10 days in....

We are still flat hunting. We were considering 2 different areas of KL - both to the west of the city centre. Bangsar and Mont Kiara. Originally I was sold on Mont Kiara. However, after a second visit to the area this weekend I've decided it's just all a bit too sanitised for me. I would miss the hustle and bustle of being in a big city. I love city living and all the hassles that come with it.

I did consider living right in the middle of town, but think it's probably not the best place for babybear. There is an amazing children's play area in KLCC though, right behind the Petronas towers. It's fantastic - huge and varied slides, swings, climbing frames etc plus a wonderful splash pool. We do spend a fair bit of time there. I do think though that it would be better to be out of the city centre a bit where there are other mothers and kids the same age as babybear.

We're now focussing our search on Bangsar, there is a lot more happening there and it just feels a bit more Asian (even though it's filled with gringo expats :-). It's hard going though, trying to find a place to live with a toddler in tow, in the heat and humidity. Plus babybear is currently on some weird sleeping schedule which seems to go something like: wake up around 9.30am, nap around 2pm till around 4pm then up and with it till around 10pm. To be honest, I don't really mind it as a schedule, though it does mean I get very little time on my own, we do get to see daddy in the evenings and have a meal out. Besides, everything happens at night really once it gets cooler.

We often end up eating at a food court. Last night we went to one where babybear enjoyed climbing on to the seats, facing outwards so he could see people as they walked past and enjoyed high-fiving everyone that stopped. He also rather enjoyed dismantling a light (mummy and daddy were busy eating their yummy penang noodles and only realised what was happening when a passerby pointed it out to us - oops, how lax of us!).

I am missing my life in Wimbledon but do know that things will settle here eventually, once we've got a flat it will feel alot more like 'home'. I miss the ease with which I could get stuff done in London. I knew how things worked, where to go etc. Here I have to catch taxis to get places, fine from the hotel but once I'm somewhere I then have to try to flag cabs down on the street to get back again. I've been lucky so far, but anyone who has been to KL knows that getting a cab that will a) not rip you off horrendously b) actually take you where you want to go or c) even just say that they will take you in the vicinity of where you want to go instead of just flatly refusing the fare, is pretty hard going. Plus I have a 16 month old and a pushchair in tow! I live in fear of ending up wandering around in the heat of the midday sun, with no food for the bear, miles from the hotel and no cabs in sight......not happened yet, fingers crossed.

Babybear was a bit ill the last few days which was a worry, fortuantely he now seems better and hopefully his immune system is firing on all cylinders and gearing up to cope with the local diseases. It would be impossible to avoid him getting ill though, he is into everything (particularly drains, though he'd have to fight with the rats here in order to gain access to one, and they are bigger than he is :-).

He also seems to be going through a bit of a shy phase. I'm guessing it's his age and he'd be going through it at home, but I do think he sometimes finds the attention a bit overwhelming - he really has no escape from it. As soon as we are out people want to touch him, or hold him, or speak to him. He's taken to sometimes hiding his face into the side of his pushchair. I think this will get a bit better when we move out of town a bit, where there are more expat children anyway so it will dilute the attention a bit. He does not however have a problem with getting attention from the girl who cleans our room - whenever she is around he likes to strut around and pull his t-shirt up over his tummy to show off his milk-belly. Or he picks up a ball and holds it above his head, with accompanying 'strongman' grunts and groans. It's hilarious to watch, I guess it must be inbuilt in men then - pretty girl, show off, pick up football ;-)

Ok, the bear is waking from his nap (at 4.30pm, goodness knows what time he'll go to bed tonight), better get going.

Starting off in KL

So, finally we are in KL and it feels good to be back. The weather is really not that hot this month, lots of cloud cover to cut out the cruelest heat) and the general excitement and friendliness of the place is a joy. Babybear being a bit of a flirt who seeks out attention wherever he goes, is positively spoilt for it here, and as a consequence loves being wheeled around in his pushchair laughing and smiling at his audience of fans!

We took him up for a swim last night at the pool on the 22nd floor, amazing view of the towers from it. He loved being in the warm pool water and absolutely refused to hold either mummy or daddy's hand whilst he walked across the toddler pool. As a result he managed to dunk himself twice, but seemed to take it all in his stride and got straight back on with another lap of the pool. The funniest thing is watching him trying to walk through water...he tries to lift his legs completely out of the water with each step, as a result he kind of looks like he's walking on the moon, it's very funny to watch and it had the added bonus of completely tiring him out.

The flight here was OK, completely packed and absolutely no room for babybear to stretch out so he had to try and 'sleep' in the tiny bassinet. He was not the happiest fellow, but it did have the unexpected bonus of meaning that he didn't really get affected by any jetlag. Instead of getting a full nights sleep on the plane then wanting to stay up into the early hours when we got here he instead was knackered so we managed to get him down at 10pm the first night we were here and he's more or less back in his normal routine already.

He's also already tried some of the local food and liked it.....and it's had no ill effects on his tummy which is good. Turns out that as well as being built like an ox he also has the constitution of one :-)

Today I started our property search and have already seen somewhere which is a definite possiblity, I will be seeing more tomorrow and hope to have somewhere fairly permanent asap. It will be nice to get settled down somewhere and start building a home and life again here, it does get hard to chop and change all the time. It's stressful without you even realising it is, it's only once you settle you realise you don't feel permanently tired and on edge.

