The new house according to Leila

To try and stop Leila grabbing at all of our electronics we have given her one of her very own!  For quite some time now Leila has had a camera - my very old Canon camera that is small and basic and we don't mind if it gets smashed up.  Considering the abuse it is getting from her using it it's amazingly robust!

At first Leila just loved to look at picures on it that we would take around the house of things in Cairo.  Then Ella would take photos on it of what they got up to (the park, cats etc) which she again loved to look at and we loved to look at too, as it meant we could see what she had done that day and who she had met. 

Recently though Leila has discovered the 'selfie' and turns the camera towards herself, and takes a picture (mainly of her teeth) whilst wincing/squinting/smiling.  Se then quickly turns the camera round so that she can see what she has just taken.  She has just started trying to take her own photos of things and providing we helpmove her fingers off the lens, she can take some good shots!  It's fascinating to see the world from her perspective, so here are a couple of her recent shots around the new house.

Our road (view from the buggy)

View from the buggy again - no we don't cage her in!!

Our open living room / dining room and kitchen

SELFIE!!

Kitchen - complete with Ikea clips that are a good distraction for L when we're prepping dinner

Fang and Leila's books

Dad!

Today

Well, today is Saturday 26th July 2014.
ONE WEEK since Leila and I arrived in Bucharest,
FOUR WEEKS until my (estimated) due date, and
SIX YEARS since Scotty and I got married.

It all seems a bit crazy, really, doesn't it?!!

There was no chance of a lie-in this morning as Leila was up at 5.30am (she's been waking up before 6am since we shifted he body clock to Bucharest time even though the room she is in is dark.  The last few nights though, she's even been waking up in the night, but we're not sure whether it is heat, humidity, teeth, or just something else). We're not getting to bed until late here (lovely evening light and temperature with the garden doors open) and so were both knackered!

After breakfast I offered to Scott to take Leila for a bit so that he could catch up on some sleep.  We played around the house for a while but then I decided to take her out in the buggy for a walk as I thought the roads would be quiet and therefore a good time to explore along Erou Ianco Nicolea (our main road).  We go 'right' most of the times along the road as this is the way to the mall (I don't think a day has gone by without a trip to either Ikea or Carrefour!) and the nearest supermarket, but I wanted to go 'left' as this is the way to Scott's new school.

The walk itself was fine and Leila enjoyed spotting all the diggers at the building sites that were very active (there is some building work near our house and she is now obsessed by diggers).  I had a bit of a fright when a dog started barking at us, but the security guy near-by reassured me that the dog was OK and he took control of him.  We had to walk on the main road for a bit as there isn't pavement along every stretch of the road, and although the cars go a lot faster than they do in Cairo it was still OK to do the walk.

We walked past Scott's new school and then dropped in to the bakery place opposite to pick up some pastries as a treat.  I had no idea what I was buying so just got two different types.  At home with Scotty later we discovered that one was a savoury cheese thing and the other an apple and cinnamon strudel.  Neither were particularly tasty, but as an anniversary present I was able to generate change from a 100RON note! Scott's anniversary present for me was the start of a Romanian flag themed collection; six ROM chocolate bars (which apparently contain rum, cool!)

We'd been thinking of heading to the park today, but as Leila has been waking up earlier she often wants to start her nap a little earlier to, so we decided that instead of heading into town to Herestrau Park we would give the Zoo a go as it is at the far end of our road.

It turns out though that the zoo is a lot closer than we thought; we probably waited longer for a cab than it took to drive there!  It cost us about a fiver to all get in and once we were inside it was lovely and shaded and there were lots of benches all along the paths there.  The animals were in OK enclosures and had access to indoor and outdoor space, so I guess the zoo ranks somewhere between Cairo Zoo and London Zoo!  We saw the monkeys and lions and Leila made the appropriate animal sounds to show that she recognised them.  She doesn't quite 'get' the idea of a zoo yet though, as she was equally excited about seeing the picture of the lion on the outside of his enclosure! We then went and saw the lamas (which Leila loved thanks to her new obsession with an Old MacDonald book she was given that is set in Peru!) and Leila recognised a 'cama' (aka camel) in the next.  We showed her the parrots but she seemed to enjoy the pelicans more.  My favourite part was that they had a Grey Squirrel enclosure, and that about a dozen flats overlook the zoo and the lion pen!

