Wheels on the bus go round and round, round and round...

Here in London, Zoe and I go on a lot of public transportation and I am proud to say I am learning to navigate the underground with a stroller. The trick is to know which stations have elevators and escalators and look helpless at the ones that don't, prompting a nice fellow passenger to help. In the beginning I would still carry her in the Beco or my wrap if we were not going out for long but she is 22 pounds/10 kg now and walking far with her is tough. She has never been a fan of her stroller, (which is one of the main reasons I have always carried her so much) she simply doesn't like to sit still and be driven around, which leads me to look enviously at all the calm or sleeping babies in the strollers around town. How do they do it? Do they drug the babies? Do they bribe them? Zoe might sit without complaining if we are walking through a particularly interesting area with many people, but as soon as I get into a train or bus, she wants up: "Bah? Bah?", she says, pulling her buckle and pointing down.

I had a particularly long train ride to Cambridge yesterday, one I do not want to repeat any time soon. The train we were supposed to catch was cancelled due to unavailable drivers (that's actually what the sign said) so we ended up on a completely full train where, even though I walked all the way up front, each and every single seat was taken. I pushed the stroller inside the train and prepared myself to stand up when a woman at the window graciously offered me her seat. Zoe promptly smiled and padded her on the head when she sat down on the floor in the hallway. Luckily our seat was around two women who clearly had children on their own because they smiled and paid her the right amount of attention, but diagonally across from us was an elderly lady with thin black hair who was not going to be Zoe's friend. She looked a bit at her when she reached out her hands but she huffed loudly when Zoe accidentally dropped a lime wedge (after taking it out of the plastic cup with fruit, biting in to it and making the funniest sour face), which bounced off the lady's stocking clad leg. I apologized but the lady just starred out the window, clearly upset. As I tried to give Zoe a bit of milk from a carton with a straw, something we have just recently started, Zoe squeezed the carton spilling a bit of milk, also on the woman's stockings. I thought she was going to have a fit at me, the irresponsible mother who let her baby eat on the train, but she just huffed louder, still not looking at us, which made the mother across give me an acknowledging look. She knew I was trying my best. I was relieved when we finally reached Cambridge and managed to carry Zoe on my arm, while pulling out the stroller where I put her in, to her loud screams.

So taking Zoe on public transportation is not my favorite activity but after learning a few tricks I am getting better. One trick is to always take the bus rather than the underground and then take her out of her stroller and on my lap for the ride. She often gets rowdy and difficult to hold because she wants down so she can run around, which is obviously not an option on neither a bus nor a train. I found that she likes my singing so I sing quietly into her ear: "The wheels on the bus goes round and round, round and round, round and round..." So far so good.

Fried Brains

One thing that happens when you become a mother is that your brain gets fried. I’m sure there is a logical, evolutionary reason for this but for an evolved career woman like me it means that it is now impossible to focus on any intellectual task for more than a couple of minutes, if at all. This is why I am sitting at London's finest Harvey Nic's 5th floor restaurant drinking lattes and blogging about traveling with a baby. Or should I say blogging about not working, because this was what my life is all about at the moment. I have managed to get child care for Zoe, at least 5 hours every day, I got my library card to the British library where I have all the quiet, all the electrical outlets and all the lunch I need for a good work day. Yet, I keep finding excuses to go somewhere else, either because I really do need hair conditioner (I squeezed the last drop out of my travel bottle this morning), or because I am not entirely sure which research project to work on yet. Today I needed to go to the Danish Embassy to vote in the Danish general election, something I haven't had the opportunity to do for about ten years and therefore prioritized. (In fact the last election I voted in was the Scottish regional election in 2006, which I was eligible for as a European citizen, opposite the Danish ones which I haven't been eligible to vote in for many years. Don't ask, it is complicated.)

