Autumn's here!

I've been working at my new job for a little over a month now.  The two boys and I have settled into a routine and I have fun finding new things to do with them that they'll enjoy.  A few days ago I taught them how to play 500 with a whistle football.  I'm going to bring my Charlie Brown Halloween movie in 2 weeks and carve a pumpkin with them.  They've never had the opportunity to touch the inside of a pumpkin before!  It's awesome being there for any first experience.

Yasmin tolerating my boys and the neighbors as they put grass on her

Most weekends are devoted to St John lately because it's a busy time of year for induction coordinator.  I'm also on a trainers course that teaches you how to teach including the different styles of learning and assessment.  I love the content.  There's lots of homework to do during the week for it, though.  Luckily I have a few hours in the middle of the day during the week between school drop off and when the little one gets out of pre-school to do any work.

Tim's first day of med school!

Tim's hospital

Tim's lunchbox

Tim is loving med school!  Every other Thursday I take Yaz to work with me because Tim is on clinical placement.  He goes to a hospital or clinic and gets to practice his skills on patients under the doctor's supervision.  His other days are full of lectures, discussion groups, and sometimes labs.  The school seems nice enough about Yasmin.  If Tim needs to go into a lab a member of staff doggysits.  Tim says that they hurl new information at the students in rapid succession and he's trying to take in as much as possible by going over the slides again at home and looking up any material mentioned.  It means that I get to help with the research.  It's kind of fun, actually.

Yasmin got a blood test on Monday and found that she's clean and healthy.  She has pancreatitis we found out.  It's a lifelong condition, but she only needs medicine when it flares up.  She's back to normal now.  She likes coming to work with me occasionally, but she's not crazy about the kids.  I think the kids would be better off with a hyper terrier.  They keep trying to put sticks in Yasmin's face hoping she'll take it or tug it with them.  She just wants to be left alone with her sticks, though.  The employers (parents) like Yasmin, though.  They even offered to doggysit if we ever need it.

Our new house is great, but constantly messy at the moment.  Everything still isn't moved in.  I have a week off of work the week of Halloween so I'm hoping to make the house more of a home then.  It's really cool, though.  We aren't used to having so much space to the 3 of us.

Super Long Winter

Life's just going too fast lately.  I cut down a lot on my volunteering.  I haven't done a duty since New Year's Eve, and before then I hadn't done one since Halloween.  I had to work 4 induction weekends (10 hrs a day Sat and Sun) in 5 weeks last year.  Thankfully this year it's only one a month and the February one got cancelled.  That's much easier to handle.  I decided I'm never doing 2 weekends in a row again.  I was feeling subhuman with no rest outside the work week.

Yaz being a good model in the snow

Our house in the middle with the green door and a dog in front

Tim got a couple interviews for med schools.  He had one last Wednesday that he felt went well, and he has another on the 15th.  That pushes our Valentine's Day to the weekend.  Our conversations have been about almost nothing else but med school and preparations for the interviews.  Tim's been reading books on how to do well at a med school interview, he's been looking up info on the university (Queen Mary's) including the history, any special curriculum, and any famous research that has come from there.  There's a lot there.  It turns out the museum has the skeleton of the Elephant Man, and a writer of one of Tim's major biomed textbooks teaches at the Bart's med school of Queen Mary's.  I can't wait 'til this part is over, 'cause then it's just a waiting game.

We decided for Valentine's Day to do something a little different.  The pathology museum of St Bartholomew (the med school of Queen Mary's University) is hosting an event called "Mending Broken Hearts" which is a seminar involving something to do with organs and I'm guessing at least one heart.  Should be interesting.  At least it'll be different.

The baby I look after turns 1 this weekend.  I got him a Mr. Potato Head 'cause he likes putting thing inside of things lately.  It's good for his dexterity and who doesn't like Mr. Potato Head?  The kids are a lot of fun.  The mother is a little crazy sometimes, but she'll start working from an office 3 times a week instead of at home.  That makes my life a little easier.  It's not nice to feel like everything you say can be heard by your boss.

This is the pond near the house where I work.  There are some geese walking on the iced part.

It's finally above freezing so I can drive my scooter to work again.  I was taking the bus and train when it was freezing and below and it takes twice as long to get to work so I had to wake up earlier and pay more money.  I was living in my long johns for a while 'cause it was so cold.  I'll be so glad when winter is over.  It feels like it's lasting forever.

