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Hamburg
A few years ago my husband’s father sent him a YouTube video that featured the largest model train exhibit in the world. The exhibit is called “Miniatur Wunderland” and it’s in Hamburg, Germany.
My husband watched the video, showed me, and then said “Wow, that’s amazing. I’d really like to go there someday with dad.”
After we moved to London, going to Miniatur Wunderland was now much more possible than ever before – and we added it to the do-to list.
Rich’s dad, Greg, has spent lots of time here with us… probably more than anyone else. He came along and helped us with our initial move over. Stayed for three months. Then came back when we had to change houses and stayed for a few weeks again.
And he is just the BIGGEST help to us.
But we were just too overwhelmed and overloaded to go to Miniatur Wunderland during those times. When it was arranged that Rich’s parents were coming this year for the kids’ half-term break, it became apparent that this was the time to make it happen.
And there was absolutely no argument or negotiation.
Rich just matter-of-factly said “This is happening, now.”
So… off we went to work it out.
In order to book affordable flights, we booked with the budget airline that flies out at the airport over an hour’s drive away. And in order to make the most of our time – and hopefully visit Miniatur Wunderland on the same day that we fly – we booked the early morning flight out. This meant we needed to leave the house at 4:30AM.
We don’t normally do such a thing. But for this particular time/day/destination flying out of Stansted Airport costed £56/person. Flying out of Heathrow or Gatwick costed £136/person. We’ve got 6 people to fly.
£56 x 6 = £336
£136 x 6 = £816
Even after we pay for very expensive cab service to the airport – right around £140 per car per way, we still come out way ahead. Plus, it’s sooo LUX for us. Not to be schlepping all our bags and all our kids around the sidewalk and up and down the stairs and the stations and on and off the trains to the airport.
Ahhh, there’s something to it. Not usually our best or cheapest option.
But this time is was and it was so so sweet.
Kids rolled out of bed, we made it to airport, through security and right on to our plane smoothly and in good spirits and really excited.
As soon as we get seated the captain comes on and announces that “Because of the lighting storms through the night, yada yada….. something about the fuel….. and we don’t have fuel for the plane. Apologize. So we’re on a little bit of a delay.”
And I was like, ok that’s fine. Expected, really. The kids are good, everyone is fed, we can use the plane bathroom. We’re good.
And we sat inside that plane on the runway for THREE MORE HOURS.
No joke.
I understand that there are storms and delays and things get backed up and it’s impossible to recover. But I’m still not sure, why, in this situation they went ahead and boarded us. The only explanation is that they underestimated our wait. It could have been miserable, but all things considered, it really wasn’t that bad. In fact, I was impressed with my children. Plus it was good practice. Since our move over, we’ve never taken them on a flight over 2 hours. Like I said – they were all freshly fed, watered, with access to a potty and full charges on the ipads and lots of fresh stickers.
Remove any of those factors and it could’ve gotten really ugly.
But still, it’s nice to know they can handle it.
This flight itself to Hamburg is only a little over an hour. So once we finally did take off it seemed like we were instantly back down and ready to land.
We took public transit to our hotel, and in the process we definitely got a little turned around. But we made it in a fair amount of time.
Our hotel was beautiful – just a Holiday Inn Express, but seriously immaculate.
We were able to rest a little bit. Viv fell asleep.We had been up since 4AM, after all.
Rich was able to move back our Miniatur Wunderland tickets, and we even had time to grab a meal at a nearby McDonald’s. Our favorite! So, even though that huge delay put a real damper on our day, I think we still salvaged it.
We took a quick cab from McDonalds to Miniatur Wunderland to save time and hassle. From there we just breezed right on in.
Before we booked this, I have to be honest, I was very lukewarm. Like, I know that it was a big deal for Rich and I really knew the kids would like it. But, since it’s not my thing really… “I’ll be impressed if I’m impressed” was all I could think.
I mean, for a train novice like me, how awesome can model trains be?
First off, it’s huge. I knew it would be huge. In some of these pictures you can sort of tell how big it is. Behind us (in the pictures below) you can see back through the open space. And this is one floor, out of two.
And for me it was something that you have to observe, and let it soak in for a little bit to really appreciate. Something about the scale of it that is impressive. The little tiny trains and the little tiny people, in the big giant space. Going on and on creating a real miniature world. With INCREDIBLE detail and fun surprises. So many thoughtful and clever details.
Moutains, cities, bridges, train depots, airports, bays, rivers, deserts, snow-land, an amazing volcano!, on and on…
Mini models of Hamburg, Las Vegas, Venice, Rome…
In every section, it would turn from day to night, and you could appreciate the scene in a whole new way.
The big scenes were impressive, but it was the little details that got me.
Like a little pet daycare I found.
And an underground lair to plan “World Domination”
The blue crystal Elfin Hollow
To the outdoor evening market.
And this poster of glue categories that I feel like could only exist in Germany.
I also really appreciated, that between each section they let us get a peek at the inner workings. We also had full access to see the control center where they monitor the trains and all the cameras on all the tracks. And for some reason, I don’t have a picture of that. But it was cool.
Speaking of cameras… and tracks…. we had a little incident while we were there.
Because of course we did.
When we went to McDonalds, we got little Happy Meal toys. The current toy in Hamburg Germany is a small National Geographic stuffed animal. Which by the way could not be more perfect for us at this time. It’s like the lord himself made McDonalds have these perfectly suited toys for my children while I was on this trip.
That’s how it feels.
Normally, my kids don’t really like the happy meal toys. But not these toys. They love these. Especially Finn – who EVERYONE knows is our animal lover. I’m talking BIG TIME animal lover. He knows all the facts and all the science. He loves every single moose and otter and ant. And he’s very sensitive about the killing of them.
He cries and cries forever. With real feelings.
Like, as in, we can’t even swat at flies in his presence anymore and we have to pray over the bee that I had to kill in his room and we have to catch and release any spiders we find in the house instead of giving them a good old squish. It’s gotten pretty serious and we’ve just – all of us – walked around him on this one, because what else are we going to do? Have him bawl-a-fit every time we swat a fly? Not really. Even little Theo knows, it’s best just to take the go-around, and not stomp on the bugs outside.
So, back to train world. Finn had gotten a very special manta ray at McDonalds in his happy meal. He wanted to carry it around train world.
I advised otherwise.
He countered.
And in most of the pictures above, he is holding his little manta ray.
Three quarters of the way through the visit, Finn and I were perched up on a little balcony taking in the beautiful view of down below, when wouldn’t you know it – he drops his manta ray INTO THE EXHIBIT.
And not just INTO THE EXHIBIT, but right smack onto a train track.
I mean, right on it.
He shakes my arm “Mom, I dropped my ray.”
Me “What?”Him “Mom I dropped my ray in the train.” and begins to panic.
I finally realize what he’s saying, scan the exhibit and find his ray. It’s on the track.
Oh man….
Maybe it’s just a decoy track or something.
Nope.
Here comes a train.
Oh man… this is gonna be bad. There no way I can fish it out. There’s nothing I – or anyone – can do.
Train comes, hits the manta ray.
Stops cold.
Shit.
So now we’ve got double bad. First bad because he lost his manta ray.
And second bad because he’s now caused a train-murder of his manta ray.
And bonus triple bad – because now I’m afraid that we’ve somehow stopped the whole exhibit and some train worker is going to have to crawl in there and get his manta ray off the track.
And it’s going to be really embarrassing, and we don’t speak German, and I don’t know… are they going to yell and kick us out?
I mean, I’m sure he’s not the only person to drop something into the exhibit. Right??
RIGHT???
They have millions of visitors per year.
Pretty sure he can’t be the first or only one.
And that I’m not the first distracted mom…. right?
Finn starts wailing. We wait for a little bit for someone to come along. But no one ever does. I usher him away from the scene. Half trying to comfort him, half afraid that we’re going to get a serious scolding.
I take him over to the “airport” and he recovers remarkably fast all things considered. And when we walked back by the scene of the crime, the manta was still in the exhibit, just to the side of the track. The train had somehow finally pushed it’s way through.
And Finn was sad, but realized there wasn’t much to be done. He didn’t want to push – same as me – for fear of getting in trouble with the workers, I think.
So he let it go and moved on with a promise that Grandma would let him pick something out in the gift shop.
Which he did.
Overall, I have to admit, I was impressed.
It’s the number five tourist attraction in Germany for a reason.
The Germans love their trains, and that’s apparent here. I think anyone who visits could be, at least, a little bit enthused.
Hundreds of thousands of hours of work and love. Millions of dollars.
A work of art.
Even someone like me can appreciate it.
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Afterwards there were no cabs waiting outside, and we struggled to find a cab option – it was a very quiet part of town on a Sunday evening.
The walk back to the hotel seemed simple enough – about 20 minutes, and it seemed our best option to get back. Even though we were all seriously exhausted, the directions were fairly simple, the weather was beautiful and we made it back safe and sound.
And here is Finn, happy, with his gift shop find – a new animal to carry around.
The kids ate some snacks, in lieu of solid dinner, and cashed out fairly soon.
And we all slept.
We leisurely woke up and ate our lovely continental breakfast; then checked out shortly after. Thank goodness we had the good sense to book an afternoon flight instead of morning.
A walk and a train back to the airport. We’re heading to Prague today!
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Where we stayed:
Miniatur Wunderland:
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Disneyland and Paris
Hello!
We took our kids to Paris… again.
As in Paris, in the country of France.
And again, I’m like…. how is this my life???
We’re from a cornfield in Illinois.
We live in London.
And we are going to Disneyland Paris.
That’s life and it’s strange.
We decided to book this trip only a few weeks before we actually went. Because that’s how we roll almost alll of the time. Little ads kept popping up on my Facebook feed asking if I wanted to go to Disneyland. (because facebook knows everything about my life… and yours, and probably intercepted email from me ordering mermaid stickers for Viv and that means I’m interested in Disneyland. Which I am.)
ANYWAY… I was like “No!” I don’t want to do that.
I’ve got too much else to see and do over here.
And then, like it always does, a little “deal” popped up.
Ticket sale for Disneyland Paris.
Add to that, *Her Royal Highness* Princess Vivian, despite literally no encouragement from me or her THREE older brothers, is slightly obsessed with anything princess related. Let me clarify – I don’t negatively encourage it, I’m just neutral like Switzerland.
Her brothers obviously negatively encourage it though – one day, the boys turned their bunk into a pirate ship. Viv walks up in her full princess garb. She wants to play too. Harry says straight to her “Viv. You don’t want to be a princess. You want to be a pirate!!” On that rare occasion, she conceded the outfit.
But for the most part, she remains undeterred by them. We’ve already burned through one princess costume and now have purchased a replacement. She insists on wearing it daily, usually with a tiara and superhero cape. She calls herself Hero Princess, which I actually think is completely awesome. She’s a hero princess on the daily… eating… going to the store… picking up the boys from school… all that.
So… I knew she would like to see the princesses.
And I knew that I would like to see her see them. And I didn’t really care whether the boys liked it or not. There’s definitely a ranking system in our house. Tra la la…
I looked into how we’d get there. I didn’t previously realize how easy it is from London. Just pop on a train for a few hours. There’s a stop right at Disneyland! That sounds nice! We found a GREAT (fun, family, pirate-themed hotel). That also sounds nice.
Why not?
We don’t come from California or Florida where Disney is this accessible to us.
When will it ever be this close, inexpensive (relative term), and this easy?
Tickets purchased.
Ok, we’re just going to do this. We booked late March. I quickly whipped up a Pinterest board, watched some YouTubers go to Disneyland Paris, and starting thinking about packing. And a few weeks later, during Spring Break, we left for it.
One of my favorite parts of the trip actually happened before we even left.
We went ahead and told the boys that we’d booked train tickets for our family.
“To where?!?” they said.
“To Paris!” we said.
“What?!! YES!!!!” they said, and proceeded to jump and yell and dance around as they do when they are really happy.
We hadn’t even mentioned Disney yet and they were sooo excited.
Rich and I high-fived ourselves, like, ya we haven’t even told them the best part and they already want to go…. we are the best.
OK!
For a short trip, this is going to be a long post because I want to remember how this whole crazy thing went down.
Two days before leaving we get an email that our train to Disney has been cancelled due to trains strikes in France.
ahhhh what yasaythere? no train? no train for us??
The original booking was for a train to Lille, France. From there, you get off, and make a switch for the train to Disney.
We planned to do this. Then get off. Take the shuttle to our hotel, check in and unload our luggage and then go back to the Disneyland station and head back into Paris for the day. Disney is about an hour outside of Paris. The journey from our hotel to center of Paris should take about 1h20m each way.
With our train cancelled, Eurostar rescheduled us on a later train and now the best Eurostar could do was get us on a train to Paris. And well… that doesn’t really help us because we paid for and planned to arrive out at Disneyland.
But then I realize, Heeeeyyyy, we wanted to spend the day in Paris anyway! This might actually work out in our favor. We can take the train direct to Paris, tour around for a little bit, and then make our way out to our hotel in the evening. We will still have to pay separately to get ourselves out to our hotel. But hey, we were going to have to do that anyway because we were planning to come into the city and back out. So now, not only will we start out where we want to be, we’ve gained an extra 3 hours or so of time that was previously going to be in transit to city center from our hotel and back.
This strike is a big win for us!
Eurostar and the third party booking company we used drug us along all day however and we weren’t sure if we did – in fact – have seats on the train to Paris. They originally rescheduled us for a 10am train and then a noon train, and even though I was happy with our newly arranged plan – arriving even later, and then later again, was not cool.
8pm the night before we are supposed to leave – we still don’t have confirmation that we are on any train to Paris. Rich has been on and off the phone all day with different agents, but everything is a mess. We’re worried about our rescheduled tickets being all spread out and not together.
“Nobody can give me any answers,” he says, “I don’t want us to get all packed up, show up there in the morning and then NOT be able to get on one. I’m just going to go to St. Pancras (the international train station) right now and see if they can help us.”
So, he takes off, I stay home and pack for a trip I hope is going to happen. The thought of waking up and telling the kids we can’t go makes me want to vomit. I simultaneously look up car rental options and driving routes, and also miserable and expensive flight options. St. Pancras is across the city and about an hour away from our door. About 9pm, Rich texts me “We’re on the 8am train, seats together. I’ve got tickets in hand.”
No extra charges, just done. Sometimes, you just have to march yourself to the station at night and get someone to work it out. Job well done. Whew! I seriously thought we weren’t going to be leaving at any time tomorrow and now we’re on an even earlier train. We’ll have seats together and we’ll have most of the day in Paris!
But now… if we arrive in Paris… and we don’t check into our hotel, what will we do with all of these bags I’m currently packing…. ?? Carrying them around is NOT an option. Hum… a quick internet search provides me with “Stasher.” A website where you can arrange to have your luggage stashed at a locker or a hotel, for a small fee.
Is there one by Gare Du Nord? Yes there is. Yes! Fist pump.
I finish packing, because now not only are we leaving tomorrow for sure. We’re leaving even earlier than originally planned. We’ve got to be OUT THE DOOR by like 6:00am. Rich makes his way back home and then cleans up the wreck that was left in the kitchen because both of us were too consumed with trip plans to clean up after dinner.
We also decided to go ahead and book our Louvre tickets. This will save us time tomorrow. We won’t have to wait in the ticket line or find where to buy them off site. With our now confirmed early train – this is a no brainer.
Rich finalizes and prints our Stasher reservation, reserves our Louvre time and prints tickets and then I ask him to also print the Disney tickets.
It’s now midnight, I’m down to just the last few items I need to pack and Rich says “Hey hon… uh… looks like I booked the wrong sort of Disney ticket.”
You know that deal I talked about? We saw the deal, but the deal just inspired the trip. We knew we would have to go during spring break and the deal tickets were over before that. We knew the deal expired before we were going, we knew we were paying for regular tickets. But for some reason, the website let Rich book “deal” tickets even when he put in dates that were after the deal. And.. he hadn’t previously checked the confirmation email closely enough to realize this small fact.
Bottom line, our Disney tickets were expired.
Rich is confused and devastated. But, it appears to be a simple mistake. Anybody could have made it. I have faith it will get fixed once we’re there.
“We’ve dealt with enough today,” I say. “We need to get to bed… try to sleep. I’m sure we can work out the Disney tickets once we’re there. Maybe they can just credit us what we already paid or something. It’s Disney, they’ll fix it. If we learned anything today, it’s that if we go to the place – there’s a chance they can just fix it for us.”
Did I mention, too, that the weather forecasts calls for rain every day of this trip?
Well it does.
But by now, I know how to dress for spring time in Europe and I’m prepared with layers and rain coats, warm shoes, umbrellas, microfiber towels, and ponchos that double as tarps and picnic blankets. Rain sucks. But at least I’m ready and prepared. And hey, maybe it will keep the crowds away, and that’s always a good thing.
The next morning, we’re all up on time, fed, excited and in good spirits for our day ahead.
And I have to admit I’m more than anxious about how Vivian’s going to do. We’re asking a lot of her today – she’s only two after all. A train ride, a full day out, and probably a skipped nap. She’s still not comfortable with her potty situation when we’re out and about. The hand dryers in the public restrooms really set her off. Anybody else with that?? As usual, we just hope for the best and plan for the worst. I curb my anxiety by putting her in a pull up and bringing along our fold-up potty seat.
Early Uber to St. Pancras and here we are boarding our train. I would like to note how hard it is to move around with kids AND bags. It’s really hard and completely exhausting. It’s been a while since we did this and I honestly forgot how exhausting it is. The last time we did this we had an AuPair with us, and that made a big difference. And I pack LIGHT. As light as humanly possible… but as we were arriving to the train, I was already making notes on how to try to improve this situation the next time.
Regardless, we made it with no problems, happy to have a train to get on.
Happy face times a million.
We train.
We arrive.
We locate our “Stasher” hotel across the street from Gare Du Nord and stow our luggage.
Winning!
And now, kids are hungry, of course.
I mean, I brought snacks. They ate snacks.
But we were up early and they are hungry NOW. Full force. RIGHT NOW. So, we stop into McD’s grab some lunch. I know…. lame. But you make sacrifices when you travel with kids. And Paris is not the place to be sticking to any sort of opposing ideals on this.
Kid friendly, this city is not.
Nuggets and Hamburgers. A surprisingly delicious wrap for me. And we’re off with happy kids ready to take on the Louvre. And hey, I like exploring McD’s in other countries. It’s fun to see the differences and to see how they make changes to adjust to the differences in culture. Anyway…
We use the Metro to get to the Louvre and then we have a few blessed minutes to hang out in the beautiful park in front of the Louvre. Rich takes the boys to grab some pastries while me and Viv chill in the grass with my poncho-turned-picnic-blanket.
And you know what? It’s not even raining a little bit. In fact, it’s hot! And even though I’m packed for rain I’ve got sunglasses for everyone and it’s wonderful.
And Finn with a Dab.
I really wanted a picture of all of us outside the Louvre that wasn’t a selfie. I scanned the area and used my nice-person radar to locate the perfect little Swiss lady. She took our picture and practically made a show of it. Taking her time, trying really hard to get all of the kids to look at her and be agreeable. She gets a gold star, and afterwards we chatted for a bit.
Let’s all be more like her.
Our entry time arrived and we headed towards the main entrance, which is in that glass pyramid. I had read about the nightmare that is the Louvre ticket and security line. That was our primary reason for buying our tickets in advance. But we just waltzed right up to the door with exactly no one in front of us. NO one. Pretty sure it’s the most visited museum in the world… something like that. Definitely the largest, I think.
So, this was bizarre… I don’t know if it was the beautiful weather, or the (late-ish) time of day – 3pm – but there was no line.
Win!
While we were walking up to the entrance, I’m soaking in the 80 degree sun, and I casually think to myself “I bet it’s hot in that glass part.”
