The Fear

“Hank” is due to arrive in a little over 9 weeks.  Nine.  Weeks.  66 days.  1,584 hours.   Give or take a few.  To say I’m feeling a little apprehensive would be an understatement.  It’s not just butterflies in my tummy, that’s for sure:

Bumpity bump - 30 weeks

Maybe “terrified” would be a better word?

Of course, I cannot wait to meet him.  When I found out that Hank was on the way, we had just returned from a day trip to the US Embassy in Grosvenor Square.   During the train journey, I had felt very sick, very tired and very…well, pregnant.  And then I went back to work in my little home office, overlooking our tiny Brighton back garden, while Evie played happily at daycare until 5.45pm…and I stared at one of these:

Eek!

So much has changed since that day, it feels like an absolute lifetime ago.  And, consequently, this feels like the world’s longest pregnancy.  How can all that have happened, and yet I’m still pregnant!?  I must be a human elephant, gestating this baby for 2 years.  It’s the only explanation.    That day, I don’t think I had even decided to resign from my job yet.   We were still nearly two months away from catching a flight to Seattle, and several hotels and apartments away from moving into the Dream House.

Evie still looked like our teeny little chubster baby:

I adore these chubby knees!

And I was a million miles away from “Stay at Home Mom” status.  Evie and I spent maybe 2 hours a day together – either rushing around giving her breakfast, packing her bag and getting her dressed & ready to walk down to nursery with Daddy, or sorting out tea, watching In the Night Garden and getting ready for bed.

Chilling out in front of Iggle Piggle before bedtime

Now, though…wow!  I don’t think we are ever apart, from 8am to 8pm.  She has even started giving up her afternoon nap, so we are practically joined at the hip for 12 hours a day.   In so many ways, I really love it!  My absolute favourite part of the day is the half hour we spend together when she first wakes up – she runs through to our bedroom, with a huge smile on her face, yelling “Mummy, Mummy!!” (though these days, it’s starting to sound disturbingly more like “Mommy, Mommy!”).  We have a quick cuddle, before she starts rifling through my bedside table, looking for fun things to play with – like my Kindle, wedding rings, hand cream – toddler-suitable toys like that.  Then she’ll lie down and pretend to sleep (complete with fake snores), demand I turn the light out, or throw me a book to read to her.  She’ll often pull up my pyjama top so that she can “kiss the beebee”, before climbing up for bump-squishing cuddles!  It’s so nice to have this snuggle time together in the mornings, without having to jump up, get showered and rush out of the house – I only wish I could wake up so full of energy and smiles every morning!

But.  But….what is going to happen in 2 months time, when she runs through into our bedroom to find “Mummy” is otherwise engaged?  Mummy already has her hands full with your baby brother, so you have to go to Daddy.  Or sit calmly.  No bouncing.  No climbing.  No snuggling with mummy, but you can sit next to me if you’re very careful with the baby! And no, honey, Mummy can’t come and play peek-a-boo under the duvet with you, I’m busy feeding Hank right now.

Is she going to be OK?  Is this huge change in her life (yet another one in a very long list this year) going to wipe that fabulous morning smile off her face?  Will she forgive us?

Evie will be two next month.  Two years old – how on earth did that happen?  How has it been 2 years since this day?

Ickle Evie - long before she learnt to answer back!

Along with that momentous milestone come the tantrums associated with the Terrible Twos.  In fact, they’ve started a little early for Miss Genevieve.  I often wonder if it’s because she’s now too used to having me around 24-7, and is being a little spoilt with cuddles and attention?  Have I created a monster?  Has she lost her wee independent spirit?  Or is this a completely normal 2-year-old response to…well, life?

At the moment, she’s easy enough to distract – you want a biscuit, and if you can’t have it, you’re going to throw yourself on the floor in hysterics Evie?  Well, OK…..or, we can go upstairs and have a tea party with Upsy Daisy instead?  How about that?

You don’t want to put your shoes and coat on before we go outside, Evie?  Well, OK, you can stand there and scream at the injustice of life, or we can quickly peel you an apple to keep you distracted while I grab your wellies.

Most meltdowns are, fortunately, pretty easily averted before she hits full throttle.

But.  But…how am I going to peel an apple with a newborn in one arm while a whinging toddler tries to climb my leg?  How quickly am I going to be able to stem the tide of rage, if I’m right in the middle of feeding our wee boy when Evie decides that things aren’t going her way?   How quickly will I be able to run to “kiss it better” when she falls off her Tiger Trike and bangs her head (as she has literally just done!)?  How do I run after her when she does this, without giving the newborn in a sling shaken baby syndrome?:

I worry about ridiculous things.  Will Evie hate the baby?  Will she stop loving me, or develop abandonment issues and turn from our happy, playful little monkey to an angry, difficult wee attention-seeking monster?  Will I love this new baby as much as I love my beautiful Genevieve?  I keep dreaming that I completely forgot to feed him, only realising my fatal error  after 3 days.  Or worse dreams, that Hank is born, and not only can I still not decide what to call him, but I’m indifferent to his arrival.

I suspect the root of all this anxiety is the knowledge that it’s going to be so very, very different this time.  We’re in a new house, in a strange country on an entirely different continent.  My family are a 9 hour flight away, and my friends…oh, I miss my friends.

There’ll be no snuggling on the sofa in front of Jeremy Kyle with baby, while we recover from a sleepless night before – not with a restless toddler on the loose!  There’ll be no antenatal classes to meet mums due at the same time.  And no postnatal support groups, baby massage or mummy and baby yoga.  Worse (much worse) still, there’ll be no meeting up with my lovely Lu for a clandestine vino (or two – medicinal purposes, you understand!) while the babies snooze in the sunshine.