I hope everyone got their Christmas cards/post cards!  I haven't heard back from everyone so I don't know if they got received or not.

Enter October

Life seems to be non-stop lately between work, St John drama, landlord drama, and having a temporary guest.  Work doesn't really change, though it's very demanding.  I feel like a hybrid between a housekeeper and an old school governess with all the tasks that are thrown at me.  I'm expected to do all sorts of cleaning, cooking, toy fixing, and laundry on top of following very specific instructions of toilet training principles, working on each boy's individual physical and intellectual development (as if they aren't developing fast enough), and organize all playdates, playgroups, and any extra field trips for the boys.  I must say I prefer the latter tasks to the previous ones, but the mom sometimes just doesn't seem satisfied if the boys haven't progressed somehow in the last 2 days.  So I have to be sure to tell her any news regarding a leap in learning.  Jacob (the older boy) is turning 2 this week so I've got to wrap his presents.  I got him the movie Cars and a small toy of Lightning McQueen (the main character in Cars).  Then I just couldn't pass up on some really cute Batman PJs with a cape attached!  I got him Finding Nemo recently (anything I get them is reimbursed if the parents approve... they've yet to not approve) and he loves it!  However, I notice he's less prone to eating fish since he's started watching it.  Instead he makes the fish noise with his mouth.  We may have a budding vegetarian. : \

This week our projects included cooking "Lucky Stone Soup" after a book we read that was basically a retelling of "Stone Soup" and making a vehicle out of the box below.  It was also meant to satisfy the mom's requirement of "some type of drawing every day" to work on Jacob's dexterity.  After I made this box for the boys he drew on it and put stickers etc on it.  Thomas, the baby, loves being inside of it.   There's shiny paper taped to the floor made of space blanket material as well as other fun colors inside and out.

Jacob has a friend named James.  James' nanny, Sonia, and I get the boys together regularly for playdates or museum outings.  We're planning a fun halloween play date where the 2 year olds get to draw on pumpkins, decorate gluten and dairy free cupcakes, and watch "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown."  I'm sure we can find something for Tommy to play with on the side seeing as he doesn't draw or decorate cupcakes at only 8-months-old.

I don't even want to go into the St John drama/politics because I'm convinced that the very fact that it even exists is ridiculous because it's not what St John Ambulance stands for.

We're having to take our previous landlord to court because she didn't follow the law as it applies to landlords.  Basically, she wanted us to pay for a new front door.  We said the door was fine and we didn't agree to forking out hundreds of pounds for a new one.  We even got second opinions on the fact that there wasn't a problem with the current door.  It turned out that Linda (landlady) pocketed the deposit money she should have given the government as a landlord.  Tim was assured that it will be an automatic win for us so that Linda will have to pay for court costs, give us back our full deposit, and possibly even give us more money on top.  We suspect there are other reasons behind Linda's insistence that she needed a new door, but she refused to give us our deposit back so it led to this.  Unfortunately, the court date isn't until January 7th.

We also have a new guest living with us.  She used to be a colleague of Diana's at Incarnate Word.  Her name is Nina and she used to teach English to students at UIW.  She's now doing her masters here in London in the Scandinavian languages.  She's staying with us for now.  Nothing is decided about how long she'll be with us, but she's welcome to stay at least for the first semester so we can see how stuff goes.

Tim has just finished his application for med school and is about to send off to 4 different programs at 3 different med schools.  We aren't expecting to hear anything before February.  Fingers crossed!

We are looking at being in TX from the 19th to the 30th this Christmas, but I still can't promise anything.  For one thing, Tim is finally changing his name (like he said he would over a year ago!) so he can renew his (expired) passport with his new name.  So we can't buy tickets before his new passport is issued.  But now that his school applications are in priority can be given to this.

Mid-summer

I have one week left with the boys.  I've told them I'll get them ice cream on my last day (Thursday) if we don't see the ice cream truck before then, but they have to agree on what type they want me to bring.  It'll probably take all week for them to agree.  They still have 2 weeks left of school.  Kids here only get a 6 week summer because they get so much holiday during the school year.  Whole weeks off here and there.