We had to leave pretty sharpish as we were walking home (didn't want to go through the embarrassment of trying to get a taxi for the 3-minute drive!), and although the walk wasn't too long (less than 30 minutes) it was a bit of a nightmare as Leila was so tired after her busy morning that she was nearly falling asleep on Scott's shoulders!  We have never sung 'Wheels on the Bus' which such vigour before but managed to get back, have lunch and let Little Miss Sleepy get to bed.

Post-nap we played at home and then headed out in the buggy for dinner at the Don which is a restaurant opposite school.  Scott had eaten there when he visited in May and so we knew that they were fine with kids and had good food.  The food was really good and although she ate mainly chips at first, Leila did finally balance her meal with some chicken!

Back home and a little play before bath and bed for Leila and then a nice catch-up Skype with the Prebbles for us.

Out for a walk

This is our little road.
There are houses on one side and a wild meadow (of sorts) on the other. We're at the top of the cul-de-sac and so make this short walk to the main road a number of times a day to get cabs or go shopping etc.

Mini-snails on the lawn

This morning we discovered a dozen mini-snails on the lawn. Leila was a little confused at first but then really enjoyed looking for 'more' in the grass.

Needless to say; we're enjoying having a garden :-)

Preparing for Birth in Bucharest

Well today I had my first antenatal in Bucharest; four weeks and one day before my EDD!  We also had a meeting with our doula and an antenatal class with her, so all in all it was a busy baby-prep day for us!

The doula meeting and class went well. She really understood what we were after, which was someone to help remind us about all the things we've forgotten in the last two years about birth, tell us about the quirks of birth in Romania and someone to answer our questions as we suddenly thought of them.  It was a one-to-one class, thank goodness, which meant that we brought Leila with us.  She was content to play with one of their baby dolls (used for demonstrating slings usually!) at first, but then started running around the room like a maniac and so Scott took her outside to play.

We learnt that; labour is likely to be very different for number two (especially as Leila was induced), that the doula is very relaxed about her role in everything, that we had signed up to one of the best doctors in Bucharest (but not 'the best' according to the doula!) and that unless we specify then the hospital will provide formula for the baby.  We'll meet again next week and hopefully have more questions and answers!

As we were waiting for our afternoon appointment with our Romanian gynaecologist, a man carrying a motorcycle helmet and a few days of stubble came in; turns out that this is our doctor!  He seemed relaxed about our pending arrival and read through the notes that I had from Dr Cherif in Egypt, asking questions about the pregnancy and Leila's birth as we went along.  I'll meet with him again next week for an ultrasound and he advised me on the other appointments that I now need to book with the hospital (it's routine here to meet with the anaesthetist and neonatal nurse at 36 weeks).

It's wierd but I think we feel totally unprepared on one hand, but on the other don't have any questions or concerns about the birth itself.  I guess it's just everything else that the birth of Pickle #2 is going to entail that we are worried about!!

Leila at 21 months

In Leila's first year I would try to write a post every month to document what she was doing, but then switched to shorter, but more regular posts.  With so much going on these last few months my posts have become a bit more random, so I thought I'd try and write a post showing what she is doing at the moment in this 'inbetween' time as we move from Cairo to Bucharest.

Eating - Leila eats pretty well at her three meals each day plus her two snacks.  We've just introduced an extra snack at bedtime to try and help her sleep better through the mornings (rather than wake up hungry) and to replace the boob. Leila enjoys most foods we put in front of her, but continues to pick and choose what she will eat at any particular meal.  For example one meal of spag bol all she will eat will be the bol, and the next meal of it all she will want is the spag.  We've learnt not to worry (too much) but that things will even themselves out over a few days.  She's good at her veg too as she loves brocolli. She can be funny about trying some new things, but we just keep trying by placing them in front of her (she has never got back into enjoying courgette despite loving them at first).

