A week of firsts

A few notable events this week...

Dave's first day at work, first day as a consultant and first night on call.  Monday was a public holiday in NZ - they're a patriotic lot; it was to celebrate the Queen's birthday.  So come Tuesday, Dave was off to City Hospital for his first day as a shiny new consultant.  Didn't do much consulting as he has a two week induction period before he gets his hands on real patients, but he got to ride his new bike to work (and discovered that some of Auckland's hills are real killers).  Thursday was his first night on call.  Back in the bad old days of registrar life in Leeds, a good night on call went something like this: get lots of calls and referrals, make it home about 10pm, get lots of calls and referrals over night, and a bad one meant not getting home at all and having a couple of hours sleep on the office floor.  On Thursday, the phone rang once during the evening and one of the other consultants reckons she gets called in to the hospital maybe once a year.  So there do seem to be some advantages to this consultant lark then.

Reuben and Tilly's first day at nursery.  Wednesday morning, and Reuben and Tilly were off to their new daycare, Bear Park, for their first full day.  Some tears and trauma from Reuben and very few from Tilly, and I'd thought it would be the other way round.  It's very similar to their old nursery in many ways, although Tilly is now a 'Morepork' (some kind of owl apparently) rather than a Funky Monkey and Reuben is a 'Tui' (haven't sussed where that one fits in ornithologically, yet) instead of a Happy Hippo.  The best thing from Reuben's point of view is that the pre-school room has a work bench with real tools and he can spend as much time as he wants hammering real nails into chunks of wood or cutting wood into chunks with a real saw.  Can't see that happening in the UK!  The staffing ratios aren't as generous as in Leeds but all NZ nursery staff have a degree in early childhood education and if that sounds expensive, you're right!

First night in our new home.  While everyone else was out of the way, I spent Wednesday moving our currently meagre belongings into our new house.  Two car trips and it was done.  The children love the house as there are acres of floor space and they can race around unimpeded by boring things like furniture (an example of this available here).  The only things that came with the house are a massive flat screen TV and speakers that are fixed to a wall, and a rather nifty vacuum system that works with a suction canister in the garage and sockets in each room that you plug a hose into.  I don't know how many houses in NZ have one of these, but given that our hoover is currently heading down the Suez Canal, renting a house with one built was a bit of a bonus.
Thanks to friends of friends Martin and Leo, friends of friends of friends Mike and Karen, and my cousin twice removed and wife Hal and Annette, we have been provided with a stash of kitchen things, towels, sheets and even a fridge, kettle and microwave to tide us over until our shipping container arrives.

Reuben's first night in his new bed.  They don't really do Ebay in NZ, but they do have a site called Trade Me and we found a great cabin bed for Reuben on it, with a ladder to get up and a slide to get down.  Dave picked it up Thursday afternoon and it has been the cause for great excitement.  Discovered that Tilly really gets some speed up when sliding in a babygro!


First meal at our new table.  Eating off the floor for six weeks was never going to work, so we invested $NZ91 in another Trade Me bargain and got a table and 6 chairs.  From this:

to this:

So everything still going swimmingly - the holiday is over and we're getting down to the 'living' here bit; it still feels strange not really knowing where everything is in the house (and living out of cardboard boxes from the supermarket as cupboards and drawers), but overwhelmingly the experience is positive at the moment.  Perhaps when the 'awful' winter weather (we were only on the beach for one of two days this weekend) is over, we might get some visitors...?