I love planning Bryan’s birthday because it’s in August and we can always do something fun and outdoors. I have no doubt our friends think we are crazy to keep celebrating birthdays but I do not plan on stopping. If you sass me, I’ll just take you off the guest list.
So this year we had it a bit belated because this past weekend was the one where people were in town (no small feat in August in EUROPE). I decided to also combine it with his Wet the Baby’s Head- I think it’s some kind of English tradition where you take a man out drinking after he’s had a baby. Wonder how women got shafted on that one?
Saturday we went lawn bowling in Hyde Park and scored the most beautiful day. Lawn bowling is from the bocce/petanque boules sport family but with an English imprint- mainly in the form of balls that don’t roll straight and the grass. The English and their grass. We followed it with an American bbq dinner out. Because, well, we’re American.
It was our first time leaving Jonah with non-related babysitters and it worked out beautifully. Our friends Ricky and Jemma came over and we already knew from experience they would love on Jonah.
At one point Ricky texted us: “your son has his hand down my girlfriend’s shirt” and we knew all was right in the world.
Which left us to rush to the concert at The Troxy in East London. The Troxy. Cool venue name. Not lame like Roxy, but Troxy. Me likes.
I also like:
McDonald’s. You systematically rape the rain forests but for people in a rush, a three chicken Selects meal on the tube could be worse.
Three Beck’s beers: It has been a year since I drank 3 beers in a row. I actually can’t believe how delicious it was.
Jeff Tweedy: It was your birthday and you did a great show and you were nice and fun to the crowd. You made me laugh when you said you were turning 29. It’s the kind of joke that is always funny.
My son: who got two shots/jabs earlier in the day and we probably picked the wrong night to go out but you were a champ and only felt your babysitter up once.
Texting: wish I knew who invented. Peace of mind for parents.
My spouse: It reminded me of all the concerts we have been to together and how happy live music makes you and I like to be there to see it.
Wilco: What does it say about your audience that you sell baby onesies at the merch table? Or me that I just said merch?
Oh yeah, this blog. Well my day started off all wrong. It was my first foray into grocery delivery in this country and at 8am the buzzer rang and I was informed the eggs broke. So of course, my natural reaction was to temporarily despise all English people. HAVE YOU HEARD OF FOAM? I am just saying… I got groceries delivered 600 times in Brooklyn and the eggs were always intact. Yes, 600. I counted. I am agitated about the eggs because I decided to make cupcakes for Bryan’s belated birthday/Wet the Head tomorrow. But anyway.
Sooo… we scrapped the baking and visited Bryan at his office. Fingers crossed Jonah did not acquire swine flu there. Fingers… fingers… here’s what’s weird. I was just changing Jonah for the fourth time today (sigh) and he was mildly apoplectic and would not jut his arms completely out of the long-sleeve shirt. For a moment we both were at an impasse and with his arms and hands bound up in the confines of a little shirt he appeared to me as one of those lobster people. I had not thought of them in over a decade since I first read an article about them. But to brighten your Friday, here ya go.
Okay, a plug now. Listen up because I take my plugging seriously. Jeremy is running the New York Marathon to raise money for juvenile diabetes. {Side note: Out of laziness a lot of us just say “raising money for cancer/AIDS/diabetes”. It’s funny if you think about it from a grammatical sense. Not that AIDS is funny.} Now many people embark on these charitable endeavors and Bryan and I find ourselves donating on behalf of quite a few friends each year. BUT today seems like a good day to encourage you to donate for Jeremy too. Here. I don’t know why, maybe it’s the blue sky. It has me all in a tizzy. Maybe you’re thinking:
(A) I already did.
(B) No, because I hate Jeremy.
(C) No, because I don’t know Jeremy.
And I say:
(A) Good on you.
(B) Impossible.
(C) But that’s the fun part. Like back in the day when someone would pay the toll booth operator extra for the strangers driving behind them. A time before EZ Pass.
And because I love you, I am sharing this hilariousness that’s been going around. Thanks Betsy!
P.S. Josh offered to buy Jonah a travel swing so I just Googled “travel swing”… it turns out there are very nice vacation packages for couples that swing. I just think Jonah might be a bit young.
I really thought the longer I allowed my Karate Kid post to fester on your computer screens, the more of you might comment. But no.
So today is a new day. A beautiful day in London. I don’t know what is going on with this weather except that the supreme being of the universe is pleased with England’s capital these days and wants to reward us for good behavior.