Sleeping - Leila has her nap and bedtime routines that we stick to pretty closely. Naptime is at 1.30 and she has a 'sleepy biscuit' (aka rusk) to take with her for her nap.  This is a good 'signal' we think that it is naptime and she tends to eat it before she is in bed (although sometimes we do let her take it to bed with her). A good nap is for 1.5 hours, but she can hit 2 hours on rare occasions. If she wakes up after less than an hour then we are in for a very grumpy and tired afternoon :-( Leila's bedtime routine involves a bath, then getting into her sleeping bag and having some boob and a story before getting in to bed.  The stories are only something we have started relatively recently, but she enjoys them.  Leila is still not yet drinking milk and so I have continued to bf her, but my intentions to stop have been put on hold by our 'summer of change' coming up. We decided that trying to ween her from the breast at this point wasn't going to work with a new baby and move taking place. We're not sure what's going to happen when the new baby does arrive though - maybe I'll have to tandem feed and feed them both.  It's hard to tell whether seeing me bf the baby will make Leila want to give the breast up, or make her want it more!  Leila tends to sleep for 10.5-11 hours at night and it's great that she is sleeping through as it means we can go out in an evening (not that we do!) We know it's taken us a while to get to this point, but changes now are going to be gradual things.

Language - Leila has a few words that she uses and can be quite good at communicating without language too. She has a lot of 'sounds' that she uses to communicate with, such as 'weee' for aeroplane, and 'wee-ya' for swing. She can name a lot of common animals using their sounds.

Physical - Despite living in a one-floor apartment Leila is very good at climbing stairs.  She can easily do stairs one foot at a time when we are holding her hand or if she can hold the wall.  She can even do a few stairs without holding on to anything as long as there are only one or two of them, or she is distracted (by holding something in both hands already).

Leila has been working hard these last few months on the 'standing jump'.  In Cairo she regularly insistsed that Scotty play 'Layla' over and over again whilst she tried to jump up and down.  Leila's a great climber too and she can do some of the step-ladders or climbing nets in the various play parks that we go to (although we're always there just behind her with a supporting hand just in case!) She can/does climb by herself into her buggy and her high chair which is a little scary, but we've realised that as she can do this we'd better make sure she does it as safely as possible - as if we try and stop her she's just going to keep going!
Leila is still tall for her age it seems (although others are catching her up) and manages to be slim but have a baby bellie at the same time!

Leila is getting really good at her fine motor skills too.  For quite a while now we've had cutlery for her at every meal and she would sometimes attempt it, but now she is really good with both a spoon and a fork. She loves to use her fork to jab peas and her spoon means that couscous is not nearly as messy as it once was! She likes to 'colour' but this is mainly random scribbles with crayons (neither straight lines, nor circles).  Her hand-eye coordination can be seen through the pictures that she manages to take using her camera.  she is getting better and better at actually taking a photo of the thing she is trying to photograph!

Health - Leila's in good health and up to date with all her vaccines etc.I have even managed to get BUPA to remove the exclusions from her health cover (which were added because of the difficult birth and meant to remain on her policy for three years) which I am pleased about.

She is very nearly on 'full dairy' in her diet now.  At Easter we got close to this as she was having a small amount of uncooked milk in her breakfast, but we then had  a little scare and so pulled things back once again. She now has uncooked milk (normally from Gramps' breakfast bowl!) and eats yoghurt.  Yoghurt has been a bit of a difficult one as it has been hard to convince her that this new texture is food!  We have got her 'into' it through encouraging her to 'dip' fruit slices.  This was so effective for a while that it meant she wouldn't eat yoghurt unless she had a dipper!  We're really pleased that it seems that she is over her allergy/intolerance, although we still do look at every poo - yuk!