And I was wrong. It was SUPER hot is that glass part. The second we entered the door, it was like hitting a wall of lava. I’m not over-exaggerating. Similar to when you walk from your air-conditioned hotel out into August of central Florida.
Just all over hot insta-sweat.
And my first thought was “I need to get out of my clothes.”
I stared at the security guys in their full on jackets with pity. All they had was a little fan. Like, I’m sorry Louvre pyramid designers… did that not occur to you? Was the air-conditioning just not on yet because it was April? I mean, it is France…. I think there’s a possibility that it’s really NOT ever air conditioned in there.
Anyway, seriously, ask Rich… he got caught up by a guard at the escalator. They wanted him to take some dumb elevator down instead with the stroller, but I just bee-lined ahead with the boys as fast as I could. I rode down and left Rich behind. I located a spot of shade beneath-the-escalator and stripped myself and the boys down to our under layers. And even though I was still sweating, at least I could breathe.
As previously mentioned, the Louvre is enormous. And really confusing, honestly.
We walked around for a little bit trying to get oriented. I think we were there an hour and a half or so and we covered ONE FLOOR of ONE WING. That’s it.
Given – we move slow. And we had to maneuver around and find elevators, Finn had to poop for 10 minutes and we split up for that and then sort of lost each other. But regardless I was happy with what we accomplished at the Louvre. I didn’t intend to spend a long time in there. I just wanted us to have the experience. You know, get a taste of it. And with four littles, I think we did just that.
Entrance is cheap enough, kids are free, we got RIGHT IN. Obviously there’s much more to see there, but only for people who know and appreciate what they are looking at. And since that’s not us, I don’t feel like we wasted time or money.
And don’t worry, once we got away from the pyramid, the temperature inside was MUCH better. And here is a picture of Harry and I in the temple of heat:
As you can imagine, it’s overwhelming and it’s awesome. And honestly the kids really liked walking the halls. There was lots of nudity… which lead to lots of questions and fun answers. Despite that, the kids appreciated the grand-ness of it all.
We found HER!
Oh, and also, Viv peed here.
Sorry, but it was a huge deal.
She was terrified of the bathroom on the train, she was too scared of the hotel bathroom where our “Stasher” was, she was terrified of the bathroom at McDonalds because someone turned on the dryer. She’s too advanced to want to pee in her pull up. So our two year old held her pee from 5:30am until 4pm. And it’s not like she didn’t eat or drink anything either. And it’s not like she was a happy chicka either. She was as miserable as you would imagine, and it was showing. We felt so awful for her and it was majorly stressing me out. We passed a bathroom in the Louvre, I just took her in and made her sit and she cried, but she finally couldn’t hold it.
AND IT WAS THE BEST.
And that’s traveling with kids. Specifically potty-training kids…. which are the worst kind.
From here, we took the Metra to the Notre Dame area and got some ice cream!
While Rich was waiting for ice cream, I stepped next door and bought cheese and sausage pastries and the-most-delicious chocolate baguette. I had to fumble through my order with grunts and points, because the shop workers didn’t want to con VER sate in English with me – even though I know they could.
Next we made our way to Notre Dame. When I came with my mom, this was my favorite thing in Paris. When we came back with the kids and Rich’s family – it was crowded and full of police because of a huge wake we didn’t know anything about.
So – we HAD to get back here this time. I was insistent that, at least Rich see it. We waited in the line to get in, which moves really fast. Then we randomly got asked to be interviewed by French television. So.. we did that.
And then, a few paces into Notre Dame – as kids like to do, all three boys announce to me that they need to pee.
WELL that’s just GREAT.
Notre Dame has no bathroom, I know this.
The area around doesn’t really have a bathroom either – Paris is really bad about public restrooms. I say to Rich – you go on with the stroller and Viv. Enjoy it. I’ll take them out and meet you in the park. And that’s what we did.
I backed out of the guideway in Notre Dame with the boys. Asked two different attendants where the nearest restroom was and got two different answers. I have a ‘public restroom’ app on my phone, there appears to be one right outside. But we search and search and cannot find it. Across the river I spot a Subway restaurant. We march across the bridge and by now we are really reaching emergency levels of course. My planB is that I’ll let them pee in the park. But I’d really rather planA work out, even if I have to buy a sandwich. I sneak us in and to the back of the tiny restaurant. They have a potty!!!! YES!!! Pee. Done. Again.
We meet back at the park where Rich is waiting for us. And, now, finally, this was a really relaxing moment for us. The kids played, we sat. The kids didn’t like the French pastries I bought, so Rich went back over to Subway and bought some sandwiches. Between that and my pastries, we were all full enough for dinner.
And it was nice. And I let the kids have a few nibbles of that chocolate baguette I bought and then I tucked the rest away for after the kids went to bed.
Rich and I ate the rest of it all by ourselves because we deserved it.
Theo made a friend, of course.
It was getting late-ish, some clouds were sort of rolling in, and we needed to get back to our luggage by 7:00pm to avoid an overcharge.
So we headed towards the bus stop. From there we were able to catch a relatively quick ride back up to the train station. The kids were doing great, but definitely getting worn out.
Theo fell asleep at some point, and so did Viv.
And then we had to decide how we were going to get from the city center train station out to Disney. We could wait and catch a train to Disney and then take our hotel shuttle from Disney to our hotel.
Or we could hire a driver to take us straight from the train station to our hotel.
They both take about the same amount of time.
The train option costs maybe 10 Euro.
And the taxi costs 110 Euro.
We’re tired, and the thought of dragging ourselves, the tired kids, and now the bags again has altered our budget.
Taxi it is.
And it was the best 110 Euro we ever spent. It actually ended up being much faster than the train – which hardly ever happens… and obviously much easier. Rich grabbed coffee while we waited for the taxi, the kids were weirdly quiet, the taxi-van was really nice and big and roomy and since we always train it instead, this car ride was so luxurious for us.
It’s during this car ride, however, that I decide we’re not coming back into Paris. The original plan was to do as much in Paris as we could do on our arrival day (Sunday) which turned out to be quite a bit! Then spend one day in Disneyland. And then a third day back in Paris. We thought we could spend the morning at a fun Market Street like Rue Cler where we could grab food for a delicious picnic, have a picnic lunch in a nearby park and possibly visit the Musee D’Orsay. But I just decide it’s not the best idea. We’ll either find something else to do outside of town, or we’ll just hang at the hotel if it looks good.
Ok, now.
I’m about to get a little bit off topic in order to explain myself and my decision to avoid Paris a second day.
I’ve gone to Paris three times now and I’m just going to say it…
I don’t like Paris.
To say it and to put it here in permanent ink where it will live forever feels like betrayal to…. myself… or Emmanuel Macron (who I think is a complete genius).
I like and respect a lot of the things that France stands for and does.
But it’s just my truth.
And my decision NOT to go back there when we could’ve easily done so just felt right to me.
I whispered across the van to Rich my thoughts, and he agreed without hesitation.
I don’t want to talk smack. I really don’t.
No place, no city is perfect… even my precious London. I KNOW THAT.
And I’m spoiled. I KNOW THAT.
There’s just a lot of situations happening there. Paris has a larger homeless population than we are used to seeing. The homeless are out and in-your-face even around tourist areas and especially around the train stations. This brings up discussions that we have to have with the children. I’ve had to explain why we saw a homeless person pee-ing on the sidewalk.
Most of the Metra stations smell like pee. They are also poorly lit, poorly staffed, and dirty by my standards.
Public restrooms are hard to find. I know they’ve made strides to improve this, but it’s still not good enough. Which is probably why it smells so much like pee everywhere.
In addition to the homeless, there are lots of beggars and men trying to sell you cheap trinkets of the Eiffel Tower or selfie sticks or bottles of water. Even out by Disney, these men were set up and walking around.
There are lots and lots and lots of stairs. This is also the case in London, by the way. So, if you’re with a toddler and a stroller this is your nightmare.
There is a large armed presence. Men with BIG guns walking around all train stations and most tourist areas.
Everyone smokes. Everywhere. And this is not specific to Paris. People were smoking at Disneyland. Obviously it’s worse in the city. It’s everywhere and constant.
People are rude. I don’t really need to elaborate… just the truth, in my experience. It can feel like nobody wants to be nice and like nobody is happy to see your kids in their space.
You better speak French. Or at least try. I have absolutely no ground to stand on with this, because I feel like Americans are equally demanding that people better speak “American” when they are in America. But if you have ever travelled anywhere where you don’t know the language – having a person be gracious enough to try to communicate with you anyway is, like, literally the most bestest thing to happen in your day.
On that note, service is TERRIBLE. Again, don’t feel the need to elaborate. It’s just really frustrating when everything else is already really hard.
And if you read anything about traveling in Paris, and Europe for that matter.. you’ll see that you need to watch out for pick-pockets and people trying to distract you while their buddy robs you from behind.
So, the situation is like this moving around Paris, FOR US – We’re walking from the train station and we see multiple armed guards. Kid discussion about that. We see multiple homeless camp-out stations. Kid discussion about that, and questions about smells. We see someone getting arrested, little bit of discussion about that. While we were eating in McDonalds some undercover cops confront a patron and check him for drugs. The kids, and I, were genuinely scared. I didn’t know what was going on for a few minutes because the cops were under cover, but afterward everything was fine. Again, discussion.
And we’re moving around the city and we’re trucking up and down stairs, trying to figure out where we need to be (which isn’t that hard for us at this point), with people literally smoking in our faces.
And the entire time, don’t forget, you’ve got the baseline need of just simply keeping track of your kids and keeping track of your valuable items because you know the pick-pocket dangers and you know you can’t take a second to be distracted.
It’s like… you need to be at top level brain function to be able to process and handle everything that it takes to maneuver around this city.
And bottomline – it’s just stressful.
Doing another day and going to the market street sounds fun, but ALL THAT is the reality of being in Paris for us.
I mentally prepared myself this visit. From our previous visits I knew, and planned to avoid the busy areas. Avoid the Eiffel Tower area. I was determined to have a different Paris experience this time, and I was ready and open minded. We were going to avoid the French restaurants, but still get good food from the cafes. Try to relax in the parks. That was my goal. But it was just too hard.
I KNOW I’m spoiled in London – where seriously I don’t think I’ve ever approached a flight of stairs at a tube station and someone didn’t offer to help me with the stroller.
I KNOW that I have a microscopic view of Paris with my visits and maybe I’m not being fair. Maybe I’m not doing it right. All of that is possible.
I KNOW that seeing homeless people and people getting arrested and people getting roughed up for drug checks is not specific to Paris. I am not, nor are my children, above seeing or having discussions about these types of things. My kids can handle it. And I can handle it. I can have those tough discussions with them about tough topics. It’s part of living and traveling.
I KNOW that there are millions of wonderful, smart, warm, amazing, thoughtful French people. I know some of them! Here in London. They are my neighbors, and my friends.
I KNOW I can’t judge a city by a few narrow, short, visits.
And I KNOW there are many reasons to love Paris. I’m just not in that place right now.
Sorry, Paris. It’s not you, it’s me.
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Continuing on.. our magic carriage took us directly to our hotel/resort. I don’t know whether to call it a hotel or a resort. It was built for families is all I know. Pirate themed. Indoor and outdoor playgrounds. Soft Play. Indoor pool fun area. A dragon in the lobby. Couple different restaurants, one being a buffet. Arcade room. And the best part… a room actually built for a family of 6. We booked a “crew 6” but until we arrived I was skeptical.
I was like…. ya, ya… they’re just calling it that and it’s going to be cramped and we’ll have to call for extra stuff and I don’t know what else. But no. We walked into our room – nice big bed and a set of bunks. And then another room (with a door) and another set of bunks! 6 beds, 6 towels… the whole deal. Run of the mill, generic, hotel rooms are never built like this. I was elated. The hotel and room weren’t lux, but they weren’t budget either. Just right in the middle. Clean and tidy, with plenty of space. Just perfect.
This was a huge score for us. The kids were so happy.
We take a little walk around, Finn lays eyes on the pool area.
“I have to be in there. I will swim in there.” He says, matter of factly.
We settle everyone in. Sleepy time. We have Disney tomorrow.
And here is the video we created of our day! In it, we let Harry take the camera for a little while. I might be biased, but he is completely adorable.
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We get up and around a little bit later than we should because we were sooo tired. We head down to the breakfast buffet and then out to the shuttle and over to Disneyland.
We’re dressed and ready for rain. We take a few pictures outside. It does, in fact, start to drizzle and feel cold. And we move ourselves to the customer service line because our tickets are technically, accidentally, expired.
Rich waited for a while in the line. Because of course there was a line.
Gets up to the front, pleads his case.
“Sorry can’t help you.” They say.
ah, what?
“Ya, they are expired. There is nothing we can do.”
A little push back from Rich….
“No. Sorry sir.”
Bye.
………………………..ok…..
We have taken our children to the gates of Disneyland and now we can’t go in.
Thank goodness we’ve booked the expired tickets with our Amex. We can make a claim with Amex to refund the ticket money. We have previous experience with them, and they are pretty good about that kind of thing. #AmEx
We’ll deal with it later.
We gotta move on and get tickets.
Option 1 – Buy tickets at the gate.
Option 2 – Buy tickets using our phones from a third party to save some money.
Option 3 – Go back to hotel and try to figure out tickets for tomorrow.
I don’t know if anyone ever just walks up to the gates of Disneyland to buy their ticket anymore. But ah… definitely don’t do that.
For our family to enter Disneyland Paris for the day, gate price was 500 Euros.
Option 1 is out.
A quick search on our phone tells us we can buy from a third party for about 300 Euros. We also figure out that we can buy them from the front desk at our hotel for a similar price.
Option 2 is out. Nothing from a third party or our hotel will be for ‘same-day.’
So, Option 3 it is.
It’s raining. It’s a little cold. We got a late jump on the day anyway. This is fine. Since we’ve decided not to go back in to the city and we haven’t had time to make any new plans, I guess this means we’re spending the day at the hotel.
This morning the kids begged and pleaded to go swim or to go play in the soft play. But, we had to get moving. I know leaving Disney is sad, but I know telling them we get to go back to the hotel is also going to make them happy. At least I think so…
I say to the kids, “Ok guys. Now we know how to get here! We have practiced how to get here from our hotel. We for sure know how to do it. So that’s good. But, we made a mistake and we don’t have the right kind of ticket. We can’t get in. So we’re going to leave and come back tomorrow.”
They’re like, “Ok. Alright.” and they were all very ok with that.
“So, where are we going to go?” They said.
“Back to the hotel for the day.”
and… total eruption of happiness, lol. “YES!!!!! SWIMMING!!! Pirate ship!” “YES!”
That damn hotel. What kids are happy to leave the gates of Disneyland?
Mine, I guess.
Partly, probably because they didn’t really know what they were missing. But also mostly because the minute we stepped in that hotel the night before, they were dialed in. They were in wonderland.
We didn’t make alternate plans and we just hung at the hotel and the kids were SO HAPPY. It was really relaxing and fun. We were able to buy Disneyland tickets for the next day at the front desk, and we didn’t even have to sell one of the kids.
They ran around like crazy people and had the best time.
Viv was happy to take care of her potty needs as usual in our room – so we all took a brain break from THAT.
We ate the dinner buffet at the earliest possible time (5pm), and got the kids in bed early.
And you know what? It rained all damn day.
ALL DAY.
Every time I looked outside, it was raining. And I was so glad we were not at Disneyland… or anywhere else.
And you know what else? Weather forecast has changed for tomorrow. They were previously calling for rain all day again, but now it says just a spot here and a spot there. I can definitely work with that.
And now… I need to take a second to talk about the food at our hotel. We are in France, and I truly didn’t know what to expect with a French Buffet.
What does that even mean?
We ate three breakfasts here and one dinner.
First morning here, came down for breakfast… and the first thing I see is the breakfast salad bar.
This has been the scene in every breakfast buffet I’ve seen in Europe. I’ve seen the breakfast salad before in Germany and in Croatia. It always strikes me odd. Savory vs. Sweet – I usually go savory for breakfast, but even this is a stretch for me.
To actually have cucumbers and tomatoes. But, you know, it’s fun. And Harry actually did eat one single cucumber slice every morning. “So he could be healthy” he informed me. It definitely was needed to balance out out the 5 croissants he ate each morning.
Anyway, as I walked around the buffet for the first time I have to admit, I was disappointed.
They just have the salad bar, some cheese and fruit, and some cold cuts.
Simple yogurt and three types of chocolate cereal.
You could pay extra to have eggs cooked, but we were like naaaaaaa.
And then bread.
And more bread.
And CROISSANTS and CHOCOLATE CROISSANTS.
I just didn’t think there was very much choice or that the options were going to be very healthy and filling. And they didn’t have oatmeal, which is my go to.
We start filing plates and coming back, and eating.
And that cheese is really good.
Huh, and those cold cuts are DELICIOUS.
And the bread. Forget it. Completely serious, as I type this my mouth is literally watering remembering these croissants and the shortbread.
They just… they know how to do it.
And like, ya, there’s not a lot of choice. That’s true. But if the choices you have are really good, then you don’t need a lot. You just eat 5 or 6 or 7 croissants and you move on with your day. We didn’t even need the egg station, which I would’ve normally ran to.
When you combine those croissants with some of the coffee. Knock yourself over dead. By the third morning, when I woke up, I COULD NOT WAIT to get downstairs to eat this buffet.
I know it doesn’t look like much. But it really was – to us anyway – just SO GOOD.
Plus, the kids loved it. Which is always helpful. And it was so easy for them to just go grab whatever they wanted next. Normally, I’m a bit of a stickler with making sure we have a nice breakfast with minimal sugar. But not here. I let them just eat as they pleased, and they didn’t go overboard. And they didn’t vomit afterward – which I started to get seriously worried about. They just had a good time.
Seriously though, I think Finn made himself three salami sandwiches one morning with three glasses of juice and Harry confessed to topping out at 5 chocolate croissants for the meal. So ya, I see it’s not the healthiest. But you can make up for that later in the day… hopefully.
Speaking of later in the day. Since we were in the hotel for the day, we had the oppurtunity to eat dinner there. And just also – for the record – I would like to confess my love of buffets when it comes to dining with children. Just get over yourself and go to buffets. Because you know what?
YOU DON’T HAVE TO WAIT FOR SOMEONE TO SERVE YOU.
It’s perfect! That’s the worst part of eating at a restaurant with kids. The dreaded wait. The dreaded wait – while they are most certainly starving-to-death and they have to simultaneously sit still and be reasonably quiet.
So, just, do the buffet.
DON’T look at your kid’s plates.
Everything will be fine.
Ok, DINNER. I take our first gander around the pickings and I’m (again) disappointed.
As first glance, I thought maybe they weren’t done setting it up.
Very simple fare. Not a lot of options again.
A lot of cold items that I didn’t even recognize.
Plain roasted chicken, fish, and lamb. Plain pasta, sauce separate.
Steamed plain vegetables. Potato wedges.
It is France, though, and there will be bread. YES.
And desserts.
Like I said, I’m deflated for some reason, but we forge ahead.
And I mean…. I’m wrong again.
It was plain. It was simple.
But again – it was completely delicious.
It was healthful and nutritious. Cooked perfectly. And after you’re done, you don’t feel like you need to do a cleanse. I grabbed a small plate of all the things I didn’t recognize – tried them all.
My kids ate this food really well. They loved the roasted meats and even ate the vegetables, which did help to make up for their sugary breakfasts.
And I mean…. the bread…. again.
Doesn’t look like much. But IT SO IS.
And the desserts. SAME.
Just genuine good feelings in and around everything about this dinner buffet.
If we would’ve been around to have another dinner here, I would’ve looked forward to it.
