Fun with short person in winter

When I come to writing this blog, I realise that all my years in England had a profound effect on me, because the first thing I think to mention is usually the weather. Always an acceptably polite, un-intrusive opening for a conversation in blighty. Nevertheless, it is our first winter here in our new home, and it must be a sure sign of age that this year in particular I seem to be feeling the cold more than ever, particularly as we’ve had a few bitterly cold snaps of late and the classroom I teach in is South facing and behind a staircase so it never gets any sun in winter. Luckily we’ve got a decent supply of firewood for our fireplace - thanks to a diseased oak tree that we had to cut down last spring in front of our driveway.

We do quite a bit less adventurous gallivanting about with a small person in our entourage, but we’ve still managed to have some fun this year. Particularly memorable for me was a trip to Cape Town in March to celebrate Helen’s mother Renee’s 60^th birthday. While I unfortunately was only able to join the family for the weekend (while the others stayed for a full week) as it was still term-time for me, we had a super time staying right on the beachfront near Sea Point and I even managed to squeeze in a very refreshing swim at Lluandudno beach (Atlantic Ocean) on the Sunday morning.

My half-term break at school in February, meant to be a few days off from Friday to Monday, was not really much of a break at all, as by then I found myself in the hot seat as the school’s First Team basketball coach. Even at the beginning of the year, I had reservations about the negativity of the incumbent coach, but her decision to suddenly announce that she was leaving on honeymoon for a month half-way through the first term season made the decision for us. Basketball is still very much a new sport at our school, so the boys don’t have the same exposure to or experience in the sport as many of their competitors from other schools and therefore can struggle against stronger teams. However, much as I sometimes wanted to tear my hair out, I was also very proud of the boys’ effort and passion for the game.  I was also lucky that in the summer on Sunday afternoons I could leave the house for a few hours to play basketball at Wanderers club, thereby avoiding embarrassing myself at basketball practices if the boys needed an extra person to step in, having last played many years ago.

The first term was a particularly long one, lasting from January to mid-April with no exams to break up the relentless cycle of teaching. But when our break did finally come, Helen and Calvin and I managed to fit in 2 short breaks into our 2 week holiday. Luckily Helen had managed to stretch her maternity leave out to 7 months, so that we could have some time together as a family while I was on holiday. First we visited the Eastern Cape, spending a few enjoyable days in Port Elizabeth, as well as some time in St Francis Bay. The sea was already quite chilly and the weather was quite temperamental by then so Helen unfortunately hardly got to swim at all, but I managed to get some time in the water and we also enjoyed relaxing, going for runs, and watching some series on dvd while we were there. Following our return to Joburg, we then went to a timeshare lodge called Mabalingwe near the Waterberg region, close to a town called Bela-Bela (formerly Warmbaths).  It is a game park with African wild-life, so we made the most of it by tag-teaming who looked after Calvin so that the other person could go on a game drive or in my case a game walk on foot in the mornings. We also drove out with him in his seat in the back of the car after breakfast when sometimes he would stay asleep for a while. All in all though, it was not an entirely successful trip as Calvin didn’t take kindly to not being entertained all of the time, and as we were staying in a split-level studio bungalow with no separation between the living area and the bedroom, we had to be very quiet at night once Calvin was asleep. On the last night I had a stomache upset, but dared not get up to go to the loo in case I woke him up, so it was not the best night of sleep I’ve ever had!

Our middle term at St David’s is winter sport, which means hockey or rugby. Though I am still primarily a referee, I have also been helping out a little bit with the Under 16 age group, whose A team were this year invited to a tournament at Hilton, a prestigious school in a beautiful rural setting in the Natal midlands. I enjoyed refereeing some of the games at the tournament, and was also delighted to join my fellow coaches and the boys for the Friday off in between the first two days and the last day's play, for a trip to uShaka Marine World in Durban, which is a water theme park filled with slides and other fun. Unfortunately after several hours, including frolicking in the sea as well as in the water park, the boys’ enthusiasm had waned whereas I was still having tremendous fun tearing around going on as many different slides as possible. The youth of today - no stamina! :-)

I have had some fun games as a rugby referee this season. One of the highlights in this was a few days of refereeing over the Easter Weekend at the Krugersdorp High Festival. Not nearly as prestigious as the festivals held at some of the other schools in Johannesburg, I nevertheless thoroughly enjoyed some of my games between various schools 1^st teams. This included a fixture between Linden Hoerskool and Waterkloof, who surprisingly sent almost their entire first team to the tournament, which was probably one of the fastest paced high school games I’ve ever reffed, and credit to Linden (Waterkloof have in past years been ranked in the top 20 schools in the country) it was a much closer game than might have been expected.

