Change of scene

It's been a while since I last posted; a year, at least, and of course a good deal has happened in that time. When I last wrote, I'd gotten myself married and moved countries; subsequent to that, I got myself pregnant by the charming man I married, moved houses, had the baby, and am now in the process of moving countries again (two burly guys are packing up our things as I write).

Francesca's sitting next to me on the dusky green couch.  She's preventing me being properly productive by being cute.  Babies have never particularly thrilled me, and I'd steeled myself from expecting the child to be at all attractive on his or her first appearance, given the fact that newborns are pinched and squinched and generally better to look at after the first year of life.  I had, in fact, been rather anxious after an ultrasound scan revealed that the baby was a male child with an ugly, large nose and a most unappealing grimace.  I didn't feel prepared to give birth to such a child.  I have perhaps never been more surprised than when a creamy-skinned, dark haired, button-nosed little-girl creature first snuggled onto me, still damp from being born, and searched for a nipple.   It did not take me long to realise that I had no pretty pink clothes for this most feminine of female babies, though this was remedied hastily.  Why, even her squeaks were entirely feminine-sounding.

And now this eight-week old little girl is having a late lunch whilst trying determinedly but entirely unsuccessfully to sleep.  And, now we are moving back to New Zealand, back to our family and old friends, in time for a family Christmas catch-up.  Husband has a new job in a new town a couple of hours drive from our hometown, Christchurch, and so once more we will be strangers in a familiar, but strange land.