed special enough: the crew I work with is a frighteningly disciplined/workaholic bunch, so even when I leave at half-six on Friday to catch the 7:15 train, I’m usually the first out the door. The rest stay working until, well, who knows?

Anyhow, blame it on Christmas, Chanukah or just a cheerful holiday spirit, but today we all shut our laptops at six PM sharp, and ran out the door for drinks. And unlike Cambridge, where the choice of beverages varies between ale, lager, and warm ginger beer, tonight we wound up at some fancy London watering-holes that could actually mix a proper martini. (Eighteen dollars a pop, once you figure in the exchange rate, but I strive not to play that particular counting-game anymore. You can’t win.) Our office is an a ‘posh’ neighbourhood, I guess.

And so now it’s 11:30 and I’m still nowhere near home. Azure gets a gold star for actually encouraging me to do this — to skip out with my colleagues for the night — but the (sad? nah, not really) fact is that I’m happy to finally be on the train home, with less than an hour to go.

It’s a long day, this. Emmie woke me at six-thirty-ish this morning, with a few solid slaps to the face — rather sweet, to be honest. See, she sleeps well in her crib, now, but since she’s all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and super-talkative right around dawn, Azure sometimes brings her into bed with the hopes of getting her to calm down for an extra hour of sleep. Which brings me back to those face slaps - Emmie’s in a grabby mood, these days, and while she can’t move around much, if she’s lying right between Az and I, she can still wiggle over and flail her arms so that they hit us right in the nose. With some spririt, too.

I tried my best to sleep though E’s cooing arrival this morning. But no dice. Along with a few successful swipes at my nose, she also managed a respectable uppercut to my chin that actually woke me up (for a minute). Course, all she does at that point is stare at you, with a sort of innocent, “What’s up?” expression.

Yeah. No doubt I’ll be getting more of the same in a few hours. So I suppose sleep would be good thing, right now, on the train, but I’m too scared to slumber through the Cambridge stop.

Regardless, it’s time to shut the laptop. To mis-quote Zero Wing, ‘Main screen turn off.’ — indeed.

Happy weekend!

Emmie’s all smiles, these days. Maybe it’s due to the holidays, or something, but she’s giving out these cheeky little grins with a generosity that rivals the reformed Ebenezer Scrooge. All you need to do is walk into a room and her eyes start to sparkle; the fact that she’s got no teeth only makes it cuter.

Better yet, the opposite rarely happens when you leave - Emmie’s been pretty good about entertaining herself in our absence. Dunno if this will change soon; I’m expecting it might, once she makes the cognitive leap towards ‘object permanence’ or whatever. But right now, things are pretty easy with her.

Sleep, however, remains the sore point. Emelyn simply isn’t a fan of the big doze. It’s hard to keep her down for more than 45 minutes if she’s alone, and she gets squirmy and fussy whenever her naps last less than that. Plus, getting her back to sleep once she’s up for more than 5 minutes is super-tough, so recent nightlife has consisted primarily of sitting quiet in the living room, and bolting up the stairs if we hear any noise from the bedroom. (No, no, we’re not taking a cry-it-out approach… not just yet. However, our attached neighbors move out in a week, so things may well change.)

The amusing bit, of course, is that we’re on an already-noisy street (and this is one thing that’ll be weird about returning to the US - the sonic buffer of a suburban front yard and a free-standing house will feel a bit eerie, I imagine) so we’re falling for a lot of false alarms. The cry of a cat, the squeal of a bike tire, the high-pitched giggle of pub-goers - they’ve all sent us running for the crib.

Not quite sure this is sustainable. We’ll see…

The worst part about updating Emelyn’s blog during the week is that it’s almost all second-hand information. On the weekend, I feel like I’m watching “The Emelyn Show - Live!” with some spectacular new thing happening every hour. In that case, it’s no problem to pound out a few paragraphs detailing whatever Great New Thing she’s been up to. Weekdays are all hearsay, though, another matter entirely.

So, no, I haven’t personally seen it yet (I’m still on the night train home), but Em now has a tiny little chair to call her own. I’ve seen a photo, at least - intra-day news updates come to me via Az - and she looks super-duper-cute in it. It’s remarkable how upright she can sit, and in the picture I’ve seen, she’s got her bobble-head held up to see the world around her. I guess Emelyn loved it right away. Can’t quite remember what the chair is called, but it’s all very sleek and Euro-looking.

