Calvin Ajax Moeckel!

Whew. Neither of us got much sleep last night, Sam lying awake in the hospital and me kind of lying there in bed with startling images flashing before my eyes. This morning we were told that Sam would probably get a chance to hold Calvin for the first time in the afternoon, which was a pretty huge boost. The initial shock of seeing all the tubes and wires had worn off a little, but it was a pretty a helpless feeling only really being able to stick you hand in the incubator to touch him. Here are a few pictures of Team Moeckel the Next Generation from the afternoon.

First real mother-son contact:

A family self-portrait of exhaustion:


Mid-squawk, being put back in the incubator:


As you can see, he's got some filling out to do, and it's not really a whole lot of fun with the tubes and wires all over the place. It's going to be stressful going for the next while, but it was really great to see him resting with Sam for those few minutes. Hopefully, in the end, this episode will just make the first chapters of his biographies a little more interesting, and make his future world-dominating exploits all the more impressive.

For the next few months, our life is going to be pretty focused on Calvin. I think our plan is to use this blog as a place for people who are interested to check in and see how things are going. So, whenever you're curious, pop in and check it out.

At the moment: his first 24 hours went by pretty uneventfully. He's getting some help with his breathing (CPAP), has an IV, a feeding tube ready to go but not in use yet, is being given some antibiotics as a precaution, and is getting some blue-light phototherapy.

Adventures in crisps

We're sort if in a dead zone of tourism at the moment. A lot of castles and other attractions are closed until March, the highlands are full of snow and rain, and Sam's probably not up for a whole lot of hiking at this point anyway. Life around the house is exciting and fresh though- when I cook, I usually don my Scottish apron, strike a confident pose, and grab the whisky and a packet of crisps for nourishment.

If we were conversing, you'd probably say 'Hey, what kind of crisps are those?'

I'm glad you asked!
I saw these at the store yesterday and was stunned. It's a pretty ambitious idea, and it was impossible to resist purchasing some to see if they could pull if off. The answer: no. Sam said they smelled like someone had sprinkled fish food on regular crisps, and she has a heightened sense of smell right now so let's go with that description instead of 'dead sailor', which is what I first thought. The taste is extremely salty with a blast of vinegar up front, and then the fish flavor hits you. This is part of a contest to see what flavor (flavour) will make it into the lineup. I feel bad for whoever got put in charge of the fake fish flavoring division at Walkers. Fake fish flavoring is probably never a great direction to find your career heading, and I guess they did the best they could, but based on our initial testing I don't think there are going to be any promotions handed out based on this product.

Throughout this all, Sam continues to grow a human (free of synthetic fish additives), and still looking pretty good:

Change of plans

So, our long term plan has changed a little bit. We were all set to move to Cardiff in the fall, and after our visit there we were pretty excited- nice city, close to family, and the project I would have been working on sounded pretty good. Then everything got confusing when I got an offer we couldn't refuse, in a non-threatening way.

New plan: head to Cambridge for three years starting in October. Plenty of time for people to come visit us and prance around under a descendant of the tree that assaulted Newton.

Unrelated: I walk by these statues of penguins every day on the way to the bus. I think they're walking toward the Discovery hoping to get back home. I like that Dundee will take one of their oldest buildings (the church in the background), build a shopping mall around three sides of it, and decorate it with a whimsical statue of penguins.



This billboard I don't walk by every day, but I love it. Dundee College's advertising team are either geniuses or wildly out of touch. You could draw several accurate conclusions about Dundee from this sign, including their penchant for silly fonts. This is the sign that greets you when you enter the city:I think they take themselves more seriously in Cambridge, so that might be an adjustment.

Tentsmuir Forest & Our First Rugby Game

As you can tell, I'm getting worse at posting but I'm blaming that on the cold weather which keeps us indoors on the weekends. This last weekend we were able to get out and we headed over to the north-eastern coast of Fife to walk around in Tentsmuir Forest. Luckily it's a flat walk which is good since going uphill is starting to become a struggle for me. We spent most of the walk ambling up the coast and Nick got some great photos of the landscape. I like this photo he took of me, which gives you an idea of the coastal terrain.

There were a lot of happy dogs running along the coast here and apparently it's a popular sun-bathing spot in the summer. Since we're in the middle of winter, I can't imagine it ever being warm enough to wear shorts let alone a swimsuit! I guess we'll find out this summer.

On Sunday we attended our first rugby game. It was actually my second game ever (thanks to Uncle Ken and Kath who took me back in 2002) but Nick's first and it was Wales vs. Scotland. If Nick were writing this post, he would have said Scotland vs. Wales. We were a divided couple yesterday. Unfortunately for him, Wales whomped Scotland but it was still a really fun game to watch. The game was held in Edinburgh and we went with some friends of ours who live close to the city. However, we spent more time getting to and from the game than it took to actually watch the game! It was still a great experience and I hope that we will be able to experience a game at the Millenium Stadium in Cardiff in the next few years. Below is a picture of one of my favorite things about rugby: the side out. They propel one of the players up into the air, cheerleading style, in order to get the ball being thrown in from the side. This picture shows Scotland getting the ball.

More pictures of the weekend's adventures can be seen here.

I'll leave you with a picture of a wee highland coo (or "cow" in English). I haven't heard one moo yet but I'm sure they have a Scottish accent.

