I don’t know how often I laugh out loud. I worry it’s not as much as I think. I am stingy like that. I am one of those anoying people who is more likely to say “that’s hilarious” with a stone cold serious facial expression, than to actually -laugh-.

But sometimes I have a right old giggle to myself.

The other day I was walking down a street in the ‘hood and saw this sign:

Oh lord, thank you for letting me live here and for my new vocabulary. Later on I said to our British childminder:

Melissa, what is hooting?

Hooting?

Hooting. Like involving cars.

Oh! Yeah hooting- you know, it’s when you pip the horn.

A couple of weekends ago we were just lazing around when all of a sudden we heard a protest right outside our building. So exciting! Bryan managed to somehow see out some hairline crack in the plastic sheeting wrapping our building and informed me it was a group of women, some with children. A protest involving women and children?? I.AM.THERE. I sprinted downstairs to check it out.

There is nothing like waking up to a boobs march outside your window.

My older brother, Josh, is one of two of the best uncles in the universe. No offense to all your brothers and uncles. When it snowed in the Northwest US last week, he set up Skype so Jonah could watch a real-time building of a snowman in Seattle. I laughed out loud. See, I am not so miserly after all.

Snow, please come to London.

Finally, this 100% made me laugh out loud: Parents: Don’t Put Any Goddamn Candy In The Goodie Bag. Thank you Carrie and Sarah for sending it to me- for being one of six blog readers and therefore knowing exactly what I would like.

The usual things happened. I’m not ready in time. My jeans are tailored way too short for wearing heels which means I am wearing terrible high waters and the babysitter is making fun of me for being stressed about it. Bryan’s annoyed I’m not ready. We walk out the door.

7:35pm

Arrive at MEATliquor. A potential oasis of cool in the midst of our very fabulous but totally not hip neighborhood. For four years we’ve been walking by this parking garage just a few blocks away. Previously known for (1) being ugly, (2) housing the strip club SophistiCats, and (3) having a boarded up restaurant at street level – Palmisano’s. Then out of nowhere we saw mad queuing outside. Then Bryan read this in Time Out magazine.

7:36pm

Bryan leaves the queue to go get beer. As I’ve mentioned, no drinking in public prohibitions in the UK. GOD BLESS THIS COUNTRY. He asks me what I want and I say, I don’t know, you know what I like. Something light?

7:37pm

I’m pretty bummed Bryan is gone because I am sandwiched in line between a hipster nerdy American/Canadian couple in front of me who are peppering their very animated but boring conversation with kisses – who does that?? who just keeps kissing every fifth word? – and two loud British girls who are doing that weird thing where when one person says something moderately funny/sarcastic in response to a topic of conversation and they laugh but then the other person repeats the funny phrase and then they laugh again. No fair, the repeater can’t get credit for being hilarious!

7:40pm

A man from the restaurant comes outside and yells something at the queue. He’s British, so by yelling I mean talking very maturely and articulately and calmly. He is saying that if anyone has friends come to meet them while they’re in line, the whole group has to move to the back of the queue. Even their website is serious about this rule.

7:50pm

Bryan returns with four cans of Kronenberg 1664 in a Tesco bag. If I was British I would have typed it Tescos. I love Kronenberg but on this night I declare that it tastes like French Budweiser. I feel sad that my taste buds have improved just that much so now I have to nix it off my short list.

7:58pm

Babysitter calls me to ask how she can access the latest Bachelor episode on our iTunes. I got her hooked on the show. I am like an American ambassador for culture.

8:03pm

We’re halfway there. Bryan is getting drunk on Kronenberg and yelling about things he doesn’t like.

8:26pm

So close.

I already like this place because they are officially open later than every other bar/restaurant in the entire United Kingdom. I then get homesick for New York. Even though I am not from there. Is there a word for that kind of homesick?

8:34pm

We’re in! This place is hella cool. Graffiti. Crazy shite. Mad people. Super dark. Some serious bartending and the #1 tipoff it is styled after a New York joint: the servers are nice!