Other news to relay is that Em seems to have figured out that Azure is, like, the person feeding her. So instead of staring off into space while having her feed, Emelyn has started to look up at Az, and will try to simultaneously smile or coo at her. Az says it’s weird, and I believe it.

All this isn’t to say that Emmie and I don’t get any quality time together. The two of us trekked to ASDA late last night to get some direly-needed nappies. I can’t remember if I’ve mentioned this before, but Emelyn just loves ASDA. A bit declasse, if you ask me, but then again, where else can one get 4 frozen Yorkshire puddings for just 37p? Anyhow, we made a fine time of it; I made an impulse purchase of Ovaltine, and Emelyn was enraptured by the industrial-sized fluorescent lights. As always.

I just got a fancy 3G card for my laptop, so I’m going to see if I can’t post this from the train, now. Bye!

It’s been an inauspicious start to the week - I just tried catching the 6:45am train to London, which included a mad-dash cycle ride through the dark, only to be thwarted at the very last minute. So I literally watched the train pull out of the station as I ran up to the track, which is one of those things that makes your heart sink. Rough week ahead, I can tell.

Last week was a bumpy one, too. Emelyn went into growth-spurt mode on Tuesday, when I was in Germany. She was feeding every 1.5 - 2 hours, and stubbornly fussing all the rest. Azure was operating solo, those nights, so obviously it wasn’t the best timing.

I’d thought I been through a lot on Thursday evening - I flew back via Air Berlin, a not-so-brand-name carrier, and their disreputable-looking transport (a weird Fokker jet from the early 80’s) delayed my arrival just long enough so that I missed another train - this one being the last direct train home from the airport. Oh, I made it home, in the end, but not without seeing much of Essex by night (empty, dark, featureless), first.

Like I was saying, if Thursday was bad for me, it was worse for Azure - I noisily barged through the door, only to be greeted a wild-eyed “Don’t wake the baby!”. Which told me just about everything I needed to know, and was some sound advice, to boot.

In fact, “Don’t wake the baby” is becoming something of a mantra in our lives. Certainly it’s on the way to becoming our standard phone greeting to any person who dares call us outside the hours of 11-11:30am.

Still, all this stress and worry somehow seems to disappear on the weekends. Suddenly it’s easy enough to put Emelyn to sleep in her pram or the Bjorn; you just have to keep her moving as you go about and do fun things. Saturday we spent just pushing our way through Cambridge, and hanging out on the grass behind the Wren library, watching the punts go past. And Emelyn, of course, was on perfect behaviour the entire time.

We topped that on Sunday by doing even more - Emelyn went for her first train ride, over to Audley End. (It was pretty sweet, actually, the porter insisted we hang out in the first-class cabin, so that Emelyn could have her lunch.) There’s a large manor at Audley End, and some really fantastic gardens to walk around; it’s dozens of acres. The only downside is that the actual Audley End house is a good mile-and-a-half from the station, and through intermittently paved paths - suffice to say Emelyn’s pram boldly rocked the ‘muddy SUV’ look, most of the day. Nice.

Azure, Emelyn, and I all did pretty much the same thing this weekend, namely, sleep, hang out, and eat. Emmie engaged in a fair bit of crying, too, which isn’t really like her. She’s still congested from her cold (no surprise - I’m still coughing, too) and I think it’s waking her up from her naps, and frustrating her, overall. Can’t blame her.

My first night and morning away from Emelyn was at least memorable - I woke up in a very Gosford-Park-ish kind of place somewhere in Sussex, and spent the morning shooting skeet and playing with crossbows. All very enjoyable, too; it must’ve tapped into some kind of paternalistic hunter/gatherer instinct.

In other news, the descent into winter seems to be picking up speed. It’s pitch-dark when the alarm goes off, these days, and the sun has barely cleared the horizon when the 7:15 train rolls out of Cambridge. It’s brisk, too - Emelyn and I went for a long walk yesterday morning and I had to bundle her up pretty good before dropping her into the Bjorn. She still managed to lose both her socks along the way (a recurrent problem) so from here to April, I think it’s time for wee little shoes to be worn if venturing out-of-doors…