It's very telling that our attitude to knocks and scrapes has changed somewhat as she's got older.  She got a whallop the other day on the play equipment in the park and it was later that day when we noticed a large, dark bruise.  We just left it as she didn't seem fussed by it, but then a week later, as the bruise was fading we noticed that a lump was actually forming there.  We again left it for a few days, but then felt it was getting bigger and so decided we really ought to get it checked out.  It turns out that yes it was jsut a complication from the bruise, but that we can help reduce the swelling with a cold compress.  The Doc asked us about the bruise itself and we suddenly realised how relaxed / negligent we'd been by not even putting some frozen peas on the initial bad bruise!!

Our Balkans adventure starts here!

Well it kind of started four days ago for Scott, but today the three of us flew out together to start our new adventure in Bucharest.

Scott arrived back in London late last night (although not as late as we thought he might because he was able to walk straight off the plane with no hand or hold luggage) so that he could do the flight out with Leila and I today.  It was a good plan for him to come back as he was able to tell us about the place (he and Jane have done loads to get it ready in just a few days!) and could help on the flight and with the final bit of packing.  Poor Scott only had time to grab an apple at MVR for breakfast because he had to repack our cases to get them within weight.  We had been struggling to get the scales to weigh them properly and work out what should be prioritised into the cases and what not!

Soon enough though we were all in the car and on our way to the airport.

These sunglasses are the best buy we never made - Leila loves them!

Just three suitcases this time, plus two in hand luggage, three carry-on bags, a buggy and a car seat

A snack at the airport

Last cuddle goodbye

We got to the airport in good time and were able to check everything in.  The buggy had to go in to the oversize area, but that was all good and we had time to sit down for a coffee before going through security.  It was lovely for Leila to have a last goodbye cuddle with Granny and Gramps as they have been brilliant putting us up these last three weeks while we have been in transit!

Leila was great on the flight once again and although we only booked the two seats we were one of the lucky few rows that had a spare seat.  This was great, but as the flight was only three hours it was a lot more 'do-able' than the Cairo flight anyway. It was an afternoon flight and Leila quickly spied the cheese on the tray (good ol' BA serving cheese and biscuits with the in flight meal!).  We thought we might get an afternoon nap out of her as she asked for a sleepy biscuit and was happy to snuggle down a bit with her blanket across the seats, but there was just a little too much going on for her to settle.

When we arrived in Bucharest we found that we were waiting aaaaages for our bags. The last bag (the big moses basket one) just never seemed to arrive and so Scott when to find out what had happened to it.....it turns out that it had 'broken' and so they were trying to repack it and send it through on the belt.  It finally came through and was taped up with parcel tape at one end.  Everything seemed to be there and in one piece and I guess for 100LE what did we expect, but it was still a huge hassle we could have done without.

We finally found our taxi and an exhausted Leila fell asleep on Scott's shoulder on the way home from the airport. 

The Move - Bucharest Preparation and a Quick Dash Back To London

We took the liberty of giving ourselves a very small lie-in.  We still woke up before the alrm, though, so were eating breakfast by 9am and checking out of the hotel by 10am.  With us came the final two bags we'd brought over from Doncaster, which we again dumped unceremoniously in the living room of the house.

The first job was to finish building the furniture.  By this point it was only Leila's toy chest and the garden table, and we finished both in less than an hour thanks to our highly tuned IKEA-building skills.  This was followed by sorting some of the smaller things in the house, before we started to feel like getting some lunch.  Once again we took a taxi to Baneasa Shopping City, but this time ate in the food hall.

On our list of things to do was to look into mobile phones and internet connections, and it turned out that there was a shop in the mall that could sort both.  It took over an hour of contract signing and other faff to prepare the paperwork for the TV/phone/internet package and my new mobile phone contract, but considering I just walked in off the street and left with a new mobile phone contract and arrangements for connections at home it was impressive.

While I was sorting this, mum started yet another shop in Carrefour, this time focusing on stocking up on food.  It's now become clear that it's impossible to identify and buy everything you need to fully kit out a kitchen in one shopping trip, but the fact that we did this trip certainly laid some excellent foundations for what Alice and I have done since.