The last rule says “No ballet pumps.” Marry me, MEATliquor.

We order burgers, chili cheese fries, deep-fried pickles and onion rings and I have key lime pie all to myself. You know how cool this place is? There are ten desserts on the menu but they tell me only one is available. BALLS.

No more French Budweiser for me.

Bryan is wasted off Baker’s bourbon.

10:29pm

We leave and since we are five minutes from home, I am feeling pretty proud that we are relieving the babysitter early. We need cash to pay her so we walk towards the closest cash point. We’re one foot away and Bryan says, I bet you it’s not working. I laugh as my heart simultaneously sinks. He is making a joke but we both know he will be right. In the UK there is an 85% probability the ATM you need is out of service. No one has yet been able to crack this mystery of why such an advanced nation can’t keep up with the 3rd grade level technology involved in running an ATM.

We see this and laugh/cry hysterically.

We’re drunk so we run to the next one.

Then this. And we laugh even harder.

Now we’re pretty far from home but in some kind of divine intervention, a British bank has one working machine. I can’t believe it either.

I see this on the way home and it rubs me the wrong way. Is it a pygmy dwarf on board or a baby or a child? Be specific!

10:50pm

We’ve been diverted but still make it home for 11. That’s the way you say it in England. Home for [time] not by [time]. Bryan passes out cold on the couch while I watch the original Jaws on tv. I am pretty sure I see a mouse. It’s all really romantic.

But since life is also magnificent, I will share happy news here.

Cristina and Bailey married two Saturdays ago in California. Cristina is a dear friend of mine from high school (and another dear friend, Tosha, officiated) and I thought very hard about moving heaven and earth to be there (with Simon in tow) for 48 hours. In the end, good sense prevailed, even though I was very sad to miss it. Lucky for us, Cristina and Bailey came to London for the start of their honeymoon!

The happy couple is two beautiful people and we had a nice night Wednesday at Oxo Tower (go for the views, not the food) hearing the good engagement and wedding stories. They were telling us about their different football loyalties. But I had no idea how seriously they take it. Awesome cake. Awesome peeps.

Snowdonia National Park is actually what we have come to expect from a national park: awesome (in the proper sense of the word). You can feel awe just driving through it. We had no idea that there is a strong mountain biking, hiking and kayaking community there but we knew we would see the largest mountain peak in England and Wales. I spend so much time in London, and view Great Britain as so small (!) that I have to admit I was pleasantly surprised being in the mountains there. I kept exclaiming: This is the Colorado of the UK! Who knew! An incredibly inapt comparison but whatever.

Our first true holiday with both kids and no additional help in the form of a relative or friend meant that we had to keep our daily goals modest. There were overtired tantrums and tears and both culminated in at least one gastropub experience which has most likely left indelible emotional scars on both Bryan and myself. But in all, I count the trip a total success. That’s the only way I can travel. Make it good. There’s always a way.

Bryan’s colleague and friend Sara grew up on a dairy farm in Treuddyn. While Sara was home for the holidays, her lovely family had us over for a delicious roast lunch (lamb from their farm!). Her brother Edward, who now runs the dairy farm operations with their father, gave Jonah a fantastic personal tour. We saw cows being milked, where the milk is stored, learned about the general operations and business considerations and Jonah got to sit on an actual tractor. He was elated. Sara and her husband Nick just got married on the property this past summer and it’s obvious why. The views are so breathtaking and  I always love experiences that make me say Wow! People actually live like this. It’s not just movies! Just a little sheltered I am.
      

A gorgeous village just inside Snowdonia is Betws-y-Coed and it’s considered a gateway to the park and destination for holidaymakers. It has ancient bridges, waterfalls and more shops specialising in outdoor wear and equipment than I have seen in a very long time (the Colorado of the UK!). It also has a model train museum and shop and a mini train for children to ride next to the actual train station.

