EH11 2EL

We have an address!

18/15 Downfield Place
Edinburgh, EH11 2EL
United Kingdom

If you drive ( in an unfamiliar rental car, on the left side of the road, very haphazardly,  in a city you've landed in 2 hours prior, with a sleep-deprived wife gasping at every turn) to this old building on Downfield Place, and climb 4 flights of stairs, stop at the first door on the right--the one with a fresh coat of red paint--you'll find the smallest flat that ever was.

Home Sweet Home

We have a tiny bedroom with a tiny armoire, a lounge room with a tiny loveseat, and the tiniest kitchen I have ever seen in my life. Our ceilings, though. Being on the top floor has its advantage. The ceilings are so high, if we turned our flat on its side, it might improve our space situation dramatically.

We hired a letting agent named Gregor--a referral from our knowledgeable expat friend Marisa--to find us a flat after unsuccessfully trying to secure a place on our own from Wichita.  It had been so difficult, what with the time difference, the fact that flats are being rented the day they are posted online as students are flooding the city this time of year, and that most landlords require tenants to do a walk-through before placing a deposit. The thought of having to stay in a hotel while we looked for a place, for who knows how long, after traveling so far, was disheartening to say the least. Once we hired Gregor--at a very reasonable price--we could relax and focus on the things we had to take care of in Kansas as he scheduled viewings, took over paperwork, and negotiated with property owners on our behalf. He asked if we would be okay with a less-than-desirable property if it would be just a six month lease, then we could find something better when the market is less crazy. We were desperate for anything at this point, so we gave him the go-ahead. He found us a place within a week. So worth it.

We drove straight to the flat from the airport to meet Gregor and our landlord.  As I stepped onto our new street, Gregor walked right up to me and kissed my cheek, which caught me so off-guard, I responded in a very delayed manner and am pretty sure I just kissed the air as he moved onto Neal. We went upstairs, sighed at the sight of our flat in both shock of the size and relief that we had a place to live. We signed all the paperwork, Neal hauled the aforementioned nine bags up all 57 stairs (nope, no elevator) and piled in the car to Ikea. It's a furnished flat, so most things we need are provided, but we still needed a crib for Eleanor, a clothing rack, etc.

Speaking of, the child is currently sleeping in our lounge + kitchen area, which makes nap time very inconvenient for Neal and I. We had to eat pot roast in our bed last night! So we're thinking of switching our bed to the living room, and moving her crib to our bedroom, so it's more of a studio apartment feel. Only if we can muster the motivation to move furniture through our so-called "hallway".

Oh, and we don't have a garbage disposal. Or a dryer (yes, we have to use a drying rack. apparently no one has a dryer in the UK). But! We are in a GREAT location. Within walking distance of two supermarkets, lots of restaurants, a bus station, and just minutes away from downtown Edinburgh. The flat is really starting to grow on me. Neal hasn't started school yet, so I haven't yet had to experience walking down the stairs with a chubby infant, diaper bag, and stroller (In the end, I'm either going to be really buff or I'll have never gone anywhere ever, one of the two) all by myself. I did, however, slooowly make my way down in high heels on Sunday. Ouch.

The most important thing to remember about our flat is that if you shut the door, it automatically locks. We forgot our keys the other night and had to call our poor landlady away from her pint at the pub. But at least we have a very cool-looking key.

The Flight

With 9 bags of various sizes, a stroller, and a baby, we were a sight to see at both our departure and arrival airports.  We were that family going through TSA.  Neal slicing his finger while collapsing the stroller and seeping blood all over the place didn’t speed things up either…three TSA agents came to assist as he bled through several paper towels and two band-aids. Eleanor was busy trying to eat my boarding pass, and I was attempting to keep things moving. I kept trying to remind myself that we would never see any of these people again and not to stress out about holding up the line. Most were actually really great about it—they’ve dealt with worse before, I’m sure. Hopefully. Maybe not. It was pretty bad.

Eleanor's first flight. SUCCESS.