Two thumbs up and 5 stars from me.
Oh, and check out this sign. #BOSS
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Next day. Disney day.
We are up and ready, fed and happy, and on the shuttle and by the gates of Disney just shortly after it opens with tickets in hand.
I sat Viv on a trash can and tried to get a castle picture. She wasn’t interested.
Theo and Finn snuck off while we were waiting at the gate.
Pretending to be statues…. because they think they are so hilarious.
And they are.
We rode a couple rides, watched a few parades, ate some food and just generally had a magical time. Our princess strategy was just to catch them in the parades and shows instead of waiting in line at the princess pavilion. Vivian was thrilled to see them from a short distance and it worked out wonderfully.
Theo found adorable kid-sized potties and thought they were so cool.
On the potty note – Viv was back to having a hard time. She was totally freaked out in the restrooms here and withheld again. Making her really hard to deal with, again.
While we were waiting in line for the Peter Pan ride, she lost it and even though she was wearing a pull up – it either couldn’t contain the volume or the force, because it leaked out and around everywhere. And we were the people with the kid who peed all over the ground in line.
The stares from the people in line with us were sort of awful, actually…
A quick step out of line and a change. We were able to join back up and ride together with our boys. And naturally she was a much happier girl after that.
Screw off judgey line people.
Moving on, the park itself is beautiful.
We camped out for the main evening parade about 40 minutes beforehand. The kids and I held down the spot while Rich went and grabbed us pizzas. And we just had a picnic dinner right there while we waited. And we were the only geniuses doing that.
It was perfect.
We were multi-tasking!
Plus, we wouldn’t have to fight the rush of people in the restaurants after the parade was over.
Triple win.
Then the main evening parade began and it was awesome.
And by the way… check out that beautiful sunshine. The rain completely held off.
Did not come at all and the weather was complete and utter perfection.
AH, got a little pizza sauce on your face there…
After the parade, our crew was really getting tired but still trying to put on a good face.
We rode “It’s a Small World” twice in a row, because it had no line. And then we got ginormous lollipops and called it a day.
Outside the park I grabbed a little surprise for the train home tomorrow…
We also made a little video of this day. It’s fun.
Go to minute 12:50 for the best Vivian moment ever.
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Our overall review of Disney Paris is a little mixed. We liked some things, we didn’t like other things. The size of the park is small in comparison to Orlando – which I actually think is a plus, especially for small children. But other things, like service at the restaurants, food in the park, line management on rides, and smoking were big disappointments.
The magic of Disney is there, but for us was just ever so slightly sour. Compared to our Disney Orlando experience – which was overwhelmingly sweet, this one was just a little under the bar. Still GREAT, and the kids had a wonderful day.
And like…. if we won tickets to go back or something like that, I would be happy to go again.
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We slept, woke up, ate the delicious breakfast. Then, leisurely packed back up and headed home. Without a hitch really.. except Viv not liking something at the train platform….
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And that’s all there is.
We did it.
And TRUTH, it was exhausting.
The whole experience was a roller coaster – between the upfront train fiasco, all the forecasted rain, the expired Disney tickets, and the unplanned non-Paris day.
Despite my mixed feelings about Paris and Disney, I’m really glad we went.
The kids had a wonderful time.
We had a wonderful time because they did.
I’ll forever think of this trip as the trip that went completely wrong and then worked out exactly right.
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Where we stayed:
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Year End 2017
It’s the end of another year in this crazy thing-we-have-going and here is the wrap up:
the year:
We started out the year deciding it was best for us to change houses. Overpaying for rent is only cute for so long, after all. And right on Easter morning we found ourselves in a new home.
Right before the move, we hosted my brother and his girlfriend for their spring break. They thoroughly toured London, and spent a day in Paris. It was so great to see them!
And oh, ya, Bear turned THREE and STARTED NURSERY!
Our new garden has featured lots of wildlife for us to enjoy; including lots of birds, cats, squirrels, and even a few foxes (that had to be removed). But when the animals aren’t using our garden, it gets a lot of play from us.
No matter the weather. And mostly for a lot of wrestling matches..
After the move, we turned our attention to three things – that frankly – we’ve really dropped the ball on, with the kids. Swimming, biking, and piano lessons. With no major travel plans in the mix this year, we finally focused on these activities.
We bought a bike for Harry, and he learned how to ride it! We signed up for a gym and took the kids swimming every week, and we bought a digital piano (with generous help from Grandma Janice) and began Harry on lessons.
(I unfortunately don’t have any pictures of us swimming because they don’t allow cameras in the pool house. Sad face.)
In May and June, Harry and Finn have birthdays. Harry split his birthday party with a classmate at the trampoline park. And Finn split his birthday party with two classmates at a community center gymnasium (on one of the hottest days of the year!).
Inbetween their birthdays, Rich and I took a little trip to Corfu, Greece.
And it was AMAZING.
This year I finally feel us coming out of the baby-zone fog that we’ve been in for so long. The diapers, the baby food, the bottles, the night wakes. Slowly, we’re getting rid of things like bibs, burb cloths, and a diaper genie. We’re not using our high chair as much or the stroller or the baby gate. We don’t have our ears up to the baby monitor constantly – even spent a few nights with it OFF (on accident). We don’t have to leave detailed instructions and time tables for sitters when we leave them with the kids.
I mean, we still have a two-year-old, and we are still in the baby-zone technically – but all I’m saying is that I see and feel the shift coming. And it is a THING OF BEAUTY PEOPLE. Something we are definitely completely ready for. We’ve done it thoroughly and completely….. and for us – we’re ready to “get out of the pool” and totally “dry off.”
We’re not only ready for the next season, we are excited and looking forward to it.
Speaking of the next season, we celebrated our 10 year wedding anniversary.
ANYWAY – near the end of the school year the boys each have the British traditional “Sports Day.” It’s so fun and cute. Even the parents participate a little bit.
And just like that, the school year was over. And on the last day we celebrated with donuts! On the first day of summer break, the boys ran around the house like silly little boys.
Then it was Viv’s birthday. And then lots of family took turns visiting. Mom and I took day trips to the Cotswolds and Brussels. And Rich, Harry, and Finn, along with Rich’s family, took a few days visit to Edinburgh, Scotland.
We also took a few really fun family outings in and around London:
quite a few visits to HAMPTON COURT PALACE –
a few visits to KEW GARDENS (Royal Botanical Garden), where we were gifted a membership from Erika and family!:
the DIANA MEMORIAL PLAYGROUND, at Kensington Palace:
the LONDON ZOO
Open-air Monkey area – where there is nothing between you and the monkeys. 
We spotted a low one (in the bush). 
Walk through – open, GIANT spider exhibit! 
Another open exhibit. This time, amazing leaf cutter ants. 
The lemur exhibit was also open-air. See some behind Finn’s shoulder. 
And then of course, our everyday-type visits to the local parks, walking around our neighborhood, and visiting the Natural History Museum.
Just as quickly as it blew in, summer was over.
And then, of course, the boys went back to school.
When the boys started school, Viv decided it was a good time to try potty training. It’s slow going, but positive. And she’s steadily doing very well.
And not normally a big deal, but Theo was really REALLY struggling with ‘going number 2’ on the big potty. Months and months and months went by and he made no progress. And then one day, he just decided he was ready.
And it was one of the best days of my life.
And Finn lost some teeth. Which also isn’t normally a ‘big deal.’ But shortly after loosing a couple teeth he took a really hard fall on the stairs and slammed teeth first onto an upper stair. It was seriously one of the goriest things I’ve ever seen. The lower picture, is a few days in, so the bruising is less than the initial day. The dentist assured us that as long as nothing was cracked or hanging that he was fine. And they confirmed that his adult teeth have no damage underneath. But, I think (we) Finn got lucky on this one… because had those teeth been adult teeth, this fall would’ve knocked his front teeth out. And on adult teeth, obviously once they’re gone, they’re gone. Instead, he got lucky and just further loosened the teeth that were already loose.
School Pics. Finn’s face.
And HALLOWEEN. Halloween always creeps up on me. Erika texted me a picture of her boy’s costumes mid-October and I was like ‘Crap, I forgot about Halloween and costumes.’ But we did alright, I think.
In November, we had house guests – Hollee and Jon, and then Isaac came back. So fun.
And we went and visited Santa, and Viv shocked us by being totally fine with it.
We decorated. And then a string of lights went out on the tree. So, we undecorated and redecorated the tree.
And then Grandma Janice came!
And we went back to Kew Gardens for their “Christmas at Kew” event which features singing trees and light shows. The kids didn’t care that it was cold, wet, and muddy.
Finn, especially, had the bestest time ever.
Christmas cookies, of course.
And then church on Christmas Eve.
And Christmas morning.
Right after Christmas, Grandma Susie and Aunt Patty came!
We went to our local theater for the British traditional Pantomime show. This year it was “Jack and the Beanstalk.” We then ventured to the city center for dinner at Rainforest Cafe, a visit to Kingdom of Sweets, and to see the Christmas light displays. And Finn insisted on wearing his Meerkat shirt OVER his adorable sweater. And I just wasn’t willing to fight the battle that day.
Then with a little leftover Christmas magic, we were able to score three tickets to the hottest show on the planet.
Also Aunt Patty and I went to Westminster Abbey.
Then, the three of us visited Kensington Palace and had afternoon tea there. We followed that by briefly browsing around Harrods.
AND THAT takes us to New Years Eve.
…Where we were all promptly in bed by 10.
Because we are party animals.
Then there’s just the regular everyday….
And Theo and Viv’s year-long favorite pasttime… NOT playing with toys.
Just turning the living room in to a soft-play area.
Lastly, after much discussion, our 2017 birthday donations went to PreEmptive Love.
the babies:
Harry
Harry is awesome. He’s smart and thoughtful. A great helper. He’s grown (literally) and matured a great deal this year. Typical to his type-A-ness, he continues to thrive with “rules” and “structure” and he also continues to do very well in school. He’s a perfectionist and an over-achiever. And he puts a great deal of pressure on himself – on everything from swimming to math to piano. We’re always working on his resilience when he’s frustrated and this year he has made improvements.
Change is still a little hard for him. When something is new or different, he is initially resistant. Even small things like wanting to switch his favorite animal from a fox to a tiger. But overall, he’s doing very well.
At school, he’s an absolute math whizz – able to solve three digit addition problems in his head within seconds (ex. 365 + 738). He also SHOCKED us and his teacher, by asking to give a power point presentation to his class. I guess a few of the other kids had done this on occasion. Not as part of a project, just an independent power point presentation. So he made one. At home. All about sea life. He spent an entire day working on it, and then confidently asked me to email it to his teacher. I was nervous and hesitant for him, but did as he asked. And a few days later, he told me that he gave the presentation to the class and that it went really well. He was nervous at first, but felt fine after he got started. Just wow!
His confidence has grown, socially, as well. He seems comfortable with his friends and asserting himself with strangers. Making better eye contact and speaking more clearly to others. We also signed both boys up for Rugby. And although Finn openly dislikes it, Harry really enjoys it. And he has asked several times for us to help him be “faster and stronger” and to help him practice rugby. Up until now, he’s been very lukewarm with any sort of sports. He did a round of tennis lessons this summer. He was a positive participant, but his interest quickly fizzled. But, with Rugby he really enjoys himself and wants to continue. We are shocked. When I asked if he wanted to sign up for next term, he was like “Of course I do.”
This has been the year of the Pokemon for Harry. He is absolutely obsessed. He told me in early November “Mom, I’ve thought about it. The only thing I want for Christmas is Pokemon cards. That’s it. My whole Christmas, all Pokemon cards.”
Me “Are you sure??” Him “Yes, tell everyone.”
His sweetness is so cute too, sometimes. He still loves and cherishes each of his siblings. And he is just the best and most supportive and patient brother to all of them. He loves and dotes on Vivi all the time. He’s so thoughtful and worried about them. One time, both Harry and Theo had cuts on their face. Harry says “I want Theo’s cut to heal before mine.”
And we love his perspective on money. When we told him we bought a lottery ticket and explained to him the whole deal, I asked him what he would do with the money if we won. He says “First I think we could get a new chair. Then maybe some decorations for the walls and maybe a shelf in my room. Then some Pokemon cards and then some Pokemon figures on my birthday.”
He loves and excels at games of all kinds. He can even handle most adult board games. Recent favorites include Blokus, Monopoly, checkers, Kingdominos, Exploding Kittens, and Love Letter.
He has also really taken to his piano lessons. Although understanding rhythm has been a challenge, the structure and counting of music makes sense to him. The logic of it suits his brain, and he’s learning almost effortlessly. A big part of it is his teacher. He loves her and I over hear him talking his head off during their lessons. Telling her everything about his life – including his bunk bed, our plans for the day, how mom and dad went to Corfu and bought him a notebook, daddy’s work schedule, the monster disco, invertebrates, and anything else that enters his little brain.
Mother’s Day card from Harry. (You have been taking care of me and I liked it so much.) (Put a picture of the whole family in this box)(Mum and Dad bring me to these places – with world map.) (Everywhere you bring me)(Did you know? Everywhere you bring me was brilliant) 
Mocking daddy. 
Helping Viv. 
Secret Spiderman kit, he’s tucked in the drawer under his bed. 
Finn
Or as we call him, Captain Underpants. This year, Finn has continued his wardrobe habits. And there’s really only so much we can do about it. Most days – underpants it is.
He’s sunny and happy and silly. With a true sense of humor that makes us laugh all the time. He’s also incredibly stubborn and sometimes insensitive.
He’s incredibly observant, with a memory like no other. Harry was given a “Simon” toy for Christmas. And Harry – like a normal person – took several tries, most of the day, and worked up to remembering a sequence of 19. Pretty damn good if you ask me. So, finally Finn steps up. And on his first try gets a 20. For real.
Like Harry (and their father), he excels at Math. He can quickly add sums in his head.
Conversation I had with Finn walking home from the park, after working with Harry on riding a bike.
Finn “Mom, I want to ride in one of those baby seats on the bike.”
Me “hahaha, Finn you’re way too big for that. We just need to get another bike and you can learn to ride it. And if we all want to ride together, we’d need to get a bike for mom and dad, plus two baby seats, one for Theo and one for Viv.’
Finn “How much is an adult bike?” Me “Probably $150”
Finn “How much is a kid bike?” Me “$80”
Finn “How much is a baby seat?” Me “oh, probably $100”
Finn “We need two baby seats, two adult bikes, and one more kid bike. So for everything we need it would cost $580”
Just that fast.
Changing his favorite color this year, took much thought and consideration. He was nervous about it, but told me that he’d like to change his favorite color from red to silver. But then had a panic and changed it from silver to blue.
He has built on his love for all things animal and earth. I often find him reading from his animal encyclopedia on his own. Or find it open in his room, because he was reading it. At Kew Gardens he runs amuck with excitement wanting to read every plaque and every scientific name of every tree and plant. Same at the Natural History Museum – which he basically has memorized. And during our zoo visit, he said “I just LOVE it here at the zoo.” “I’m just SO happy here mom.” He literally cries if he sees us squish an ant or a fly. I wonder if he’ll become vegan sometime soon. It wouldn’t surprise me one bit. For Christmas, we got him an Ant Farm, and it just lit him up. He most definitely considers the ants his pets.
He likes to test out what he learns in school. Asking to repeat experiments that he’s done at school and quizzing me on French. His teacher tells us that he excels, but that she doesn’t always know if he’s paying attention. But when she talks to him or sees his work, it’s clear that he’s understanding everything.
One time I wrote “You is kind. You is smart. You is important.” on the the kitchen chalk board and he couldn’t stand it. Probing me and begging me to change it. “Mom, it needs to be You ARE.” And I said, “Well, it’s just a different way to say it. It’s grammatically incorrect, but it’s charming that it’s an incorrect on purpose. It still has meaning.” He thinks about it, still frustrated, and says, “Ok, then, WHO is you?”
Me “Fine. Just change it, smarty.”
He became OBSESSED with wanting to go to swim school. I could sort of put him off for a few days. But of course, he got smart on me. He started with “Can I go to swim school, mom? Can we go swimming?” To which I could answer “Um, ya, maybe, let me look around” and then started asking “Mom, WHEN are we going swimming?” And then he started making arbitrary deadlines, “Mom, in three more days we’re going swimming!!” We did buckle down and sign up for a gym with a pool so that we could start trying to teach him to swim. He loves it and is full of enthusiasm even when he struggles.
He took the same approach when he randomly decided he wanted to make gummy bears. He asked me one day “Mom, can we make gummy bears?” And I said “I don’t know, I have no idea where to start on that.” And he says back “Well, I’m sure you’ll figure it out.” Again began asking “When we could make gummy bears” and sure enough I had to figure it out.
And he began wanting to try all kinds of new food, which was awesome. Requesting to try hot chocolate, and guacamole, and tea, and salmon, and tzatziki, and smoothies, and RIBS (his favorite), to name a few.
His sense of humor is real. He can understand most of Rich’s little dad jokes that go over Harry’s head, and recalling inside jokes between us. A few minutes after Rich told him the “What’s black and white and red all over” joke, Finn came back with his own:
“What is brown and yellow and green all over?” “What?” “A sick giraffe” hahaha.
The day that he mysteriously came home with his shorts on INSIDE OUT. Theo
Theo’s main stepping stones this year were starting nursery (half days M-F), and potty training. He’s learning how to make friends, and blossoming more into his vibrant little self. He’s sweet. So sweet. And fun and loving. Silly and musically inclined. And he loves his brothers and his sister so much. He began referring to Harry and Finn as “his boys” and to Viv as “his girl.” Saying things like “”Sorry Vivi, I gotta go play with my boys” “Daddy! Don’t scare my girl!” and “Hey let’s go to the zoo with you and mommy and my boys and my girl.” And most days, at school pick up, he greets me with “Love you mom.”
He alternates between playing with the big boys and playing with Viv. And seems to enjoy both equally and effortlessly. I have a feeling this will be his life. Although, he’s been increasing his time playing with Finn, while Harry is starting to a have a few separate interests, Theo and Finn have bonded a lot over their general silliness and love of video games. And more recently….. Theo’s “new found love” of wearing only his underwear. The big boys taught Theo how to play all of the video and computer games that they play. And he can totally hang with them! It’s crazy. They love to include him when they can.
He began attempting to drop his nap. He got into a pattern of not wanting to lay in his bed for nap time, so I let him lay on the couch for a while. Where he would fall asleep without fail everyday. At the end of the year, he takes one to two naps a week.
In late spring he FINALLY quit banging his head in bed. We moved him to the big boys’ room in a big boy bed and he stopped almost overnight. Partly because he didn’t have a crib side to bang on, I assume. When he gets upset or sick, he’ll still – even now – sit up and rock back and forth or get on all fours and rock back and forth. But, overall he’s doing great.
When he would rock in his crib, it was always a steady banging beat. And now, he sings more than either of the other boys ever did combined. Randomly, one day, he just started singing “Baa Baa Black Sheep” and pretending to strum a guitar along with himself in perfect rhythm. So, I think it’s related and natural for him.
Also natural for him, is kicking a soccer ball and riding his balance bike. He’s an instant whizz. In addition to something that comes natural for him, is a love of guns/weapons. I mean, seriously, obviously I certainly don’t promote violence or guns. We don’t have any anymore, and the other boys don’t even have any gun toys. But as if he’s born to do it, Theo fashions guns from everything – mostly legos. And his most treasured toy this summer was his bubble gun. And when it broke (because damn bubble guns always break) he says “Mom, I was thinking daddy could take me to the bubble gun store and get a NEW BUBBLE GUN!!!” For Christmas, I found a little play gun set with holsters. Needless to say – he loves them.