I went to Wimbledon tennis on Friday (July 6th).  We weren't allowed into the actual courts where the famous players were playing, but Wimbledon is like a little village almost.  You need a ticket to get into the area, and the cheapest tickets will allow you in to buy souvenirs, get into the food places, and sit on the lawn/picnic area to watch the famous courts on the big screen.  It was a beautiful area.  I wish I had taken more pics of it.  The lawn was lush with purple flowers (Wimbledon's colors are purple and green) and arches of green plants with controlled green ivy on the buildings.  There were smaller courts where anyone could play with ball boys and girls and an referee.  I saw some women playing doubles in wheelchairs.  That was pretty amazing.  Not much happened first aid-wise.  I only treated one person the whole 9 hours I was there and my treatment center only had about 5 or 6 patients all day.  They said the first week is much busier.  I'd like to go back next year, though I really don't care about the tennis part.  I'm not much at spectating.

I had my first 4th of July in the UK this year.  I didn't realize the date until I saw a post on facebook after I woke up.  Probably because there are no 4th of July sales here.  I left my flag shirt at home, so Tim let me wear his.  I felt kind of self-conscious wearing it around Bromley.  Most Brits I spoke to didn't realize it was our independence day, but they at least knew of it when reminded.  Jack said his school gave them American food for dessert at lunch.  It was American (thick) pancakes with ice cream. Lol.  I told him we are more likely to eat pancakes with syrup.  Tim and I barbecued burgers and hotdogs and had typical 4th of July food complete with apple pie and pre-made margaritas before watching Captain America.  Pretty patriotic I'd say.

Tim found out this last week that he is exempt from taking the UK CAT (test to get into med school).  It's a 5 hour test.  Tim asked if they could make it accessible for him.  They would have had to give him more time and either given it to him on a screen that could magnify or given him someone who could read it to him.  They said they couldn't make it accessible so he doesn't have to take it.  That means that Tim's next step is to look into med schools.  He'll still need to take a test for whatever school he applies to, though.  There are 4 in London he's looking at currently.  They are Kings College, Imperial College, St. George's University, and St. Bartholemew's (not sure how to spell, but it's generally referred to as Bart's).  It's pretty exciting news anyhow!  He's been reading up on his chemistry in the mean time.  He wouldn't start med school before Sept. of 2013 so he'll probably take on more first aid teaching and assessing jobs for now.

Yasmin is doing well.  She generally falls asleep in bed with me because I have to go to bed early to get up at 5:20 every morning.  Tim kicks her out when he goes to bed.  Tim doesn't like to go to bed before 11 or much later if he doesn't have to get up early.  I really don't blame him.  I wouldn't either.  Thankfully there's only one more week at waking up at stupid o'clock.  In other Yaz news she loves going to my softball games because she's guaranteed to get loads of attention and love from both the girls and guys once Tim takes the harness off.  Other than that she's pretty happy and healthy.  She loves sitting outside the flat in good weather chewing a stick.

My Coldest June Yet

It's almost the end of June and the weather still bugs me.  It just doesn't feel like summer.  Yesterday I was playing softball for part of the day in shorts and a T-shirt, and the rest of the day in pants and a hoodie with the hood up!  And cold rain is the worst!  June is the time for warm rain if any.  The highs have been mostly 50-60.  Once in a while we'll get a nice day that's about 70-75 for a few hours before the clouds cover the sun.  The worst is when it rains cold rain at 6am when I'm biking to work and the seat of my pants are all wet when I arrive.  So I'm just cold and miserable for an hour or so at an ungodly hour while I dry off and warm up.

Tim has been teaching first aid courses unrelated to St John lately.  A friend recommends Tim for the jobs.  His friend said that the company is short on first aiders and will probably need to use Tim more often.  He's currently preparing for a course that runs this Monday-Wednesday.

I had a softball tournament yesterday all day.  Between 9am - 6pm we played 7 games.  Yasmin came along because Tim was planning on spending the day preparing for his course.  She had a great time meeting new friends and getting loads of affection from my team and the opposing teams.  She loves the softball people 'cause they give her tons of attention.  I think most muscles in my body are sore now.  Even some in my back because I got knocked hard by a guy running to 2nd twice (the same guy both times)!  I mostly played 2nd base, but a couple games on 1st, and half a game as catcher.  We were short on girls so there were no breaks for us.  The first 5 games we played back-to-back, and with no break I was starving and exhausted by the time we finally finished the 5th game around 2 pm.  My team came in 3rd overall.  I have no idea how many teams were there.  We only played one team twice.

I gave my month's notice to the parents I work for last week.  They keep forgetting to tell the boys.  I sure don't want to tell them, and I don't look forward to all the questions they'll ask once they know.  Here's a pic I took last week when they asked to play on my scooter.  They both jumped when Jack pushed the horn.  It it kind of loud for such a small vehicle.  Jack's in front and Jude in back.  They switched off being in front and back.