I am very lucky that Helen lets me get out to referee on Saturdays as I thoroughly enjoy both the exercise and being around the game of rugby. Often Helen takes Calvin to see her parents, but we also have a nanny who sometimes looks after Calvin on a Saturday morning so that Helen can go to gym or meet up with other people without our little boy. Calvin is exactly 8 months old today and he continues to develop and grow week by week. My parents were out a month ago in late May to spend a week with him (and in my poor Dad’s case, to fix a whole lot of things around our house, which he did a fabulous job of) and unfortunately for them Calvin started to crawl just two days after they left, so they just missed it! He is a cheerful and friendly little chap who is quick to smile and likes to meet people (but, like his dad he’s not too keen on too big a crowd at once) although his good nature can take a turn for the worse if he is hungry, or tired. That much still hasn’t changed, although getting him to eat can now be more difficult at times, but on the bright side he sleeps through the night most of the time, except when he’s sick like he has been for the past week or so.

Life with a baby certainly has been different. There are moments of tremendous cuteness and love and affection. But also plenty of strain for parents to absorb as a couple while retaining their sanity and sense of self. There is also lot less free time, and things require more planning. We’re very fortunate to have a nanny to help us, particularly since Helen has gone back to work (and is loving having her own goals and achievements again) and is now away from 8am to 6pm on week-days. For now we have managed to survive things with a sense of humour, and perhaps too a sense of relief that by the standards of babies, Calvin is still pretty easy-going and we’re luckily able to support each other even when it isn't plain sailing.

We do still have some fun times also, we haven't completely retired into boring-hood. For my birthday we were treated to a night out to ourselves by Helen’s parents, who looked after Calvin, and we had a lovely evening joining friends at a sports bar for a few somewhat rowdy drinks while we watched some rugby, and then ate some delicious sushi at a restaurant I’d never tried. It was even more fabulous to celebrate our 2^nd wedding anniversary in May by having a delicious dinner at a fancy restaurant, dressed in our wedding day outfits (Helen looked fantastic in her wedding dress!)

We are off to the Drakensburg mountains for a week of half-term this Saturday. And while we’re a little bit wary of what sort of trouble our over-active little man is likely to have in store for us and how much we’ll really be able to relax, we’re also looking forward to getting out of town for a few days before work pressures return. I have been enjoying elements of my work at school very much. My Grade 12 and 11 classes have some very capable and hard-working young men, and this term I have even started a Current and World Affairs Discussion society to try promote some discussion of topical issues in the news and the world around us. But I have to admit I have also been struggling at times with the rather rigid approach from History department head. He has now been head of the department for almost 15 years and unfortunately he is, to put it mildly, somewhat averse to inputs on curriculum or assessment, and whereas I started this year in charge of the direction of our grade 11’s study programme, this has suddenly reverted to being entirely the head of department’s domain. But the moral support I’ve had from senior management has been great and hopefully over time I’ll win the trust of the head of department and get a chance to try to be a bit more creative and to help to re-imagine some of what the boys are learning. I have also recently joined a ‘leadership group’ to help formulate and drive forward ideas for improvement of the school in key performance areas - the area I’ve joined is Innovation in Education, so I’ve already been trying to put together some possibilities for experimenting with some new and different things with our students and staff.

In late August to early September we will be in the UK and France for my brother Andrew’s wedding. Unfortunately London and France are the only two places we’ll get to, but I’m hoping to be able to meet up with people while we’re there and to make the most of the time we’ll have. If you’re likely to be around please do drop me a line so that we can make a plan to meet up. Even if it's only because you want to meet our little rascal, who yesterday learned how to stand up in his cot (this smells like trouble!)

