Janette Abroad

We're off to Canada tomorrow for three weeks.  It's my first time travelling with Petra.  I'm nervous about the whole airport/airplane thing, although Petra's usually pretty mellow when we're out.  She's very curious and spends her time looking and looking at everything and everyone.

We have an appalling amount of luggage.  I'm used to travelling pretty light, but this time we look like we're planning an assault on Everest or some such epic endeavour.  We have two big suitcases, a laptop (Travis has to work while we're away), assorted other carry-on bits and pieces, as well as the pram and carseat.  Scary.

I am very much looking forward to being in Vancouver though.

Here's the photo in Petra's Costa Rican passport.  She's not a petrified Petra in this one - the woman taking the photo rattled one of Petra's own toys at her and cooed rather than yelling, so it was a much less alarming experience.  I love the wild hair.  It puts me in mind of whales and fountains.  Whale's tails, whales spouting, fountains fountaining. 

Petra's 23 weeks old now.  There continues to be more of her almost every day.  More flesh, more noise, more movement, more personality.

She's grabbing at things we don't want her to grab now, things like the TV remote, my glass of orange juice, freshly washed clothes, my cellphone, books, and magazines (she tore Charlton Heston's obituary out of The Economist the other day and threw it on the floor - I guess she didn't approve of his stance on gun control).  But she's not yet at the stage where she cares when we take things off her.  She just moves on to the next thing.

She's developing physically all the time.  She sits like a pro, leaning over, red-faced and precarious, to get at escaped toys and straightening herself up again.  And she topples like a pro, falling onto her back with her legs in the air or onto her face.  She's very nonchalant about these sudden changes in position, although she expects me to sit her up again promptly and complains when I'm not quick enough.

Her face has gotten more expressive and it's fun to watch her delighted reactions to things she sees and hears.  If I produce a particularly favoured toy for her she beams at me.  And when I start singing, especially if it's The Teddy Bear's Picnic, she turns to watch me and smiles those whole body baby smiles.  She's a wonderfully uncritical and enthusiastic audience, appreciating my efforts no matter how quavery or off key I am.  Poor old thing doesn't know any better yet!

Travis collected Petra's Costa Rican passport this morning.  At the grand old age of 23 weeks she has two passports.  She qualifies for a third but I haven't gotten around to dealing with the paperwork for her New Zealand citizenship yet.

Here are all our active passports.

Here's proof that a really professional passport photographer can make anyone, and I mean anyone, look like an escaped convict.

It's my birthday - the numbers are getting way too big and grownup for me....

When Travis and I were driving around in northern France a few years ago, one of my geekier pleasures was listening to the BBC World Service.  Buried in amongst the news were little documentaries about all kinds of odd things.  I remember one about birthday songs because it aired a couple of days before my birthday, so I figured it was just for me.  Songs they played - Stevie Wonder's Happy Birthday and 50 Cent's In Da Club.

Song I wish they'd played - the one by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds that begins "your happy day is here again", sung in his usual dirge-like tones.  I can't track it down on Youtube unfortunately, but I can give you a taste of his unique gloom-making ability.  Here he is with Shane McGowan singing Wonderful World
And, if you Wikipedia your birth date, you find all kinds of interesting "on this day in history" stuff.  Here are some events and birthdays for 21 April that appeal to me...

Events
753 BC - Romulus and Remus found Rome
1509 - Henry VIII ascends throne
1944 - Women in France receive right to vote
1989 - Tiananmen Square protests begin

Birthdays
1816 - Charlotte Bronte
1923 - John Mortimer
1926 - Queen Elizabeth II
1947 - Iggy Pop
1959 - Robert Smith (from The Cure)

Spotted at an intersection last week, a nice summary of life in Costa Rica.

1) A young woman in pants so tight that I could see what kind of knickers she was wearing (a thong) and watch the movement of her butt through the cloth .  She teetered along in black and white stilettos that had improbably pointed and turned up toes.
2) A guy on a scooter wearing his helmet pushed back on his head like a baseball cap.  He had the chin guard  resting on his forehead.  It was on his head, but served no function at all.

In honour of the spring that I'm missing, and of K in Toronto, here are a couple of songs by Nina Simone.  She knows a thing or two about spring fevers...

Petra has had a busy afternoon. 

Travis and I are preparing applications for Costa Rican residency and one of the things we need to provide is a criminal record check from Canada.  To get this, we have to send copies of our fingerprints to the RCMP for them to run through their database.  We went to the main police station in San Jose last week to be fingerprinted and went back today to pick them up (they needed to keep the fingerprints for a week for reasons best known to themselves).  We had to queue outside and while we waited it started to pour - heavy fat tropical raindrops pounded down on the ground, making a big racket. 

Petra's a dry season baby and has never seen or heard rain before.  Her first encounter left her none too impressed.  She has a special, heartbreaking "I'm frightened by this loud noise" cry which she let rip.  I  hugged her and talked to her and she eventually decided that she could deal with the noise.  But she still had to contend with people talking to her and touching her feet, with cracks of thunder loud enough to make my hand jerk as I signed for my fingerprints (and she's never heard thunder before either), and with Friday afternoon traffic as we walked to and from the car.  The entire process only took about 20 minutes but Petra was pale and exhausted by the time we made it back to the car.  All those firsts were hard work.

She napped in the car and woke up her usual hungry and happy self.  She responds intensely to what's going on around her, but can move quickly on to the next thing.  Very adaptable...

Having a child of my own seems to have triggered a massive attack of nostalgia.  My already scattered head is made even more so by a constant buzz of half-remembered music from my childhood.  I find myself singing snatches of songs to Petra and having to track them down on Youtube.  Thank god for Youtube, without it I'd be driven crazy trying to remember lyrics, titles, and bands.

One of the odder things to have popped into my head is:

Songs by the Wombles.  The North Americans in the group probably won't have heard of them because they're a very English phenomenon.  They were created by Elizabeth Beresford, who wrote a series of books about them that I loved as a small child.  They're furry creatures who live in a burrow under Wimbleton Common in London and clean up the rubbish from the common.  They were ecologically aware in the 70's.

The BBC made a series of stop motion animated shorts. And someone decided that what the world needed was singing wombles and released a massively successful album in the early 70's.  I tracked down some videos and surprised (dismayed?) myself by remembering many of the words to the songs.  I've been playing them for Petra - she's my excuse anyway....