Two years on!

Two years ago today, right now, I was en route to our new life in the US. I woke up that morning and could barely breathe.  I didn't want to leave. I didn't want to leave the UK.  I didn't want to leave my family.  How could I not see my Mum every six weeks? How would I survive?

I didn't know how to 'be' in the US. I felt like I had jumped off the edge of a cliff and was free-falling to a sudden and painful death.  I have never been so scared in my whole life.

Now here I am two years later and I wouldn't change it for the world.  I've purposely not gone back and read my "One Year Later" post.  I can't remember what I said and I wanted to think about things without refreshing my feelings from last year.

Photo courtesy of Clare Ahalt Photography

This summer is the first year I've really felt settled. I've made friends, proper friends now, people I can talk to about more than just baby poo and summer activities.  I've found a community of birthy people, people who get my passion for pregnancy and birth and don't think I'm a crazy hippy for eating my placenta and having my baby at home!  I've done some doula work, which always makes me happy!  I'm building my photography business and have had steady work for the last few months. I've started doing birth photography and feel like this is what I was born to do.

Most importantly my family is happy. My babies are growing up and my heart shines every day to see them smile and hear them laugh.  It helps that the sun shines so much here!  It's nice to be home with them and see them grow, and it's nice to fill our days with activities and see new things and go new places.

Of course it's hard sometimes.  Finding a balance between working for myself and looking after my boys and finding time for my husband can be challenging.  I still miss my Mum like crazy.  Yes I can live without seeing her every six weeks, but in a perfect world I would be able to, and it is still the one thing I would change about living here.

I'm glad I grew up in the UK and got to see so much of Europe and other places around the world, but I'm also happy to see my boys grow up here, for now.  This is a good place for my family and I can't ask for more than that!

Ahhhh, so I read back my first year post and remembered I had made a list of all the differences I have found here!  I can't think of any more off the top of my head, but my 'new' thing for this year is realising words that I will never ever be able to say properly. For example:

Graham - Thomas's new teacher is called Mrs Graham. He laughs every time I say Mrs Graham. It's Mrs Graaaam, I can't say it, it's going to be a long year...

Squirrel.
Horse.
Hill.
Blueberry. Make that any kind of berry.
Pasta.
Any name with an Anna in it. It isn't Anna, it's Ah-na.

There are more. I can't remember right now. I'll have to come back and add them later!

Fireflies

For every mosquito that lives to bite me, there is a firefly that lives to twinkle for me.

I wish this photo twinkled like the woods behind my house do every night!

Photographing babies

I'm starting to blog over on my photography page now as well as here, so bear with me as I figure out what needs to go where...

Here is my first guest post for the Sacred Roots Birth Community!

http://www.lindseywelchphotography.com/blog/2013/3/photographing-babies

Summer fun

We played, we laughed, we loved, we had a lot of fun.

We visited the lakes and went swimming and climbed on bridges and got tanned.

We had a potluck lunch and playdates in the park.

We rode bikes and ran for miles and ate mountains of fresh fruit and vegetables.

We made lemonade and played on the slip n slide and visited the zoo and watched the baseball.

Thank you Maryland. What a great summer we had!

This photo was submitted to the I Heart Faces photo challenge – www.iheartfaces.com

One year on. Really?!

In five days I will have been here in the US for one whole year. I can’t really believe that so much time has passed. I vividly remember that last morning in the UK, not being able to move from the bed, not wanting to have to say goodbye to my Mum. Even now as I sit here writing this, my eyes glisten with tears as the feelings of despair and sadness wash over me.

I do miss my Mum. I really do. I miss all of my family. I can’t dwell on it because if I did, I would be unhappy and really, I don’t have a right to be unhappy when I am living such a nice life!

Life here is good. I am doing things I love, bringing up my boys, training to be a Childbirth Educator, setting up my photography business. I have met some fabulous people, and some not so fabulous people. I have been to some amazing places, visited six states, found beautiful parks, and my home feels like a home (albeit messier than I would like…). I have struggled with cultural differences, and laughed at cultural differences. I’ve experienced Fall and Thanksgiving and American Hallowe’en. I’ve discovered that there are hundreds of reasons to celebrate with candy during the school year. I’m figuring out the supermarkets and CSAs and farmers markets. I’m running - a lot! I passed my driving test. I had an American baby! I discovered groups like Frederick Mommies, Mombook, API of Frederick, La Leche League of Frederick, and I joined them all! You could never accuse me of being cliquey :)

The first three months were the loneliest I have ever had. I didn’t know how it ‘worked’ out here. I thought I would never make any friends or be able to have a normal conversation with anyone. I was sad. Then it all started coming together…

So, one year on. I feel lucky. Lucky to have a husband who supports me in all the crazy things I’ve decided to take on; who doesn’t complain when I spend all day looking after children and all night working on photos or coursework. I am lucky to have made some good friends who have seen me laugh and seen me cry. I wish I could move my home nearer to my family. Better still, I wish I could move my family nearer to me!

Spurred on by a Facebook conversation, I decided to start making a list of all the language differences I’ve come across this year. Bear with me, I’m sure I’m missing hundreds of others, but these are the ones that stick in my head!