He is slowly but surely coming out of his eating funk. This time last year, I could barely get him to eat anything that wasn’t tan or brown, and he was losing weight. And now he eats several different fruits and vegetables, and will at least try something if I really ask. He’s learned to love oatmeal again, and spaghetti, and Japanese noodles, and fried rice, and ribs, and salsa, and hummus, and carrots/apples/sweet potatoes/bananas/grapes/peas/corn and hamburgers, and lots of other foods I never would’ve thought he’d work back up to.
The evolution of their eating habits is such a frustrating and tricky thing. But I find that patience (even though it’s pull-your-hair-out-annoying) is really the only thing that works. And nothing has made Rich and I happier than to see him enjoying food again.
His teachers tell me he does well in school, especially in Math. Weird, huh? But at home – following his brothers – he loves a good puzzle. I mean, just really loves to do puzzles. If he gets to pick which toy he wants to play with, he asks to pull the puzzles down. I would be interested to see the correlations between doing puzzles and being good at math. Because I haven’t been able to stop my boys from wanting to do puzzles. Right around age 2/3/4, all three of the boys asked to do puzzles everyday. And now, they excel at math. Got to be related…. maybe? Not sure. But Theo – as if it’s required of him – loves and wants to do a puzzle ALL THE TIME.
With his gun of the day, built from Legos. 
Viv
Princess of the house. And not because we treat her that way, but because she has decided that it is so. She calls herself princess and our house a castle… all on her own.
She’s loves girly necklaces and bracelets, and everything pretty, pink, and sparkly. She, however, is not soft or gentle. While she may be shy when you first meet her, once she gets comfortable around you, she’s happy to be your boss. She’s tremendously loud, and there is no quieting her. No matter at home or in public. She rarely just talks. She mostly yells or cries for communication. She’s a tiny tyrant or a tiny storm. Uncontrollable, loud, and demanding.
And she already knows how to use her voice to manipulate her brothers. When I’d put the baby pool out in the garden, as soon as she saw me filling it up, she’d run outside – usually with clothes on, and get in the pool. And then she’d stand her ground and screech at the boys when they tried to get in the pool. Yelling “ME!” or “MINE!” She cries and asks them to bring her things. And they do. If I won’t give into her wishes, she’ll run to one of them to solve it.
She knows how it works.
When she’s not busy bossing us around, she’s incredibly sweet and silly. And just absolutely melts our hearts. She coos over all of her clothes and accessories, and her princess shows and movies, and her little playhouses and dolls and stuffed animals, and ponies and unicorns and tea sets. She has a bunch of Beanie Boos that she calls her ‘friends’ that she leaves in her crib. And she has a little stuffed doll she named “Daisy.” She loves to play with her Bitty Babies and push them around in the stroller. She loves it all. She loves for me to do her hair, get dressed and then admire herself in the mirror. She loves to call her self ‘cute!’ and ‘prettiful!’
She relishes if she gets to “help” me in the kitchen. Just absolutely loves it. And towards the end of the year, during certain times in the day, I’ve started letting her join the boys upstairs for playtime (without me to supervise), and she just thinks she is SO COOL.
She’s gone through a few weird phases, but for the most part she’s a great eater. And she’s not afraid to make a mess, still in some situations (like Oatmeal) preferring to use her hands to eat instead of her spoon.
She’s also not one little bit afraid to get dirty outside. In fact, if the boys are outside – she will be too. And she’ll be tromping around, picking up bugs right with them. In fact, she happily caught a snail in the garden and then proceeded to stick her finger into the snail. Totally grossing me out, along with all three boys.
I started having to give her ‘time outs’ for various infractions – mostly hitting Theo, when she didn’t get her way. She’s a little young for a time out, in my opinion. So I wasn’t sure if it would work. But it did and she has quite a few time outs depending on the day. She just likes to do as she pleases – which isn’t always the best.
In search of a little break, and little bit of outside social interaction for Viv, she started going to a Nanny one day a week for the morning. And she’s made a little friend of her own, named Charlotte. They have the cutest little friendship, and it’s fun to see her excited about something outside of the house and her brothers.
She loves to climb. All around. She has no fear, and it’s terrifying… but she does have great balance. Crazy girl.
Her major love of the year was her scooter. After enough practice in the house, she’s really mastered it. And, she just goes and she LOVES it. It’s practically a part of her.
Most recently, often dressing up at Hero Princess:
kid words:
“I can spell Lion: a s q t a. And I can spell Lemur: l d s t r e. ” (proudly smiling) Theo
“Vivi just has a twinkle in her eye.” Harry
“Viv is so cute I just want to punch her!” Harry
“I’m cute.” Viv
(while Harry is at tennis lesson) “I hope Harry’s having fun.” Finn
“Mom, do you want me to carry the backpack?” Finn
“Mom. Theo and me are best buds.” Finn
“Mom. You’re such a newb.” Finn
Me, after being out “Theo have you been a good boy or a bad boy?” (half kidding)
“Both.” Theo
“You want to go to the potty mommy?” Theo
“Oh yes, I do” Me
“Great! Then you can go to school and get presents!” Theo
“It’s not a mess, it’s a party!” Finn
“Let’s high five! yes!” (slap) Finn and Theo
“Let’s face five!”
“Ah, no guys. Don’t do that.” Me
(watching descendants with Harry) “Wow, those are some good dancers.” Me
“Of course they’re good dancers, they’re pirates.” Harry
“Mom, are you gonna clean up the stuff on the counter. I like it better when it’s clean.” Harry
“I tagged someone today in rugby” Harry
“Oh ya? Awesome!” Me
“Ya… he was running right at me. And I was worried that my team might think it was weird if I didn’t tag him. So I did…. it’s part of the rules.” – Harry
“This shirt is SO COOL MOM! I LOVE IT!!!” Theo (about a Captain America shirt)
“This meerkat shirt makes me really happy” Finn
“I spy with my little eye something that is beautiful… you mom!” Finn
“YESSS!! I’ve always wanted a cookie jar SO BAD. And now we have one!! We have a cookie jar!!!” Finn
“I want to move because I just really like putting all of our things in boxes.” Harry
“Packing-up is my middle name.” Harry
“I want to clean up so that uncle Isaac thinks we have a nice house.” Harry
“Mom, do you want to hear a really loud fart?” Harry
“I belong to you, mom.” Theo
“Finn, at school, the teacher says you don’t ever raise your hand. But I think that you know the answer and you just don’t raise your hand because you’re too shy. Is that right… Is there ever a time when you don’t know the answer?” Me.
“Never.” Finn “There’s never a time when I don’t know it.”
(hands me a Minecraft toy) “You love it, don’t you.” Theo
(Theo licking the table) “What are you doing??” Me
“Something delicious.” Theo
“Mom, I’ve thought about it for a long time, and it makes me a little sad… but I’ve decided to switch my favorite animal from a fox to a tiger.” Harry
“Mom, why are you sad?” Finn
“Oh, I’m not sad. I’m just very tired. We’ve had a long fun day at the zoo and now daddy had to run into work which means I have to get all of you home, fed, bathed, and in bed by myself. And i’m just tired right now, that’s all.” Me
“Well….. maybe you shouldn’t have had so many kids.” Finn
“Mom, I gotta get my shoes on. Go outside with my boys and my girl. I love them all. Yep. That’s true.” Theo
(Finn says he never wants to get married) “FINN. If you see a girl and you think she’s beautiful and she sees you and she thinks you’re handsome then you’re gonna get married. There’s nothing you can do about it.” Harry
(Verbatim string of words from Harry, with no prompts or responses from me, riding the bus home from shopping) “I always buy the best gifts. We always try to do the right thing. I’m a great friend. Our family, we always make it in time – we always make it to the bus.”
“I’m so big now. This watch just makes me feel like a high schooler.” Harry
“I broke my necklace..” Me
“Oh no! I loved that necklace!” Finn
(shopping in Lush, shouts) “Everything in here smells disgusting!!” Finn
(reading animal encyclopedia) “Elephants eat grass and roots and leaves.” (eye roll) “Everybody knows that.” Finn
“I’m ready for a cell phone mom. One of my own. I can call daddy. I’m ready for it. I am. I’m ready.” Harry
“I’ve got all the funkiest moves.” Finn
“These flags have a good and beautiful design.” Finn
“This muffin is attractive to me.” Finn
“Daddy is at work… just using his fixers.” Theo
(I gave Harry a bag of M&M’s after a successful trip to the store, on the bus home)
“How many can I have?” Harry
“As many as you want. It’s your bag to share with Finn.” Me
“How many are we gonna have!?!” Finn
“Well…. we don’t want to be unhealthy… so I was thinking 3.” Harry
“Ok, ya. I was thinking 5.” Finn
“Ok, yes. 5 will be okay.” Harry
“Yes!!” Both
“What if me and Jerome were walking down the street and a thousand girls were behind us?? In love with us??!! Haahaha” Harry
(Looking at his class picture) “Look at me…. I’m so smart and handsome.” Harry
“Mom. Does the water we drink come from the sewer?” Finn
“ahhhh, no.” Me
“OH, WHEW!” Finn
“If you’re going to play rough, then you’re going to get hurt. And when you get hurt, you just have to deal with it.” Harry to Theo
“You’re my favorite mom.” Theo
(when Erika and Jake were here) “There’s two mommies AND two daddies here. I CAN’T BELIEVE IT!” Theo
“I’m proud of you mom.”Theo
“I’m not hungry because while all the other boys were playing tag rugby, I was eating all the sandwiches.” Finn
“We should look back at our Christmas list, and cross off the things that we already got from Grandma. C’mon Finn” Harry
“Na, I’ll just look at my toys to remember what I got” Finn
“I’m so happy just demolishing all these ribs.” Finn
“How’s your day going?” Harry
“No where.” Theo
Birthday Interviews
Harry –
- Now that you’re 8 what’s different? I’m smarter.
- How tall are you? um… really tall.
- What are you really good at? Coloring and drawing!
- What’s your favorite thing to do? Play Nintendo 2DS!
- what’s your favorite thing to eat? Hot dog
- Favorite friend? Thierry
- What do you want to be when you grow up? Lego builder
- What does daddy do at work? Works in a big office doing computers.
- What do you like best about mom and dad? I like best that mom is kind and creative and good at cooking. And dad is kind, and he’s also creative, and he’s fun. And he’s funny.
- How strong is dad? Super strong, like strong as an elephant.
- What’s mom’s favorite thing to do? um…. cook. because she’s really good at it
- What’s your favorite thing about Finn, Theo, and Vivian? I like Vivi because she’s cute and she’s funny. Theo is creative and funny and nice. The only thing I like about Finn is that he’s funny.
- What do you think of girls? um… I don’t know. I think they’re cool and smart.
- If you could have a super power, what would it be? Super strength, because then I could punch villains and jump high to kill villains.
- What’s the best thing that happened to you this year? Having 22 pounds (GBP). And going to Daniel’s party.
- Where do you want to go on vacation? something where a paradise was… ah, California!
- Are you going to get married someday? um, actually I think I am. Because I think I’m handsome. And you do too.
- How do you make cookies? Mostly, um, I forgot the first bit, but I know the end. What you do last, so mostly you get the cookies out of the oven. No – first you, oh now I remember. You have this dough, and you add chocolate chips and you mix it together in a bowl in a mixer. Then you put it on a plate in the oven. Then you get it out, it’s cooked and you use this thing that makes them into circles. And then you put them back in the oven and they are flat.
- Can you tell me a joke? Ah… no.
- What do you think of God and Jesus? I love them.
Finn –
- Now that you’re 6, what’s different? I’m taller.
- How tall are you? This tall – points to measuring chart.
- What’s your favorite thing to eat? PIZZA!
- Favorite friend? Yusef… since he was my first one.
- What do you want to be when you grow up? A zoo keeper.
- What does daddy do at work? He works on the computer.
- What do you like best about mom and dad? Mom is nice because you make breakfast for us. And dad is nice because he plays games with us.
- How strong is dad? Really really strong!
- What’s mom’s favorite thing to do? To eat breakfast.
- What’s your favorite thing about Harry, Theo, and Vivian? ummm.. Vivi’s cute. Theo’s kind. Harry is smart because he tells me everything he knows.
- What do you think of girls? They’re beautiful.
- If you could have a super power what would it be? Flying and laser eyes.
- What’s the best thing that happened to you this year? Swimming in the swimming pool at swimming lessons.
- Where do you want to go on vacation? Japan!
- Are you going to get married someday? Nope! I’m going to live with you.
- How do you make cookies? Um.. I don’t know. I like snowman cookies.
- Can you tell me a joke? Why was the pteradactyl in the toilet? (why?) Because the P was silent. hahahahaha
- What do you think of God and Jesus? They’re AWESOME and smart and good.
Theo –
- How tall are you? 3
- Now that you’re three, what’s different? I’m three.
- What’s your favorite food? um… carrots
- Who is your favorite friend? ahhh.. Joe.
- What do you want to be when you grow up? ah, 4. ah, 100.
- What does daddy do at work? He builds.
- What do you like best about mom and dad? I like best a kiss from mommy, I like a kiss from daddy.
- How strong is dad? 180.
- What’s mom’s favorite thing to do? Build on the legos.
- What your favorite thing about Harry, Finn, and Viv? A kiss from Harry. A kiss from Finn. A kiss from Vivi. Hahahaha
- What do you think of girls? hum…. a kiss?
- If you could have a super power, what would it be? Ah, a super man.
- What’s the best thing that happened to you this year? I fall down.
- Where do you want to go on vacation? Trains.
- Are you going to get married someday? I did.
- How do you make cookies? French Fries.
- Can you tell me a joke? Yes! Do you want to hear a construction joke? (yes) I’m still working on it. hehehe.
- What do you think of God and Jesus? That you want to give them a kiss and when I give them a kiss they give Vivi a kiss.
Mom Fails
Keeping the bathroom clean…. because boys. A plumber came to re-caulk the bathtub. He bends over and touches some liquid around the toilet and says “Now, is the toilet leaking?”
Me – “Ah, no. Wash your hands. I have three boys. Sorry.”
Forgot about Theo’s fundraiser. I was in Greece. He made a parfait to “sell” and I didn’t tell Grandma she’d need to buy one.
After the move, found condoms in the Pokemon cards.
Finn went to school and couldn’t get his new PE shoes on bc they still had the paper in them.
Accidentally packed Theo’s shirt for Finn to change into after morning rugby. And when I picked him up from school he was wearing Theo’s tiny shirt.
Took Finn to Harry’s piano lesson, where he suddenly needed to poop. And the only toilet is right next to his lesson room – which is within earshot. Harry couldn’t stop laughing and was also super embarrassed from Finn’s pooping sounds in front of his teacher.
Accidentally bought two shampoos instead of one shampoo and one conditioner. Put one of the shampoo bottles in the cabinet for later. Used the shampoo and bought new conditioner. Used them both, needed more. Incorrectly *remembered* that I had extra “conditioner” in the cabinet, so I bought shampoo, thinking I would now have a shampoo and a conditioner. When I got home realized I was wrong, and once again had two shampoos.
Long story but the words “Fu*k slime” came out of Finn’s mouth.
Ruined an entire batch of lentil soup by adding sugar.
Added spiced peanuts to my huge batch of trail mix for the kids, instead of regular salted peanuts. Had to dump out the entire batch and pick out the peanuts.
Set dry oats on fire in microwave.
and… *special edition* Dad fails:
Rich decided to go through the volunteer training class at school so that he would be able to volunteer on field trips. When they asked for his children’s classes and teachers, he proceeded to write Theo – Reception, Finn – 2D, and Harry 4S. All three of which are incorrect. He said the writing “reception” was just a total fluke that he didn’t realize until afterward. He knows the Theo’s not in Reception, but in Nursery. And he got the big boys’ year group right, but just the wrong teacher initial letter, which is totally understandable. It’s just frustrating, and slightly hilarious to get all three completely wrong.
Ordered the wrong bunk bed. Once put together, it was non-returnable. Put it together before he realized it was the wrong one. Had to order a second bunk bed and sell the first… for a third of the price.
The words “what does ‘eat a D’ mean??” came out of Harry.
Again long story, but all Rich on that one.
….. too funny not to add, love you honey.
OKAY! That’s it. 2017 locked up and in the books.
Goodbye, farewell, auf Wiedersehen, Good Night.
To you, to you. To you and you and you.
-
Cotswolds
Its mom and me, again. On another girls day out.
This time – it’s the Cotswolds.
A picturesque country-side region of England (sort-of) west of London.
We took a big tour bus out from city center for this day. We did this in mid-July and the weather was absolute perfection.
There are quite a few Cotswolds tours that leave from London everyday, and many of them just do one or two villages and then go on to visit something else, like Stonehenge or the Downton Abbey house. But we decided that we might feel shorted on our Cotswolds time if we did a combo tour. So we went all-in with a four-village 3/4 day tour to the Cotswolds only.
We had a great tour guide for the day. She gave us lots of information on all types of things including the sheep and wool trade of old century England and the construction of Cotswold-stone walls. We like learning, so we liked this.
In general it was a little busier and more commercialized that we realized. Which was fine… just not what we expected. See here:
There were some great antique shops along the way that I found surprisingly charming. I bought a vintage necklace for Viv and the perfect teal vase.
The flowers were gorgeous everywhere.
We ate a very traditional lunch at a very traditional 18th century pub.
We posed by 14th century English cottages… that people still live in right now.
If you read my post about Brussels, you’ll notice I’m wearing the exact same outfit.
I dubbed this ^ my official day-trip outfit.
It has everything I need. Moving on.
We found our bus tour to be slightly odd on timing, and almost rushing us around. We think they could’ve cut one village to give us more time in the others. And our bus was sold out, and honestly a little tight on space. That being said – a bus tour is still nice because doing something like this on your own – driving – would have been much more stressful.
Regardless of that, we had a nice quiet day and at the last adorable village we enjoyed tea and scones by the river. #win.
-
Brussels
When my mom visited us this summer, we made sure to carve out a few days for her and I to do something fun. We went around a little on what those “somethings fun” should be but we landed on Brussels.
From London, you can train it to Brussels in about 2 hours.
Ka-Ching.
We took an early train there and an evening train back.
Spent the day. And it was just lovely.
Mom looked ahead, did some research, and found a handy little “walk of Brussels” tour on Pinterest. Turns out Brussels is blessedly walkable. Party! I would just like to say thank you for being walkable Brussels.
I like it, I appreciate it. I see you.
It makes your city even more destination-able than it already was.
Not having to worry about transit in foreign country = happy me.
Our “tour” ended up being perfect. I mean, as far as I know. We saw all the ‘major’ things.
We had plenty of time to eat and dilly around the chocolate shops.
That’s all I need.
Our Goals for Brussels –
Eat Chocolate
Eat Waffles
Eat Fries
Drink Beer
Secondary Goals –
“Touristy” things that might be in cahoots with or on the way to chocolate, waffles, fries, or beer.
___________________________________________________________________________________________
We arrived at the main train station (Midi/Zuid). We had previously googled how to take the train to the first stop on mom’s Pinterest tour, which was a beautiful park and palace.
We completed the first part of our day with ease and efficiency.
And also – at the top of our walk we walked by this huge building with these massive flags hanging all over it.
And I was like, “Oh look the German flag. Must be their embassy.”
And mom was like, “Are you sure, I don’t know. Could be a fancy Belgium building.”
And I was like “NO way, I definitely 100% know that is the German flag – geez mom, don’t you know your flags.”
We shortly found out however that I was wrong and that ^^ is in fact the flag of Belgium.
She graciously didn’t rub it in my face. But in my defense THIS is the German flag:
Flag lesson over.
From there, we walked by some fancy museums (Royal Museum of Fine Arts, Musical Instrument Museum, and Magritte Museum) and onward to the Cathedral of St. Michael and St. Gudula.