Oblivious to mummy's tipsy time!

Of course I realise I am not the only woman in the world to have ever had two children  (or even three or four…or half a dozen, Angelina Jolie – of course, if you’re married to Brad Pitt, I bet you can cope with just about anything!) and survived to tell the tale.   Hell, many of my friends have done it – not only are they alive and well, but they’re even still smiling!  But it doesn’t stop me panicking just a little bit every time I walk past Hank’s bedroom door and see that cot waiting for its teeny, tiny new arrival.

Hank's nursery...with a certain impostor making herself comfy in there!

Maybe that’s why we are still no nearer to choosing a name.  I’m clearly in denial – help me, or he’ll be Hank forever!

Snowmageddon!!

At least, that’s how the news anchors have been referring to the weather events in Seattle this week. Or “Snowpocalypse!!”. I love the names they come up with for these “major” local news events – the 9-day closure of the Alaskan Way Viaduct (a 1950s elevated highway now being replaced by a tunnel) in October was met by headlines screaming about “VIADOOM!!“.  And yes, the exclamation marks are mandatory. It’s brilliant – I can’t wait to hear what they come up with for the inevitable flooding that’s going to follow the big thaw!

Anyway…so yes, we’ve had a bit of snow this week.

Pink sky in the morning is the housebound mother's warning!

It started last Saturday, and snowed pretty much non-stop for 5 days.   It’s been both breath-taking, and maddening for me.

Breathtaking because it’s really made us appreciate where we live now.  This Dream House is even more beautiful in the snow, the neighbourhood turned into a true winter wonderland, and our huge garden really came into its own – we actually had room to build a snowman this year!

Evie - snow sculpting genius!

And while I am loathe to say anything negative about our lovely old Brighton home, which holds so many very precious memories, there’s no denying that our snowy January 2010  was a markedly different scene to 2012′s version:

Our lovely, but little, Brighton backyard

Dream House, now with frosting!

Beauty and big gardens aside, though, it’s also been a maddening week.  I’ve been meaning to post for a while about the possibly inevitable side effect of giving up work and moving across the ocean with a toddler and a whole host of pregnancy hormones in tow - the lonesome blues!  Wow – no matter how inevitable, and hopefully short-term, those blues are, it’s still pretty tough to deal with.  I will still write more about that one of these days, but last week, we finally had a full diary.  I’d signed up to more “Mommy groups” than I could even remember the names of, and said yes to pretty much every event I was notified of.  Evie and I had something in the calendar every single day – from inflatable fun at “Pump it Up” to art classes at Gymboree – and I was feeling positive about finally getting a chance to get to know some other mums, and Evie finding some fun new playmates.  Having moved three times in three months, and with Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year thrown into the works, everything has felt quite on-hold until now – but this was Our Big Week!  Was.  Was our big week.  And then Snowmageddon hit, and that was the end of that – everything in the last week got canceled, including my optician appointment.  Quite the disaster, given that I ran out of contact lenses weeks ago, and Evie has now apparently decided that glasses are, like, totally not a good look for me.  At least, I assume that’s what she’s trying to say when she squeals “No, Mummy!”, pulls them off my face and tosses them across the room with a look of disgust on her face.  Charming.

It’s definitely been an interesting week, with some great ups, and some miserable downs.  Several trees in the garden have fallen apart under the weight of the snow.  We ran out of firewood, and tried not to panic as the lights continually flickered, clocks reset themselves and the cable box faltered.  We were incredibly fortunate, in the end, not to be one of the  quarter of a million households to lose power completely,  not to be one of the families sitting in the car with the engine running just to keep warm (why, oh why, are all the power lines above ground here, in a part of the world so very proud of all their trees!? Every time the wind so much as puffs, the lights flicker!).

Why, Seattle, why??

We may have run out of comfort food, like bread and chocolate (though I’m still convinced a chocolate shortage does actually constitute an emergency), but our amazing milkman still turned up, snowchains and all, to sort us out with Evie-essential milk and eggs.  Trooper!

I may have been frustrated at having our entire week of potential mommy-meeting opportunities canceled, but with most of Hunters Glen also housebound, we finally got to see so many more of our neighbours.  One even brought us gifts, which included chocolate and candles – our very own little rescue package, hurrah!   We met the other new family in the cul-de-sac – another Microsoftee with two young daughters.  We met the neighbour who looks like Kevin Bacon’s older brother, and whose grandchildren are almost exactly the same age as our wee family – granddaughter Grace is also a March ’10 baby, and grandbaby-to-be is due at the same time as Hank.   And our fabulous next-door neighbours kindly knocked the snow off some of our trees, just because they were doing their own at the same time after a (fortunately harmless) tree-falling-on-garage incident.

Beautiful snow-laden trees. Just waiting to crush your home.

What has been quite interesting has been the news coverage.  I guess some things don’t change, no matter where you live.  Whenever it snows in the UK, the news reporters would have you believe that the whole country has ground to a halt.  Schools are closed, flights grounded, trains canceled.  Supermarkets (and councils!) run out of salt; bread and milk suddenly become rare commodities; roads become impassable and pavements turn into ice-rinks.   And in the wake of it all, everyone starts with the Daily Mail style whinging – why can’t we cope with the snow?  Everyone else in the world manages OK each winter, where they have several feet of snow, not just a few inches.  Why aren’t the councils better prepared?  What is wrong with our government that they keep letting this happen?

Well, here we are in Seattle.  A city surrounded by snow-capped mountains, less than an hour’s drive away from the nearest ski resorts, and a mere hop, skip and a jump from the Canadian border.  And let me assure you, dear Daily Mail readers, they don’t cope any better here either – or so the LA Times would have you believe, anyway (much to the indignant fury of Seattleites everywhere!).