    

 

BW Expansion

Well 2014 has been quite a year. New job (twice), new house, and a new addition to the family. As most of you will know by now, Calvin Retallack was born at 9:27am on Wednesday 22^nd October. After months of preparing herself mentally and attending ante-natal classes which at times scared the heck out of us, the big day finally arrived. Actually, Calvin was due about 10 days earlier and although Helen had felt a few pains, when we visited the hospital on the Monday nothing had progressed to the point where natural birth would be possible, even with induction. So we arrived again at the hospital on the Wednesday with the doctor warning us that one way or another our little boy would arrive. And so it was, that he was delivered that morning by caesarean section.

Calvin in hospital

A caesar is a very sudden arrival. One minute Helen has a bump, then they put a spinal anaesthetic in place and a few minutes later she can’t feel her legs. Only a very short while later out comes this tiny little person, indignant at being removed from his comfy swimming pool. And suddenly your life changes because there is someone who you are completely responsible for. And that someone is very willing to let you know any time he’s not happy. Calvin is now just over 6 weeks old, so far he seems to have his mother’s sweet nature and ability to sleep well (so far, anyway…), and his father’s grumpiness if he doesn’t get what he wants - especially if he doesn’t get food.

 

Little babies are cute physically, and I suspect that’s mostly so the family don’t eat them or leave them outside when they become completely unreasonable. And there are moments in the beginning when you just have no idea what this little dude wants, and you’d happily stand on your head singing if it would make him stop howling. But after a while the different noises start to make more sense. And once we figured out that although Calvin was breast-feeding well, he still wasn’t getting enough food - and we started supplementing with formula, well that made a world of difference to his happiness and sleeping at night, and to our peace of mind. Now that he’s more than 6 weeks old he is starting to be much more interactive. He is beginning to smile, he definitely recognises Helen (still a bit dubious about the other person living in his house) and he has started reaching out for objects. He is at times very engaging and is ridiculously cute when asleep or just woken up!

Sleeping Buddha

Helen has coped wonderfully well with having to wake up several times a night to feed Calvin, and being cooped up at home most days. She’s starting to be able to get out and see friends and sometimes she can leave Calvin with me for a few hours while she gets out to do something for herself. But it is tough to get much of a break for her at the moment as the little man tends to need to be fed about every three hours, and he wakes her up very early in the morning so that by 9:15 even if we’re watching a riveting tv series, Helen is heavy-eyed and often already asleep on our couch. But I am full of admiration for how nurturing and caring she is with him. Even impressed by how inventive she is with pop tunes that are turned into songs for bathtime and nappy change time (Madonna’s “like a virgin” turned into a feeding song was a big hit with the audience responding with little hoots and coo’s of approval). Actually a friend of ours gave us a Metallica album turned into baby lullabyes. So I guess it’s coming back to us that I originally suggested a number of Metallica songs as middle names. I eventually agreed to Retallack (a family name on Helen’s side of Cornish origin) because it’s close enough to “Ride the Lightning” which was my personal favourite. Actually there are plenty of other good Metallica tunes that I thought would have made for good middle names between Calvin…  and Butler-Wheelhouse. “Unforgiven”, “Nothing else matters”, “Of Wolf and Man”, “Kill Em All”. All super middle names really, not sure why Helen talked me out of them actually.

My new school is going well: I joined St David’s on 22 September, after finishing at my old school on Friday 19^th of that month (so much for teachers having long holidays). The staff and the school as a whole have been incredibly friendly and supportive. It has been great to find how much easier the job is made by how well-organised things generally are, and how the school has the right infrastructure in place to make that possible. But next year looks like I will be incredibly busy - from what I can see I will have 6 classes across 4 grades, and that will include a Grade 12 class to take to their final school examinations. I have also been made Master-in-Charge of Basketball - I’m hoping to be able to juggle some basketball coaching of the Under 16 age group with also co-ordinating the other coaches and all of the admin that goes with hosting and visiting fixtures with other schools. I have gotten back into playing some basketball on Sunday afternoons as well and am glad to be enjoying being around the game again. It’s a nice way to keep fit between rugby seasons too.