Caerdydd (that's Welsh for Cardiff)

The week of January 19th brought us to Cardiff, the capital city of Wales. Nick had a conference there and I went along to enjoy the sights. Cardiff is also going to be our future home since starting in the Fall, Nick will begin a 2 year research position at Cardiff University. So it was also a chance for me to get a feel for the city that we will soon call home!

The first day, I took a tour of the Millennium Stadium with my friend Zhao, who also tagged along with her husband to the conference. This stadium opened in 1999 and it's most famous use is for Welsh rugby games. One day we hope to go to a game with my uncle and cousin who have awesome seats for all of the home games. In the meantime, we got to see the players' dressing room (apparently they don't call it a locker room here), walk out to the pitch and glimpse what it would be like to have a VIP booth at the stadium. But actually, I would say there isn't a bad seat in the house because they designed it to not have any pillars blocking any views (wait to go structural analysis!).

We spent most of the next day touring the National Museum of Wales and boy, were we surprised to find really big names there! The Welsh art was beautiful too but we were thrilled to see Monet, Renoir, and Van Gogh, just to name a few. There were two Welsh sisters that collected all these masterpieces and then bequeathed them to the museum ~50 years ago. It was a really nice surprise!

On Wednesday, I spent the day on the Cardiff waterfront with my aunt and uncle who drove over from Swansea (~1 hour drive). Unfortunately, this was also the day that it rained the most. It started raining at 3 pm and didn't stop until sometime during the night. But we managed to have a nice day touring the Millennium Centre and the Senedd building (Welsh for Senate). The Millennium Centre is where you go for stage performances and we also got an in-depth tour of the building which was guided by the world's fastest talker. We also toured the Senedd and even sat in on some of the proceedings as the assembly members debated and scrutinized policies. It was actually pretty interesting and it was surprise to hear the members constantly switch between Welsh and English. We even had headphones so we could hear the translation. Even though we'll be living here, I can pretty much guarantee I will not be learning Welsh.

On my last full day there I was able to tour Cardiff Castle, which was also very impressive. If you ever go to Cardiff, the castle should definitely be on your list of things to see. I won't go into much detail but here is the Keep which is in the center of the castle grounds. Before you head up, it warns you there are lots of steep steps to get to the top. Luckily, Angus and I were up for it. The picture I took from the top shows the castle house on the right and you can see the white poles of the Millennium Stadium protruding around the castle towers. By the way, I apologize for not being able to take magnificent pictures like Nick! (it was also pretty dark outside, to be fair)

One last thing I want to mention is that I also took a peek inside one of the oldest buildings in Cardiff which is St. John's Church. It was really dark in there but I was able to get a picture of this: someone put together a model of the church only using matchsticks. This guy must have had a lot of patience!

Diagnosis: Dude

For those of you that I haven't been able to tell yet, we're expecting a baby in mid-May (May 17th is the official due date and also Norwegian Independence Day as Beth informs me). We had our second ultrasound today and found out that we're expecting a baby boy! I had thought it was going to be a girl so Nick has won the bet (2 Euros...we play high stakes here). We're very excited and are starting to think of names but will keep the name a surprise until he arrives. For now you can call him Angus.

We still don't know if he will be born in Scotland or England yet but we will post updates on our living situation as we find out more in the next few weeks. Either way, he'll be born in the UK!

Celebrating the Holidays: Welsh Style

Happy New Year everyone! We just returned from a wonderful visit with my Aunt Mary, Uncle Ken, and cousins Helen and Kathryn in Swansea, Wales. They were extremely kind to us and let us spend Christmas and the New Year with them and we really had a great time. This was Nick's first visit to this area of the country so now he can claim to be the first Moeckel in Wales. And I don't think he was disappointed.

First of all, we had gorgeous weather most of the time we were there. And it never rained during the 10 days we were there. That's right...NEVER! For anyone familiar with Wales, this is unheard of. Luckily we have proof of all the sunshine we had through all the photos that Nick and the Owenses took. I'm still not sure if my dad believes me (he grew up in Swansea).

Because of all the nice weather, we did a lot of hiking along the beautiful Gower coast. On our first hike, Nick was able to capture the dignified beauty of Welsh sheep with the photo shown above. The photo below was taken on the same hike.

Christmas with the Owenses was a treat and since I'm such a gracious guest, I complied with the rule of everyone eating at least one brussel sprout. Here is the proof.

We also had the pleasure of trying a Welsh delicacy: laverbread and cockles. Laverbread is basically boiled seaweed. Cockles are small clams. Don't they sound like they would be delicious together? It's usually served for breakfast with bacon (bacon usually makes everything taste better) but we had it as a starter before one of our meals last week. Here is Nick looking excited to sample the dish.

I think I'd rather eat brussel sprouts.

We've posted pictures here but I want to point out one of the highlights of the trip: hiking out to the end of the Worm's Head. The Worm's Head is an outcrop of rocks in Rhossili Bay that you can only hike out to during low tide. People have died when they were stranded on the rock after low tide and thinking they could swim back, have been swept away by the currents. Nothing like the fear of death (or spending the night outside in the middle of winter) to hurry you along the hike! Nick took this spectacular picture at the end of the Worm's Head looking back towards Rhossili. Click on the picture for a bigger version.