Yep, it’s been a funny old week, and it’s definitely made an otherwise typically miserable month a lot more interesting - while Evie built her first snowman and became an absolute pro at snowball wars.   But now, dear snow, will you please bugger off and let me get that diary filled again?   Momma Pepper needs to get herself some buddies!

Farewell snowy scene - now sod off!

If you have a Y chromosome, you may want to skip this one…

I’m going to talk about childbirth in the USA…..

I don't know who this is going to hurt more - me or you!

Still here?

Having written before about how great the medical care is here, and how excited I was about “continuity of care”, I…um….decided to discontinue that care.    Pleasant enough as Dr. D and her nurse were, I had started to have a few misgivings.

I’ll provide a bit of background.  In the UK, you never once see a doctor during your pregnancy, unless you have any complications or risk factors.   So from Week 1 to Week 41, I only ever saw my lovely community midwife, Jo  (I was supposed to see a consultant at one point, because my bump was “measuring small”, but on the day of my appointment, he failed to notice me sitting in his waiting room, and went home early.  Because, you know, women with 8-month pregnant bellies sitting right outside your office door are pretty hard to spot).

Evie was born in a midwife-led natural birthing centre in the UK.  There were no doctors there either.  In case of emergency, the nearest hospital was 20 minutes away, and there was no access to any pain relief stronger than gas and air (Entonox).   The reasons I chose to give birth in a birthing centre 45 minutes from home, rather than the local hospital 10 minutes down the road, were manyfold.   I’d heard bad things about how under-staffed and over-stretched the labour ward was, resulting in some pretty scary stories from mums who had delivered there.   But mainly, despite coming from a family of doctors and nurses, and having worked in countless medical establishments throughout my own career , I just don’t like hospitals.   They smell funny, they are always ridiculously over-heated, they’re full of sick people.  Hospitals  just make me nervous – and let’s face it, that consultant I almost met didn’t exactly help to sway my opinion.

All of the above, combined with the knowledge that my birthing partner was going to be my extremely needle-phobic husband, who started to faint when I just told him about the blood draws I’d had, meant that choosing the birth centre was an absolute no-brainer for me.

So why on earth I thought a hospital birth in the US might be different, I have no idea.  I think maybe I was seduced by the ease of access and parking, the nice clean, modern feel to the place, and the availability of good coffee and chocolate brownies in the cafe.  Who knows, maybe I can use the age-old baby brain excuse?

And then I watched a couple of episodes of One Born Every Minute.  The US one, which is, oddly, narrated by Jamie Lee Curtis (does she really need the money!?!?).  Let’s just say it put my hospital aversion right back on track.  Beyond the track, in fact – right there, in your face, flashing big red beacons and screaming “Nooooo, stay away!”.

I can’t quite believe how backwards such a so-called progressive nation is, when it comes to childbirth.  Every single one of these women laboured on their backs.  They were all given pitocin almost immediately.  In the UK, if you show up to the hospital and you’re not in active labour yet, they’ll send you home with instructions not to return until your contractions are less than 5 minutes apart, and lasting more than a minute.   In this show, the women were told “Oh, you’re only 2cm.  Well, we’ll get you on the pitocin, and hopefully get things properly started.  Would you like an epidural?”.  Of course, they were then hooked up to the continuous electronic fetal monitoring – so, effectively, strapped to the bed, on their back, until the baby was born.  Or, more often than not, until labour failed to progress, and they were rushed off for an emergency C-section, or a brutal forceps delivery.  Anyone who dared to confess that they had hoped for a drug-free delivery was sneered at, with a dismissive “Okaaaay honey, but just so you know, you will be begging for that epidural soon enough.  Just let us know when you’re ready”.

This goes against absolutely everything we are taught in the UK, whether you get your antenatal classes from the National Health Service, or from the National Childbirth Trust.  Aside from the increased risks associated with all those interventions and unnecessary drugs, doesn’t anyone stop to think “Hey, let’s get a helping hand from gravity here – how about standing up?”?

You may well be sitting there yelling at me not to believe everything I see on TV.  And yes, of course you’re right – you only have to look at this charming picture from their website to get an idea of the message the show’s editors are clearly trying to convey:

Oh my goodness, that smarts some!

Oh the drama, oh the PAIN – will somebody please get that poor, poor woman some drugs!!!

 

Before I judged a whole nation (and even my own chosen hospital) on the heavily edited “evidence” from one small Methodist hospital in Ohio, I thought I’d better do a little research of my own.

It was quite an eye-opener.

In Washington State, 30.4% of women going into hospital to have their baby end up with a Caesarian. The rate recommended by the World Health Organisation is 12%.

97% of births here are in the hospital setting.  More babies are born in prison (or a “federal facility”) than in a birthing centre or at home.

93% of women reported having electronic fetal monitoring – that scene where they are strapped to the bed by all the wires and gadgetry (that’s the technical term, you know!) – and pitocin augmentation rates (i.e. using oxytocin to “get things moving”) range up to 60%!

At the hospital where I had planned to have Hank, their Caesarian rate is a shocking 38% – the 2nd highest in the entire state of Washington.  The epidural rate is 70-90%, and nobody gets gas and air.

 

My eloquent summary of all the statistical gobbledegook above?

Birth centre?  Errr….that’ll be a no brainer!!!

 
So, I made my appointment to tour the Puget Sound Birth Center just after Christmas.  And I signed up on the spot!  Admittedly, I may have been slightly swayed by the queen-sized beds in the “birthing rooms” that look more like 5-star hotel rooms, complete with en-suite bathroom and huge jacuzzi tub (well, they’re birthing pools obviously, but details schmetails).