Our first leg was delayed for an hour and half.  We had a 2-hour layover in Chicago, so it wasn’t a big deal.
My daughter gets an A+ for behavior on her first international flight, and Neal gets an A+ for booking smart. First, he chose a departure time 2 hours before Eleanor usually goes to bed, in the hopes that she would sleep most of the flight, which she did. He reserved seats for us on the second to the last row, choosing a window seat for me and an aisle seat for him. He thought this would decrease the likelihood of someone choosing the third seat on our row, because who wants a middle seat? Well, we lucked out, and there were several empty seats on our flight, our middle seat being one of them. So we were free to use it for Eleanor and her car seat, even though we didn’t purchase a ticket for her. This was definitely the key to having a successful flight with E—we played with her for the first couple hours, then laid her in the car seat with the cover on, and the sound of the plane made it a piece of cake for her to fall asleep. We usually play airplane “white noise” at bedtime for her at home, so it really was perfect. She slept through the rest of the flight, briefly waking twice. And the angels sang.

I, on the other hand, hardly slept a wink. Neal is blessed with the ability to sleep anytime, anywhere. He can literally decide to close his eyes and it’s like he immediately enters REM. It's so unfair. I wasn’t very comfortable and just felt like a kid on Christmas Eve.  I couldn’t wait to get to Edinburgh. The month leading up to the move was so focused on dealing with stuff in Kansas and tying up seemingly infinite loose ends, that I hadn’t had much time at all to think about Scotland.  So I shifted restlessly in my seat, worrying about all the details I hadn’t had time to worry about. (Typical.) Finally, with about 2 hours left in our flight, I dozed for a half hour before they flipped the lights on and wheeled out breakfast. We had decided to stay up all day to help curb jet lag, so I knew it was going to be a looong day. A long and exciting day. As we landed, my husband and I exchanged the “ohhhh my goshhhhhhhh we’re across the world” look.  We left the plane, made our way to customs, and I heard the first sounds of a friendly Scottish accent.  I had to pinch myself. We made it! 

we made it!

We have arrived in Edinburgh! After weeks of stress and preparation and several outbursts of “just forget it!”, we are actually here. I honestly can’t believe it. There was so much to do to get ready for this, it seemed impossible to get everything done in time.  August was full of packing, selling stuff, packing, cleaning, and more packing.  We boxed up our entire house and stuffed our suitcases to the brim with clothing and shoes. We were permitted three 50-pound checked bags, three carry-on bags, and three personal items (we used backpacks). We considering shipping some household items but after looking at the cost to do so realized it would be cheaper to just buy what we need here.  We made our last trip to the storage unit hours before our flight left, went to church for sacrament meeting, and were dropped off at the airport by my aunt and uncle. Twelve hours later, we squinted our eyes at the Edinburgh sun. While we have only been here for a week, there is so much I’d like to write about.  I’ve decided to break the week up into several posts. So bear with me.

baby...or monster?

After a long day of packing, sorting through mom's stuff that's been collecting dust in my dad's basement, preparing for a garage sale, doctor's appointment, craigslist extravaganzas, making banking arrangements...I'll stop there, you get it...Neal left Eleanor and I at home so he could attend mutual at the church.

We have been sleep training E and it's been rough. I'm starting to think it was a dumb idea because she's always gone down easy at bedtime, but she's been used to napping in her swing. I am 120% certain she exceeds the weight limit of the swing (it's a loaner so I don't have the manual), as it barely moves even at the highest speed. Also, pretty sure we can't bring that thing to Scotland. So we are trying to get her used to napping in her crib during the daytime. Anyway, sleep training is controversial and I don't really want to get in to that, but the point is, now seems like the best time to do it. Neal and I are both home and able to take turns, we will be living in an apartment in Edinburgh and don't think our neighbors will appreciate it then, etc. Like I said, it's been rough, and I think Eleanor has been a bit crankier as a result.

After Neal left, I decided to feed her a bit of sweet potatoes. Sounds like a one-man task, right? Normally Eleanor behaves like the babies you see on commercials and will allow us to airplane the food into her mouth. She'll mash it around with her gums and wear a confused face, but eagerly leans in for more. It's always cute and fun. Not so much tonight.

