Kate and Andrew Scott

Mum, the cake’s on fire!

So last September we became parents, and that was pretty amazing. This September we celebrated that first birthday, moved house, and Andrew toured the globe. I’m hopefully that next September may be a little quieter!!

Globe trotting first. Andrew headed off mid-September (Timed to miss all the box packing? He says not!) first to Amsterdam, for a couple of conferences, and then on to Seattle. From Seattle he headed up to Victoria, Canada, to see Bob and his family. And then back to Melbourne. Away for only 10 days it was an action packed trip, highlights being seeing Bob, and the Seattle Music Experience Museum. Apparently having a child also makes jet lag easier to bare because you’re use to falling asleep when ever you can, or is it that you’re exhausted most of the time and therefore it’s easier to nap whenever? Which ever way it was, Andrew found the jet lag much easier to cope with than previous trips.

While he was off globetrotting Kate and Harriet had the mammoth task of packing up Kensington in preparation for the move to Ascot Vale. While the house was small it contained a lot of stuff, obviously we’d lived there too long as stuff had bred in the cupboards and particularly in the shed….. The dinning room was converted into the box room and Harriet had even less space than usual to play. Box after box was packed, and the house also had to be presentable for prospective tenants, although thankfully it rented after only one open-for-inspection which was wonderfully quick.

10 nights is also a long time for your Dad to be away, and Harriet missed Andrew a lot, particularlyat bathtime, as Mummy gives her a very boring bath with no lobster chasing, and no pulling of the plug to watch the water leave the bath allowed. She formed a special bond with her toy Tiger, and didn’t say Dadda after the first couple of days. The morning that Andrew got home she almost bounced out of Kate’s arms, yelling ‘Dadda Dadda’ at the top of her lungs. She was so excited to see him that she wouldn’t sleep all day (yeah, that was a lovely gift to give!!). Tiger is now back on the pile of stuffed toys and is no longer a daddy substitute.

And all this time Kate was also wrangling the builders, trying to get the new house in a fit state for us to move in. With a 100% over-run in the timeline it was all getting a bit much, but finally the painting was completed, and the new floor coverings laid. We might not have moved in before Harriet’s birthday, as was our plan, but we did manage to have her birthday afternoon tea at new place as planned. And it was amazing to have a party in a place big enough to allow our small number of guests to actually be in the same room as each other!!! Very exciting indeed.

And so it was that on the 26th Sept our little girl turned one. Pretty amazing to think that we, and she, had survived the first year and that that little tiny baby that we’d bought home from hospital has survived our total ignorance of all things baby, and grow into such a beautiful, happy little person. Parenthood really is the most massive change you can make to your life, and one that tests you in ways you can’t foresee, but it’s rewards are so much greater than you expect. Showered with gifts, and allowed to eat an enormous amount of icing by her Gramps, we had a lovely celebration of Harriet turning one, and what a momentous year it had been.

And then 5 days later the removalists showed up and we shifted all those packed boxes the entire 4 minutes down the road to our new place. It may have been the slowest move ever recorded (9 hours) and our most expensive ($$$$!!!!) but we’re in and we’re loving it. The house is just massive in comparison to what we’re use to. As Andrew says we use to have to manage our stuff in minimal space, now we have so much space that we have to manage it! We have curtaining in most of the rooms (Kate got the bargain of the decade at Spotlight $10 a curtain, yes $10!!), the ducted heating works, and Harriet has a play area the size of our old lounge room, plus her crawling skills have stepped up a notch now she has the run of the corridor. The house really is amazing, we’ll put some photos up in the next couple of days and Andrew will re-do his video walk-through of the house. Check his flickr site.

So yes, it’s been a massive month, oh for the quiet life please!!! :)