Birth Suite....or should that say "Sweeeet" !!

 

Birthing Pool. Or as I prefer to think of it, "Spa Tub"

I’m happy with my choice.  In fact, I just feel this huge sense of relief now that the decision has been made.  There are just three midwives, and you rotate through them all as you attend for antenatal visits – this means that, regardless of which one is on call when you go into labour, you will know her well already.  And irrespective of shift patterns and sleep deprivation, that same midwife stays with you right the way through from filling that hot tub…err, birthing pool, dammit….to loading you and your precious new bundle into the car to go home.

Saying that I’m looking forward to giving birth would be something of an overstatement (!!), but I’m very happy to report that at least I’m no longer dreading it!  I don’t think you can really ask for much more than that.

 

Culture shock shocker!

(I’m not even going to apologise for the delay between posts – there are only so many crap excuses I can come up with, and it’s starting to feel a little pathetic, even to me!)

Now that we’ve survived our first US Christmas, I thought I’d have a little chat about the “culture shock” thing.  I must admit, it was something I never thought would be an issue – after all, I was at university in Sweden in 1997/98, I lived in Australia for 4 years, and I’ve seen enough American movies and sitcoms to give me a pretty good idea of the lay of the land.  This should be a doddle, right?  Right?!

You’d think…

Mostly, of course, it has been pretty straightforward a move for the Pepper family.  But there are definitely some massive differences between life in sunny, laid-back Brighton, and life in the huge, sprawling space of the Pacific Northwest – some great, and some not so much…   So, to name but a few:

• You have to drive everywhere.  It’s a strange thing for me to get used to, having lived in a city as small as Brighton, where I would never contemplate taking the car into town (mainly because I just could never face the traffic or parking nightmares), and rarely took the bus (um, because it was smelly and carried passengers who rambled on in loud voices about how high they were…at 3 in the afternoon!).  Evie and I walked wherever we needed to go, and there just weren’t many places we couldn’t get to on foot.   But now, in our part of Redmond at least, the car rules.  We haven’t spotted a bus stop anywhere near us – I suspect the nearest might be the Park and Ride, 4 miles away, on a road with no pavement – and as for walking…I’d be going for 0.8 miles before even getting out of our housing estate, let alone finding somewhere to actually walk to!  Which is probably why we had to indulge ourselves and fill the driveway with some pretty little hunks of metal with wheels:

Oooh, pretty!

Mine is the beast on the right, and my husband drives the hairdresser’s car.  Zoom zoom!

•  Speaking of cars…you can “Drive Thru” pretty much anything here.  I’m not just talking McDonalds or Taco Bell – I mean, anything!  There are drive-thru ATMs (that’s cash-points, to you and I), pharmacies, laundry services, coffee shops and even post boxes.  Yep, you don’t even have to get out of your car to post a damn letter!  It may well go some way to explaining the rapidly expanding waistline of the “average American”, but I’ll be the first to admit – easy access to a grande, decaff, non-fat cappuccino when you’re stuck driving round aimlessly with a snoozing toddler in the back seat?  That’s awesome!!!

A little cup of heaven, straight to your car window!

• I can’t not mention the language issue.  Yes, we all speak English…or some version of it, at least.  And yes, we’ve all watched enough TV to know that trousers are “pants”, pavements are “sidewalks” and Americans have this odd habit of omitting the U from  ”neighbours”, and sticking a random Z in “socialising”.   That’s Zee, not Zed, by the way.  Zed’s dead, baby.  Zed’s dead…   But, despite knowing all this, it’s still insanely hard to remember in the middle of a conversation, when you have an impatient toddler climbing your leg, and a brain-zapping baby in your belly.   I finally managed to get to the hairdresser last week, and despite knowing full well that I wanted “bangs”, I just could not stop going on about how I like my fringe to be cut.  I spent ages looking for tights in the department store, before remembering that I had to ask for “pantyhose”, and I always forget that Evie’s mode of transport is a “stroller” and not a pram.  And who knew that searching for coriander will prove completely fruitless, unless you know to enter “cilantro” in the search bar of your online grocery order?  I’m sure it’s one of those things that will soon come completely naturally, in the same way that I still talk about picking up stubbies from the “bottl’o”, after too many years of being well acquainted with the local offie / liquor store (see?  Confusing) in Australia.  In the meantime, I’m just going to have to get used to that “huh!?!?” look that I’m becoming so familiar with, and hope that Evie picks up the lingo quickly enough to act as translator for her embarrassing old British mother.

Who knew?!?

• Baked beans.  Oh, Heinz, please come and teach these people how it’s supposed to be done!  I can hardly bear to even put this down in words, it’s just so awful… they….they….they make them with bacon juice and brown sugar!!  I don’t even want to think about what exactly “bacon juice” means, but seriously, you do not want this stuff poured over your scrambled eggs in the morning.  In fact, I don’t know what you would want to eat this stuff with.  Except, of course, Evie loves them.  She can devour a whole bowl in no time, and still demand “More?” when they’re all done.  But it’s hardly surprising she loves them – they are pretty much canned in liquid sugar!  In fact, many foods here taste strangely sweet.  Bread has a surprising sugary after-taste to it, as do many of the pasta sauces.  It’s strange – but I suppose it’s a good incentive for me to stop buying the jars and work harder on releasing my (very well hidden) inner domestic Goddess, and make everything from scratch.  Now…what are the chances Heinz will give me their recipe?

  Oh yes, and while we’re on the subject, and still vaguely in the festive season, I ought to note that mince pies are an entirely English thing (apparently), so not only did I have to cope without M&S or Mr Kipling to keep us satisfied in the last few days, I had to make my own damn mincemeat as well!  And no, you can’t buy suet either.  Or if you can, you clearly need to know people who know people who know where to shop.   Thank goodness for Nigella and those naughty people who upload her recipes for free on t’internet!