Our most urgent and noisy house renovations thankfully were finished just a few weeks before Calvin arrived. Just in time for us to have a number of friends over to celebrate our housewarming. It has been great to have our own place to live in with our new family. And I know my parents were pleased to finally get back their flat which they had kindly let me and also Helen stay in for quite a long time (now it looks more museum-ish again with all of my late grandmother’s furniture and pictures back in there). But a house is certainly an animal all of its own when it comes to things to fix and get sorted out - if it isn’t drainage, or pool chlorinators, or disagreeing with the gardener about when it’s ok to just not turn up for work (hmmm…. on the bright side I learned how to use the lawnmower), then it’s me on the roof finding out that some of our wood cross-pieces snap easily and having to get the tiles re-set urgently before our next urgent thunderstorm, or crawling on my belly along cross-beams into a very tight space of the roof when it felt like about 50C up there to run security camera wires. But we’re enjoying being here, a mere 2km from my school, and with many years ahead of us to find more furniture at auctions and continue to upgrade and improve on our home. But we now have a spare bedroom so anyone of you who's had a mind to visit South Africa should definitely let us know as we'd love to see you in Johannesburg.

 

For now though, we’re about to head to the coast for holidays. It will be lovely to spend some time at the beach and we’re looking forward to introducing Calvin to many of our friends in the Eastern Cape, and also to having my parents there with us and maybe if we’re lucky they’ll sometimes look after Calvin for a little while too.

Wishing you all a wonderful festive season and a happy and stimulating year in 2015.

PS Calvin BW has his own facebook page if you’d like to see more of him. We decided that inundating our friends with pictures of him was a little bit unfair!

The Farmer’s in the Dell

Dear friends,

Lately I think fairly often of an English nursery rhyme called ‘The Farmer’s in the Dell’ which describes how the farmer gets a wife, the wife wants a child, the child wants a nurse, the nurse wants a dog, the dog wants a cat, etc. etc. etc. Actually, I have discovered that life is a little bit more complicated than that. In our case, both Helen and I are very much looking forward to the birth of our son - due in mid-October. But we’re also discovering that these days it seems that babies want a lot more than just a nurse!

In fact, I have come to the conclusion that starting a family is like being a motor racing enthusiast, or a golf nut. There is a lot of equipment to understand (I am no longer supposed to just call it a “push-chair thingy” and I now know what isofix attachments in a car mean), and it is expensive. You find yourself seeing other people with the same ‘hobby’ and checking out what equipment they’re using. Even asking them why they chose it and what the pro’s and con’s are. Mind you, at least no-one walks up to my stomache and starts talking to it or asking to give it a rub - like it is public property!

We’ve started going to antenatal classes on Tuesday nights, and those have been very informative but also quite an eye-opener. The way our childbirth expert discusses things, much of it sounds a lot like sports psychology: being fit and prepared, focusing on the goal and visualising in your mind your intended outcome, getting into a zone where you no longer are completely aware of your surroundings or pain / discomfort. And yet I have no envy for Helen in giving birth to a child because it’s an impossible thing to have a practice run for, and it’s really difficult to have any idea what your actual experience of it all will be like before it happens (unlike golf for example, where if you visit a driving range or play a few cheeky holes with a friend and then decide it’s crap, at least you haven’t gone through too much discomfort before reaching that realisation).

Helen has coped marvellously well with carrying around what is now a medium-sized but growing melon in her stomache. At night she was beginning to feel uncomfortable but now she sleeps with a large phallic pillow in the bed to help her rest more easily. Freud has a picnic with it all, but at least my wife sleeps better! The outside world meanwhile, for guys at least, seems to divide into two groups: those who don’t have kids shake their heads pityingly and lament the loss of a friend (me) who they expect to see again somewhere on the other side of the impending darkness and unfathomable depths (and I used to be one of these, maybe I still am occasionally when I look at myself in the mirror), and those who have kids and snigger about how your life is basically over and things will get worse or more expensive or probably both, with a generous dose of sleeplessness on the side. But from both sides there is also a positivity: having a child or children seems to bring with it lots of happy, silly, funny, warm and caring moments with someone who is uniquely special to you because they are your very own family. And you get to watch your own biology experiment develop into his or her own person with a common and yet unique experience of the world. I think it would be fair to say that both Helen and I are positively realistic about it all: we are excited, daunted, unashamedly still very ignorant, but looking forward to working it all out and supporting each other as we learn.