She has, seemingly overnight, started reaching for everything in sight. Notice that I said everything in sight, not everything in reach. So tonight I quickly realized that I needed to remove everything from the kitchen table because she was whining and reaching for every little thing and totally ignoring the food I was trying to feed her. Once we were all clear and she finally focused on the spoon, she started to yank it out of my hand and shove it into her mouth and began chewing down on the spoon ferociously. I think this was more due to teething than to interest in eating the food. She did swallow some of the food on the spoon but I'm pretty sure it wasn't intentional. She kept gagging herself, so I tried to take the spoon from her and hold it myself and kind of dump the food into her mouth, but that made her so angry she started screaming hysterically and even threw the spoon on the ground. I was shocked! My sweet daughter was seriously glaring at me as she repeatedly reached for the jar of food and the spoon.  I couldn't tell if she wanted more food or what. Within two minutes I was covered in sweet potatoes, my kitchen was covered in sweet potatoes, Eleanor was covered in sweet potatoes + drool + her tears + my tears. It was time to abort. I threw my hands in the air, pulled Eleanor out of the Bumbo chair (although someone's chunky thighs made that less dramatic than I wanted as they were firmly lodged in the leg indentations. We practically need baby oil to get those things out). I stripped her naked and one-handedly drew a bath as I held her on my hip and prayed over and over that she wouldn't pee on me (although why not throw pee into the mix; I was covered in everything else).

As I set her into the bath her countenance changed. E loooves bath time. She started splashing and squealing and obviously I melted. She's just so darn loveable.

Bottom line: Every time I think I am getting the hang of this mom thing, I have an evening like this where I realize I have no idea what I'm doing. Such a rookie. On the bright side, I put her down to bed just before starting this post. She fell right asleep without even a whimper. Sleep training is either my nemesis or my best friend. We'll see.

Okay...I'll forgive you.

we're moving...

.... to SCOTLAND!

It's utter chaos at the Lutz household right now. In fact, I'm blogging specifically to avoid the mess that is my living room...piles of clothes, empty cardboard boxes, VIP (very important paperwork), etc...but also to share the exciting (albeit stressful) news that we are moving across the pond next month!

Long story short: Neal is going back to school for his MBA at Edinburgh Napier University. His grandmother was born in Edinburgh, and her parents immigrated to the states when she was a little girl, so he's always had a desire to visit the country. To dig around at his roots if you will. Masters programs in the UK are shorter in length (twelve months) and cheaper than most American schools. We would both love to have the experience of living abroad, but my husband is the one with actual guts to move forward and make it happen. And honestly, now feels right. We've talked a lot about waiting to go, but as our family expands, we know it will become less of a possibility and more of a dream. So we're going to seize the day and just do it. YOLO and all that.

Eleanor has her little passport, we've applied for our visas, and booked our flights. We're scheduled to depart the US on August 24 on an early red-eye flight.  In the meantime, we have to weed out what we're leaving vs. taking, sell things we want to get rid of (garage sale), secure housing in Edinburgh, and a billion other things.  I am trying to stay organized but I keep starting little projects without finishing them, alas, the crazy house. I keep fantasizing about two months from now, when we should be nice and settled in and I can hopefully have a normal routine.

So. If anyone has advice on executing an international move, traveling with an infant, or knowledge of weird Scottish lingo, please be in touch.

Edinburgh

as of late.

Neal was gone all last week on a high adventure trip in the sand dunes of Colorado with the young men from church, and I had a teeny taste of life as a single mom. A single mom of a single baby. How some women one-handedly parent their childREN on a regular basis amazes me. Props to you ladies.

 While he was gone, I was forced to learn to change the liner on our diaper pail. It's really not that complicated but I had successfully avoided learning how to do it for four months. Neal has come home to an overflowing pail a time or ten, and considering that he would be returning from his trip in time for father's day, I decided it wouldn't be cool to go the whole week without emptying the thing.

Taken in my review mirror at a stoplight. I think this was the moment she decided to set a world record for dirty diapers in one week.