We spent an afternoon in Llangollen (you have to hear Bryan say this word in its proper Welsh pronunciation. He spits at least twice), a beautiful town in North Wales on the River Dee. Its beauty is striking, its shops are charming and we managed to do more train-related activities. Jonah’s mind almost exploded. TRAINS! I started to get the feeling that Thomas the Train must have been invented there by its ubiquity. I don’t think it was but everything on Wikipedia is written in British and you know I don’t understand British.

Although we had a full monty children meltdown here, it’s been a long time since I have been so taken by a restaurant as The Corn Mill. It is a 700 year-old former mill, now well-known pub restaurant, understandably very popular on a ridiculous location and should I ever move to Llangollen, I will certainly be trying to hold an event there. Also, the wait staff didn’t spit on me when I asked for our food be wrapped up to go. See, you shouldn’t do that in Great Britain. But I use my accent as an apology/excuse and it seems to work out just fine.

The Red Dragon of Wales is the best flag symbol in the whole world, I have decided. Isn’t it something that some countries choose something heinously boring like two lines of a color as the whole entire flag concept (I’m looking at you, Poland) but then others pick a DRAGON? It made me wonder why more nations aren’t like bears and lions and cannons and stuff.

Another reason Wales has my heart.

On a short holiday which took on such a train-focused theme (model train sets, a ride on a steam engine train, a ride on a mini train, a train museum), I thought often about my dad. My whole life my dad has been passionate about certain things and I find his pure unadulterated love for them so magical. Whether it’s Civil War history or trains or battleships or 1950s era western/samurai movies or variety shows, to me a whole half of my father is a throwback. In the best sense of the word. I find him to be a man straddling two eras. His intellectual prowess and professional success (this or this is what happens on a normal day) and base humor lie squarely in the here and now. His wanderlust and daydreams and the things that tickle him (oh yes, he might even use that verb) are from another time. I know my brothers admire it as I do. They have even gleaned much more of it than I have. But I appreciate being a spectator to it. It makes sense that my dad only reluctantly bought a flat screen tv after searching high and low for a new tube version only to be told, I’m sorry, those aren’t even sold anymore. All the kids and kids-in-law recently bought my dad an iPad for his birthday and I would be lying if I said I wasn’t the least bit worried that more often than not my dad will be stomping around the house shouting things like “Michele, have you seen my glasses?? NUTS, I CAN’T FIND MY GLASSES!!!” and then once said glasses appear, he will still squint and yell NUTS every time the touch screen does something he is not expecting. You should see the man’s cell phone. I always expect it to start talking in a 1980s synthesized computerized voice and make weird robotic hand gestures. Yes, I just anthropomorphized my dad’s bo bo old cell phone which may or may not have electrical tape holding the back on.

So trains. My dad loves them. In one respect, he writes about them for a living. I know one day he will build a masterpiece of a model set with his grandchildren and we all look forward to that. For now, Happy belated 65th birthday, Dad. In your retirement, you should consider Lasik. NUTS!

I’m typing this on your six-month birthday – the last half hour of it to be exact. The flat is perfectly quiet because I am the only night owl who resides here. At night I usually completely waste my time. You would not believe how often I hit the refresh button on Google News Entertainment. It’s like I am convinced that in the last millisecond, a celebrity might have a juicy scandal surface and it would be terrible if I didn’t know until morning.

But on this night I am just pensive. I want to say so much about you being six months old and what you’re like and what it means to me, to all of us. But I really just don’t have a way with words. Oh, there are people who will beg to differ. Kindly people like some of our close family members and a couple of big-hearted fans. You will one day know the type: people who are always positive and supportive and who cheerlead as habit. But the reality is that I write the way I do most things: so-so. And I don’t mind this at all until these moments. These moments when I want so badly to say what I am thinking. I want to be able to type the explosions.