Speaking of weather (good segue, Yael!), Seattle had a record-breaking spate of no rain this summer, with some days getting beyond 100 degrees F. So don’t think you know Seattle, suckas. My brother Josh, who lives there, keeps me entertained with the goings-on of his grounds, whether it’s the fruits of his trees and gardens or the activities of wily menaces, such as raccoons (Pause: saying “such as” makes me think of that Miss South Carolina beauty pageant contestant… “such as The Iraq”). Here is the latest, and look, you saw it here first. This should be the real squirrel video going viral.
Now back to London. GOOD SEGUE.
This past Saturday Bryan and I took friends out to eat at The Palm, newly opened in Fitzrovia. Halfway through the meal I was standing up, rocking Jonah, when all of the sudden a man at the table next to us turned to me and veryexcitedly said, “I couldn’t help but overhear you and we are American too!” Now, he was so sweet or I would have punched him for his assininity. You can’t exclaim utter surprising disbelief at running into another American in a city with 5 gazillion Americans and all the while eating at an AMERICAN restaurant. He obviously doesn’t live in my neighborhood where you are more likely to fall off your seat if you heard a British accent. But he was so nice and seemed genuinely delighted that he ran into another of his and his partner’s species.
It did get me thinking, though. I don’t actually know how many Americans live in London. So I decided to do a little research. I like to call it “googling”. Don’t wear it out, kay? All I could find is that there are approximately 200,000 Americans living in the UK. But that didn’t help with my quest to crack the London numbers. Blimey.
Ok, Saturday night we had some friends over for “game night” (never played a game though but we are branching out… one couple is CANADIAN. If you count Toronto as part of Canada).
I don’t remember how but a discussion ensued where I admitted that The Karate Kid movie creeps me out a bit because Daniel-san shows up at his school’s Halloween dance dressed as a shower, curtain and all. I just felt that not only was it not plausible, but the costume itself made me nervous. Bryan was adamant that the costume made sense because Daniel was trying to “hide” from Johnny and his gang of Cobra Kai skeletons (by the way, the skeletons did not scare me nearly as much as the shower) and what better way to do it than hide behind a curtain.
Really? No. First of all, if you are trying to go incognito on Halloween, wouldn’t you just wear some generic monster mask and blend right in? But a HUMONGOUS, RED, POLKA-DOTTED SHOWER CURTAIN? If I was at that dance, and on the other side of the room, I would have been all, WHO IS BEHIND THAT CRAZY HUGE COSTUME? WHO? I NEED TO KNOW IMMEDIATELY. And I would have done this even from the other side of the room. You know what I’m saying? You are from the WRONG side of the tracks and what, you’re just going to sit down and create this elaborately huge and uncool costume in bright patterns so that nobody notices you? It’s crap.
Jonah turns two months today. We have our days and our little life that we live together. Nursing every few hours, usually after piercing hunger screams from the little man. Sleeping in his Moses basket at night, at the foot of the bed. Easy to reach for all the times I have to put the pacifier back in. Wrapped up in his Miracle Blanket that is the perfect color to mimic him as a burrito. He sits in his bouncy seat and looks around the room. And he knows he can bait me with smiles at the most surprising times. We dance around the room when he cries. We quickly reminded ourselves of: Itsy Bitsy Spider, I’m a Little Teapot, Row Row Row Your Boat, Hush Little Baby, Rock a Bye Baby, Freres Jacques, London Bridge is Falling Down, show tunes, Little Mermaid songs and our song together- Close to You by The Carpenters. Bryan and I read books and sometimes Jonah is very chatty. We wipe drool, change diapers, discuss Jonah’s poop and spit-up and when we leave him, we talk about how beautiful he is and we can’t believe he’s ours. When he is nursing, I stare at the S the inside of his ear makes. And that nose. That nose. The conversation piece. Pug, button, upturned, ski jump… best. nose. ever. I could subsist on eating his nose. I examine his skin in long, lazy moments of changing him or rubbing lotion on. Not an imperfection. Isn’t it something that way we all start out so pristine. The bottom of his feet are silky smooth, his hands often clenched in a minuscule fist. Teeny fingernails to cut. Teeny fingernails to stare at. A particular swirl pattern of hair on his head, that I brush after a bath. We sing the swimming song in the bath, the way my mom sang it to me. The way Jonah’s cousins’ mom sings to her boys. We start bedtime routines and traditions- Nascent little traditions that will one day seem so, well, traditional. He is starting to get so curious. My breath has not been the same since he came on 13 June. Does he know how secretly breathless he leaves me? How unconditionally I love him. How little I expect in return. How much more I love his father than I even knew I could. I inhale Jonah’s sweet, delicious baby breath and my mind has no ability to articulate or comprehend our luck. The divine fortune.