Back at the house we did lots of sorting a moving of furniture to get the house as ready as possible for Alice and Leila's imminent arrival.  At 6pm, however, I needed to say goodbye to mum.  I needed to get to the airport, as I was flying back to London in order to accompany Alice and Leila on the flight to Bucharest the next day.  I'd arranged for a taxi to pick me up from the house, but he struggled to find the exact location which highlighted that in future we'd probably need to get taxis from the end of the road.

This was the first time I'd ever flown without a single piece of luggage.  I didn't even take my keys as mum would be staying in Bucharest and Alice and the Ps were in the house in London.  All I had was my wallet and boarding pass.  I also chose not to take a sweater, since I wouldn't need it when I was back in Romania and I'd only be in the UK for a few hours.  A sweater would just have been another item I'd have to pack into our already overflowing bags.

The flight to Luton was almost full, but travelling solo I was easily able to find a seat close to the front of the plane.  On arrival in the UK I was one of the first off, so sped through customs and on to the shuttle bus to the station.  It set off only 2 or 3 minutes after I boarded, and I knew the next one wasn't for another 15 minutes.

At the station I only had 5 minutes until my train to St Pancras arrived, so if I hadn't been sat at the front and made it on to that first shuttle bus I would have been at least another half an hour arriving into London.  Net also kindly came to the station to pick me up, which again saved me waiting for connecting trains to Harringay, so having touched down at 9.05pm I was inside the house at 10.30pm...and went straight to bed!

The Move - Bucharest Preparation (part 2)

My alarm went off at 7.45am, and we threw on some clothes to wear to breakfast.  45 minutes later we were hauling two of our four suitcases down to reception in order to get a taxi to get us to the house.  At about 9.03am, when we were no more than 500 metres from the house, I received a phone call from IKEA.  The delivery was on its way and would be with us in five minutes.  I jumped out of the taxi at the top of our road to flag down the van (because finding our house isn't very easy) and by 9.30am all our flat-pack furniture was inside.  The poor driver had reversed all the way down the single-track road, only to find a huge turning circle outside our house.  To add to his stress, we could initially only find 14 boxes of the 15 we were due to have delivered: the missing item turned out to be Leila's cot mattress that was in a different part of the van.

Considering we had been told the delivery would be 'some time ' between 9am and 4pm, the early delivery was perfect.  Mum and I spent a few hours in the morning building garden furniture, but realised we needed a hammer for one item that we consequently left to one side.  At lunchtime we therefore decided we needed to do something different for a bit, so we walked up to Tia Supermarket to get another water, and then took a cab back to the large retail park and headed into Baneasa Shopping City where we planned to buy big household items from the Carrefour Hypermarket.

After lots of to-ing and fro-ing we eventually found somewhere to eat (the next day we realised the food hall was in the one direction we didn't try) and had a great lunch of Romanian goulash and bread.  In Carrefour we bought a microwave, toaster, kettle, and various other household things that we didn't or couldn't get in IKEA the previous day.  We took another taxi back to the house, piled the Carrefour shopping in a corner, and got back to building flat-pack furniture.  With our newly-acquired hammer we were able to finish all the garden furniture, and also have a good go at the stuff inside.  By the end of the day we had only 2 more things to build, but we called it quits at 7pm and headed back to the hotel.

Feeling like we deserved a treat, we showered and changed before taking a taxi to Lipscani, the name of a road downtown but ultiamtely the general name given to the Old Town.  We took a short stroll around some of the pedestrianised cobbled streets, felt a huge sense of 'this is the right place', and managed to grab a table at Hanul lui Manuc, an iconic inn dating back to the early nineteenth century that seems to be on every tourist's list.  The food was good and reasonably priced, and we generally had a great evening to round off two incredibly hard yet productive days.  We still had Thursday to go, though, so it was back in a taxi to the hotel for our final night before decamping to the house.

