As expected I have had nearly no time to update blog. It happens every year: I make all sorts of promises to myself to achieve all sorts of stuff over Christmas and it just doesn't happen. It's already the 28th, I've been back a week, and I've barely touched my computer. Which is good and bad.

The news? Firstly that Jody is officially crawling. She linked her first real steps on the 21st on my mother-in-law's carpet and has been wobbling on hands and knees ever since. She has mostly been an angel these last few days apart from yesterday when she decided that there was altogether too much going on and she would really rather be in a quiet place sleeping. She voiced this in a rather loud manner. Ah well. It had to happen.

Christmas has been lovely as usual, although I've been suffering slightly from the last few weeks of stress and sleeplessness. We had the usual amazing Danish meal on the 23rd at my parents, followed by a good run up the Long Mynd with Sven and Charlotte on the 24th, in preparation for Danish Christmas dinner in the evening. Off to the mother-in-law's house on the 25th for a traditional English Christmas dinner, and then to the father-in-law's on the 26th for a cold buffet and family feuding. Always something going on in the Taylor household.

Amongst other things I am now a raincoat, a tripod, a camera bag, a griddle pan and a car better off. Yes, a car. Rather overwhelmingly we were given a brand new silver diesel Rav 4 for Christmas. Unbelievable. Took advantage while the rest of the guests were out shooting yesterday to meet up with Camilla and we drove out to the Pheasant for some sandwiches and chocolate pudding. The car is truly gorgeous, and so is Camilla who I am looking forward to see a great deal more of now that we're on the same side of the Atlantic.

Just a week now until Roj returns to New York for a fortnight. Lots planned in that time including catching up with various friends and instigating a rigid schedule of daily running (to start today).

It's nice to be back. The British chilliness has already got under my skin, but I'm very much enjoying spending time with family. I don't yet feel that the move has been permanent though. I do have an underlying hint of saddness about it, but right now I feel like I've hopped on a flight for Christmas and I'll be back home to New York shortly. Hopefully reality won't sink in until we're distracted by beautiful New Zealand.

Right. I think the wee one needs a bath, since she's covered head to toe in squash. And then there's that run to contemplate. And where can I drive today!?

Wow. I actually have time to blog! It's 1 o'clock and we're not leaving here til 5. We've had a great morning. We got up for a "run" in the Park ("run" because I walked half of it and took pics up at the reservoir, and the rest of the time I might as well have been walking because of my pace!) We followed this with a lovely final breakfast in Route 66 where we didn't even have to order because the waitress knew what we wanted. Amazing to be greeted with a cup of steaming coffee before even sitting down. I will miss that place.

Later we came home to get rid of our coffee & side tables and feed Jody some yam which she really enjoyed (hooray, because solids haven't been going so well these last few days) and to squeeze the last few items into our bags.
And I've been going 'it's the last' all day. The last time in the Park, the last time in Route 66, the last time in the shower here, the last time seeing Gilbert & Murphy on the desk downstairs. Lots of lasts. Lots of nostalgia and sadness but also excitement at the next phase in our lives.

Last night we had the most apalling meal in the world. 2 Papaya hotdogs followed by 3 Krispy Kreme donuts. Each. Disgusting!

Our apartment echoes. Funnily it looks smaller now without all our stuff than it did when it had bikes oozing from every corner. It's got no character now - just a square box with a lot of windows. But I will still miss it.

Right. Time to sign off for the last time in New York. I'll be merrily blogging over the Christmas break thanks to my scrummy laptop (which unfortunately means that I'll have no excuse not to catch up on all my work). Thanks to all those who've sent us good wishes for our trip ... and New York ... I'll miss you horribly, but you haven't seen the last of us yet ...

Well this is nearly it. Tomorrow I'm getting on a plane to leave New York for good. I might come back - I hope I do - but I doubt we'll ever live here again so it will never be quite the same.

It's so sad to be doing things for the last time this week (and not at all sad to be doing others - using the laundrette downstairs, shopping in these darned supermarkets etc.). I met Jennifer and Ethan on Tuesday for coffee and after saying goodbye felt a huge sense of loss. I hadn't realised how much I'd been enjoying our once-a-week yoga and coffee breaks. It's been so amazing to know someone with a baby of exactly Jody's age who can relate to all of my experiences. I know I'll find other mums in England but they won't have had a baby at the same place I did, just 24 hours before. It means a lot right now, and I'll miss the two of them a lot.