I signed the contract with my new employer.  I'm working there for a few hours on July 7th for the first time.  I'm supposed to read up on The Baby Whisperer and Noel Janis-Norton beforehand 'cause it's the philosophy they want to use in raising their kids.  I've never had to read up on child rearing for work before, but it's a full-time job so I shouldn't mind a little bit of homework.  I do think the Baby Whisperer might have come up with a more original title, though.

Since I don't have much longer of having extra time in the middle of the day once I start my new job I'm trying to do driving lessons and brush up on the theory section of the British driving test.  I have my next lesson Monday.  After my lesson last week Tim and I rented a zipcar to practice with on Friday so I could practice without the instructor in the car.  Zipcar is a company that has regular looking cars parked all over London and the UK.  I think the company is in other countries also.  You pay a membership fee yearly, then you can book a car close to you for a few hours, or as long as you want.  It's very useful.  We used it when moving and rented a van.

Something I pass everyday on the way to Jack and Jude's house.  I think it's supposed to be the prime meridian.  We do live 6 miles South of Greenwich after all.

New job...again, and lots of St John

I realize it's been a while since I last posted.  I was waiting until I might have some news about a new job.  I think I finally do.  I have pretty much landed a full-time nanny job that starts in July.  It's 50 hours a week looking after two little boys aged 3 months and 2 years.  I'm very excited because I'm hoping with this job Tim and I can move into a bigger place, bring Guinness over, and visit the US for Christmas.  I'll still have weekends off so that's fine by me.  Now we are going through the process of agreeing on hours, holiday time, showing her all my official documents, etc.

I'm getting better with my scooter.  I can now always get home without the use of a map now.  I still need to tape the directions to my dash (just hiding the clock) to get anywhere new.  Medical tape is awesome for that!

Laura is visiting London for about a week and a half.  We went to Oxford yesterday and I invited friends over for a movie night tonight.  We're planning on barbecuing.  I'm trying to take lots of pics for facebook so more updates will be on there.

Tim and I have been going to a lot of duties lately.  I went to a parade in Chelsea a few weeks ago that was of great interest to the boys I look after.  They're huge football (soccer) fans.  Chelsea won some cup over lots of teams in Europe and there was a huge parade in Chelsea.  It reminded me of the Spurs parade I went to on the Riverwalk in 2007, except there were far more drunk people here.  Thankfully they were all friendly since they all were there to support Chelsea.  You just had to dodge the flying celery.  Chelsea has some song that is slightly crude involving shoving celery into the orifices of their opponents.  I was slightly surprised to see children throwing celery into the crowds also.  They were all waiting for the team to drive by on a double decker bus.  Anyway, I showed the pics to the boys and they told me the names of all the players on top of the bus.

The team on top of the bus with the cup

See that balloon the baby is holding in the shape of the cup? They were selling those balloons for 7 pounds!

Tim and I also went to a Coldplay concert last weekend.  It was my first rock concert ever! I was so cool.  It was even better because we went for free with St John Ambulance.  People were so considerate too! They only got ill before or after the concert.  I don't think I would have paid for it, though.  I liked going with St John so I could go into the treatment center if I got tired of standing in the cold.  I could warm up with a quiet cup of coffee and go back out.  Especially since I don't really like crowds.  But I really want to sign up for more concert duties this summer.  It was fun.  There's the O2 Wireless concert in July with different bands playing, Wimbledon tennis, and of course, the Olympics!  I'm sure I'm missing something, but those are the main duties coming up that I want to go on.

Just a Few Pics

Here are some pics of the boys I look after. This was taken around 6:30 am.  I have a "not-before-7" rule where they can do what they like, but I don't play games before 7 am.  Why they wake up before they need to is beyond me.  They don't need to be up before 7:30.  I couldn't help but snap a pic of them entertaining themselves.  Jack (older one) is filming Jude.  Jude is the sillier one who does all sorts of funny faces and voice impersonations.

The boys' birthdays are just one day apart so they share a birthday party.  This is the birthday invitation their dad made on the computer with the numbers on their jerseys showing how old they're turning.

And they brought me a T-shirt, pencil, and bookmark back from Malaysia.  I didn't realize that the building from the movie Entrapment was in Malaysia, but I recognized it right off from the movie.