I have to say it’s pretty standard on the scale of “beautiful European Cathedrals.” I don’t know how to describe it like an Art Historian or an Architect. I mean, I know just enough to be dangerous, so it’s probably best if I leave it to the professionals. Just know that I’m always impressed and I never tire of seeing these places and being in them.
From there we walked to the Grand Place. The Google definition of Grand Place is:
“Huge city square completely encircled by elegant historic buildings dating back to the 14th century.”
And that’s precisely what it is and it doesn’t disappoint.
It’s huge, vibrant, and beautiful.
From there, you walk the surrounding area. You shop and search for Chocolate, waffles, and Fries.
You also search for the Mannekin Pis, which is this litte statue of a boy peeing.
It is very important to the Belgiums. They dress him up in all sorts of outfits, and there are mini’s of him all over the shops.
I didn’t really like it. I don’t know… I think that’s why I don’t even have a picture of us with it. But what’s weird is that I was compelled to buy a little statue of him at the train station. And here he sits in my house.
Everyday, all day.
I don’t have an explanation.
Moving on – we were getting hungry and mom had done some research on where to find THE BEST Belgium waffle. And it happened to be right next to the Mannekin Pis.
Mom got sweet – Strawberry and Nutella. I wasn’t quite ready to brave the sugar coaster, so I got a cheesy/savory waffle pocket.
Both were yum yum yum. Yummy yum yum. Double thumbs up.
Then mom got some Nutella on her white shirt, which is hilariously typical and I had to take a pic. Sorry mom!
Other waffle displays we left uneaten:
From there we continued to peruse and follow our Pinterest tour, while taking in some of the funky street art and some of the Belgium famous tapestries and lace.
I learned something new – Belgium is (additionally) famous for tapestries and lace.
And then the chocolate shopping commenced.
You see one chocolate shop and it has the most beautiful display and the most amazing looking treats and the most incredible SMELL.
And you’re like “This shop is amazing!”
“I want to buy chocolate in here.”
But then, you remember you’re a lady and you’re required to shop around. “If I keep walking I may find something that I like even better….”
And you can continue to do this all day in Brussels. Because there is literally a chocolate shop every 20ft. Some of them have a folk-y sort of feel. They have chocolate treats but also a lot of other types of sweets and fun colored lollipops. In those shops – I would feel comfortable letting my kids come in. They have pretty colored tins, and mix-and-match bags.
Others are not that way – they are quiet and white with chocolate so elegantly styled and presented that the chocolates look like make-up instead of candy. And they have, like, 30 chocolates total in the whole store and that’s it. Nothing else fun. These shops are SERIOUS. No kids allowed. (I mean, I’m sure they’re allowed) Just in general, however, you feel like you should behave yourself.
And then there are some in the middle. But either way, walking around you start to realize that some of the shops are doubled or even tripled around the city. This makes your lady brain relax a little. You can go ahead and start buying some chocolate – you’ve hit all the options.
Mom had again researched ahead where we should eat fries. The place was called Frit-land, and it was about mid-point in our walk. Obviously lots of other people had decided they were going to get their fries at Fritland too. Because when we happened upon it, the line was loooooong. But we were there and we decided to wait. We waited for 30 minutes and didn’t move. We jointly decided that maybe we weren’t going to have Frit-land fries and started making our way back to the Grand Place.
Once we left, the line seemed to loosen up a little, but not much. I’m not sure what was going on there. I think there might have been a big group or some sort of problem. I don’t know. How long do people wait for fries? How long does it take to make and distribute fries??
Not sure, but once back at the Place, we found a place to sit. Mom ordered cheese, fries, and a (Radler German style) beer for us to share.
After snack time ,we made our final chocolate purchases and decided we needed to give ourselves plenty of time to figure out how to get back to the train station.
Even though we had googled and screen-shot-ed directions ahead of time, we found ourselves utterly confused at the French/Dutch/German speaking train station. We somehow figured out how to get tickets and then also found the platforms. But we COULD NOT figure out which train we needed to get back to Midi (which is the international train station). We kept switching platforms, trains kept coming, boards kept changing. We felt like we couldn’t make sense of anything. There didn’t seem to be a lot of (helpful) English speakers, or employees. I had a real mini-panic-flash that maybe we wouldn’t figure it out. Even when we thought we had it figured out and finally, bravely, decided to get on a train… I was not confident.
The root of our problem was that we didn’t realize that our destination (the international train station) called Midi or Zuid goes by two interchangeable names. We were only looking for Midi. So, we’d find Midi on the board – run to the platform – to only see the trains going to Zuid! And then repeat.
We got on the right train, though, and it was only a few stops before we arrived at MIDI/ZUID. Even with all that messing around, we ended up getting to MIDI way earlier than we anticipated. We had about 2 hours to kill, so we sat outside in the nice weather and had a nice dinner at the station.
With that much time to kill, we realized we would’ve had time earlier in the day to visit one of those museums we walked by or wait in the long Fritland line. But that’s just something you learn on your first time in a new place. We still accomplished our scholarly goals, and had a fun day together. The train back left around 7, and we were in London by 9 and home by a little after 10.
Adventure day to Belgium – done and in the books.
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Corfu, Greece
GREECE.
oh, hello my love.
Greece.
Corfu to be exact.
Reflecting back on Corfu, my only thoughts are of utter bliss.
Just ahh…… brain melt type bliss.
Taking THIS trip to THIS place was one of the best things we’ve ever done.
1.Get Married
2. Have Kids
3. Go to Corfu
We knew we wanted a quick get-away once grandma arrived in June. So we stirred around about it for a few days and shopped deals. But, per the usual – we became overwhelmed with options. One night we really focused and searched all kinds of things. From Iceland to Venice to Budapest.
We both became frustrated and decided to go to bed.
It was midnight, Rich was brushing his teeth, I just clicked on one more random “deals in Greece” link on TripAdvisor. Corfu came up.
Flights, hotel, food. A price we thought was great.
He says, over brushing his teeth, ‘just book it…’
I would like to say ‘we have always dreamed of going to Greece’ or ‘we researched thoroughly where we wanted to go’ and all that. But truth is at the end of a long a somewhat depressing evening, we picked Corfu on an exhausted whim.
Booked at 12:30am.
We took a VERY early flight out of London. I think we left the house at 3:30am, and had the most charismatic cab driver take us to the airport. We never take a cab. Cabs are to be avoided at almost all costs. But the train to the airport doesn’t run all night. Enter cab… begrudgingly.
This put us at the airport at 4am-ish. The airport at 4am was strange and unexpectedly lively. Families with children, large groups, all kinds. Some people were drinking beer and some were eating breakfast. It was really weird and, like kinda fun or something. I don’t know – I was just really happy at the airport.
Fly out at 6. Three hour flight, time change, cab to hotel – arrive at hotel around 11ish.
This is my ‘no make up, been up since 3am – but relieved to be in Greece face’
The Resort.
Ok, so, let’s clarify – we went to Corfu. But also we went to a RESORT in Corfu. A resort that markets and caters heavily to Brits and western-type travelers. Like…. if you just stayed at the resort and didn’t venture off anywhere – I’m not sure how ‘Greek’ your experience would be. You’re here and you’re going to experience Greece, but also don’t worry because you’ll have all the things you’re used to, also…. if you want them.
Like air conditioning or fried chicken.
They served very good food with authentic Greek options, but also lots of “Brit” and “American” options. And then, of course, there was the beautiful authentically Greek seaside scenery that I suppose you would experience with the resort. But that would be the extent of it.
Which – btw – THERE IS ABSOLUTELY nothing wrong with.
It was hard for Rich and I to want to leave the resort. We almost didn’t. Like, I could totally just live there full time. I could promote it – do commercials for it. I can’t say enough positive things about. I’m just making the disclaimer that I think we ‘cheated’ a little in not doing something more ‘authentic.’
But do I care?
Not one damn bit.
Do not fear, we peeled ourselves off our beach chairs and left the resort.
We did. We cultured.
So. there.
My favorite thing about this resort was the quiet.
Lack of sound.
Basically just the ocean sounds. And the general sense of having the place to yourself. Which was odd. There were a lot of people at the resort. I know this because I would see them at meal times. But then after the meal times, I don’t know… everyone dispersed. There were several pools – one of which was strictly kid geared. The kid pool had it’s own thing going on. The more adult pools had a party-type thing going on. But our favorite spot was down on the “beach” where it was blissfully quiet and there was a great little cafe.
The coast where we were staying was rocky, but they manufactured a little sandy beach, with a cool deck-type situation where you could wade (or jump) into the water.
See how there are not very many people in most of those pictures? It was like that often in the resort. Just not very crowded. Quiet, calm.
The Weather.
When we were there in early June = #absoluteperfection
The Town.
On the second day, we ventured to Corfu town by way of a bus that picked us up by the resort. It dropped us off in town and picked us up in town. We were able to peruse the town and take a sunset cruise complete with dinner and real Greeks doing traditional dancing.
When we finished eating on the boat – music just came on and the crew of the boat just appeared on the deck and started dancing! Like, clapping the hands up high, twisting, kneeling, walking in a square moves. It was interesting, and obviously something they’d done their entire lives. Sadly I don’t have a picture of that. I guess I was too swept away…. and I was also a little seasick and cold from the sea breeze in my sleeveless top. No matter how warm it is during the day – bring a coat on the ocean, people!
The Food.
Mostly yogurt and honey. And then, cucumbers, tomatoes, feta, seafood and wine.
We had great food everywhere we went.
Most of our meals were at the resort, but we also ate in Corfu town, on our boat cruise, and at a cafe down the road from the resort, perched above the water called Barbayiannis Cheers Bar.
Yogurt deserves a Gold Star. We’ve all heard of Greek Yogurt. Maybe some of us have heard of Greek honey.
(and as I have in other posts – I would like to point out what a damn fool I looked like taking a picture of the yogurt bowl)
THIS yogurt is…. served in a huge bowl, accompanied by a huge bowl of honey.
You scoop a couple scoops of yogurt and then you drizzle drizzle.
And it’s the sort of experience that makes you re-evaluate. Your brain doesn’t properly process what is happening. There is confusion and shock.
On our first dinner at the buffet, Rich who doesn’t even eat, or really like yogurt says “I can’t believe I’m about to say this… but… I’m going back to get more yogurt.”
We became absolutely crazy for the yogurt and ate it with every meal.
Creamy, light and rich at the same time. Sweet, but not too sweet.
Flavorful, fresh. Cut it with that amazing honey……
I know this is hard to understand. Because yogurt is just yogurt and you move on with life. But all I’m saying is…. GREEK YOGURT IN GREECE IS SO GOOD that you’ll be mad about it.
The other.
Besides eating, and visiting the town, we layed around on the beach. That’s always my absolute favorite.
Me, in my beach chair, when we started to get hungry one day “I’m getting pretty hungry. I really want to go get some food. Walk over to that restaurant and eat something seafood-y. Sounds amazing…. but I’m just not sure it’s worth getting up out of this chair. It’s tough babe. Do you think they would bring food over here to us? How can we tell them??”
We also unexpectedly found ourselves swimming in the ocean. I say “unexpectedly” because I’m not really a swimmer. I LOVE to go to a lake, or go to a beach, or be on a boat. However – I do not like to swim.
I mean, I’m not afraid… and I CAN swim – if it is required of me. When I was a kid and went to 4H camp, and I had to tred water for 5 minutes before they let us take out a canoe – I crushed that. But I never EVER swim for enjoyment. I’ve just never really enjoyed it that much. When lazying about near a body of water, I usually just dip my toes in to cool off, or wade in half way or something.
BUT – Finn went on a kick in late spring where he was obsessed with going to swim school. It was too late to sign him up for lessons, so we started taking him to the pool at the gym and just trying to teach him ourselves. So there I am, studying instructional swim videos on YouTube. And now I’m a swim teacher.
ANYWAY – I had been in a swimming sort of place. I was a little hot on the beach, and I decided to just get in the water for a little bit. I waded in and I found myself wanting to swim. A lot. Like, way more than Rich was up for. Like, I swam way way out by myself. And just swam and swam and swam. Under water, over water. And it was so awesome. It was cool and refreshing, and I had to exert so much energy and then I could eat all I wanted. And the best part was that I surprised myself. I’ve never swam in the sea like that. I’ve never WANTED to. But, I guess I just do that now.
I just had the best time swimming in the ocean like a boss.
Maybe it was all the yogurt. I don’t know…
Here is a picture of how swimming made me feel. And also, how the ocean water in combination with the sun made my hair have legit ‘beach wave’ for the first time ever. And also – the rare occasion in which I let myself be photographed in a bathing suit.
ON THAT NOTE
feelings about bathing suits –
I have come to a point where I feel I need to wear a one-piece bathing suit instead of a two-piece. (In that ^ picture, my arm is crooked under my chest, showing what looks like belly skin. But I am – in fact – wearing a one piece.) And I think it’s probably easy for most women to understand the reasons why I feel that way.
However I found myself to be over-dressed in my one-piece in Corfu. Once I noticed it, I started looking. And I only found TWO OTHER women wearing a one piece bathing suit the entire time we were there – and one was a tankini.
At all the pools, at the beach, around the resort. I was (essentially) the only one.
Women of all shapes, sizes, and ages wore two pieces – or sometimes only the bottom piece. And it didn’t matter what they looked like.
It just didn’t matter.
And we weren’t at a nude resort.
IT WAS JUST THE WAY.
Obviously it comes down to a cultural difference. From my standard American perspective the thinking is “If you don’t look a certain way, you better go ahead and cover up.” This makes a healthy mother of four like me feel ashamed to wear a bikini. Meanwhile, the Italian 80-year old next to me confidently and freely walks the beach in hers. She has no fear of judgment or ridicule or whispers. And neither does the Greek 40 year old, the German 25 year old, or even the Brit 30 year old.
During my laze-ing around I pondered these thoughts. Overall I’m just annoyed. I want to be that comfortable with myself.
I think most of the European/Greek women think “I’m at the beach and the appropriate attire is a bikini.”
I still think about it now – months later.
Modestly is different. That is a different cultural or religious choice. While I think you should respect yourself, I don’t consider myself to be modest. Living in London, I see actual modest women on a daily basis and they don’t show a lick of skin below their neck. I don’t subscribe to those notions and I should be able to wear a bikini if I so desire – because that would be appropriate beach attire and that is the only reason I need.
Or… at least that’s the thought.
___________________________________________________________________________________________
Alright – that’s all on Corfu. I give it 5 stars. Or 80 billion…. however many it wants.
If ever my path crosses again with Corfu, I will be a lucky person. And perhaps a less-dressed one….
____________________________________________________________________________________________
Where we stayed:
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Changing Houses
Ok… I’m finally ready to write about this.
We have changed houses.
Not moved. Because when I say “we’re moving” everybody tends to over-react.
This is me, with almost every other parent/friend at school:
“We’re moving…..”
“Oh my goodness!! Where to?!?”
“Just Gordondale.”
“oh.. oh good. That’s nice.”
When I say ‘changing houses’ FOR SOME REASON it is much better received.
So there it is. We changed houses.
Here’s the thing. We don’t ENJOY moving, even though I know our life choices make it appear that way. Rich and I will hit 10 years of marriage this June and we’ve lived in many different homes. 8 to be exact.
Not typical, I know.
Some moves were our choice, others weren’t. For the official record I would just like to chronicle our moves and why they happened. And then everyone will see once and for all… that… it makes sense….
1 – apartment in Washington DC = Summer 2007 – Fall 2007. Moved because Rich took a job in Chicago. And because I was a little whiner who didn’t like DC.
2 – apartment in Schaumburg = Fall 2007 – Fall 2008. 1 whole year! Moved because our year lease was up and we were expecting Harry, and wanted something “bigger.”
3 – townhouse in Palatine = Fall 2008 – Fall 2009. Moved because our landlord foreclosed. Waaa waaah.
4 – townhouse in Schaumburg = Fall 2009 – Fall 2010. Moved because our landlord foreclosed. What? Again? A different landlord? Yes. Double Waaa waaaaaaaaaaah.
5 – townhouse in Aurora = Fall 2010 – Spring 2013. 2.5 years! Moved because we decided to build a house
5.5 – Mom and Dad’s house 🙂 = I lived here for four months with the boys while our house was being built. Rich stayed with friends in Chicago and came home on the weekends.
6 – Oswego house = moved IN Fall of 2013, SOLD and moved out Summer of 2015 because we are insane. Didn’t quite make it 2 years.
6.5 – back at Mom and Dad’s for a month because our house sold too quickly.
7 – Stroud house = Fall 2015 – Spring 2017. Moved because of several reasons.
8 – Gordondale house! Spring 2017 – …………… ?
So… it doesn’t seem that bad when it’s all laid out and explained, right???
Right??
RIGHT?!?!
Right.
I’m glad we agree.
A lot of different factors lead us to the decision to move this time around.
Basically we were paying too much in rent.
Way too much.
Here’s the thing: we knew we were going to have to move in October regardless. Our landlord was wanting too much money from us.
Quick tip: if your landlord/rental management agency demands anything over a 3% raise on your rent after ONE YEAR, they are out of bounds. 3% is more than enough to cover fluctuations in the market.
Last summer, our landlord asked for a 15% raise in rent. IS THIS REAL LIFE?!?
We knew that was crazy but we didn’t know what else to do. As a GOOD tenant, you have a little bit of power, in that if you leave your landlord will incur costs and time in finding a new good tenant. The Stroud house is at the top of the market on size and quality alone. And it is completely furnished. We get all that. We were happy to have it. But, we were still paying alot lot lot. At the thought of moving last year, we wanted to vomit… so… we compromised on an 8% raise and re-signed for the year. We didn’t like it, I mean – we already paid ALOT.
This year, though, we’re more settled. Things have calmed down. WE have calmed down. “Changing houses” didn’t seem so bad.
WE KNEW, we just knew, that our landlord was going to ask us for more. We also knew that we were not willing to pay any more. So, we started looking around… and come to find out, prices had gone down and we now pay 500-800/month more than other comparable properties.
ahhh…… what now? NO.
Not cool.
So, we could either wait till October when our lease is up. Keep paying our super high rent and have more pressure to move by an October deadline, or we could start looking now… and possibly leave early.
Here’s the other thing: It’s relatively stupid to pay too much for rent. You don’t have to. That’s the wonderful thing about renting. If you don’t like it, YOU CAN LEAVE.
I recently found out I was paying too much for the hand soap that I like and I was like super mad about it. HAND SOAP.
I don’t like to spend unnecessary money. Not even a little. I don’t think anyone with four kids does. I’m a shop-arounder. I’m the queen-returner. And I’m super practical. I don’t like buying things that don’t serve a purpose. I have to convince myself to buy ‘decor’ items, with the argument that their purpose is to be ‘decor.’ I wear socks with holes in them and shirts with stains because they still work. Stuff like that.
I don’t consider myself to be cheap because I appreciate and see the value in spending money on the appropriate things when the time calls. But I will not pay more for something if I don’t have to.
I’ve got other things to spend that money on.
Horrendously over-paying for rent is not on my list of “appropriate” spending.
We crunched the numbers and decided that even after we incurred moving costs and possibly FURNISHED AN ENTIRE HOUSE, that we could still save money in the long run.
We called the rental management company, asked if we could get out of our lease. They said yes, and that was the turning point. We realized we were going to move.
Sooner rather than later.
And the hunt began.
HOUSE HUNTING in LONDON
(specifically Wimbledon)(specifically walking distance of Wimbledon Park Primary)
Being a family of six in the city is sometimes stressful. Searching for a house is one of those times. You have to decide what you’re willing to compromise on. What can we deal with? What are the deal breakers?
Side note on homes in London vs. the homes in America (in general): They are different. Set your expectations accordingly.