Yi Shun and Jim came over last night too, to our empty empty apartment (the shippers stripped it bare during the day) and brought lovely goodies to eat. It was fab to see them here for the last time and I really hope we see them again sometime - in England or here. We will be in touch with them I know ... but email is a poor replacement for real human company.

I thought my camera had broken yesterday. Or at least I thought the white balance wasn't working. I was ready to throw the whole thing over the balcony ... myself attached. As it turns out, after some test shots this morning, it seems fine. I can't work out why white balance gave up the ghost yesterday, but it definitely wasn't doing what I expected it to be doing. Never mind. I won't question it too much.

So I'm headed off to SoHo now for some last minute Christmas shopping (when Jody wakes up anyway). Luckily I have an exact route planned out so I am not intending to spend a day getting all demoralised. I'm hoping that I can achieve enough that tomorrow will be a day of relaxation. We're definitely going to Route 66 for our last breakfast (sounds so death row!), and the plan is then to take a taxi up to the upper East side so that we can take a final walk through Central Park. We have to be back here by 12 because we have furniture changing hands, but as yet the afternoon's activities are unconfirmed. Hopefully it won't be too frantic, but knowing me ...

We had an amazing evening on Wednesday. We went to the Gramercy Tavern for the first time. It was partly a celebration of our 12th year together (twelve!!), and partly a big posh goodbye to New York. Goodness, their food is phenomenal! We had the Fall tasting menu which began with fois gras, then langoustines then black bass - my two favourite courses - then bacon then lamb then two deserts and innumerable petit fours and tasting chocolates. It was one of the best meals I've ever eaten and we both agreed that the atmosphere was also very special - it's a posh expensive place but it's not up it's own arse, so to speak, and the staff were brilliant. Jody started off really well and was wholeheartedly flirting with all the waiters but something about the ambient noise set her off so that by the time the lamb was on the way she had become miss hyperactive. Luckily when she's unhappy she doesn't seem to cry and scream, she just gripes a little and kicks and wriggles an awful lot. It was disruptive, but we made our own bed so we were happy enough to lie in it. The biggest problem with the evening was the vanishing trick played by half of one front pair of Maclaren buggy wheels. Gramercy Tavern could only find the other of the pair, so we suspected it had been left in the boot of our taxi. It doesn't really matter - Roj has taped the remaining wheel on so that it can at least go along OK - but the timing is immaculate; just three days before leaving.

Right. Plenty of things I need to be doing rather than sitting here getting nostalgic. Jody is still asleep so I will busy myself packing until she deigns it the right time to go into town. I am fully intending to post one last time tomorrow but who knows ...

So tired. Can't type.

Had a lovely leaving do yesterday, despite a rather poor showing (we'd like to say it was because of the terrible blizzard, but because people made it from Connecticut and the far reaches of New York State, we can't). Thanks so much to all who did turn up to make it special for us, we really appreciated it.

Meanwhile this packing lark continues apace. Or not, because I'm such a zombie that I can't work out which pile is shipping and which pile is taking. Must c-o-n-c-e-n-t-r-a-t-e. Right now I can't begin to envisage being ready for the shippers on Thursday, but ready I most certainly will have to be. The biggest hurdle currently is the backing up of all material off my PCs hard drive, and making sure I am fully equipped to do business with my laptop for a couple of months. Having had a laptop recently die on me, I'm extremely paranoid about losing important stuff, so this is definitely a big job.

I also have nightmare nightmare nightmare client to fend off in the next few days. I have already done nearly twice the work scoped out in the project plan to this point, and several more billion hours to go. Needless to say nightmare client wants website (which has turned particularly uggglly) launched before I go. Like hell. And then there's a couple more bits and pieces for other people to finish which, while not very big in themselves, are weighing heavily on my conscience ...

But I'm not here to whinge.

I took Jody to the pediatrician's today for her six month appointment. She is average height for a ten-month-old! She is, nevertheless, quite a skinny little thing on the scale (only 85th percentile compared to 97th in height - and it doesn't go any higher than 97th). She had two boosters, one for polio and one for diptheria and tetanus and she didn't even whimper which made me phenomenally proud!