The first night he was away, I heard Eleanor on the baby monitor at 3 AM, letting out a loud cry. Not a hungry cry, or a sad cry, but the yell she gives when she's trying to roll over. We call it her warrior cry.  It's loud, determined, and really does resemble Serena Williams during a tennis match. When she first started rolling over, she tried for over an hour with yell after yell and passed out from exhaustion. Neal and I felt like we had watched her first sporting event. I thought about adding some protein powder to my breast milk. Anyway. I heard her warrior cry in the middle of the night, and then silence. I thought it was weird, but it sounded like she had gone back to sleep. I went to check on her (we should invest in video monitors but we're way too cheap) and saw that she was face down in her crib! We have swaddled her at night since she was born, and she's always slept great that way. But since her arms were tight at her side, she was unable to push herself up and even just turn her head to the side so she could breathe. Obviously I freaked out, took the swaddle off, and decided it was time to break her of the wrap. It was a rough week, because she was startling herself awake at night with arms are free to fling as they please, but it seems like she is getting used to it and is sleeping through the night again. Neal is depressed that we aren't swaddling her anymore, he says she's growing up too fast and needs to be a little burrito forever.

                                                      Officially swaddle-free !

I discovered that Eleanor loves being outside. Whenever she gets a little fussy, I walk out to our bench and we watch the cars drive by, the wind blow the big trees in our neighborhood, and the stray cat who thinks he lives in our yard. Works every time.

Eleanor heard Doc Martins are back in style and thinks she can pull it off.

Back in time for Father's Day! The papa is obviously way more fun than I am.

playing it safe

I'm a worrier.  Have been since I was a little girl. I began to struggle with insomnia in the sixth grade. The night before my first day of middle school, I lay in bed staring at the ceiling with my hands wrung, thinking about what the next day would hold. I worried that the 7th and 8th graders would be mean to me, I worried about remembering my locker combination, I worried about bells and class periods and not being able to make friends. I distinctly remember the knot I had in my stomach all night, and my mom sitting on my bed, stroking my hair until I pretended to be asleep so she wouldn't feel obligated to stay any longer.

I sleep better these days, but new endeavors still terrify me and ignite the same feelings of dread. 

Neal and I met on eHarmony. Sometimes I forget this, because it's so bizarre, but we really did. We communicated online for a few weeks before our first (two hour) phone call. At the end of the call, Neal laid it out: "Dani, I'm not looking for a pen pal in Kansas. I'm looking for the real deal. Something serious. Just so you know, so there are no pretenses." After we hung up, my heart was beating fast and my face flushed. What if this guy was the one? It seemed impossible at the time. He lived 1,000 miles away. He was 8 years older than me. I had just started nursing school and didn't need a distraction. I felt sick. For an entire week, I was nauseous and barely able to eat. The idea of having a relationship with someone in such an unsafe, unrealistic manner was giving me major, major anxiety. But I liked him. A lot. I liked him so much I felt even sicker. We kept talking. And talking. One month later, he flew to Kansas so we could meet for the first time. He applied for a job while he was in Wichita. He actually wanted to move here. It was ridiculous. It was absurd. My friends and co-workers couldn't hide their trepidation. This guy was going to quit his stable job, pack his belongings, and move across the country for someone he just met? What if it didn't work out? It probably wouldn't work out! Worst idea ever! Red flags! Warning! Warning! I was ridden with fear. I could think of a million "responsible" reasons not to move forward with the relationship. But I liked him. I loved him. He moved here. We got married. We have a fat baby.

Our marriage is by far the best thing I've ever invested in. Neal is kind, patient, supportive, and makes me laugh every single day. He makes me feel valuable and loved. He is teaching me to be fearless. If I had been rational and put the breaks on our crazy, eHarmony, "foolish" frenzy, where would I be today? I wouldn't have the life that I am in love with. It's definitely not perfect. Our marriage is not perfect. But I cannot imagine being with or having kids with anyone else.

We are currently making a major decision, one of those life-changers. It has caused heart-racing, facial flushing, and sleepless nights for anxiety girl. I can think of a million reasons to play it safe. My fearless husband can think of just as many to follow the road less taken, to take a chance on an opportunity that we may look back on as one of the best choices we've ever made.  I'm scared.  I've been digging my heels in the ground as Neal tries to drag our daughter and I on this insane adventure. But this morning I started to think about the last time I made an irrational, crazy decision. A life-changer. When I could think of so many reasons not to. And I feel a rush of excitement and a sense of trust that everything will be totally okay. Because regardless of what we choose, I know I have the craziest, best choice I ever made at my side.