But having said that, on the whole our arrival here has seen us all more relaxed and happy, although missing our friends back in Wimbledon.

Hotel room living

Babybear didn't really enjoy his time in Germany. Nobody really spoke to him, I thought about getting him a sign to wear, something along the lines of 'hello, I am a human infant, you can interact with me freely'.......so he kind of retreated a little into himself. This resulted in him morphing into Grouchybear. Huge tantrums every day, things being thrown around the room, Mummy bearing the brunt of his frustration resulted in me being hit with a camera at one point. It was a difficult thing to gauge really, how much of it was frustration at his surroundings and all the changes we were going through and how much of it was just general 16 month old brattiness?!

One thing we are incredibly lucky about with him is his eating. He will literally eat anything we put in front of him, I never have to worry about finding food he will like, he'll try it all thank goodness.

By the end of 10 days we were very happy to leave and ready for our KL adventure. I was also looking forward to it as I'd booked us into a fancy serviced apartment right by Petronas towers, so we'd have more than one room and a kitchen I could cook in. For the benefit of my partner who may be reading this, it really was the cheapest place I could find to book.. :-)

In Dusseldorf

I had been to Dusseldorf a couple of times previously, way before babybear came on the scene. Both times I rather enjoyed it, wandering round the aldstadt, drinking alt beer and generally enjoying the good life. It was a rather different experience this time round.

First off the flight. Full of business people and one babybear. An evening flight on a day when I was very tired indeed is never a good thing.

I am pleased to say that I am no longer flying phobic (and some friends of mine can testify to the fact that I was absolutely TERRIFIED of flying, fainting, hyperventilation, complete and utter panic), but every now and then when I'm tired and have to fly I get a little nervous. And this was one of those times. The flight was incredibly bumpy, the bumpiest flight I've ever been on - we were rolling around all over the sky, not very nice at all. Anyway, horrendous flight over with we checked into possibly the smallest hotel room in the world.

Having asked for a bed for a baby I was dismayed to find a camp bed that was about a foot off the floor - to sleep a 16 month old in?! No travel cots available that day or for the next 2 days. Babybear, who is never a very restful sleeper even when confined to a cot, could not sleep properly at all and would get up and run round the room at various points in the night. Apparently it's hilarious to make your exhausted parents leap out of bed at 3am to catch you as you run off towards the glass cabinet door you love to open and slam shut!

To add to this the other guests in the hotel included the attendees for the 2009 International Conference of Sour Faced Business People. These were the charmers who were happy to watch me struggle to drag a highchair across the floor at breakfast holding a struggling babybear in one arm without even offering to help, but managed to find time in their busy schedules to voice their 'concern' that I let him run barefoot through the (carpeted and superheated) hotel corridor. Ho hum.

To top it all off, babybear cut a molar whilst we were there. At the end of it we all needed a holiday!

Me and PND

So this time last year I was having some really dark days. I had what could be called a 'difficult' birth with babybear. A 3 day induction which turned into an emergency c section and a heavy loss of blood, with a whopping 10lb 13oz baby to pick up afterwards. Unfortunately both the birth and the subsequent 'care' on the postnatal ward left me reeling and contributed to me developing PND.

A horrible, disorientating illness. You feel as if you've been pithed - like there is nothing in the centre of you to cope with a new baby and all the massive changes that come with it, nothing to centre you and make you realise that although life will never be the same again it will all be fine, and you will regain a sense of self. Several things helped me over this period in my life - not least of all some medication which gave me a little bit of a level playing field to start from - but more than that the help of a local PND support group run by 2 health visitors. This allowed me and others to talk about what we were feeling and most importantly to meet other mothers experiencing similar feelings.

Of course now that I'm better it's strange, and a little sad, to look back at that period and realise that I could have enjoyed it all so much more had I not been ill. This time last year I struggled some days to make it to the front gate of the house............and this year I'm travelling halfway round the world to start a new life, funny how life turns out.

So, which pushchair should we take?

Babybear (currently 16 months old) has had a series of transportation modes during his young life - 4 different pushchairs and 3 different slings.

I love the slings and would have carried him in them all the time if i could have done, unfortunately for me he is incredibly heavy and even in a mei tai on my back I find it hard to carry him for long periods. Plus he is a dreadful wriggler and trying to put him in a back carry just got too fraught, so a pushchair it is.

So anyway, we got final confirmation of our move to KL on 23rd September and the lease on our property in London expired on 7th October so it really was cutting it fine. The packing then began in earnest, further complicated by the fact that we had to spend 10 days in Germany before flying to KL so had to pack a selection of cold weather gear as well. There were 3 piles - going to KL, going to KL via Germany, going into storage in the UK. It was hectic to say the least..

On top of all the stress of packing were all the doubts that come about when you make a big move like this - is it the right thing to do? Would I be able to make a life for myself there? Would I cope with the heat and humidity? (sounds like such a silly thing to worry about, but it's so pervasively hot that it's definitely something that has to be considered) I worried about babybear missing his 'friends' but then how much memory does a 16 month old have anyway? Finally I was stressing about whether to take the stroller or the 3 wheel tank that would cope far better with KL pavements (or lack thereof).....

Finally all the packing was done, and there was just time to give the keys over to the landlord and get into a taxi to Heathrow with a rather fractious and tired Alfie in tow.

Oh, and we ended up taking the 3 wheeler, figuring it would do more damage to the baggage handlers than they could do to it!