(In no particular order)

Garden = Yard

Vegetable patch = garden

Boot = trunk

Bonnet = hood
Rubber = eraser
Condom = rubber

Pram = carriage

Buggy = stroller

Pushchair = stroller

Travel cot = pack n play

Activity centre = Excersaucer

Nappies = diapers

Aubergine = eggplant

Coriander = cilantro

Courgette = green squash / zucchini

BBQ = grill

Clothes pegs = clothes pins

Post = mail (people think I’m talking about the Washington Post newspaper if I mention post)

Football = soccer

American football = football (who’d have known!)

Cordial = doesn’t exist!

Zed = zee

Bottom = tush

Bum = butt

Biscuit = Cookie

Dumpling-type thing = biscuit, as in “chicken and biscuit”. I haven’t had it…

Pronunciation:

The completely different pronunciation of certain herbs, with herb itself being ‘erb:

oregano = o-ray-ganno

basil = bay-zle

quinoa = key-noir (had a very puzzled look from a shop assistant when I asked for ki-noah…)

Zebra = zee-bra

Nauseous = Naw-shus

Awesome ONLY sounds cool with an American accent. Fact.

Random musings:

When we first arrived I mentioned to David that there were a LOT of deaf people here. There really are! It took me ten months to realise that the Maryland School for the Deaf is in Frederick… so not just some kind of Martha’s Vineyard then…

Go to the shops / dentist / haircut etc = ‘running errands’

The addition of ‘of’ to a sentence: “take that off of there” “you get off of route 70”

The Lube Center. No matter how many times I drive past it, I still snigger to myself like an adolescent schoolboy. It just sounds so rude. It’s a car shop!

What is the thing with milk? In the UK you have whole milk, semi-skimmed milk and skimmed milk.  Here you have whole milk, 2% milk, 1% milk, some places have skimmed milk, raw milk (illegal in MD). Which one is the same as UK skimmed milk? Probably none of them, I’ve not worked it out yet…

Photography business!

Yes, I went and did it! Now I have four sessions lined up and other possibilities coming together. Exciting times!

Earthquakes, hurricanes... welcome to Maryland!

Where to start? With the incredible wrench of leaving my Mum?! Or the total shock of the heat? Or the earthquake, followed by the hurricane… Welcome to Maryland Lindsey and Thomas! Not to mention leaving Glasgow a month before Brad Pitt arrives to film his new movie, bahhhhhh humbug!

Excuse the blogging hiatus but we are still running on temporary Wifi which doesn’t work very well and all the running around has been tiring me out!

We arrived two weeks ago now and I think I’m starting to find my feet. Our house is beautiful but nowhere near unpacked and there is a lot to do. Thomas is having an incredible time! He sleeps all night in his own room, even before it has anything but a mattress in it! (waiting on carpets upstairs…). Every morning he comes running in to me – “Mummy, Mummy, it’s morning-time! It’s morning-time!”. It just makes my heart melt to see him so happy.

There are bugs galore but most of them hidden and/or small, like stink bugs and mole crickets, some are more eek-worthy, like the mantis on the front door the other morning…

I can now drive on the other side of the road! There are outlet malls and strip malls and BIG shops around, as well as the historic downtown Frederick which has an amazing library and a brilliant toy shop, along with restaurants and coffee shops and museums and a canal (I might do more of a post on downtown, I think we will spend a lot of time there!).

I’ve done some research and found day trips for all of us, pumpkin patches and giant corn mazes, farm visits, hay rides (maybe not for me, being allergic to hay and all), science centres, zoos and the upcoming Dora Live at the Frederick Theatre! Plenty of fun to be had if we can sort the house and buy a car and get social security numbers and a driving licence and a transformer (of the electricity variety, not a robot) and get my head around all of the possible UK substitute foods. I mean seriously, no cordial?! The powdered stuff just isn’t doing it for me! And why does everything have sugar / maple syrup added to it? Why can’t I just buy baked beans? Why are they filled with bacon and maple syrup or brown sugar and other vegetables?! My UK Malteser supply is dwindling (if you know me and know my address, please feel free to send Maltesers, Oxo cubes and Moroccan spice mix… I would be eternally grateful!). The vegetables are amazingly fresh though and the choice is sometimes overwhelming but brilliant. There are pros and cons to everything!

I found a midwife, well two actually, and feel incredibly lucky to be able to plan a home birth in a country with an extremely medicalised view of pregnancy and labour. I love the fact that my list of “I do not want X, Y and Z” was met with “well we would never do that a standard anyway”. I have my first official prenatal appointment this week and feel that this pregnancy has so far been brilliant! I haven’t suffered from any of the aches and pains I had with Thomas, no carpal tunnel syndrome, no swollen legs and painful feet, less weight gain… I don’t know if it’s because I am more relaxed about it all this time or whether it’s because I don’t have to get up and go to work every day! I am getting more tired as the weeks go on (25 and counting!) and am getting bigger and less able to do things, but I feel really well! Oh, and in case you missed it, it’s a boy!

So much to tell and I will try and get better at updating and taking photos. It was a big shock to leave my parents and come here and I really struggled for the first week. I’m getting better, I miss my Mum every day, but there is email and Skype and the world is a much smaller place than it once was.

This week we will venture to the 2-5 year old storytime at the library and see if we meet any new friends. This is the one part lacking so far, but mainly due to not getting out and meeting people. There are so many things that need sorting out so friendship has been low on my priority list for the time being. People are so friendly and so willing to chat, so I just need to put on a big smiley Lindsey face and be brave. If I can remember how!

:)