Happy Anniversary

Today is our seventh anniversary. After waking up from our big sleep, we had breakfast and started out on our day. We saw several parts of Hong Kong island, but the highlight was The Peak aka Victoria Peak, the highest mountain in Hong Kong. The tram up the mountain goes straight up the side at a rather steep angle. When we reached the top and made it outside of the tourist trap, we were in a nice little mountain village shrouded in mist and surrounded by lush green growth, which made the walks fun. Unfortunately the mountain was so shrouded in mist that we could not see anything below. We had lunch in a nice restaurant with glass walls that maximized our view of the mist. By the end of lunch we could just make out some of the nearest skyscrapers.

The rest of the day was taken up with seeing the excessive shops of Causeway Bay, having tea in a greasy spoon in Wan Chai and meandering our way back to our hotel through a night market.

Oh, and Charlotte started standing unaided today. It is quite fun watching her stand up, waiver for a few seconds and plop back down.

Car Baby

As we wander along the roads of eastern Canada, we are spending a tremendous time in the car.  As some of you will know from our time in San Diego earlier this summer, Charlotte and cars do not get along very well.  Therefore, a few of you are probably wondering how we are coping. 

There seem to be three crucial things to preserving our sanity.  1) We try only to do significant driving every other day to give all of us a break.  2) Rachel spends a lot of time in the back seat, singing nursery rhymes, making faces, and preparing bottles on the fly.  3) We rely on toys to help out.  In this category, we must say a HUGE THANK YOU for two very important toys.  To Lucy, Anna Christina, and Jemima who gave us ‘Mr. Monster’, we are very grateful as Charlotte will spend copious amounts of time just staring into his yellow and black eyes.  And to Naveed  who gave us Georgie the musical puppy, we are extremely thankful.  It is the only thing other than mum or dad Charlotte will fall asleep to.  We spend a lot of time listening to him play Twinkle Twinkle Little Star!

Of course, then there are those times when the baby just cries and we have to put up with it.  We normally try to stop these before mum is head-in-hands in despair, but we don’t always manage : s

The Memory Keepers

What is it about the evening hours, a cup of tea and women gathered together?  Here I stumble into that familiar pattern again.  Sitting, getting the baby off to sleep, my grandmother and start the story telling process.  Exchanging memories of people and places long past or changed in the present.  Talking about those life experiences that have indelibly marked us.  Through it all a picture emerges: family tree, a sense place, identity.  Concepts and words only, but so much more.  Crucial stories and memories that define us, conveyed in the twilight, in the dreaming time. 

GCA Stop 1:Good-bye Toronto

We’ve had 4 wonderful days in Toronto. Although we did not do a tremendous amount of ‘touristy’ stuff, we had an excellent time reconnecting with family. While Brian met a lot of this side of the family for the first time, Rachel caught up with people she’s not seen in over a decade (including a 16 year-old, competitive sailor, cousin who was 3 when Rachel last saw her at the yacht club). Charlotte had a great time cuddling with aunts, uncles and cousins in many different places, including a unique and special evening visit to her Great Aunt Sandy at her office in Sunnybrook Hospital

By far the most precious moments on this trip were those spent with Onnie in her apartment. After 24 years in the building, Onnie is moving in September to a retirement home (yes, at 90 this spry lady is still living on her own). This means that any future visits will not be in the apartment, 15 stories up in the sky over North York. As a result, those late night moments when Onnie would hold Charlotte singing ‘Sing a Song of 6 Pence’ or smiling and talking baby talk; the copious breakfasts of every seasonal fruit imaginable and Fruit Loops; and the stories that flowed, prompted by the many pieces of memorabilia around the apartment won’t be repeated. We had a very blessed time. Even the apartment balcony, which has been closed for repair for 8 months was opened on our last day. (A wonderful thing for Onnie—who really wanted to sit with Charlotte out in the area that for decades has been a flower, vegetable and humming bird paradise—and a special event for Rachel who used to sleep outside on the balcony when she came to visit Onnie’s as a teenager). This time also helped us understand a biblical passage that had never really been significant before. The moment where Ruth places her first child with Boaz on Naomi’s lap and Naomi is declared blessed because God has given her a child once more was never so clearly understandable as watching Onnie hold her first great-grandchild.

GCA Niagara Falls

When you travel, you are always advised to take advantage of the advice of local residence when planning your itinerary.  Today we are doing just that, after Rachel’s family have suggested that we include Niagara Falls in our visit to Toronto. 

At only a little over 2 hrs drive away, Niagara is pretty accessible from Toronto.  Today, however, was not the ideal day to go as a very large thunderstorm was expected in the area in the mid afternoon.  As this was the only block of time large enough in our visit (lunches and dinners with family and friends the following days will prevent us from having a 6+ hr time block to work with again), we pressed on.

Initially, the going was slow due the great summer season of construction on the highway.  Unfortunately, crawling along the highway out of Mississauga did not sit well with Charlotte, who chose to start screaming while we were grid locked in the furthest in lane of traffic.  Both Brian and Rachel were sitting in the front, as Charlotte had been asleep earlier.  So there was little we could do to calm her down.  Eventually, in desperation, Rachel made up a bottle and fed it to the baby blind from the front seat.  This was quickly followed by grumblings for more milk, which was promptly given.  This was shortly followed by more screaming…at which point we finally had a chance to pull off of the road.  Taking the baby out of her seat, we             quickly found out that a) she had a tummy so full of milk she was uncomfortably straining the band of her diaper and b) she was soaking wet!  Mum had managed not only to feed the bottle to the baby’s mouth, but most of her clothing as well.  A change of diaper, clothes and a lot of deep breaths for mum and we were back on our way.