Homemade and fabulous, darlings!

Not exactly worthy of a photoshoot, but tasty & delicious nonetheless!

 

Of course, there are a million other things I could talk about, and probably will in the coming months, as we get to know (or puzzle over) our new home a little more.   I haven’t mentioned the hundred channels of crap TV and how much I’m missing Eastenders, or the really actually quite good radio, the airwaves filled with Nirvana, Soundgarden and Death Cab for Cutie.  I’ve not managed to comment on the lack of availability of diesel at the “gas stations”, or the fact that car salemen will proudly boast that a car is capable of “up to 21 mpg on the freeway”.  And I’ve not moaned once that even Cadburys tastes odd here, and Hersheys smells like vomit.
But I must say that despite all the oddities I’ve mentioned, things definitely aren’t worse here, or in Brighton.  It’s simply…different.   More different than I could ever have imagined or prepared myself for, I think.

On the other hand…if the weather wasn’t to my liking in Brighton, and I really fancied seeing a bit of snow on Christmas Eve, there wasn’t much hope of jumping in the car and going to see this in less than half an hour, was there?

Snow!!!!

Sorry – I had to get my smug shot in here somewhere!

 

And….we’re in!

Yet another long delay from yours truly.  I could lie and tell you that it’s taken this long to get the internet set up, but then a) this wouldn’t be a very useful blog at all, full of untruths and misleading information and b) erm, yes, you’ve seen my Facebook updates, and I guess you know I don’t spend that much time in Starbucks, hogging the Wi-Fi.  Bugger.   What can I say?  It turns out that being a housewife / SAHM (that’s “stay at home Mom” to the uninitiated – do keep up, dears!) in a house this size is a time-consuming business.  Particularly a house this size that keeps breaking!  Ahem…

So, yes, where was I?  Oh yes, as of Friday 18th November, we are living the dream, baby.  Well, living in the dream (house), anyway.
That Friday was a nice hectic morning.  Having been told that the shipping would arrive around 8am, and bearing in mind the weather forecast was for snow and icy roads, we decided that Damyan should go on ahead of us to meet the removal team, and Evie and I would pack the car with as much as we could from the apartment (including Milo) and follow on soon afterwards.

We finally pulled up in front of our dream house at 10am, to be greeted by this glorious sight:

Our stuff - our wonderful, fabulous stuff!

And here is where I completely embrace the homemaker in me and confess that I was most excited to see all my cook books again – yeah, the kitchen table and sofa were quite good to see, but my God, I was so looking forward to cooking up a Rachel Allen  chilli*!

*  Disclaimer – this was before we climbed into our own fabulous bed that night, and realised what we had really missed.  There is absolutely nothing in the world like sinking into your own, familiar mattress after 2 months separation!  The words “ahhh….I love you, bed!” may or may not have been uttered a few times…

I think it took about half a dozen men 4 hours to unload and unpack all our belongings.   And not much longer for the house to look properly Pepperized (yes, I must now learn to put Zs where they really don’t belong!):

The Pepper effect

The next few days were spent in a blur of unpacking, finding homes for things, trying to remember where those homes were 5 minutes later, and shopping for all the electronic stuff we’d had to leave behind because of the difference in voltage here.   We also had to go back to the apartment, pick up the cat (sorry Monty!) and the rest of our things, and return the rental Jeep….but not before Damyan crashed it!  ARGH!!  Well, admittedly, he didn’t so much crash it as be crashed into, but literally half an hour before we were going to return it – after having it for a whole month – you couldn’t make that shit up!!
While we’re on the subject of impeccable timing… a word of advice to anyone buying a home in the US.

Get. The. Home. Warranty.

I don’t care if the house looks perfect.  It doesn’t matter if the inspection report came up clean as a whistle.   And no, it definitely can’t wait until next month…just get the damn warranty!

No, of course we didn’t get the warranty.  And yes, Sod was definitely out to prove his law to us.

Within 48 hours of moving in, we discovered (well, I say “we” – of course I mean Homemaker Jane, here) that the dryer wouldn’t work.  It took another few days (and a couple of emails to the previous owners) to convince us that we weren’t just being thick with a newfangled gas appliance, and that it was truly broken.  But because they insisted that it had been working fine when they moved out, we had no way to claim any compensation from the previous family.

I finally got around to calling Whirlpool to get an engineer to come and look at it, and I swear, the guy who came to “fix” it (using that term loosely, given that he left after 2 hours, but my wet clothes are still hanging in the living room!) could have been an understudy in The Green Mile:

This was the expression on his face when confronted with our dryer, too!

When his cellphone started ringing with the theme to The Godfather, I’ll admit it, my palms started to sweat…

$200 later, and with another appointment booked for 10 days time when (apparently) the dryer really will be fixed, we consoled ourselves with the fact that at least the washer and dryer had effectively come free with the house, so it wasn’t actually a loss in real terms.

Having invested in a house, two cars, various electronic items and bits and pieces for the house in the last month, it wasn’t wonderful news, admittedly, but not exactly devastating either.

And then…a few days later, while putting the munchkin to bed, we were disturbed by the strangest of strange, loud, buzzing sounds.  What the hell was it?  Coming from under the kitchen sink…oohh…the alarm for the septic tank.  Fabulous!  What does this mean?  Raw sewage seeping out onto the front lawn?  Or backing up into the bathtub?  Help – we’ve never had a septic tank before, what could possibly have happened, the thing was only pumped and inspected the week before we moved in, surely we can’t have filled it (or broken it) in less than 2 weeks!?!  I know I’m pregnant, with all the wonderful symptoms that go along with my “condition” (I need not, and will not, divulge further – if you know, you know, and if you don’t, well, I’m so happy for you…git!), but surely this can’t be my fault?!