One of the problems with a fried brain is not that "they didn't tell me this would happen", because I sort of knew something like this would happen through reading about motherhood, listening to other mothers and simply realizing how much energy would go into a child. The problem is that I thought that I, with my amazing drive and great ambitions (ha ha), would be able to work past this quickly and get back in the grind or that I would at least be able to focus on work in little chunks of 1-2 hours. How could I not? I have always been hard working and master deadlines like the pro researcher, working 12-14 hours the last week, with focus, with attention to details. Yet, I find myself so overwhelmed with the back trail of projects that all need my attention, quickly getting older, outdating the empirical data and making me forget why I was studying that phenomenon in the first place. Not only do I feel the obligations of my research projects slowly unraveling me, I am also weighed down from my students' expectations of my involvement and for some a definite need of my involvement. I am letting them down by not working on their project, yet, I know I don't have the time to polish it enough for the deadline, so why does it matter?

So I end up going Harvey Nic's for breakfast on a Monday instead of working on my research, wondering when I will get my brain back.

FlyMommy

Earlier this week I was on a secret mission at an undisclosed location (okay, who am I kidding, the knowledgable reader will quickly decipher that this, as any secret mission in the world of research, was a job interview). It was a single day trip, by my own request, since I am still not comfortable leaving Zoe at night if not necessary. It was a very strange experience to simply get into a black mercedes at 5.15am, doze off before reaching the airport, stroll through security (because all I had was a laptop and a book) and walk directly onto a plane taking me off to another city, in fact another country, where I then spent a good 6 hours before reversing the trajectory and ending up in the grotty London Underground at 10pm on a train that was stuck for 10 minutes in the tunnel. This was the only hiccup of my travels. As I stepped back into our little 19th century apartment on 2nd floor, the only evidence that I had spent the day in another country was my Ramlösa water bottle, which I had refilled with English tap water upon landing in Heathrow.

The most surprising part of the trip to me was how little I missed Zoe. Or how little I worried about her. The 'mission' had been planned only two weeks previously and the day, which they give you and which you cannot change, was less than ideal: it was Mark's second day at his new job, only one week into our stay in London so the childcare I had arranged was not somewhere I felt comfortable leaving Zoe at for 12 hours, even if the nice childminder (as they are called over here) had offered. Instead Mark brought Zoe with him the 1 hour commute to work and dropped her off at his boss' house where a nanny was taking care of her little one. He apparently went back for lunch and then picked her up again late afternoon. I was blissfully unaware of all of this, since Mark had been the responsible husband and said, after a brief discussion of what I was to do, "Don't worry a thing, you go to your meeting, I'll figure out what to do about Zoe". And with that I had turned my focus to preparation of the meeting. When it came to the actual day, I enjoyed baby-free travel, particularly the 2 hour flight from 7-9am that provided me with time for a dearly needed nap, since Zoe had woken up at 2am and stayed awake until 3am, leaving me to twist and turn until 4am where I had had to get up. She clearly knew something was up.

As for the outcome of my little mission I have to wait a couple of weeks. But if all goes well, this will be my way of getting into the next step of my professional life. Or that is, start getting paid again for all the work that I do.

The cup holder problem

Moving to another country, let alone another country across the vast Atlantic is not a simple task to undertake. We have been lucky to have the majority of the related expenses paid, including having a set of moving people come and disassemble our furniture, pack everything up in your apartment, load it into a container and send it off, through the Panama Canal. We hope that on the other end, another set of moving people will carry the stuff up to the new apartment, open up the crates and put the furniture back together again. On the surface this seems like a great service and I was happy to have it for the first time of my life, after having moved 15+ times, always packing my own boxes. However, I quickly realized that it was not just the packing of boxes that was important but the judgement of what needed to be boxed and moved, vs. the stuff that needed to be sold or tossed. See, moving a $20 Ikea lamp from the US to Europe makes absolutely no sense because not only would the lamp not work with European bulbs (which are apparently 0.4 cm wider than the US bulbs) or European current, but the cost of moving it would also exceed the cost of buying a new one in a European Ikea. Combined with the fact that I never really liked this lamp and that it was bought merely as a 'transition' lamp (like so many other household items...) meant that it was not to be packed. Multiply that with 50 because we also had kitchen appliances that would not work in Europe, even with a transformer, include pre-pregnancy clothes that I really thought I would fit into by now but which I really should just part with, and you have at least 4 days work. Add to that a nosy little toddler who likes to take out all items I put in a box and who specialize in taking items and putting them somewhere strange (what is your little shoe doing in the cupboard? No, mommy's book does not go in the bathroom drawer), and you have about 8 evenings worth of hard work.