She's also learning that she can hold two things at once - one in each hand - which gives her an awful lot of scope for banging things together. I think we will grow to lament this learning phase! She is still threatening to crawl at every second. Tonight she climbed her hands up onto a shoe box and knelt there looking at us smugly. My days of (relative) freedom are definitely numbered. I wonder if she'll suffer with all this upheaval we're about to put her through.

Anyhow. Back to the mundane stuff. Why is the mess getting more, not less?

Jody's getting her first tooth! It's very exciting. I must have been right last weekend when I glimpsed white underneath the gum. Now you can actually feel the serrated edge of her first little pearly popping through the front left bottom gum. So she's officially teething, and she's still got a cold but she's on amazing form, remaining the happiest little baby ever. But it does explain her somewhat restless nights these last few days.

She also had her first foray into a high chair in Route 66 on Sunday, which was a great success. I don't think she's supposed to go in them until she's a little older but she's getting altogether too reachy and wriggly to have on your lap. So we stuck her in the high chair and padded it out a bit with the Baby Bjorn and she was happy as larry. The only problem is that her mouth was on exactly the same level as the edge of the table so it had to be chewed on several occasions, but hey ... they need exposure to germs (and chemical cleaners?) so I wasn't going to get too paranoid.

Saturday in the blizzard I was rather glad to be too ill to do the 15k, hot chocolate or no. And watching Tom Cruise for 2:40hrs in quite decent action flick The Last Samurai softened the blow even more. Highlight was definitely Peter Luger's with Yi Shun and Jim for a leisurely and typically amazing steak in the afternoon (during which Jody sat in her buggy and just smiled happily at everything). Yi Shun gave me the loveliest home-knitted scarf in my favourite icy-blues as a leaving present. What a sweetie.

We spent most of Sunday packing up. We're supposed to leave everything to the moving company but it's impossible to sort through what we need when we have to leave it be, so we're packing most of it into smallish boxes or bags. Sadly we also destroyed our plant. It was getting much too straggly for anyone to ever want it, so we finally got round to getting rid of it which was the most obvious gesture of leaving we've yet made. The apartment looks very bare without it (and with bookshelves folded down), and is a constant reminder that in less than two weeks we just won't be here anymore.

It's pretty cold in NYC. The big snow that we had on Friday and Saturday is melting somewhat at the edges of the pavements (you need wellies out there), but sub-zeros mean the bulk is likely to hang around another few days. Which is good because I still intend to make it out into the park with my trusty 10d.

Yoga first though, and a million other errands to run this afternoon. The list is definitely not getting shorter.

Did I say I wasn't wimping out of the run? Well I'm wimping out of the run. And it's not because of the foot of snow in Central Park either, it's because my little cold has turned into a whopping annoying cold with sandpaper throat and snot-factory nose and I really can't see being able to breathe. Instead we're going to see The Last Samurai Reel Moms at Loews. And then still going to Peter Luger's for a late lunch. Which is altogether a better plan I must say.

Also wimped out of the meeting this afternoon. It was postponed for my benefit but not at my request, due to the inclement weather we're having. Inclement is good because it allows me to take a couple of final pics of Central Park in the snow next week when the stuff falling out of the sky finally clears. It's right that New York is like this.

Daddy is currently feeding Jody pear. Pear is Jody's favourite food (closely followed by sweet potato as long as there aren't any bits in it, I discovered today). Jody's third favourite food is the spoon, so it takes a rather long time to coax it back out of her mouth in order to fill it up again. Which is fun to watch, hehe.

I am in list-writing mode. I must write lists of all our belongings to send to Rowan to see which she wants to have (and therefore which we need to sell or ship). I must write lists of the stuff we need to take back for Christmas in England and a month in New Zealand so that I'm not too disorganised when it comes to actually packing. I must write lists of people to send Christmas cards to (although it will be a miracle if any get sent this year). Luckily I went to the supermarket yesterday or I could preface it all with a shopping list. The list is the chief weapon of the procrastinator. Not that I'm procrastinating as such ... list-making is a necessary evil and, in my defence, I am an Information Architect.

Lovely couple of days with Charlotte. She made firm friends with Jody and took us out to dinner and was generally just great to catch up with. Hopefully this will happen more often when we return to Blighty.