The alarm went off on Saturday night, and the sanitation company wouldn’t do domestic visits on weekends, so we spent the rest of the weekend and Monday morning afraid to flush the loo, turn on the dishwasher or tread near any damp patches on the front lawn!   We are completely clueless, I’ve absolutely no idea what it means if the pump stops working, except that it’s probably not good.

So yes, a lovely man arrived on Monday morning, in overalls adorned with stains I’d prefer not to think about, and gleefully set about re-inspecting our tanks (no doubt seeing dollar signs flashing in front of his eyes)…and came back with the happy news that our septic pump was completely and utterly kaput.   It was, he said, the same age as the (now tarnished) Dream House, and had just reached the end of its life after 23 years.  2 weeks after we moved in.  TWO WEEKS.  After 23 years!?  Argh!!!!  I hate you and your sodding laws, Sod!

A couple of hours and $1,000 later, we are now the proud owners of a shiny new septic pump.   Oh, and a very lovely, brand spanking Home Warranty!

Get the damn warranty, people!!!

But it’s all fine.  Worse things have happened to new homeowners (erm, like the family who bought our old house and found this on the day they moved in:)

I *swear* we had no idea this was there...until the bookshelves were taken away.

The Dream House is only every so slightly tarnished, but we do love it.  It’s unbelievably peaceful, the garden is incredible, the neighbours are a fabulously wholesome all-American family (more on them another day!) and we get to wake up to a view like this out of our front windows:

B.E.A.Uuuutiful !

There’s not really a lot to complain about, is there?

On other news…tomorrow is our 20 week scan.  Halfway there and taking bets….whaddya think, blue bump or pink bump!?

I think she is laughing at my bum. The cheek!

Almost there…

Yesterday was really an unbelievable day.  I thought I might actually burst with all the excitement – I hope ickle bean was OK in there with all the bouncing around that was going on!

I had thought we would be spending the day mostly trying to kill time before closing – which wasn’t expected to be until around 5pm.  So Evie and I went to Gymboree in the morning for her Wednesday morning art class (“art” which mostly involves smearing shaving foam around, squishing Play-Doh into the floor, and generally making a mess that somebody else has to clear up – brilliant!), then decided to head to Starbucks (we are in Seattle, after all) for a latte and some pumpkin bread while we planned our next move.   As we had left home that morning, I had literally just said to Damo, “I really need to buy a sweater – it’s freezing and all mine are in the shipping”.  So I’m sure you will all share my utter joy at the sign in the window of Gap as I walked past, proclaiming “Sweaters – $25″.   It was a sign – both literally and figuratively!  And of course I had to buy three.  What?  It’s blimmin’ freezing here at the moment.

We were finally cosily ensconced in Starbucks, Evie quite contented with her milk and pumpkin bread, so I decided to make the most of the free Wi-Fi and check my emails.  First one was a message from our shipping company:

“Greetings Mr. Pepper,

I have just received good news.  Your sea shipment has cleared customs and arrived at our warehouse today.  Now, the first date this can be delivered is Friday, November 18^th.”.

Errr….what?  You mean we’ll get all our stuff less than 48 hours after closing?

SQUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Or words to that effect.  I mean, I know I kidded before about timing being everything, and wouldn’t it be nice if everything happened at the same time, but I never actually in a zillion years thought it might all come together quite that smoothly.  A-may-hay-zing!

Having given everyone within earshot quite a startle with all the whooping, Evie and I decided it was probably time to make a sharp exit and head to the gym to kill another hour or two.  Except guess who zonked out about 2 minutes before we pulled into the car park?  I presume all that gluing glitter onto paper plates is exhausting work….so “home” to the apartment we went.

An hour later we were just thinking about what to have for lunch, when the phone rang.  Jenny.

Me: “Hi Jenny!  How are you?”

Jenny: “I’m good thanks.  You have a house!”.

1.45pm.  We closed 3 hours earlier than expected.  Have I already thrown in a “SQUEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!“?   Evie and I leapt in the car, raced across Bellevue to meet Jenny in the Whole Foods car park (of all places) to make sure we got to her before she had to spend the rest of the afternoon on a tour, and very unceremoniously got the keys to our fabulous new house.  The Dream House.  Our Dream House.  OhmyGod!

Obviously itching to cross the threshold as soon as possible, we had lunch, threw some things in a couple of suitcases just so it wasn’t a wasted trip across, drove to Microsoft to pick up Damyan and then…we arrived at Hunters Glen and unlocked our own front door to our own beautiful home.   And promptly turned the heating on – brrrr, twas cold in there!

Just the most amazing feeling.  It’s such a gorgeous house, I can’t quite believe it’s ours.  And that it could possibly all have gone that smoothly.  So fast, and so easy, it’s mad.  But wonderful!  I can’t wait for our fabulous friends and family to make the trip to visit us.  but in the meantime, here’s a wee gallery of the “Before” pics – i.e. before the mountain of cardboard boxes arrives tomorrow.  I took them today, while waiting for Evie’s bed to be delievered, so we had some photos while the house is still a clean slate… and before the Peppers move in and trash it:

Our fabulous family room. I think we will pretty much live in this room.

I can think of worse views to have, while chained to the kitchen sink….

Partners in crime, just waiting to make their messy mark on the place!

Formal dining room. I *love* the gold stars wallpaper on the ceiling!

“Formal” living room. Oo-er, get *us* with our formal rooms!

The study. Though Damyan seems to think this is *his* playroom!