3 hours after leaving Toronto, we finally arrived at Niagara Falls.   Quickly bypassing the casinos, Hard Rock Café, and huge hotels we entered Niagara Park.  Here, on the Canadian side, you can drive along the falls for a long ways.  You have to watch where you park, though, as lots belonging to the Park cost about $3 per hour, while lots dedicated to the special Niagara experiences (like going behind the falls) can cost as much as $18. 

As we pulled into the falls the evidence of the expected rain storm was everywhere, from the deep puddles to the silly ponchos on most of the tourists.  Our entire visit, however, was beautifully dry.  It was still foggy and brooding though, a great environment in which to see the falls.

The falls were beautiful, but, as usual, Charlotte in her rebozo stole the show as several people turned away from the falls to gush about the baby. 

We turned around and headed back after catching a quick dinner.  The traffic was much lighter as the evening commute was over, but the rain hit in Toronto and at times caused an almost complete loss of vision.  The lines on the road would sometimes become obscured, necessitating following the car ahead to know where to go.  All in all, it was quite an adventure.

Criswell Great Canadian Adventure Stop 1

On Aug 4 the Criswell’s left the UK from Gatwick Airport to begin our Great Canadian Adventure (i.e. few weeks holiday while we wait for our household goods to sail across the Atlantic, through the Panama Canal, to our new home in the San Diego area). We flew Zoom Airlines, a Canadian charter carrier that has started running scheduled flights between cities in Canada and certain portions of Europe and the Carribean. We were able to have premium economy seats for about 2/3 the cost of regular seats on other airlines and certainly could not complain about either the service or the promptness of the flight (Rachel even dared to say that her in flight meal tasted good).

When we landed, we were quickly off to “Onnie’s” house (aka Rachel’s Grandma Harriet’s—Grandma let all the grand kids decide what they wanted to call her, toddler Rachel made up the name Onnie and it stuck). It was a lot of fun to introduce Onnie to Charlotte. They are the oldest and youngest members of any of Brian and Rachel’s extended family (They share the same birth month, but are 90 years and 17 days apart in age). We will be staying with Onnie for the next 4 days before continuing on in our road trip.

Sleep baby…please

So here we are back from our 4 week trip to the USA, Mexico and Canada. Charlotte did really well throughout the whole trip and only had one not so good flight out of 4. Now, however, she has her days and nights completely mixed up (smiley and happy at 3am and screaming if ignored), which begs the question how do you cure jet lag in a baby? Sigh…

Incidentally, possibly the strangest side effect of flying ever: Charlotte cried hard for 20 minutes of descent in the airplane and since then her lovely ‘inni’ belly button is an outie. We’re hoping it goes back soon!

death defying feats

All children are supposed to scare their parents half to death periodically with slips, scrapes, cuts, etc. that are almost life threatening (ex: how many stories can you think of where a child ‘almost lost an eye’)

With a new little baby, we have been wondering what that first incident or big ouch would be. Charlotte, apparently keen to oblige, only took 11 days in the oxygen breathing world to amass her first ‘just missed’ incident. While reclining against the chest of a friend after a dinner shared by 4 adults Saturday night, Charlotte decided she didn’t like looking backwards over the right shoulder of the person who was holding her and promptly began sliding her body head first to the left shoulder (something she does multiple times a day). Hit with a moment of inspiration, however, mid-slide she included a good strong leg kick, which propelled her over the shoulder she was supposed to be resting on. Some extremely fast reflexes, and a large diaper to grab appear to be most of what stopped her from falling 4 feet, head first, on to the floor below.

You always wonder how you will react as a parent in a circumstance like this.  I’m glad to report that both Brian and Rachel managed to stay calm.  First big risk down, only about a million more before adulthood…

Hello, World!

At 5:12 pm Charlotte Annalie Criswell was born weighing 7 pounds 5 ounces. Mommy and baby are fine, and Daddy is very happy!

Due Date +2

So here we are, two days past our due date and absolutely no sign of baby.  We had a visit with the midwife today, who assured us everything was absolutely normal.  Rachel’s health is good, the baby is fine, it’s just a matter of waiting.  The midwife is fairly sure the baby will come in the next 2 weeks, but if it doesn’t we’ll have an induction in the hospital on 29 May.

Actually, if one were a fly on the wall, the session with the midwife was probably fairly amusing.  Here was one stressed out ‘I want to HOLD my baby’ dad and a bored, frustrated ‘I’m done work, NOW WHAT’ mommy.  Both have university degrees and are pretty intelligent folk, but were reduced basically to the state of helpless, slightly whiny toddlers by the hormonal reckoning of an 8lb infant inutero.  Probably the funniest moment was when the discussion got around to the fact that Rachel, and one or two of her other sibs were over due (in Rachel’s case, 2 weeks late–born thanks to the wonders of caster oil).  The ‘and you thought this baby would be on time because’ look on the midwife’s face  was a classic.

Summoning all of her best pep talk skills, the midwife suggested that Rachel stop spending her days waiting for the baby and get out in Oxford and do something.  She also reminded us that is it a real blessing that Brian can just start his paternity leave as soon as ESTABLISHED labour finally happens.  (She’d just seen a couple where the husband had to book his time away.  He’d booked according to the due date and the kid was born 11 days late).

All I can say is it’s a good thing we live in a university town.  Rachel’s found lecture on everything from reporting on the war in Iraq to Mexican labour exports under NAFTA to keep her mind engaged in the next 2 weeks (yes there will probably be a historic sight or museum trip and copious amounts of coffee in there too).