These days you are the closest human being in my whole life. It’s a statement about physicality but it necessarily morphs into emotion. I spend every day  with you, most waking moments of those days. To share too much information, I am still breastfeeding and not very good at storing it for later so you and I are pretty well joined. That coupled with the fact that you really like being right around another human means that we spend a lot of time in each other’s very teeny personal space solar systems. Every now and then I stop and remind myself to actually feel what it feels like to be living this. To have this utterly beautiful boy with brown soft-swept hair, heartachingly clear blue eyes smiling at me in that perfectly pure way that only a baby who is all gums can smile. My babies have been my life’s whole lesson on why smiles matter. Why nonprofits are created to give them to children who need them, why some parents of some autistic children mourn their absence. Your smile slays me. As I often say. It means you’re happy and dayenu, Simon. Dayenu. Dayenu dayenu dayenu.

You as six months feels like a turning point, as I knew it would. The day you were born I think I thought ahead to this. Babies live two baby lives. Before six months, and after. I told your Daddy today that this was true and then he needed more clarification as to whether I was insinuating you were toddler-like. Hardly. For starters, you’re still nothing but nice. No, it’s more that you’re a Big Boy Baby now, I said.

You’re eating solids. It always feels so silly to me to call purees solids. But I don’t make the rules. Oh wait, for your purposes I do. Anyway, I should have started you on solid food weeks and weeks and weeks ago. I was lazy because we had so much family visiting over the course of a month and starting solids takes concentration. There’s the healthy buying and the peeling and chopping and steaming and pureeing and storing and freezing and defrosting and checking and nutritional algorithms to consider. Also, it’s messy. I had to rummage around for bibs. Also, what if you didn’t like it? I didn’t want to be in the middle of the Baltics fighting with you over mushed peas.

Well, I was jolted into baby cuisine when a routine check-up before Christmas showed that you had not gained weight in many weeks. Your weight chart from birth was a perfectly consistent curve on the 91st percentile trajectory until all of a sudden you plateaued. I should have known but your mostly happy disposition and very chipmunky cheeks led me astray. So after tests proved everything else was just fine, the doctor looked at me squarely in the eyes and said something to the effect that I was starving you. Simon, I am a food pusher. To be accused of starving someone really hits below the belt. I went into action immediately.

Now just a few weeks later I am amazed at how much you eat. I feel like I am living with a teenager. Even after I have defrosted and fed you what feels like an absurd amount of food for someone who weighs 16 pounds and has a stomach the size of a grape or something, you grab around indiscriminately with wide searching eyes. And I, every single time, frantically seize the nearest blending device and create some kind of make-shift fourth course of your meal. Just tonight I asked your father to hold you at bay while I scrambled an egg and opened an avocado and honestly, it’s ridiculous. How hungry are you?

The additional food has meant you’re sleeping better. Well, not through the night. Because that would be crazy. I am a benevolent dictator and therefore I am giving you until a very generous seven months to still wake at night. That is the line in the sand of my brain. Your brother smartened up at seven months and you will too, if not before. I like to say there is no alternative.

Which is why you, overnight, have turned into a really great and reliable daytime napper. Simon, this feat will go on my headstone one day. Figuratively speaking. Because obviously I want to be cremated and have my ashes spread at several specific meaningful gps coordinates. It will be like a reverse scavenger hunt of ash-spreading. Something to look forward to. Honestly, it’s not right for me to take credit for the nap victory. All babies are different and have minds of their owns. No wait, that’s what people say when a baby does something undesirable. When babies fall in line we take all the credit. And so it is. You finally figured out that it feels good to sleep for several peaceful daytime hours in the solitudinous quiet of your own sweet bedroom. And I 100% am patting myself on the back.

You LOVE being on your tummy. I am still surprised every day by this. I try so hard not to compare your milestones with those of your brother’s but it’s inevitable, isn’t it? And holy shrieking, he did NOT like to be on his tummy. He even found a way to crawl that did not involve crawling. And then here you are every day in our newish flat, absolutely taking advantage of the wall-to-wall carpeting that we so reluctantly signed on for (who has wall-to-wall carpeting?! really!) by loving being on your tummy. You just grab for toys and roll over and look around and drool and repeat.