Am fighting off one of the colds that have been in the house the last few days. Jody's is just about clearing up enough so that she's feeding and sleeping with no problem but still has a snotty nose. Charlotte seemed a lot better when she left, so it looks like now it's my turn. Just in time to make Saturday's 15k (which I am not wimping out of) a nightmare!

Roj is in Texas for a couple of days right now, luxuriating in slightly warmer weather I hope. It's around zero here in NYC, but with a bitter wind that reduces the temperatures several more degrees. With Jody still recovering (and even if she wasn't) I feel it demonstrates utter lack of parenting conscience to take her out round the park, much as I'd actually quite like to (having got used to the idea of running the marathon next April, and realising how little time that leaves me). I have high hopes of getting up in the mornings when Roj has his breakfast though. Of course it means early rising but also that I don't have to subject Jody to freezing weather, and it's only for a couple more weeks.

Big incentive to run Saturday's race is to build up an appetite for the meal we have booked at Peter Luger's afterwards with Yi Shun, Jim and Jody (the elder). Only the best steaks in town. Only the best steaks I've ever eaten, actually. Should be good fun even if my legs are aching.

Friday I have an afternoon meeting in Connecticut to which I am taking Jody, and I don't care what the client says about it. Annoyingly it's late enough in the afternoon that I probably won't be back in the flat before 6:30/7ish which is altogether too much like traditional work hours for my liking.

Nothing much planned for Sunday. Probably trying to reduce our shipping volume so that Ernst & Young will pay the full cost without balking (the quote currently comes to about twice the allocated sum).

Can't believe I'm already talking about plans for the weekend and it's only Wednesday. Sigh.

I have at last found something other than oatmeal which Jody doesn't screw her face up at (unlike carrot and apple). Sweet potato. The pear is on the boil right now so I'm hoping for success with that too, otherwise she's destined for sweet potato every day for weeks, poor mite. Actually stopped off at Whole Foods to pick up several types of organic veggie and fruit so there's quite an assortment for her over the coming days. I get more excited about cooking for her than for myself. Maybe I should feed myself mushy sweet potato for a while!

Gah. I knew it. I have a place in the London marathon. Gah gah gah.

Obviously it's been ages since I've written here. Partly because I've been away (wireless connection notwithstanding), and partly because I've had such a lot to do.

Happy Thanksgiving to all my Yank readership. We had a very pleasant one with Rowan's aunt Hilary and assorted cousins, auntys, dogs and cats. Jody was an angel throughout and had several offers of adoption. Declined of course. She's now eating apple, carrot and oatmeal and has experienced her first snow. Lake Placid was pretty shitty. Drove up Thursday night and explored the Olympic bobsleigh and skijump courses, but by Wednesday afternoon heavy rain had set in, reducing visibility to almost nothing. Which meant that our best course of action was to stick to the hideously twee gift shops populating the village. Hoping for clearer weather on Saturday we woke to thick snow and took Jody for a quite amusing short walk in her Kelty buggy, which we enjoyed thoroughly while hoping not to bump into anyone who would assume we were terrible parents. We spent the rest of the day watching terrible and quite amusing pay per view in the hotel room (terrible being American Wedding, quite amusing being Pirates of the Caribbean).

Sunday the forecast rightly predicted freezing rain so we left around 11 via the amazing cranberry muffin shop for the 6-hour drive back to Manhattan. Jody was pretty amazing throughout but contracted a quite hideous cold in the last 48 hours. Lots of gunky snot and terrible trouble breathing means she's a little tired and a little antsy. She's not the only one, but she definitely gets the most sympathy.

So back to Manhattan where it's unbelievably windy and I am looking forward to a visit from Charlotte of 260 fame. Also wondering whether I'll hear anything from my dismissive client, and still ruminating on a freelance name thanks to about a zillion suggestions from my parents.

And it's now less than 3 weeks til we leave America. Which is unbelievably sad and quite exciting at the same time. My to-do list, remarkably, is getting shorter but more boring as it focuses on the mundane tasks involved in leaving a nation. As for Christmas shopping .... aghhh.

Oh ... and what brilliant news that all the Cozai-ns have been adopted and moved to a new company. I am so chuffed for all involved that they do not have to undergo that hideous out-of-work thing for long. Sad to see Cozai die, but fantastic that the spirit lives on, as it were! Congratulations!