Downstairs loo

I feel a bake-athon coming on!

This will be Ickle Bean’s room

Our en-suite bathroom – a vision in gold 80s decor

Evie’s beautiful bedroom

Check our the his and hers sinks in our family bathroom!

“Bonus Room” – which is now, in fact, Evie’s playroom!

Back stairs from family room to bonus room

Carrie Bradshaw, eat your heart out!

Upstairs hallway

Our back yard…viewed from the hammock, of course!

Evie’s swingset. And the poor alder, already felled. Sorry, dead tree!

Oh yes, and on Wednesday, we also drove out to the Toyota garage and picked up our fancy schmancy new car – aren’t I spoilt?!

Photo to follow once I work out how on earth to use WordPress!

At 8am tomorrow, our ridiculously huge container-load of Lowther Road contents arrives at Hunters Glen.   And then, we can officially move in and call it “Home”.

So, who’s first to visit then?

 

Buying a house, the American way

On the 14th October 2011, our offer was accepted on The Dream House.  That was 27 days ago.  In 6 days time we get to pick up the keys and call it home.

(Sorry, I'm such a brat for constantly showing this photo!)

The process here is just so completely different (and so much more efficient – not necessarily better, but definitely faster), that I thought I’d make a few notes on what’s been going on in the last 27 days.  Probably a timeline would be the easiest way to show this – more for my own benefit, as I will never remember any of this once we’re in!

So, here we go.  It’s probably worth remembering that we arrived in the US on Wednesday 28th September!

Tuesday 4th October - We applied to the mortgage company for “pre-approval” on a home loan.  You cannot make any offers on a house without already having pre-approval in place.  Well, you can, but you would be in a much weaker position – as newcomers with zero credit rating, we need all the bonus points we can get!

Thursday 6th October – I spent the day with our realtor, Jenny, looking at dozens of houses all over the Eastside.  Well, 17 houses in total, if I’m being honest.  The Dream House was one of them.  My comments (I made notes as we went along) on the spec sheet say “Beautiful – love, love, LOVE it!!”.  I suspect that Damyan’s choice in the matter may have been limited from this point on.

Saturday 8th October – Jenny takes Damyan, Evie and I back to revisit all the houses that I shortlisted from Thursday.  This included the beautiful blue house, just around the corner from Hunters Glen (location of The Dream House):

I love the front porch on this house – I could totally see myself sitting out there with a glass of cold white wine, nosing on all the neighbours on a summer’s evening!  Sadly, this one didn’t make the cut, because the family room was completely separate to the kitchen – so I wouldn’t be able to keep an any on the little monsters darlings, while I’m chained to the kitchen sink!

We also obtained approval from the mortgage company today.  Wow – that was quick work! 

Wednesday 10th October  - We made our 2nd visit (3rd for me) to Hunters Glen, just to make sure we really did love it.  Damyan still can’t quite believe that we can actually afford to live in a house like this, so he wanted to make sure there weren’t any major faults that we might have overlooked before!  I think I’ve forgotten to mention that the family selling the house have already moved out, so it’s currently filled with some of their own furniture, and some of it cleverly “staged” by their realtor.

We wandered round the garden, opened all the cupboards, sat on all the furniture (some of it, it turned out, was fake!  Collapsing beds…it could only happen to me!), and then – da, da, daaah – we asked Jenny to make an offer for us.  And here’s where everything kicks into overdrive.

Jenny sat down with us (while we were still actually in The Dream House), to help us agree on an offer, and what that offer would entail – i.e. $ value we would pay for the house, what our initial holding deposit would be (the so-called “Earnest Money”), and which items should be included in the sale, such as appliances, warranties, fixtures & fittings etc etc.  So, we offered $20,000 below the asking price, threw in $15,000 in Earnest Money, enough to show that we were serious buyers, asked them to throw in the washer, dryer & fridge/freezer, and named a closing date of 16th November.  Jenny then dashed back to her office to write everything up into an official Purchase & Sales Agreement, while Damo went back to work and Evie and I mooched around Bellevue, killing time.  A few hours later, at around 5.45pm, we met Jenny again – she kindly drove out to the Microsoft office to speed things up – to check all the paperwork, and sign / initial every one of the countless pages.

I should mention that throughout the entire process, the only people we have dealt with have been Jenny, our realtor, and Chuck, our loan officer with the mortgage company. There are no solicitors involved on either side – which might be the reason that things move a lot faster here.  Can you imagine your solicitor driving all over Sussex at 5.45pm to make sure that your paperwork gets in on time?  And then meeting you at  the weekend to go over the next steps, timescales and what to expect in the coming weeks?

The house had only been on the market for 10 days, and there was an Open House planned there for that Saturday and Sunday.   So imagine our surprise when, at 9.30am on Friday 14th October, we heard that our offer had been accepted, no questions asked.  In fact, written acceptance had been sent to Jenny the night before, but she hadn’t been in the office to receive it.   Apparently the Sellers had been swayed by our early proposed closing date, though though they asked that we “not be too picky” when we got the Inspection Report back!

In the US, once you have Mutual Acceptance in place, the Sellers cannot back out of the agreement unless the buyers break the contract (i.e. miss set deadlines for any step of the process).  So there is no gazumping here, no fear that, although the offer has been accepted, someone else could still pip you to the post, no matter how much you’ve spent on solicitors and surveys.  There is also no risk of any delays along the way – if anyone misses their deadline, there are big financial penalties involved.  For example, if we had been a day late in arranging our inspection, the Sellers could have pulled the plug on the whole thing.  And we would have lost our Earnest Money.  That’s enough of an incentive to put the wind in everyone’s sails!