You blow bubbles into liquid. You coo. Every now and then your hair looks like a crazy Donald Trump toupee. You still go serene when stretched out in the bath. You stare at your brother with total and utter admiration and devotion. You cry harder when you’re tired and you see me but I don’t take it personally. You  were wearing the wrong sized diapers for months apparently (oops). You have that hilarious uncontrollable baby giggle when one of us finally amuses you. Your skin is flawless. You like to lay in the orange bean bag chair Daddy took from work. You’re easygoing about me cutting your nails, the nails you inherited directly from what I assume to be 25 generations of people on your dad’s side who had flat nails. You definitely have an ugly cry and I can’t help it, it makes me laugh.

But by a mile my favorite new thing about you is what I call the Mad Grabber. I have never quite seen anything like it. Daddy agrees. It’s like you have Go-Go-Gadget arms every time we’re not looking. I might be holding you while pondering the contents of the fridge and all of a sudden you are lifting the soy sauce out of the side door. Today at brunch with friends you started brandishing a butter knife that I had definitely moved far, far away. You manage, mysteriously, to locate and seize objects that are nowhere near the vicinity of your wingspan. And your Mad Grabbing has only one purpose and one ultimate destination: your mouth.

Now I know that babies put things in their mouths, blah blah blah, that’s what babies do. No, I am telling you: not like this. You are consumed by it. Baby-inappropriate objects are the human blood of your insatiable Go-Go-Grabbing vampire. You cannot be parted from whatever it is. Daddy and I still go through the motions of reading to you before bed, for no other reason than to laugh. You rip the books out of our hands and gnaw on them like I haven’t just made you your third meal of the day involving no less than four distinct and variable courses using no less than 15 total ingredients. You chew on the laptop, on dinner plates, on placemats and menus and noses and socks and your own feet and the day’s mail. You could be working on a future magician’s act, or maybe you’re teething. I don’t know, Simon. But just keep going for yours.

You make me happy when skies are gray.

Mommy

So ChristmasEveChristmasChanukahBoxingDayWinterFestivusNewYearsEveLot was all just great. I mentioned once that I like quiet holidays and the universe (aka our own free-will and decision-making) delivered. They were as special and tolerable as this doctor (again, I am referring to myself) ordered. OMG, what’s wrong with me?

Hanukkah was very Hanukkah. Jonah got into it this year and totally dug the “norah” and all the presents mailed to him from his generous relatives. Now that I am living these things as a parent, I am starting to think Hanukkah is the better gift holiday. If you spread it over 8 days, at least each gift will be savored and marginally possibly actually appreciated for 24 hours. The other holiday is more of a sh*t show with kids. My sister-in-law reported that my 5 year-old nephew opened 20 gifts in 4 minutes or something. I can’t help but think of The Room where that kid was so appreciative of the five toys that he was allowed to have for five years. The moral: imprisoned children have good values!

For Christmas Eve we had a lovely lunch at a local gastropub. Then Christmas Day we spent at least 12 hours on Skype (this is a very good article explaining why video chat matters. It really does for us. Our parents and siblings could interact in real time with Jonah opening his gifts) and the other remaining hours enjoying the very last day we could tolerate Christmas music. Best of all, we made spaghetti and meatballs. Try doing that with a million relatives clamoring for Christmasy food. I am the new advocate of antisocial holidays. Scrjewge!

New Year’s Eve was a last-minute success. We arrived back from a trip to Wales that afternoon and contemplated whether we should try to do something. Then we laughed hysterically. You have to laugh hysterically after you have been in a car for four hours with a toddler and baby. Otherwise, you might consider something more nefarious. Anyway, we had a nice dinner and drink and when the famous super awesome radical London 2012 fireworks started off the top of the London Eye, we realized we had a perfect view from the bedroom window in the back. Take that, front of the building covered in plastic sheeting!

