Bits and Bobs

Well, we are getting there.

With less than 2 weeks to go before we leave France the seemingly never ending checklist of things to do and organise is slowly, slowly getting whittled down.

I wont go in to the number of phone calls we've had to make or the number of trips we've made to La Poste to send official Lettre Recommandées  but suffice to say I think it's easier to sign up for things in France than get out. M has been amazing, handling the lion's share of awkward french phone calls and writing up official letters to send to every single agency and department but it does feel like we're getting close.

We had an extremely productive day yesterday and our apartment is almost completely sorted and packed. I actually finding cleaning and sorting quite cathartic and I've been rather ruthless with throwing things away. I think it also helps that our apartment is fairly tiny so we haven't actually accrued that much junk - if you don't include almost an entire drawer full of random postcards and small prints I've been squirreling away for 3 years - I'm determined to make some cool (and relatively inexpensive!) art out of all these groovy cards.

We're also at that stage where it's all the fiddly little bits that don't really belong anywhere - random pens and stationery, half used hand creams, small torches, about a billion bobby pins, wrapping paper.

I also keep finding small toiletries bags that have virtually identical contents: a half empty pack of tissues, 2 hair ties, a hair clip, a nearly empty lip gloss, about 84 cents in change, a card from a restaurant somewhere, a pen and a few mints/tablets of paracetamol rolling around. I've found 5 so far. hehe.

Packing up our clothes has been less fun.

We will be living out of the one suitcase from now (well ... Wednesday) until our shipping crate arrives in Melbourne hopefully by late February. That's 3 months. I have enough trouble deciding what to pack when I go away for 3 days.

It's also complicated by a few factors:
1. It's  autumn/winter here and thick coats and scarves are necessary
2. It will be summer when we get back to Australia
3. My rapidly expanding baby belly

I spent a fair bit of time yesterday layering and then un-layering my clothes and sticking a throw pillow under my tops to see if they'll make it through to February or not!

M has already packed his suitcase. Almost his entire wardrobe fits. Minus his 300 running T-shirts. Bastard.

I have got all my clothes together but haven't tried to pack yet.
It's going to hurt my feelings.


Baby Raj is going well - very active in the evenings with lots of movements and kicks and I'm feeling good.

Last night M and I were singing together  (a little bit of Lionel Ritchie, then some Mumford & Sons followed up by some Christmas Carols ) and M had his head on my belly and Raj was having a Disco in there - huge movements and kicks.

So either Raj likes it when Mum and Dad have little sing-a-longs (we harmonise and everything, old school Choir geeks that we are) OR the kicks are Raj's way of telling us to shut the F up!!!

We choose to believe the former.



Alright - I'm off to clean the kitchen shelves. Blah.

To help get through the cleaning I keep reminding myself that this time in 2 weeks I will be sitting at a cafe in Melbourne in the sunshine with friends eating bacon and eggs.

Bacon makes everything ok.


B
xxx