Meanwhile, we now finally own our first family home. After lengthy delays due to the inability of the Johannesburg city electricity department to take a decent electricity meter reading which was vital to the transfer of the property, the final week or two of buying the house was quite fraught, with the sellers seemingly making an effort to be as difficult as possible even to the very last day when the property transferred legally at mid-day, but the sellers refused to give up the keys until they finished work at 4pm. Just to keep life from being boring (ha ha) we are also now in the process of renovating our newly purchased house. Some of this work was stuff we learned we would need to do when we were deciding whether to buy the property (and we negotiated some deduction of the purchase price based on this) and some of it we’ve decided to do now because we are not nearly as keen on having to do it with a small person in the house (and because once we’re making a bit of mess we might as well get several messy things done at once!) So far most of the renovations have been going well and we’re looking forward to having them mostly completed soon. In fact, we need to have them completed soon (a source of some potential future grey hairs for me) because we want to move into the house and be set up before the baby arrives - which while scheduled for mid-October, could in fact be anywhere from later September. On that basis, we’re planning to move in over the first weekend in September (just under 2 weeks away) and we’ll be having a house-warming on the 13^th of September - most likely with some walls still not painted as repair work to the plaster is not yet complete and will take a few weeks to dry. 

The farmer may find that his wife and child have needs - but it turns out the farm itself also wants lots of equipment. And for the first time in my life, with a garden to be seen to, I have been having to look at lawnmowers, garden sheds, ladders, kitchen tiles, paint undercoat, and many other things that truly define a rock ‘n roll lifestyle. It seems at the moment like every time I pop into a local hardware or wholesale store for household goods, I come out with my eyes watering from signing a very long receipt! Luckily, Helen and I have been quietly saving away money every month for a while now, knowing that we’d be needing to get quite a few things. And Helen is a genius at finding great bargains in auction houses so we’ve managed to at least start acquiring some furniture of our own to fill this house with. My parents have also very generously given us some furniture that they had in storage in Port Elizabeth, which we recently had shipped up to Johannesburg. Nevertheless, the house is likely to feel a little bit empty at first, and we’ll probably take many years to fill things out a bit more.

I am delighted, particularly given the impending arrival of little Mr B-W, that as of the 21^st of September, I will be joining the history department of St David’s Marist Inanda, a well-established boys high school which is just over 2km from our new home. During my PGCE last year I did one of my teaching practical blocks of a few weeks there, and I am looking forward to being a part of a larger department with other teachers from whom I can learn and gain valuable experience in teaching-craft. It will also be good to be in a slightly more structured environment where routines and timetables are established, and teachers are given a bit more support by the school. I shall be quite sorry to leave many of my students at Reddam, but for me personally it will be good to be close to home, and at a school where I should have opportunities to also get involved in some sports coaching. The one serious down-side is that I am moving from a 4-term school to a 3-term school with no break in-between (St David’s really need me to start as soon as possible but I have to serve out my full term’s notice at my current school) so I will effectively be teaching from 21 July until 3 December this year, with a 5 day half term break in late October. Because teaching holidays are so long, there is scant consideration for paternity leave, so it looks unlikely that I will get more than a couple of days off when the baby is born. So much for long holidays being one of the perks of teaching! But at least I’ll get a nice long holiday in December and I’m looking forward to it already. 

But it has hardly been a year bereft of holiday experiences. I realise now that it has in fact been a very long time since my last blog post, as I have not even mentioned our hike on South Africa’s famous Otter Trail in late April. Given that Helen had just finished her first trimester, it might have been a risky decision for us to embark on a 4-night, 5-day hike. But we’d been invited along by a friend who’d had a few others drop out of their group, and we simply couldn’t pass up the opportunity to hike along the scenic coastline and enjoy ‘roughing it’ a bit - sleeping in log cabins on triple-decker bunk beds, carrying all of our food, clothes and cooking equipment (the Parks Board do provide firewood and there is running water at every camp).

Only 12 people are allowed onto the trail each day and each night is spent at a different camp along the 42km trail, so it really was a special experience to be there (I had walked the trail once before in 2004 when I last lived in South Africa). We did have water purification tablets with us, poles to help our balance to make sure we didn’t fall over, and blessing from the doctor - so it wasn’t a reckless adventure. We were a little bit unlucky with the weather in that it rained a bit on some of the days which meant that we couldn’t always fully enjoy the camps at the end of our days of walking. In fact it rained very heavily just before we started and all through the first night - which made our first night a bit of a miserable experience and meant that we were unable to cross the first major river on Day 2 and had to take an exit route up to a point high above the trail where we were picked up by park rangers and dropped off at the next ‘exit’ route on the other side of the river gorge after a short but very uncomfortable trip in the back of a truck. 