Now that the boys are all three in school and doing very well, we were basically not willing to budge on location. The agents kept asking us, “Can you do Croydon? Can you do Putney? Can you do central Wimbledon?”
Me “Are you dim.. I said walking distance to Wimbledon Park Primary. Three times already.”
– I didn’t really say that. But I certainly thought it…
We could move out of the area and save money. We could. Save alot.
We could move out of the area and get a big-giant-house. We could.
But we had time on our side, we weren’t desperate yet. We could prioritize NOT-uprooting-the-boys-from-school.
As we started looking around and touring properties, we realized one thing: we were going to have to go ahead and break our lease. We kinda thought we could have our cake and eat it too. Stay in our house and look for something new. But we began to realize that most properties that are up for rent are empty and not willing to wait for you to give your current landlord “60 days notice.”
“ah, yes, we like this house. can we move in in 3 months?”
…. doesn’t really seem to work that way.
If we weren’t willing to break the lease, we could potentially continue to see properties that we couldn’t jump on… all the way to October. We needed to be free to move in order to snag something that came up. The downside of this, of course, is that you could break your lease, not find anything, and then end up with literally no home.
We had to jump off the cliff, break the lease, and find a place to move on the fall down.
It may seem like a risky move when you have four kids, and it seems that way because IT IS THAT WAY.
It’s not like we didn’t think we would find something. We knew we would find SOMETHING. It was just a matter of which concession we would be willing to make. Will we have to walk really far? Five bedrooms is out of the question. There just aren’t any. We know for a fact that this 5 bedroom is SUPER RARE. We have to go down to four or even three bedrooms. Will it just have to be ‘not quite as nice’?
All that considered, we just did it. We decided to break the lease early and have some faith. We’ll find something. We will. We’ll find something.
After that there was drama. Most of which, I see no need to re-tell. The landlords tried to fight us on the lease break. We were IN THE RIGHT, legally. There was nothing to fight.
It got a smidge ugly. Lease-break-Gate, I think I’ll call it.
Like usual, we forged ahead.
We were scouring, SCOURING, for a new house in the square inch of land where we wanted to live.
We need to be walking distance from the school. So draw a little circle around the school.
Now – we need to have enough space (that’s a loose term).
So, knock out 90% of the available properties.
Also – we need it NOT to be a million dollars.
And – please-Lord-above could we get a dryer.
And – please-Almighty-Lord-above a downstairs toilet too.
And.. that leaves you with…………… 2 properties.
I know – I’m asking for too much.
But I’m just so tired everyday and I need a new house and I have 60 days. I’ll be a good little shepard, I promise. I have to potty train two toddlers, I really need a downstairs toilet. Oh, and I need to do six people’s laundry and bedding….
Can I live with three bedrooms if the living space is big enough?
If I have to choose between having a dryer and having three bedrooms instead of four?
I THINK I MIGHT CHOOSE A DRYER….. What world do I live in?
It was honestly more stressful than our move over here, and it consumed our thoughts and time for the first three months of the year.
Then one day the clouds parted, and the sun shone. A new house came up.
A house for us.
A perfect house for us.
- 4 bedrooms
- 2 min WALK TO SCHOOL, even closer than we used to be (which is also by the train, the bus, the grocery store, and the doctor)
- 2.5 baths (including one on the ground floor!)
- Laundry! Washer/Dryer combo machine. But, I’m NOT ABOUT to complain about anything.
- spacious garden with shed!
- beautiful and new throughout
- great layout that could easily be Vivian-proofed
The beautiful front door. 
The view from the entry way. 
Half Bath under the stairs. 
Kitchen from front. 
Kitchen from back. 
The cooker. 
The first thing to function in the new kitchen. Tea and coffee area. 
Living Room. 
Up the stairs… 
First Bath 
I just like this. 
Landing. 
Gonna be boys room. 
Gonna be Playroom/Guest room/extra Boy room 
Gonna be Viv’s Room. 
Another set of stairs. 
Third floor Master Bedroom. 
From the front of the room. 
The view out of the balcony doors. Hello everyone! 
And on the other side of the door, the Second full bath. 
Hidey holes for Dishwasher and Washer/Dryer Combo machine. 
Behind the doors. Pantry, Fridge, Freezer. I jumped on it so fast. I think my fingers sizzled as I called the estate agent.
We viewed it, but I didn’t even need to. It was love-at-first-sight-on-RightMove. We met the new landlords. We like them. They like us. They’ve been in the house for 16 years, they recently renovated the kitchen and the loft. Basically they’re solid. The new rental management agency is solid too – they proved that to us through their very professional behavior through every turn of Lease-break-Gate, and followed that up with winning paperwork and lots of care and attention.
I love this house so much.
Let’s get some perspective. Rarely, if EVER EVER, does one “down-grade” or “down-size” into a property like this in London, of this Earth. And that’s probably the most telling of how much we were over-paying on Stroud. And why the whole mess was worth it.
Hands down – I can look at that list up there, and say that this is my favorite house we’ve lived in. Including the one we built. It’s smaller in size than the last two houses we’ve lived in, but it doesn’t matter because it just fits us really well. I’ve always wanted a house the was JUST big enough. Not too big, because I’m weird about unused space. Because every space must serve a PURPOSE… or two or three.
I like things simple. I’m the opposite of a hoarder. This house has room for all of my people, and room for all of the appropriate stuff and no more after that.
Happy.
____________________________________________________________________________________________
This move was very different from all of our other moves.
One, because we didn’t have any furniture or furnishings. We didn’t have the big stuff like beds or a table. But we also didn’t have a spoon or a trash can or a toilet brush. It was all just there in Stroud when we moved in. The only things we moved over here with were clothes, bedding, toys, and a few select kitchen items.
And Two – because it was just a few streets over.
And Three – because the leases overlapped and we had both houses for a month.
When we got the keys to the new house, we began measuring, planning, and ordering furniture. We wanted to try and have it mostly set up before moving the kids over. Deliveries came almost everyday. I ran around to different stores every other day and pieced the new kitchen together.
And then, I started packing up our things at Stroud. The kids were on break from school. That meant I had mover helpers. I also have four strollers. I’m resourceful. Everyday, I’d load up the strollers with our STUFF and we’d push a load over.
Theo made sure to always bring his potty seat! 
If you think I don’t know how ridiculous this is, you’d be wrong.
I do know.
And yet, I’m certainly not above this.
Why would I hire movers or rent a truck when it can easily be done this way?
Rich was like “All the neighbors probably see you guys and think ‘Oh that poor woman, her husband is too cheap to hire movers so he makes her move all of their things over one trip at a time. I see her walking loads over everyday, with the kids…. making them push strollers too!’”
I was like “I don’t care what anyone thinks!”
Plus, the kids had fun doing it.
Whatever.
I laughed on a lot of these trips… it was just as bananas as it looks. Papa (who was here to LITERALLY save us) started referring to it as our ‘urban migration.’
Perfect.
But you know what? Nobody ever even gave us a second look.
That’s London.
In the evenings Rich and I, and Papa, would take turns taking loads over and setting up and building furniture.
We initially thought that we would rent a van or truck or something for one weekend. But as the loads slowly went over and our things in Stroud diminished, I looked around and said to Rich “I think we can WALK our whole house over there.”
And he answered back “Ya, I think so too.”
And that’s what we did.
The biggest thing we had was Viv’s crib. Brought over in two trips by daddy, Papa, and the Sit N’ Stand stroller.
By Easter weekend, the kitchen was set up and most major furniture was in place. Our goal by Sunday was to bring over everything we needed for the kids to start sleeping there. Everything left at Stroud could continue to be brought over by the stroller caravan. So, we re-located the kids and all of their essentials. We left them at Gordondale with Papa and went back to start packing up everything that was left.
At this point one of our neighbors knocked on the door
“Um, I just saw Rich walking down the street carrying a television. Please let us take a car load over for you.”
Me “Oh no, really, we’re alright! We’re just walking things over a little at a time. We have another week or so. We’re doing ok!”
Her “No, really, we’re home all day – let us just take one load over. It’s not trouble at all.”
Me, “Well, ok…. maybe. I’ll see.. maybe, ya…? I’ll pack some more and let you know.”
Her “Please do.”
I hustled and packed up the rest of our things, and we knocked back on the neighbors door an hour later accepting their offer to help. It took not one car load, but a gracious two. And after that we were moved in!
____________________________________________________________________________________________
Settling in a new place is always more of a marathon than a sprint, especially with LIFE going on. I feel like we’ve done well, all things considered.
The garden was an unexpected problem. It was filled with gravel and looked like this:
Don’t get me wrong, the kids LOVED all the gravel. They knew immediately what to do with all of that. Trucks came out, the whole deal. But it only took a few minutes each time for the boys to start throwing and kicking and for Viv to start trying to eat them. So it shot up to the top of the to-do list. We laid down some weather proof tiles. On top of that we rolled on some artificial grass. We cleared the deck of furniture and pots, and trimmed all the scary hedges.
And, Ta Da! A usable outdoor space for us.
Now that we have some furniture in place, this is how we are making this house work for us:
Anyway….
That’s why we did it. How we did it. And where we stand now.
I mean, even as I write this, there are boxes of furniture still to be put together.
Still things to be sorted and put away. Still things to be made “perfect.”
“Decor” to buy….
My list is enormous.
But we’re in, we’re moved, we’re functional and then some. Most of all, we’re relieved we did it and we’re happy.
Onward!
-
Year End 2016
Last year I said that 2015 was ‘the most outrageous year.’
I never would have thought that it was possible to have a MORE outrageous year.
But, in fact, it is.
2016 was the MOST OUTRAGOUS YEAR.
I mean… in 2015 we had a fourth baby. And it was a girl, after three boys – so we felt a little like first timers. We decided to sell our house, almost all of our possessions, and move from Chicago to London. We lived intermittenly with my parents. We home-schooled. We took four kids under 6 on a plane across the ocean. We were excited and over-stressed. We slowly settled into a new country.
I guess when you keep a high standard of activity like that, it seems LAZY to just kick back for a year. SO. We achieved the goal. The goal I didn’t set. The goal of having a crazier year than 2015.
Looking back, I think it would’ve been better to pace ourselves. But.. what are you gonna do? Life is short.
In addition to the small task of navigating the British lifestyle, the main stamp of this year is that we TRAVELED.
more specifically, we travelled to:
Amsterdam
Rome
Munich
Paris
Croatia
Las Vegas
The Chalk Cliffs of England, Bath and Stonehenge
oh, and Rich and I BOTH made separate trips back to the US for family occasions.
and oh, also – Rich went to Glasgow with his brother to watch the British Open.
And here in London, we took a couple fun day adventures:
Legoland
Chessington Worlds of Adventure
Natural History Museum, Hampton Court Palace, and the London tourist circut (a few times)
I can’t imagine we’ll ever have another year where we travel this much. It was incredible, and honestly our wallet is pretty sore. But… how amazing.
This year has had so much activity… so many changes… and so much growth for each of our children that when I think back it HONESTLY feels like two or three years instead of one.
The longest post ever may now commence:
_____________________________
We started the year with our German Au Pair (Rica) moving into the guest room. Also in January, Harry started at his new school. This was a big deal. He was resistant, to say the least. Life became harder for us, now that I needed to be two places at once (hence Rica). All of this is detailed in my “school saga” post.
Viv started exploring the world of eating food, and sitting on her own.
In March, Theo turned 2! And Daddy had a birthday too.
Then on Spring Break, the O’Rourke’s visited and we took a trip to Amsterdam and Rome. All 6 of us, plus 4 O’Rourkes, plus Rica. We were quite the entourage.
Then in May, the angels sang and Finn was offered a place at Harry’s school. Both boys at the same school!!!!! This was also a big deal, for me specifically. And once again it’s detailed more in the “school saga” post.
For several reason (to use a British expression) I wasn’t ‘keen’ to throw birthday parties for the boys. In lieu of a party, we chose an outing – this year it was Legoland. Both boys agreed on this. We went on a weekend in June between their two birthdays. And then, on the actual day – I decorated, we had birthday breakfast and presents from mom and dad. Then, after school we invited just a few close friends over to play. We had cake and their friends brought small gifts – even though I asked them not to. It worked out wonderfully for both Harry and Finn. They do much better in a small grouping, we didn’t get overloaded with a toy hurricane, and it was simple and fun for mom and dad. It ended up being the most perfect thing. They each felt special and celebrated.
Viv started sitting on her own, crawling, and pulling up!
Harry’s birthday playdate with Toby, Tilly, Loic, and Reece 
Finn’s birthday playdate with Jacob and Yusef 
She can pull up! 
She’s on the move! 
We had the busiest summer in recorded history, with all of our family visiting and trips to Croatia, Munich, Paris, Paris again, Las Vegas, the Cliffs, Bath, and Stonehenge.
Oh, and also Viv started walking and turned ONE.
When I was pregnant with Viv, we were deciding whether or not to take this London oppurtunity. I realized that if we did, it would be possible for us to take baby girl to Paris for her first birthday. I envisioned taking her picture in front of the Eiffel Tower eating french pastries. I had this picture in my mind before she was born, and I’m so thrilled that we actually made it happen. On top of that she literally took some of her first brave steps in our Paris apartment.
Also, I decided to make a donation in the kids’ names for their birthday. So I started this year with Viv’s first – donating to Little Ray of Hope.
We rounded out the summer by visiting Chessington Worlds of Adventure, Hampton Court Palace, and the Natural History museum. Other than that, we played outside a lot.
At our parks:
Natural History Museum 
Aquarium at Chessington Lands of Adventure The Magic Garden in Hampton Court Palace
In September, the big boys returned to school. Theo and Viv continued to grow and learn to play together. Also – up until school started we were moving children’s beds around in different rooms trying to figure out which combination of kids in which rooms was going to be best. With Viv still sleeping in our room, an au pair staying, and then lots of family visiting – everyone was moving all summer. I think every kid slept in every room at some point. And we tried different combinations of kids. But school was the deadline for a decision on WHO was going to sleep WHERE. We settled on NOBODY in with mom and dad. Theo on the third floor. Guest room open. Harry and Finn together. Viv by herself. It’s not the most glamorous, but it works just fine.
Also a couple small things in the house, I finally finished our command center, and our art-wall in the kitchen.
We also got to spend our first summer without air conditioning. And, I have to say – I thought I would die. But I did not. Generally the London climate stays mild, but this year was one of the hottest summers London has had in a long time. So, for purposes of future air-conditioning purchasing plans, I decided to rate the days as they grew hotter: totally fine, nice but warm, or completely uncomfortable NEED AIR CONDITIONING NOW!! We had eight days of NEED AIR CONDITIONING NOW. And they were NOT consecutive. But those eight days still had our wimpy butts researching air conditioners and air coolers. They don’t really have ‘window units’ here, and none of our windows are suited for it anyway. Any other options require window tubes and stuff and are a big huge pain. We ended up buying an air-cooler that’s basically just a bad fan. And as I looked around the neighborhood, I couldn’t hear the hum of air conditioners, or see one sticking out anywhere. And when I would talk to the neighbors and asked if they had air conditioning – they looked at me like I was ridiculous. So, we’ll just have to get over it and bear the 8 days of blazing inferno every summer. I guess I’ll survive.
With fall, came beautiful weather and a new house guest. Maleah came to stay with us. She’s a family friend that we know from Illinois. She stayed in the guest room from August to December. She took classes online, she traveled around Europe, and she helped me run the ship. She did more than pick up the slack, and was not afraid of a crying kid or a poopy diaper. She was like a better, more efficient version of me. We trust her, we love her, and we miss her greatly.
The boys started school and we still spent lots of time outside. The boys especially love our garden, which I consider the outdoor playroom. Even as the weather gets colder – I still make them go outside. Boys need to be outside a little bit each day…. even if that means you shove them out there and tell them they can’t come back inside until you let them.
Also in the fall, Rich got a promotion at DRW. He was on the team, and now he’s the team lead. Shortly after that he hit his one year mark in the London office. It’s been a challenging and very busy year for him, but he’s very happy in his new role.
ALSO in the fall I may have purchased my 11th and 12th strollers.
Whatever.
Shut up.
You bought 12 strollers.
I need what I need.
Anyway.
For Fall break, I learned from Summer break, and actually organized myself. In the summer, everything just sort of happened in uncontrollable chaotic streams. I was constantly two or three steps behind the kids. Like, we were getting up and I was dishing food out all the time and then cleaning up the kitchen mess. And they would ask for fun summer-type things and I would help them, or I wouldn’t. And then in like 5 minutes, they’ve re-arranged all the furniture upstairs and turned the bathroom into a puddle because they were making “potion.” But most often, they were doing as they pleased – which resulted in a lot of screen time. Which resulted in over-stimulated, brain fried WHINERS.
SO, for fall break, we had a schedule with daily activities and designated screen time, free play time, friend time, and reading/writing. The kids took to it really well, and it was simple and much more relaxing.
And, oh ya, the Cubs just won the World Series. We had to pull an all nighter to watch them win in real time. It was easy and fine.
Tent, always. 
The morning after the CUBS WIN all-nighter. 
a friend from the Chicago office sent a few papers to us! 
the park we attend almost every day 
I kept getting weird looks. I DIDN’T KNOW she had a Duplo motorcycle in her mouth. 
When I make BBQ, I always have two spotters. 
a hiding black spy and a king… two things that make sense 
And then Halloween.
I didn’t have it together for Halloween costumes. Harry and Finn were really wanting to be Wild Kratts – the show they (especially Finn) love so much. Then on the day, Harry changed his mind after realizing that no one in England knows who the Wild Kratts are. He put on his skeleton from last year. I didn’t get Theo a costume because I assumed he wouldn’t want to dress up. If he did, we have a bunch of dress-up stuff upstairs. I was right, and he just wanted to wear his hoodie and it wasn’t worth a fight. I knew Viv would be happy to wear a fun skirt, so I got her some ears and a tail and she was a cat!
Around Thanksgiving, Erika and Jake returned for a quick trip without the kids. They stayed with us on the weekends and travelled to Paris and Ireland during the week. We went with them to our first British Tea time and conquered an escape game. We also began testing out the neighborhood Church-of-England church. We really like it!
Relaxed Tea Time at Muriel’s Kitchen 
Mulled wine and WinterWonderland! Then there’s Christmas and return visits from both Grandmas.
____________
the babies
Harry
Age: 7
Height: 4’5″
Harry has continued to amaze us this year. He grew and developed both at home and at school. He continues to love his siblings and embrace his role as head-kid-in-charge. He fawns over Viv all the time saying things like “I can’t believe how cute she is! I love her so much!” And when Finn had trouble with a kid at school, Harry says “Who is it? Is that kid younger than me? If he is.. I can help you Finn. Just show me who it is and I’ll help.”
And, he’s so patient with each of them, imitating my calm directives. “Pause it Finn. Now, I know you’re excited to show me this new land… but you have to let me do it on my own.” And “I can’t understand you when you whine.” He is truly good help with Viv when I need an extra pair of hands to sit with her or feed her.
He is the leader, and the director of everything play. Whether it’s constructing a tent, playing Minecraft, creating a zoo, or organizing a hunt. Theo and Finn, and sometimes Viv, just follow his lead. All the ideas go through him. We’re lucky that Finn’s demeanor so greatly meshes with Harry’s personality. They are able to play together with virtually no conflict. And if a fight does break out, Harry is great at resolving it.
This year they made me laugh playing ‘sell the house’ where they enjoy placing all of their things in containers and pretending to move them. And then playing ‘travel’ when they dig out their suitcases and pack them. Then travel around the house announcing where they are and how they are traveling there. Harry:”Now we’re taking the underwater train to Paris! And if you are good boys at security I’ll buy you a treat!” Security is in the bathroom and the underwater train is mom and dads bed. They’ve picked up knowledge at school and piled it on with our travels, and their adventures take them from Russia to Asia, to Africa and the Arctic. It’s cute and amazing.