The Move - Bucharest Preparation (part 1)

We woke with the alarm at 8.30am the next morning (Bucharest is 2 hours ahead of the UK, so this was actually 6.30am to our bodies).  After a quick breakfast we took a taxi to the house.  I remembered the general way-markers, but we ended up stopping on the main road rather than driving down the side road to the house as I couldn't be certain of the exact turning.  As it was, we still arrived early for our 11am appointment with the property manager to collect the keys.  This was fortunate, however, since the heavens opened shortly afterwards and we were able to shelter from the rain in the shadow of the house!  Our first view of the house had been met with a flash of lightning and clap of thunder...an ominous welcome to our new home!

We met representatives from the company who are managing the property, and the estate agent who had originally shown me around.  It took about an hour to be shown things like the water meter and the instructions for the dishwasher, but compared to check-ins in the UK it was a rather laid-back experience.  Within an hour all the documents were signed, and the keys were in my hand.  Mum and I had a quick look around the house with the list of likely furniture requirements and other supplies that Alice and I had drawn up a few days beforehand, and noted a few more things down.  And, with that, we left the house and headed to get a taxi to IKEA.

The nearest taxi rank (if you can call it that) is about a 15 minute walk - 8 minutes to the end of our side road, and another 7 beyond.  En route we bought some water from Tia Supermarket, an apparent 'non-stop' supermarket, that reminds Alice and I of some kind of Hickville USA minimart.  It's just opposite the end of our road and, although it's not as cheap as a 'proper' supermarket it's still handy to have a shop so near - especially after enjoying the close proximity (and long opening hours) of shops in Cairo.

The taxi was a recent Dacia (originally a Romanian brand, but now owned by Renault), which we now realise is what almost every taxi in Bucharest is.  As for IKEA, apart from the labels and currency it was the same as IKEA everywhere else.  For mum and I this was perfect - we were able to grab some lunch (it was 2pm by this point) and formulate a plan of attack.

We'd already identified and noted down details of the garden furniture we were going to get, but still needed to find the dining table and chairs, Leila's cot and mattress, pots, pans, crockery, cutlery, bedding, towels...

The whole process took over five hours from stepping into the shop to getting a taxi to take us back to the house.  We had accumulated a full shopping trolley of 'bits and bobs' in addition to two pallet trolleys of flat-pack furniture.

We arranged for the latter to be delivered to the house by IKEA, and were told it would be with us between 9am and 4pm.  Quite a wide window, we figured, but the guy took my number and said they always call in advance to let customers know when they are on their way.

Everything else we had bought was hurriedly packed into those awkward large blue IKEA bags and shoved into every available space in the taxi.  We ended up asking the driver to wait while we dropped the bags in the house and then got him to take us back to the hotel.  It was after 8pm and we were sweaty and exhausted.  A quick shower and change at the hotel, though, and we were ready to grab some (delicious) food in the very reasonably priced hotel restaurant.  We ate the meal and headed to bed, as we needed the sleep and knew we were up early the next morning.

The Move - London to Bucharest (part 1)

Two days later I boarded a train to Doncaster where I met my mum at the legendary(?) Doncaster-Sheffield Robin Hood Airport.  Slung over my shoulder was a 'small cabin bag' (i.e. the largest I could get away with on Wizz Air) which I ensured was packed as tightly as possible with electronics since we didn't want them going in hold luggage.  Meanwhile, each hand pulled a 32kg suitcase.  Despite Jim dropping me just a few metres from the entrance to Kings Cross station, I was still enormously relieved to haul my bags to a safe corner on the train and have a sit down!

Wizz are a 'low cost' airline, which means their headline fares are low, but they make their money by charging for extras.  This is why I only took a 'small cabin bag' since that was allowed on board for free.  Anything larger than a laptop case and I'd have been charged £18.  However, each piece of hold luggage I booked for just £20 was allowed to be 32kg (airlines usually only let you take 23kg) which meant more things in less cases!