This picture reminds me I actually have another new year’s resolution (which I will break): learn how to use a manual camera.

2010 edition

2009 edition

2008 edition

Jonah and Simon’s Pop Pop and MiMi left yesterday, after a wonderful visit with us in London. In just under two weeks they managed a trip to Bruges, we all travelled to Tallinn and we fit in the zoo, Museum of London, a Charles Dickens exhibit, the Museum of Natural History, sports class, indoor jungle gym, shopping, Lego-building, cooking, Winter Wonderland in Hyde Park, Messiah at Royal Albert Hall, the park, the playground, gingerbread house-decorating, multiple baths and diaper changes and coat-zipping and shoe-velcroing and of course, Santacon.

Jonah and Simon were spoiled with love and holiday gifts. If there is a sight which warms the heart more than a 2 1/2 year old proudly strutting around with an Elmo backpack, I don’t know what it is. And don’t tell me if one exists either, you cold-hearted cynic.

Jonah keeps telling me Pop Pop and MiMi went up, up, up in the plane and are back with Ziggy the dog. I say just bring Ziggy next year and we can have the only children/retirees/DOG at Santacon.

And this is why you head to a city like 9 latitude degrees from the Arctic Circle: It’s so Christmas charming!

This past weekend our family travelled with my dad and step-mom to Tallinn, Estonia. It is known, among other things, for its annual Christmas market. I have actually been wanting to visit Tallinn for the entire four years we have lived in England (not sure why we waited until it adopted the euro). Years ago Prague whetted my appetite for good post-Communist tourist destinations and I am also drawn to visit places that fascinate the latent ethno-political cartographer in me.

Estonia borders Russia (take that, Sarah Palin!) and is directly across a gulf from Finland. I have always been curious to see this nation physically connected to the Baltics, but which instead leans towards a Nordic sensibility due to close physical/cultural proximity to Scandinavia. I can’t help but be intrigued by dualities of this kind. (For reals.) A very excellent coincidence is that my father used to travel to Estonia professionally before the fall of Communism to help counsel on privatization of certain industries. Yawn. I went for the beer and wooden Christmas ornaments. Jk, dad! I love privatization!

The most important thing about Estonia though, is of course its history. A recent history of occupation, in fact. Most recently by Communist Russia. USSR sounds so retro now, doesn’t it?

Also, Skype was created in Estonia. WAY TO GO, ESTONIA. I LOVE SKYPE!

It was a wonderful weekend and the boys travelled pretty well, considering the flight lengths and budget airline and time differences and 4 of us in one hotel room and limited sunlight and freezing cold and wet snow and being made to hang out in beer halls. Tallinn did not disappoint. We spent all our time in Tallinn’s Old Town, which is included in the list of UNESCO World Heritage Sites.

“Tallinn is an outstanding and exceptionally complete and well-preserved example of a medieval northern European trading city.”

I just call it One of Those Places That Looks Like a Movie Set. Same diff.

Museum of Occupation

Bryan wanted me to take this shot and I said I only would if I could include ‘spaghetti’.

a lesson on beer

Also, can we just give a shout out to nations with the confidence and pride to have pink government buildings? Estonia is right up there with every country in the Caribbean.

We’re over a week past your five month mark and so far you’re handling this big new age with aplomb.

You can roll over. Apparently. Several people have told me you do it, at least. So that would be cool if you ever want to demonstrate it in person to the person who gestated you for ten months and also gained weight and had sciatica and open abdominal surgery. But if not, that’s cool too. Stealth rolling works as well.

Simon, you’re awesome. You are the epitome of why people love babies: sweet-smelling, cuddly, eye-gazing, tiny little fingers grabbing, perfect soft skin snuggled beacon of sheer euphoric happiness.

When you are not shrieking at me out of hunger or fatigue and waking me up at night.

Our baby monitor has a mute button but it’s such a small flat, you know?

I love you. I do. Your smile slays me.

And blue has always been my favorite color.

Love, Mommy