Also this year, Harry has really taken off with his computer skills. Rich gave him the tools, (his own super-computer in his room) with a few “games” and there’s been no stopping him. He can do things and make things – homes, and tools, and rollercoasters in Minecraft and dinosaurs in Arc. He’s seven and he can do it all.
At school Harry has completely caught up with his peers after starting out severely behind last year. The curriculum in the US is 1-2 years behind the UK. After our parent teacher meeting in November, he is right at age level – in fact, a little high in some areas. Back in the spring, the kids were writing “joined” as they call it here. Or cursive. But his teacher wasn’t pushing him on it at all. Completely on his own he started trying to write cursive, and now he has some of the best hand writing in his class.
He reads amazingly well, and is obsessed with multiplication tables. He comes home and reports on his knowledge of the science units on volcanoes and oceans. But most of all he loves to write. As he became more confident, he began wanting to write at home ALOT. He would write to-do lists, plans for machines, gift lists, facts about animals and dinosaurs, books about animals and dinosaurs, super hero books and cards, short stories, and even entire board and card games. He went through three whole notebooks in just a couple months. The things he wrote at the beginning of the year are printed and the things toward the middle of the year are in cursive.
Harry is also very headstrong. Sometimes – depending on his tiredness level – we can’t even reason with him. He has outright refused to comply at GP and eye doctor appointments. The school sometimes has reward days, NON-UNIFORM days, where the kids can dress however they want. On these days, Harry insists on still wearing his uniform. That’s just what he wants and he doesn’t care if he is LITERALLY the only one dressed in uniform at school. One of the days, there was one other kid wearing his uniform at school – and he was only wearing it because his family had been out of town and his mom didn’t know it was a non uniform day. And he insists on wearing way-too-small boxers OVER his boxer briefs to bed every night, no matter how much I tell him how ridiculous it is. whatever….
Most of the time we find ourselves annoyed by his stubbornness – but other times I’m proud. Like when he refused a Gatorade from the team-mom after baseball because it was ‘too sugary” he told her….
He used to be terribly self-conscious, and this year we’ve seen lots of improvement. He definitely still has a self-conscious moment here and there, but generally he sticks to his convictions – even if they don’t make sense to us. And as he’s settled into school, I see him starting to gain a better understanding of social dynamics. Not to be confused with ‘being social’ because he definitely is still on the more reserved side, IN PUBLIC.
Despite his reserved nature, he seems to have no trouble making friends. He enjoys having them over, and tells me often about the things the play together at school. Their favorite game to play together is “Archa and Neato” a band of superheros that they have made up. His best friends of the year were Jerome, Tieri, Loic, Reece, and Toby. He was over-the-moon proud to receive the ‘Best Rounders Player’ trophy at sports camp this summer. Not everyone received a trophy. And on the self-improvement side, he had a little bout of lying to us this summer. He said he felt like he couldn’t tell the truth because he was afraid of getting in trouble. I assured him that lying to me was much more trouble than whatever he did. We were able to squash it with negative reinforcement. But Finn still reminds him, and us, of ‘all the times Harry lied about stuff.’
Favorites: Legos, Minecraft, Arc, Lego Jurassic World, Ninjago, YouTube suprise egg and gaming videos, pepperoni pizza, crumpets with nutella, “movie” popcorn, Skittles, Digestives
Birthday Questions:
- Now that you’re 7, what’s different? That I’m taller. I’ve grown bigger
- How tall are you? Don’t know.
- What are you really good at? Umm… Lego’s, being nice, reading books, being at school and being nice, taking a shower all by myself! making breakfast!.
- What’s your favorite thing to do? Legos! And Minecraft! And watching DanTDM!
- What’s your favorite thing to eat? Chocolate cake and chocolate chip cookie with white ice cream with M&M’s, and Nutella toast, Digestives, and now two healthy things… sandwich with ham and cheese and eggs!
- Where’s your favorite place to go, and why? Legoland! In America, because everything is made of Legos!
- Who’s your favorite friend? Jerome.
- What do you want to do when you grow up? Lego Master Builder
- How old are mom and dad? Daddy is 33 and Mommy is 29!
- What does daddy do at work? He fixes computers
- What do you like the best about mom and dad? Daddy plays video games with me. And mommy…. uuuuu. I don’t really know… oh ya, watching TV with me.
- How strong is dad? REAAAAAALLLLY strong. Like Hulk. Because his muscles look like Hulk’s. But it’s not the same size, it just looks like it. And he’s really strong.
- What’s mom’s favorite thing to do? Work on the computer – I see you do it all the time.
- What’s your favorite thing about your brothers? Finn plays with me nice and Theo’s cute.
- What do you think of girls? Umm. Don’t know. Tabitha’s in love with me. I don’t love Tilly anymore.
- If you could have a super power, what would it be? Being really strong.. ya. Because then I can jump really high and climb.
- What’s the best thing that happened to you this year? Not sure yet, going to Wimbledon Park Primary?
- Where do you want to go on vacation? No where. I want to stay home. Well, actually, I want to go to a hotel with a pool in the summer. Maybe every summer first we can go to a hotel with a pool.
- Are you going to get married some day? to who? No. Well… probably. Maybe I will because Tabitha’s in love with me. But I don’t love her. Maybe when I grow up, I can see.
- How long does it take to make dinner? umm…. about 3 minutes.
- How do you make cookies? Umm… I don’t know. Sugar, bread, and milk. Eggs. And uuuu.. salt. And chocolate! Mix it all up and put it in the oven.
- How much does a car cost? ahhh… 50 pounds because it’s really big and they help people, so they are expensive.
- What’s the healthiest thing you can eat? Umm… oatmeal and soup. Oh – and ham. I love ham.
- Can you give me an example of a good deed? I do not know. Give someone a present on their birthday?
- Can you tell me a joke? Um, no. Ok, Knock knock. ‘Who’s there?’ Cow. ‘Cow who?’ Mooooo!!! Hahahaha
- What do you know about God and Jesus? That they take care of you and that they help you.
Finn
Age: 5
Height: 3’11”
Finn, our sunshine baby, continues to be just that. Most of the time. He is most often happy to go along with whatever is happening. He’s our “most likely to be in his underwear” and also “most likely to wander off.” He’ll wander not because he’s trying to escape us, but because he saw a butterfly or a bird or a gap in the trees. He finds the most to laugh about. He looks at things in a new and different way – often seeing things I don’t. He noticed our uber driver’s hair or our tour guide’s shoes and says things like “That shirt is lovely. I would like this lovely shirt.” and “The water looks beautiful.” and “A rose is my favorite flower.”
And oh man, does he listen. He listens and remembers what you say and takes in his world better than anyone. He doesn’t LOOK or sound like he’s paying attention. But he is. When it’s something he’s interested in… he is paying attention.
Like with animals, for example. He eats up anything animal, like “Wild Kratts” and “Planet Earth” and our Animal Encyclopedia. ON THE DAILY – he spouts animal facts to me. “Mom. Did you know crocodile eggs: if they’re hot, it’s a boy, if they’re cold, it’s a girl?” “MOM. A Peregrine can glide down so fast!” “MOM. A trap door spider doesn’t have a web. It builds a hole and then builds something over it and… and… ” “MOM. A Honey badger lives in Africa and regular badgers live in America.” “MOM. Did you know that the Asian Beetles moved to Africa?” “Mom. Did you know a beaver’s teeth never stop growing?” And so on and so on. He tells me all kinds of things. I often come up to his room to find his animal books open. He’s been looking, and trying to read them.
He also remembers everything else too. I took him and Theo to Hampton Court Palace in mid August. Because of where it is, it’s two trains and then a bus from here. It takes about 45m. We took the trains, we took the bus. I didn’t mention anything specific. I shuffled them there and back. We had a great time. Fast forward to mid October. Hampton Court was so fun, I wanted to take Harry because he didn’t go on the first trip. The big boys had a day off of school so I decided to leave the two little ones with Maleah and take just Harry and Finn to Hampton Court Palace. After we got off the second train, I was maneuvering them through the platform and out of the station, simultaneously checking my phone for the bus route – because I didn’t remember which bus number we needed. Finn says to me “Mom, since we don’t have a stroller, can we ride on the top of the bus?”
And I say back “Yes, but I’m not sure if THIS bus has a top. I think it’s just a single deck bus.”
And he says back “Nu ah, the 111 has a top.”
I stopped in my tracks and stared at him. Then I glanced at my phone for the route information. We needed the 111 bus.
“Finn!” I said “You’re right. How on earth did you know the bus number? We only came here one other time, weeks ago.”
“I just remembered” He says.
So then I say,”Well, ok, but I still don’t think the 111 has a top. So if it does, we can. But I’m pretty sure it’s a single, so be prepared.”
“Ok, but it has a top.” He says.
And ^ that’s them riding on the top of the 111 bus. Because not only did I have to look up the bus information again, I HONESTLY thought I remembered it being a single bus. Little did I know, I just needed to ask Finn.
His sunshine nature is offset by troublesome stubborn-ness, and a little bit of social awkwardness. He’s stubborn enough to lie sometimes, to get the results he wants. And despite his open, carefree attitude at home – we’ve learned that he very much keeps to himself at school. His teachers say he behaves very well, but that he’s reserved. He’s not the most outgoing or outspoken, and he isn’t the first to run around and make friends. It takes him more time. He likes more subtle friendships, a closer relationship with one or two people instead of a small group. At Riversdale, his old school, his BEST FRIEND was Yusef. He talked about Yusef constantly, and I was so happy to hear that he had a friend. But then he had to leave Riversdale to come to Wimbledon Park.
I caught up to Yusef’s mom on Finn’s last day. We exchanged numbers and we’ve gotten them together a few times since Finn’s transfer. They always seem happy to see each other.
Shortly after the start of the new school year, I was elated for Finn to ask to have a friend over. He asked Jacob and then also Leon. But now we hear more about a friend called Hamza. I’m sure with time, he’ll find a good social fit. This year was just challenging for him, on that. He was also sick with a fever and cough and missed a full week of school in May and another in November
Social issues aside, Finn is absorbing what is being taught at school. At five years old, the full day of school – every single day – is hard for him. Some days he gets home and just melts or lays on the couch or cries… or all three. And I know it’s because he’s mentally and physically exhausted. Despite it being so tiring for him, he is doing very well. He often gets behavior rewards and he is right on target with his classmates on writing and math. His reading has really taken off. He uses the phonics rules to sound out words he doesn’t know and takes pride in reading new things. In November he moved up a reading level from where he started in September.
Despite his obvious brightness, he is 5. And within the first few weeks he lost these things at school:
water bottle (found two weeks later)
school sweatshirt (found 6 weeks later)
red polo shirt (still missing)
rain coat (found two days later)
shin guards (found 8 weeks later)
lunch bag (still missing)
a glove (found the next day)
and then came home with – someone else’s shoe laces, someone else’s cardigan, and someone else’s jumper.
At home Finn is endlessly goofy. Every once in a while he’s in a stubborn grumpy mood, but most of the time he’s up for an adventure. Up for playing in the rain. Up for eating treats in the middle of the day. Up for a dance party. Up for pretending he’s a bird. Up for telling a joke. Where Harry often wants to stay home – Finn wants to go out. And when we have non-uniform days at school, Finn is SO excited to wear his own clothes. When he plays video games with Harry, he’s so into it. He jumps up and down until he’s red and sweaty. He is the VERY BEST play mate for each of his siblings. He has the most mesh-able personality.. happy to fit the mold of whatever Harry or Theo or Viv need him to fit. Without virtually ever irritating them.
He’s the best at NOT wearing his clothes.
He’s naturally coordinated – making him good at any video game, kicking a soccer ball, or racing his scooter to school.
And then there’s this:
Favorites: minecraft, candy, snacks, playing adventure, animals, snacks, animals, cake, pizza, animals
Birthday Questions:
- Now that you’re 5, what’s different? nothing different
- How tall are you? one, actually i’m not one. i’m 100.
- What are you really good at? i’m only good at eating
- What’s your favorite thing to do? playing minecraft
- What’s your favorite thing to eat? strawberries, sweets, and cereal!
- Where’s your favorite place to go, and why? the Pig and Whistle, bc it has chicken! and pigs!
- Who’s your favorite friend? Yusef!
- What do you want to do when you grow up? I want to be an explorer, a famous Minecraft person, and a scientist!
- How old are mom and dad? Mom is 1 and Dad is 100! hahahaha
- What does daddy do at work? sleeps on his computer! hahaha
- What do you like the best about mom and dad? don’t know, i love you. and I like daddy setting up minecraft on the computer.
- How strong is dad? 100 strong!
- What’s mom’s favorite thing to do? i don’t know… watch tv?
- What’s you favorite thing about your brothers? don’t know
- What do you think of girls? I only know two girls. Ashtyn and Avery.
- If you could have a super power, what would it be? Super Diego power! To save animals!
- What’s the best thing that happened to you this year? don’t know
- Are you going to get married some day? to who? I’m not going to get married bc i’m going to be a famous Minecraft player.
- How long does it take to make dinner? 6 minutes!
- How do you make cookies? You need wheat and flour and chocolate chip cookies!
- How much does a car cost? 94 GBP
- What’s the healthiest thing you can eat? That’s easy.. it’s oatmeal.
- Can you give me an example of a good deed? I know, it’s hugging them.
- Can you tell me a joke? I can! What does a cow poop like? (what?) sausage pizza!
- What do you know about God and Jesus? I don’t know, only that they are really old. And Jesus was born in Christmas.
Theo
Age: 2
Height: 3’1″
We’ve seen lots of change in Theo this year. Last year I wrote that he was THE MOST challenging toddler, and I stand by that. We put him though a lot, all while he was learning to communicate and grow and develop. He was constantly wanting to fit in with his big brothers, but feeling left out. And I know he often felt separate from Mommy and Viv. We started noticing a difference in his attitudes when our Au Pair moved in. He finally had someone more dedicated to him. I think she really helped to usher him ‘over the hump.’ The terrible-toddler-hump.
By late summer, he went from ‘zero to hero’ as Rich says. Now he’s our sweetest, cuddliest, cutest little bear. He is just SO CUTE. And easy and fun to be around. He’s starting to actually enjoy playing by himself. He dances around and tells us the most adorable things in his cute, excited little voice. He’s always happy to see us when we come in from being out, or when we come into his room to get him, or when we’ve been upstairs. He loves to sprint from the front of the house to the back of the house. And of course, he loves to hang out with his brothers. By the end of the year, he’s starting to see Viv as more of a playmate. I’ve caught glimpses of them playing together. They spend a lot of time trying to make each other laugh – usually by spitting food out of their mouths. For most of the year he lovingly called her ‘baby gurl.’ And I’ve started seeing Theo trying to protect Viv from things, and giving her kisses if she hurts herself. He will also worry about mom or dad if they cough or stub their toe. “you otay?” he says.
He also has very good manners, thank you. you’re welcome. good job! You’re so smart!
He definitely still has lots of grumpy moments, and times when he just needs to chill in the stroller for some TV.
He enjoys getting Viv to mimic him, including his act-like-a-dog phase (which coincidentally Finn also went through). He will sit at the table and try to eat his food from his plate without using his hands, but most often calmly dumps his snacks on the floor and then eats them like a dog. He taught Viv. It’s fine.
Speaking of eating, he has really struggled with eating this year. He was a great eater as a baby. But now, he doesn’t want to sit. Typical for a grazing toddler. And he piled that on with deciding he didn’t like two thirds of what I make. Turning into a real ‘picky eater’ or ‘finicky eater’ or ‘problem feeder’ or whatever it is.
I was just letting it go, but then he started losing weight so I had to try harder.He stopped eating oatmeal and bananas, and stopped drinking milk. Three big staples for me. He stopped eating any fruits and vegetables. The only ones he gets are snuck into bars or muffins that I buy or make. This phase included me doing absolutely ridiculous things like following him around with a bowl offering him bites, feeding him in the living room, and feeding him in his bed. I can’t be catering to him like this, but I also can’t have him waste away. I’m still doing ridiculous things to make sure he doesn’t starve. It’s so dumb. “Like c’mon kid! Don’t you realize that if you don’t eat, you’ll die?!”
I know from Harry and Finn that, with time, the whole Theo-trying-to-starve-himself phase will pass. But until then, I’ll be pretty grumpy about it.
Along with food struggles, he decided that maybe he doesn’t need to nap. NOW…. I am the nap princess. The nap dictator. We nap here. So, I was utterly confused when he just randomly starting dropping it. But at only 2.5, he actually seems to do ok when he doesn’t take one. And then he goes to bed at 6:30 and sleeps a full 12-13 hours. So, I decided to be cool about it. He still goes up to his room for rest time. If he sleeps, he goes to bed later. And if he doesn’t, then it’s lights out early. And at the end of the year, it’s working well. But odd, and sort of freeing, to think he’s ok without his nap at almost 3 and that I might only have one napper left in the house.
I had the loose goal of teaching each kid their letters, numbers, shapes, and colors by age two. Like, in or around two – between their 2nd and 3rd birthdays. Harry took to it early, so I decided it was reasonable. It’s not like I drill them or anything, we just play puzzles and cards and if they’re interested, they pick it up. If not, then that’s fine. At an early two Harry knew his colors, letters, and shapes. But NOT his numbers. Just didn’t interest him, and didn’t stick – and I don’t think he learned them until he was four. Finn came along and ON HIS SECOND birthday knew his colors, his numbers, his shapes, but NOT his letters. Didn’t care about that. Now Theo, I have at 2.5. He knows his letters and his numbers, plus his shapes. But you know what – NOT color. So, there’s that for the child phycological development section.
Mentioning science… as if I am conducting an experiment in nature vs. nurture, Theo started loving anything tech – OF COURSE. He can actually hold a controller and do things with it. He can also move a mouse around and do things on a computer. And his Ipad – forget it. He’s a little bit too obsessed and we have to limit his time. He’s a master at Temple Run, of all things. Much better than me… which isn’t saying much, but still impressive considering he’s two. Impressive for him, not me.
He also loves to pull all the cushions off the couch and sit in front of the window. He talks about the things he sees outside. 90% of the time consists of him keeping tabs on the spider in the bushes. He was also deathly afraid of bubbles this summer. Hiding under the patio furniture when we got them out. But he’s more okay with them after a few months.
He continues to bang his head as a soothing mechanism. He does it considerably less frequently. As he approaches three next year, we’ve read it should taper off. We will probably transition him into a ‘big boy bed’ sometime in the new year. And I have a feeling that will help to stop the head banging – because if he’s upset he can just come get mom or dad of course. And… yes, he’s almost three and still in a crib. And NO, he’s NOT potty trained. I see no need to rush these sorts of things. Everything happens in due time… when they are ready. On the crib – if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. And on the potty – he’ll let us know when he’s ready. What’s the point of struggling? IN FACT, on December 11th, he asked to sit on the potty himself. So… maybe something will happen soon.
This has also been the year of Blue’s Clues. HE IS COMPLETELY OBSESSED. If he gets to pick at the breakfast table, for rest time, for bed time, for when he’s throwing a fit – it’s Blue’s Clues to the rescue. It’s his show, it’s his thing. He has all the episodes memorized. I guess he could do worse. Steve has a nice demeanor. He’s learned a few key phrases from Steve that he loves to use like “Jud job! You’re so snart!” and “exactly.” And “Did you see a clue?”
The other thing he loves is puzzles. Again – just like his brothers. He started wanting to do them, and I can’t stop him. At the end of the year, he can easily do 48 pieces by himself. Most of what he got for Christmas… new puzzles.
