The snows continue

by Peter
(Bucharest)

Car in the snow.

Last night Doina was with us, but I decided it was time I pulled a little more of my weight at night, and so volunteered for the night shift.

Irina and I slept like cats, the difference being that Irina awoke at every noise, while I was more like a cat after a major traffic accident, and so hardly stirred. I know it was tiring, but I also know that I am now sleeping a lot better - but I am not sure if this is because I am simply really tired or the baby is getting better.

Today we had several pieces of great news. First off, the Swiss embassy told me that little Victor could have 3 nationalities (followed by the British), taking into account Irina's Romanian and my dual nationalities... which of course made me wonder, if in the future little Victor decided to marry another dual national of a completely different set of countries, his children would be able to have 5 nationalities... and so on and so on... I guess we are all of one or two nationalities as when it comes to the heart, it is traditional to marry from your own culture... even Romanians living in Canada seem to end up marrying other Romanians... but in the future, as populations move around more, I guess there will be more nationalities in each person's heritage.

As Irina has been married to me for over 6 years (how time flies when you are having fun!), she is now eligible to apply for Swiss citizenship - so another load of hoops will need to be jumped, but I am sure we will also get there in time! We think it is great to collect nationalities - even if we are not quite sure what we can use them for.

I also managed to find a very old copy of my website, which is great as it was while the website was making substantial money - I lost it when the sever went down and was without an obvious backup! So I will work over the holidays to make it better again.

Victor has been great today. He woke up and has not wanted to sleep much at all. We ended up in a chair together, and after about an hour and a half of just staring past my shoulder (as only a baby can), he went to sleep on the condition I did not move from the chair. So we listened to various rock music tracks as I couldn't change the radio station (I had tuned in to listen to Thomas the tank engine!).

Today Nae and me continued through Victor's paperwork, and are getting there. We forgot his birth certificate on the first trip and so had to go twice. The odd thing about Romanian offices is the singular lack of computers. The lady had a book full of numbers and so handwrote down the next number on the birth certificate, and then handwrote the name of the birth certificate next to the number in her book - she had to repeat this quite a few times with each of the forms we had filled in - I can imagine it would be a major problem if I ever needed something checked and was not certain of the date of my last visit.

Good news - another gift arrived today - so thank you Aunty Gabriel and Uncle Robin - the hat was wonderfully warm - but a little big, so Irina is going to do some clever sewing to make it a perfect fit.

I still have a list of things needing to be done - such as putting the washing out - though it is predicted we will get -21C outside tonight, so I am not quite sure if they will do anything other than be rigid boards in the morning.