A wet start to the trail in drizzle

The big day of hiking is day 4, when you have to cross the Bloukrans River, which at anything other than low tide meets the sea in full flood and the river valley is then completely impassable. Unfortunately for us, the tide-table showed that low tide was at exactly 8am, but there was 10km of very up-and-down trail to be hiked before we could get to the river valley. Given that the guide for the trail suggested that this walk takes about 5 hours, Helen and the others in our group of 6 very sensibly decided to get up when they were ready, and to hike to the valley but then take another of the emergency exit points up to the top of the escarpment. But I managed to team up with a guy from the other cabin who was grouped with 5 others he didn’t know (and he couldn’t sleep because one of the party in his cabin snored too loudly). So this guy John and I met up at 4:30am and we missioned our way in the dark with head-torches for the first two hours until sunrise at about 6:30am. At times that did make it more difficult for us to find the trail where it was simply a rock painted with a yellow otter paw in the middle of the seashore, but we didn’t get too lost! We pushed hard, up some steep climbs with me encouraging John along the way, and we made it to the Bloukrans river at 7:50am just in time for peak low tide (you can actually cross an hour either side of low tide but no more than that). It was a great feeling to put my shoes back on, on the other side of the river which was only just above knee-high, and to eat a well-earned sandwich for breakfast.

Bloukrans river mouth at low tide

Though it was hard physical work, and we weren’t as fortunate with the weather as we’d have liked, it was a super trip and it made us hugely appreciate modern comforts like hot showers, being able to boil a kettle at the push of a button, and not sharing a 4 square meter space between 6 people (although I suppose plenty of Japanese people do that all the time). 

Nature's Valley - the finish line - with one deceptively treacherous river left to cross!

 In early July Helen and I travelled to Europe where we enjoyed a week-long break in Sicily (the football at the bottom of Italy’s boot) with my parents and Andrew and Romain. It was wonderful to be in the hot Italian weather in the middle of South African winter, and we enjoyed some delicious food, even learning how to cook some of the local specialities, swimming in the Mediterranean Sea, and plenty of interesting cultural and historical excursions to various sites and monuments. In fact one less sophisticated member of our party found it so cultural that at times he turned down old churches and buildings in favour of a decent book and a deck-chair by the pool. Let’s just say that I like people and personalities in history but buildings and architecture don’t always fill me with as much enthusiasm as they seem to do for others. 

After Sicily we also had a week in London - it was a frenetic time catching up with many different friends and also members of both of our extended families. Whenever we’re in London it always feels like we’ve run around non-stop, and yet we’ve not managed to see half as many people as we’d have liked to. But it was good to catch up with at least some of the many friends who we miss from South Africa, and also to touch base with a whole bunch of Helen’s extended family for a night in Hove, as well as to see my cousin Julia and her baby and spend a night with my aunt in the Hertfordshire countryside. I also finally managed to box up my books and some other odds and ends that have been in my parents’ basement since I came to South Africa, and get them shipped for our new house. Unfortunately it took me more than 2 days to do this, which meant that I didn’t manage to take Helen to visit Oxford for a day, as we’d intended. 

 The rugby season is now almost over for us referees of amateur games. It has been a tougher year in some ways: I have been promoted to Pirates Reserve, which is one level below the Pirates Grade referees who are the top group within the Province. People ask me whether they’ll see me on tv some day, but the truth is I’m already too old to merit consideration for higher honours at national level - and above our top referees in the Province there are still several rungs to climb before one makes it onto televised games. But I would love to (and aim to) be a Pirates referee and to have the opportunity to referee some good first team schools and club games. That said, the assessment of referees gets increasingly harsh as you move up, so things which were once minor matters, become ever more scrutinised. So a thick skin and a sense of self-belief are needed even when the game is finished and you are sitting in the stands dissecting things afterwards! But I sometimes just have to remind myself to be less self-critical and I continue to enjoy it when I’m out there on the field. I still enjoy most of my games, so I’ll be sad to see the season come to an end.

For those of you in the Northern Hemisphere, you are no doubt beginning to have some of those crisp nights that are still a feature of the Highveld well into Summer and soon the darkness will no doubt begin to close in ever earlier. Meanwhile, Spring is in the air here, just in time for our little boy to arrive. Wherever you are, I love to hear from those of you who do get in touch, and as always, though far away around the world, you are in my thoughts.