I approached the task with rigor, writing lists, sorting things out beginning one month prior to our big move. For two weeks this was all I could talk about, frequently asking Mark what he thought: Should I bring both of Zoe's duvets or just the small one? Should we keep the big lamp that I loved, but which would need rewiring in Europe? Would it make sense to ship the $1 wine glasses that we never used? He eventually got really annoyed and we snapped at each other, he accusing me of worrying too much and me accusing him of not helping out with the decisions. Instead he kept talking about more abstract things such as the fact that we still hadn't heard from the estate agent in London in terms of where we could pick up keys to our flat, things we couldn't do much about other than try to call them during opening hours (which was never when he expressed his concern). Eventually we found a middle way, me managing most of the household stuff, putting lamps on craigslist, him endlessly surfing the internet for estate agent news and, to his credit, showing and finally selling the car.

Almost everything was ready a few days before the movers arrived, now I just needed pack and decide what things we could not live without for 2 months. It was tough, but I managed to squeeze everything for Zoe and me (Mark took care of his own stuff) into a large suitcase weighing 71 pounds. This was clothes (including light winter clothes, we won't see our boxes before November the earliest), two of Zoe's favorite teddybears, important papers such as immunization records, an inflatable tub for Zoe, two books for me and her cup and bowl. We were also bringing her small collapsable stroller in a separate cover so we could check it in.

For some reason those last days of packing melted into one another with us trying to make the most of it, seeing people for goodbye dinners, goodbye brunches and goodbye drinks. The Friday before the movers were coming Saturday morning was the most difficult day because Zoe had to say goodbye to her lovely nanny, something I still cannot even write about without getting tears in my eyes, and something that is worth a whole other post. I was in a blur, trying to finish some work, managing a new study (yeah, I had just started a new study 2 weeks before we moved, how smart was that?) and on top of that we sold our car, so I had to look after Zoe while cooking for the dinner party we held for our nanny that very evening. When our guests finally left just before midnight I realized that I still had to label everything that the movers were not to take, such as still unsold lamps, suitcases and furniture we were getting rid of. Mark went to bed and left me to it; around 2 am I tumbled into bed, my head still spinning, hoping for the best.

Zoe and the all-important cupholder

The moving men were nice and seemed a lot more professional and meticulous than I had expected. They asked for each item that was not clear, I explained that no electric appliances were to be taken, except of course for the ones that were actually going (our large nice lamp, which we would be rewiring) and they went about their packing tasks. Meanwhile I realized that it was not entirely safe to have a toddler running around, picking up their power drills (NO ZOE, those screws are not for eating!) and generally being in the way of big men with big boxes. Mark took her out in the stroller, leaving me to guide the movers and relax a bit.

Flash forward to the evening where Mark had handed over the car to its new owners and finally, the movers had emptied the apartment and left us with the bare minimum to live with for the remaining two days. We went out to goodbye dinner with a couple of friends and were having a relaxing conversation when I suddenly realized, getting a chill down my back, that when I had put Zoe in the stroller so Mark could take her out that morning, I had taken off the cup holder because I knew he hated it (it was apparently in the way of his hand), and put it in the coat closet. The coat closet where the movers had packed everything from, including cup holder. How could I be taking Zoe for walks around London without a cup holder? How could I get my caffeine fix now? I interrupted everyone with my serious realization to the laugh of particularly Mark who did not share my distraughtness. After a bit of grumpiness from my side, he looked at me and said: If that is the worst thing that went wrong today, then we are pretty well off aren't we. And I agreed. We dubbed these small problems that we deal with 'cup holder problems', which reminds us everyday that we are so lucky to have what we have in terms of each other and Zoe, and wonderful people around us. And now I am off to spend £15 on a new cup holder because I really miss it here in London.