The train journey up was generally uneventful, other than me somehow becoming the 'go to guy' to reposition cases in a strange game of luggage Jenga.  Arriving at Doncaster station, I shared the lift from the platform to the exit with a Romanian guy who was taking the same flight as me.  He was also hauling two 32kg bags, and so neither of us needed much persuading to take a cab to the airport instead of relying on a bus from the bus station a reasonable distance away.  In the end my cut of the shared taxi didn't cost much more than a bus ticket anyway.

My mum was waiting for me at the Departures check-in.  She had offered to come with me to Bucharest to set up the house prior to Alice and Leila moving out and, although she says my initial reaction was luke-warm, I'm pretty sure I grabbed the offer with both hands!  Irrespective of whose opinion you believe, she was there with two bags and together we checked in for the flight to Romania.

Doncaster airport isn't much more than a large warehouse.  The budget nature of the operation (but also, therefore, the really cheap flights!) is summed up in this photo.  This art installation, sponsored by Yorkshire Bank in celebration of the Tour De France's 'Grand Depart' from Yorkshire, was positioned on the main route from the check-in desks security.  Yes, it's a second-hand mountain bike that's been sprayed yellow.

Despite its budget nature, I must say that I was impressed with the flight.  Boarding was a bit of a free-for-all due to Wizz flying with unallocated seats, but we managed to get a row of three seats between the two of us so we had plenty of space to stretch out.  Although we set off a few minutes late, we still arrived at Bucharest airport a few minutes early.  Bags took what felt like an age to come off the plane, however, but I think that's more an issue with Bucharest airport than the airline.

By this point it was 1.30am and we were desperate for sleep.  School had arranged for a taxi to collect us, and the driver took us to the Caro Hotel overlooking Carol Park in northern Bucharest.  On arrival the receptionist kept giving us strange looks, and on walking into the room we realised why - it only had a double bed.  After explaining the situation to the bell-boy, he quickly found us another room with twin beds which was a much better arrangement!

The Move - Cairo to London

It's fair to say that the move from Cairo to Bucharest took a while.  That may seem a strange thing to say, but bear in mind that we knew we would be leaving Cairo way back in January (because that's when we had to make decision of whether to stay another year or leave), but we didn't board our final flight from there until the end of June.

I'm not going to go into the emotional side of the move here, just the logistics, since that aspect of the move is covered in other posts on our 'old' blog at http://rockthecasbahcairo.blogspot.com

In terms of packing for the move, we experienced both frustration and exhaustion in equal measure.  It certainly wasn't easy for Alice to do it all while 6 months pregnant.  Having built our lives in Cairo from very few initial items, we had to find buyers and/or recipients for all the things we didn't want to take with us.  Some of these items were left behind because we didn't think we'd need them in Romania.  Some were sold because we planned to get a newer or better equivalent later.  Some we simply got rid of because it would cost more to ship it than to buy a new one.

Over time the detritus of our life in Cairo was gradually sorted, boxed, photographed and sold.  Other bits - those things we wanted to keep - were kept in a 'holding bay' in the corridor to our bedroom, and were gradually put into suitcases or boxes (depending on whether we intended to ship or transport as luggage).

Back in April we took a case and a half of things from Cairo to my mum's place in Lincolnshire, with the idea being that she would gradually bring the contents out as she visited us.  I took another two cases of things with me when I visited Bucharest for a mad dash at the end of May, as the Head of Secondary had kindly offered to keep hold of anything we wanted to store until we arrived.  Then, when the Ps paid a final visit to us in Cairo in the middle of June, they in turn took two cases back with them that were to follow us out to Bucharest later.  Despite getting rid of these six cases of belongings, when we left at the end of June we still took a further 6 cases, plus a buggy and a baby's car seat!  The Ps needed to bring both cars to the airport to meet us, and even then it only just fitted in!

The three weeks spent in London between Cairo and Bucharest weren't, by any stretch of the imagination, 'down time'.  We had a great time staying with the Ps, and are enormously grateful for their tolerance in being descended on in such as way!  We managed to get some visits from friends and family, as well as organising a huge amount of shopping/packing/repacking.  Oh, and I was Best Man at Norf's wedding on the 12th July, which obviously required a fair amount of preparation as well!