Wednesday 19th October – Inspection Day!  We met with Jenny and Mike, our home inspector.  Jenny brought a quart of cider (sadly American style cider – i.e. basically apple juice) and a tub of oatmeal cookies, while Mike took us on a tour of the house, pointing out every tiny thing that was wrong with it.  I tried very hard not to freak out at the many references to “rodent activity”.  The whole inspection took well over 3 hours, and Mike could not have been sweeter.  He spent quite some time showing me photos of his new granddaughter on his phone, along with several of his wife cuddling their huge Great Dane on the sofa.   Like I said, super sweet, and maybe just a little bit mad.  Or “eccentric”.  Let’s say eccentric.   That evening, Jenny requested an extension (we officially had until 9pm on Wednesday to complete our inspection and provide our response to the Sellers) so that we could get some specialists in to look at the areas of concern and provide us with a quote.  This is so that we have a bargaining tool, and can ask the Sellers to either get the work done themselves before closing, or provide us with the money for us to sort out once we’ve moved in.  

Thursday 20th October - After a frantic time trying to get money from our UK bank account to our US one in time, the Earnest Money was deposited with the real estate agent on time for today’s deadline.

Sunday 23rd October - Tom, “the wood guy”, who also seemed to be a general all-round Mr Fixit, and Victor, the drainage specialist came out to take a look at the various bits and bobs raised by Inspector Mike, and to provide us with a quote for fixing it all.  Despite it being a Sunday, they both spent plenty of time there – for poor Victor, this involved donning a suit not dissimilar to those seen in movies like  Outbreak, and crawling around under the house, amongst the rat faeces, standing water and mouldy insulation.  Nice way to spend your weekend.

They both provided us with their quotes that very evening.

Tuesday 25th October - Jenny sent our Inspection Response form to the Sellers’ realtor.  This is a list of things that we decided were reasonable to ask the Sellers to either get fixed, or pay us to fix, along with the associated quotes.  We basically went for the crawl space under the house (which was found to be very damp, with poor ventilation and an active rodent infestation – so it was full of rat faeces and lots of the insulation material had been destroyed and taken as nesting material), and some other carpentry work needed around the exterior of the house.  We also asked them to remove a tree in the garden which is quite clearly quite dead, and likely to fall either on Evie’s swingset or on the house if the wind blows too hard one day!

For the next few days, there was some back and forth, while the Sellers tried to argue that the tree had been dead for 10 years and hadn’t done them any harm at all.  In fact, they are clearly quite attached to their dead death-trap in the back garden, as detailed in the email they sent:

“While an inspector sees a dead tree that could fall, we actually experienced a place that was home to owls, woodpeckers, and bluebirds. It’s also completely hollowed out, I think, and so would just crumble if it fell.  I suggest the Peppers live in the house for a bit before they decide to take it down. They may come to love it as we did.”.

I love the “I think” part of the very convincing assurance that the tree would just crumble if it fell!  It’s worth mentioning that we did get an arborist to look at the tree, and he was quite horrified.  He wouldn’t even let Evie anywhere near it, and basically said that it was highly irresponsible to a) have that tree at all and b) then let children play in the same vicinity as it.   So, it’s got to go, and the Sellers, sadly, will have to pay for it.  I really hope they aren’t crying into their dinners as we speak, bemoaning the very sad fate of their beautifully grey, dead,  hollow, wooden stump.

Still, it will make for a nice fire in the family room!

Wednesday 2nd November - The Appraisal report arrives from the mortgage company, and we also receive notification that the Sellers have signed off on the final paperwork – so we are now officially “Pending”.  This means that all the Ts have been crossed, all the Is dotted, and now we just need to finalise the financial side of things, which is entirely the responsibility of the mortgage company.

Tuesday 8th November – The mortgage company emails to let us know that Underwriting has now approved all of our paperwork (our bank statements from UK and US, payslips, P60s etc), and that the only thing left to do is for them to work with the Escrow company to calculate the final cash to close figure (i.e. the frightening amount of money we have to pay to make up the shortfall between the mortgage and the price we offered on the house, plus all the associated fees and costs).

Thursday 10th November - The escrow company gets in touch to make an appointment for us to go and hand over our hard-earned cash.  This is the final hurdle – once the money has changed hands, we just have to sit tight and wait to get the keys.  The appointment is made for tomorrow, Friday 11th November.

Jenny then called me this afternoon to say that she’ll be coming with us to the meeting – it’ll be so nice to have a familiar face there, in the midst of a process that is so completely unfamiliar to us.  Even the term escrow itself – I’d never heard of it before!  Curious?  ”The escrow company’s job is to act as a neutral third party for both you and the seller.  They hold all of the money that you provide and the clear title that the seller effectively provides by signing the contract.  They make sure that all the terms of the contract are met and that everyone gets paid what they are due.”  So I suppose they do some of the job that your solicitor would do in the UK, except they act for all parties.

So, as of tomorrow, that’s everything done and dusted, and we just have to wait until the originally agreed closing date of 16th November 2011 until we can call The Dream House ours.  So, theoretically, we could have moved tomorrow. Exactly 4 weeks to the day since we made our offer.  I think this calls for another sickeningly smug photo!

How'd you like our living room, huh?

Oh go on then, just one more!  Come on, you would sit on that bed too, wouldn’t you? It certainly looks real to me.  You would never suspect that it might collapse in a heap underneath you….

See that en-suite bathroom? There's a walk-in wardrobe in there!!! Just call me Carrie Bradshaw. And then give me enough money to fill it with Manolo Blahniks. Pretty please?!?

So that’s it!  We’re (almost) homeowners again, and can’t wait to start our new lives properly in Hunters Glen.  Please come visit us – there’s plenty of room, and we’ll only ask you to babysit on days ending with a Y!!