Favorites: Blue’s Clues, cookie balls, puzzles, playing anything with Harry and Finn, Blue’s Clues, puzzles, Blue’s Clues
Vivian
Height: 2’7″
Age: 1
OH MY GOODNESS, Vivian.
In 2016, Vivian arrived.
She let us know who she is. She is attitude to the max, sass to the max. And she is fearless. I call her Tiger Princess.
From 6 months old in January to 17 months old in December, this has been a year of constant growth and change for her. She began with learning to sit, then crawl, then pull up. And once she was pulling up, she immediately started cruising. Once she was cruising, she took off walking with no fear. She climbed up on the couch. And then up on the arm rest. And then the book shelf. If it looks like she can climb it, she tries.
Her favorite thing was to climb up on the couch and then toddle along the front edge of the couch. I eventually gave up and just let her climb everything, and toddle along the front edge… which lead to her falling a lot. But then lead to her actually being able to walk along the edge of the couch without falling off. She has more balance and coordination than any of her brothers, and more might too. She moved through the crawl/cruise/walk thing faster than the boys did. She was ready to do the next stop, no hesitations. She is also freaky with her fine motor skills. Since she was itty bitty she could pinch and pick up something tiny, like a raisin. And at a year old she could open the window shutters in the living room – and then grab them by the tip of the hinge on the inside and pull them closed. She also managed to shove some of her bracelets in a crack between the window sill and the radiator. A task I struggled with when I tried to repeat it.
She’s very vocal, and very bossy. She’s learned to use shrieks and screams to defend her toys against her brothers. She likes for you sit on the living room floor and watch her play. She doesn’t like for you to necessarily play with her. And she definitely doesn’t want you to sit on the couch.
Floor. And watch.
And like, when I come in her room in the morning she never greets me with a happy smile – it’s always a grunt/whine and tapping her hair – a demand for me to pull her hair up.
She is generally a happy baby, she just likes things to go her way. And she lets you know immediately if they are not just so. And she’s just SO loud you can’t ignore it. She just gives me this look… like “Why don’t you have it more together? Why can’t you get me all the things I need every second and have things the way I like them all the time?” Half the time I feel like I’M an inconvenience to HER.
She’s on the serious side. But she’s also very curious and thoughtful. She’ll sit back and watch me do something. She’ll watch me with such intensity, it’s like she’s taking notes.
And when she’s not being serious and demanding – she can be sweet and happy. Her teething really bogged her down this year; with almost a whole mouth-full slowly coming in over 4 or 5 months. But every once in a while we’d get a day or two where we could tell she was having an easier time and we would glimpse her fun and silly side. And it’s glorious. When she’s happy and feeling good – she relaxes and has fun. We can turn on some music and she loves to dance. She’ll get a blanket and cuddle up on the couch. She loves to get on the floor and attempt to rough house with the boys. She’ll play with her favorite red bus, or throw a ball around, or join Theo playing cars and dinosaurs.
And there was the day she played with these raw potatoes all morning.
She amazes us with all the ‘girl’ things she does, despite the constant boy influence. She ALREADY notices the things she wears and admires them. She LOVES to carry around any bag, or multiple bags. And she hooks them through her arm, like a girl does. She loves to wear bracelets, and spins in a little happy circle whenever I put them on her. They way she carries things… cradled up on her front, like a girl naturally does.
And I have to admit, I was a little surprised. We put the baby dolls in her room, but I thought she wouldn’t be interested. I’m not used to the sight. I made sure to have a doll on hand for the boys to play with. It never got any action of course, and eventually made it’s way out the door. But, Viv has a couple babies and she likes them.
And then there are shoes. Her favorite toy/thing to do is anything involving her shoes or your shoes. She loves to look at her shoes, carry them around, put them on. She also loves to discuss YOUR shoes and put them on. She’s OBSESSED. It’s one of the things she says most clearly “SHOES!” She got slippers for Christmas. Indoor shoes that she can play with all the time.
She’s also an diligent product quality tester.
She started the year as my most enthusiastic eater EVER. I did some baby-led weaning techniques with her, and this lead to a very confident chewer. She loves to explore the texture and taste of food. She’ll try anything. The boys all started with feeding themselves, but didn’t like the textures or the mess on their hands. But not her. She takes mashed potatoes or oatmeal or pasta and just smooshes it all in her hands, then shoves her hands in her mouth.
She makes an unprecedented mess almost every meal. She would eat any thing and everything with ease and joy. Then she started teething and became very finicky, throwing almost everything on the floor. Towards the end of the year, she’s starting to slowly return to better eating.
When she was born, I really expected for Viv to be a soft sweet little flower. Not sure why I thought that…. none of the other kids have soft, calm demeanors. They are each so strong and vibrant and varied. No wall flowers here. She’s no different. Now that I know who she is – a fire tiger princess – I really love her more for it. She has a sweet and soft side, but so far… she’s hard to contain. And I wouldn’t want to.
Favorites: shoes, her clothes, trash from the recycle bin, dancing, her brothers, the red bus toy, bags and backpacks, yogurt
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a day in the life
At the beginning of the year, Viv went from three naps to two. Then in the summer, she went from two naps to one. Theo is transitioning out of his nap, and the boys are in school most days. A typical week day:
5:30 AM Finn has to poop
6:00 Finn whine
6:30 Finn comes in for snack, goes down for TV
6:45 theo starts banging, Viv starts fussing – bring him his Ipad in crib, change Viv and give her drink in crib. close my eyes again for 20 minutes, then get up and get dressed
7:40 make breakfast, go back up for Viv and Theo, dress kids, sit kids down for food, everybody’s shoes, everybody’s teeth, big boys need backpacks, water bottles, and anything extra for activities/homework/show and tell/special projects/school fundraising
8:40 walk to school, return home and clean up kitchen. playtime for Theo and Viv
11:00ish – lunch for T and V
11:30 – naptime for V
12:00 – theo goes into bed with show, probably doesn’t nap
choose a couple – clean up lunch, eat my own lunch, workout, bake, clean the bathroom, prep dinner, laundry, watch survivor, put in grocery order
1:30 – Viv is up. play in her room, while we continue to let Theo have alone time.
2:00 – play in theo’s room together
2:45 – snack time
3:15 pack up and leave for school pick up
3:45 – return from school, unload backpacks, wash hands, additional snacks for whiners, big boys retire to their room or the couch if their brains are extra mushy
4:30 – load up babies in stroller again and head back to school to pick up whoever stayed after school for an activity which on Wednesday is Harry for football, Thursday is Harry for Brainblocks, and on Friday is Finn for football.
– make fast-as-lightning dinner while Viv and Theo take turns crying in the living room
5:15 – Kids dinner, try to clean the kitchen during and after they eat.
6:00 – Theo bath, ask Harry to stay in Viv’s room with her.
6:15 – Finn’s shower, brush teeth. Brush Theo’s teeth and read a quick book.
6:30 – Put Theo in bed with a show (remember, he didn’t nap)
Read with Finn.
6:45 -Put Finn in bed with show.
read and play with Viv – again stays with Harry, so I can go up for Theo.
7:00 – Theo’s show is over, prayer and song, lights out. Come back for Viv – song and lights out. Instruct Harry to start his shower.
7:15 – Finn’s show is over. Song and prayer with Finn – lights out. Help Harry finish showering, supervise him brushing his teeth. Then, read for a while with Harry. Then, go down and finish cleaning the kitchen and prepping for adult dinner. Harry can play quietly or watch a show.
7:45 Rich is home.
8:00 Prayer, song, lights out Harry.
8:20 Adult dinner.
Clean up, finish laundry.
- ^ this is when Rich is working his late shift. And usually on the late shift, he is home for breakfast and walks the boys to school. Every other week he works an early shift. For the early shift everything is the same, he’s just home at 5:30 – if we’re lucky.
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kid words
Me: What’s your name?
Theo: Name.
Me: No, What’s your name?
Theo: Finn!
I gotta write Finn on my face so everyone knows my name! – Finn
My arms are actually really long, see! – Finn
Finn’s fore-brain is hot! – Finn
This place is awesome!!! – Harry (at Battersea Park)
Let’s fire this baby up! – Harry (about a fan)
Red roses are my favorite flower. – Finn
I’ll never stop loving you mom. – Finn
Someday, if a girl thinks I’m handsome, she could marry me. – Harry
They speak Italian in my school.. only they call it French. – Harry (trying to learn Italian)
I love our family. It’s fun to have two brothers and one sister. – Harry
When my friends are over, I want to call you mom. But when my friends aren’t over, I will call you mommy. – Harry
I’ve got a rocket and I’m going to space. – Finn
Rich, after pulling rocks out of Harry’s pockets – You’re such a boy.
Harry – Why?
Rich – because. every little boy I know always puts dirt and rocks in his pockets.
Harry – Na uh, daddy! Just me!
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a selection of words from Finn in the bathroom:
“Thank you and Goodnight.” (after me wiping his bottom)
Me: Are you done Finn?
Finn: NO. My poop is still trying to win the race.
“I have to learn to wipe myself because you’re going to die someday.”
(I told Finn that when he mastered wiping himself after going number 2, I would get him a special prize. He asked me what ‘mastered’ meant – and we discussed it. Then a few months later, he was sitting on the toilet crying – not wanting to wipe himself.)
“I don’t WANT to be the master of the toilet mommy!”
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Finn (after going on a tour of Stonehenge) – Mom, I LOVE our guide.
Finn (riding in an Uber), points to the driver and whispers – I love his hair.
Mom, can you write ZOOOOM! on my airplane. That’s his name. – Finn
I want my hair to look like a forest. – Finn
My health is at 200. – Finn
Na, I’m just gonna sit on the couch and eat some grapes. – Finn, after asking him to come upstairs for bed
Chocolate milk is not important, being alive is important. – Harry
Dammit! – Harry
But I’m already wearing a shirt. It’s invisible. – Finn, after asking him to put a shirt on
Mom, when you grow up, you should be a baker. – Finn
Your grandma sounds like a cowboy! – our neighbor, Reece, about Grandma Janice
Good job painting your eyes black! – Theo, after watching me put on mascara
My favorite number is 100 – Harry
Well, my favorite number is 64! – Finn
The coffee table is not for climbing – Me
What’s it for then? – Harry
Harry to Finn “I love you no matter what”
Harry about Viv “She’s just sooo adorable, I JUST LOVE HER SO MUCH!!”
Nobody knows how much bacon I ate. – Finn
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mom fails
I’m so jealous of Rich’s brain function. He can add numbers in his head and remember today’s date. He knows what he ate for lunch and when I ask “Hey, can you grab a shirt for Theo when you come back downstairs” he almost always remembers.
– threw away a full container of formula
– didn’t realize/forgot that Finn needed sunblock at school. He came home with a sunburn (slight… but enough).
– completely missed the permission slip for Harry’s field trip (he still got to go)
– paid to ‘not run’ in the school 5K
– Left Harry in our Rome apartment (we got to the lobby and realized we forgot him)
– sent Harry on a different field trip in the wrong shoes, with a lunch that didn’t look like anyone else’s
– sent Finn on field trip with an ordered ‘school packed lunch’ when everyone else’s mom packed them one. The school offers to pack a lunch for them on field trip days. I was like. YES!! But, I guess everyone else doesn’t think that way.
– Took Viv to the wrong doctor’s office for her shots
– Missed the deadline for Theo’s nursery application
– Realized Rich and I WERE SHARING A TOOTHBRUSH
– melted brand new expensive water bottles in the microwave (this one hurt BAD)
– ruined a rubber spoon and a spatula… trying to help the food processor. Had to comb through recipe searching for bit of spoon and spatula.
– accidentally make rock candy instead of sugar syrup and ended up with sharp-as-glass sugar shards in my cookie ball recipe. Had to comb through batter and fish them out.
– sent a picture of Maleah’s gift to my mom to see what she thought. Oh wait, no I didn’t. I sent a picture of Maleah’s gift to Maleah.
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what i learned this year
I learned the origin of why they drive ‘on the other side of the road’ here. There used to be horses on the roads. The men on those horses carried swords, and most of those men were right handed. This meant they carried their sword off to their left. So, they drive their cars on the left to keep their swords from hitting.
I also learned the origin of the word Piccadilly and dilly dally. Piccadilly Circus is sort of the London equivalent of Times Square. Its huge, lights, mega action shopping place. Savile Row is a famous street of suit shops and men’s clubs. A woman, more specifically, a prostitute used to be called a Dilly. Wasting time staring at and flirting with the Dillys became dilly dallying. Women would accuse their men of dilly dallying while they were out. Just around the corner from Savile row, there was a street known for it’s Dillys. So you could get your suit, go to the mens club, then go around the corner and Pick-a-Dilly. Piccadilly. I think that’s fun.
I also learned, from the Brits, how to take my time. I don’t need to do everything at Tasmanian devil speed. Just like I’m always telling the boys – take it back a notch.
Viv cries every time I load/unload the dishwasher because I lock her out of the kitchen. I lock her out of the kitchen because she can’t handle the dishwasher being open. Anyway – me taking an extra minute to put the dishes away without breaking them in a hurried rush is worth it.
But overwhelmingly this year, I feel clueless with the kids. Like I’m constantly in uncharted territory, never sure of myself, – not only with Harry and Finn, but also with the two younger ones. I’m always telling Maleah, “like, I don’t know what to do here…let’s try X, and then we’ll try Z.”
I think a parenting thought evolution goes like this:
after one kid: Alright, I know some things.
after two kids: I know everything!
after three kids: Okay, there were a couple things I didn’t know….
after four kids: I know nothing.
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Paris
The biggie.
I, Emy, traveled to Paris twice this summer.
What? I know. I can’t believe it either.
This is, in fact, real. It’s ridiculous and indulgent. I know.
I spent a weekend here with my mother in June.
Then in July we came back with our kids… and Rich’s family.
Even though I did go twice, both times were fast and furious.
I am, by no means, an expert on Paris.
the mom weekend
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For this trip mom and I took the Saturday morning train, spent the night, and returned on the Sunday night train. The ride on the Eurostar train from London to Paris takes about two and a half hours. We arrived, got some Euros and began to figure out city transit. I was trying NOT to use my phone for directions and translations. I didn’t want to rely on it all of the time. After a little while staring at the map and train lines, we figured out how to get to our hotel using public transit. It’s possible to do it with your own brain.
We bought tickets and we were on our way. I had booked a hotel in a great location, so it was easy to get there. Our boutique hotel was perfect. Very english language friendly, cute, clean, and within walking distance of Notre Dame. I would stay there again, for sure.
We quickly decided that the best way for us to see the sights on our quick trip was to buy tickets for a Hop-on-Hop-off bus tour. On a HopHop bus tour, you drive around the city. The bus stops at various landmarks, you can get off and walk around, then wait for the next bus to come and continue your tour. We have them in London. Great for tourists who want to skim the sights of the city without actually having to figure out how to get around. We had read some reviews that sometimes the buses are very spaced out and people had to wait a really long time for a bus, so we just didn’t get off. We rode it all around, and then decided it was worth the risk to get off at the Eiffel Tower. And we actually had no trouble catching another bus.
It was a little extra bustl-y when we were there because Paris happened to be hosting the EuroCup. When I booked the hotel, I received the “EuroCup discount” and I was like ‘cool!’ It didn’t click with me what that was… or that it might cause extra crowds… or that there might be a giant soccer ball in the middle of the Eiffel Tower. Honestly, it didn’t affect us as much as I thought it might. Just an extra hooligan here and there.
Also going on at the Eiffel Tower that day was some sort of protest? or celebration? I’m still not sure, but there was crowd from it and a man CONSTANTLY yelling, in another language, over a mega-phone.
And, of course, your standard group of Chinese tourists at least 200 strong.
We took the bus back around to Notre Dame, where – in true French fashion – my mom made me cut the line! No apologies. I’m not sure what got into her…
In her defense, it was really really long.
And I think we were hungry. Or it was raining a little.
In my opinion Notre Dame is the best thing Paris has going.
Those bus tours are not perfect, however. They quit running around 5 or 6 or 7 or something. So you have to get yourself around town after that. But, thank goodness our tour company offered a night tour that started at 9. We went back to the starting point at 9 ready and excited for our Paris-at-night tour.
And the bus never showed up.
We waited for… an hour?… if I remember correctly. There were a couple others waiting with us.
(The next day we went to office to get a refund for a tour that we paid for, but did not receive. And the jerks in the office told us it was our fault for missing the bus and would not refund our money. We were there at 9, which was the posted time on the website and the time that our day-time bus driver told us. But they said that it left at 8:30 and that the night tour ran had, in fact, ran the night before. We got grumpy, and told them we would leave bad reviews, WHICH I DID. But, they didn’t care, and would not refund us on the spot. They gave us an email to write to, which did end up refunding mom’s money after we got home. I was too sour/lazy/bitter/not-trusting to bother with it. There is nothing I hate more than poor customer service. We really enjoyed our tour bus around the city, but this soured my ability to recommend them.)
After waiting and waiting for the no-show tour bus, we finally gave up and decided to try to get to the Eiffel Tower ourselves because that is the main thing we wanted to see at night. I did finally use directions on my phone and we only caught the wrong bus and went 20 minutes out of the way ONCE.
I think we made the 11:30pm twinkle show of the Tower, ate dinner at midnight, and everything was good. I don’t remember what we ate for this meal… but it was French and it was delicious.
For the way back to the hotel at 1am… ah, pulling out my phone for UBER. Not chancing my sketchy French bus skills this time. Note on that though – Your Uber driver is a local, and it’s likely he doesn’t speak any English.
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The next day we stumbled upon the second best thing Paris has going…
this unremarkable street:
It was just a regular, local, Parisian shopping street. There was live music and basically zero English anywhere. Fish dressed up so pretty and colorful they look like dessert, fresh baked bread, cheese, meat, and lots of other things I had no idea about.
There were no tourists taking pictures… except me. We came across this street on the way from our hotel to the tour bus stopping point. We both agreed, it was our favorite.
On this day, we made it to the famous macaroon shops and past the Lyric Opera House.
And one last meal before catching the train home…
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Where we stayed:
http://www.le123sebastopol.com/en/
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the family weekend
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On this trip were Rich and I plus the four. Then Rich’s sister, her husband, their two girls, and Rich’s mom. Kim, Zach, Ashtyn, Avery, and Janice.
Here again – we took the train early, stayed one night, and took the train back the next day.
Up front, the two little ones were immediately thrown off by the disruption to their nap schedule and we felt the affects of that for the whole 48 hour trip.
You know… meltdowns at restaurants and just a little extra difficulty getting a happy face for a picture.
Our hotel was apartment style and it was literally AT the Eiffel Tower. Like, this close:
It was so special to stay here. We were just there one night, so we figured we could splurge on a great place. Between the 11 of us, we had two large apartments. Ours had three beautiful bedrooms, a full kitchen with laundry, and so much space.
The kids immediately claimed it as their own though, of course. And Viv made use of the space by taking some of her very first steps here.
After checking in we headed up the river to Notre Dame to find it barricaded off. Unfortunately, this trip was right after the Normandy shooting and the barricade was crowd controlled for the special mass taking place. We could’ve waited in the massive line. But since we weren’t confident in our ability to understand the situation, we decided it wasn’t worth waiting. Outside pictures would have to do.
By the end of this day we had high-level multiple kid meltdowns. So, we threw them in bed early and grandma graciously stayed back with them so that the adult children could go out for dinner. (And by multiple kid, I mean MY kids. Not Ashtyn or Avery. They were as chill as a seasoned traveller and had no trouble adjusting to anything. They didn’t complain, stood still and smiled for pictures, and ate their food in a normal fashion. Maybe someday, my kids will behave like them.)
Our waiter took our picture. But before he took our picture, he accidentally took this picture of his own self.
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On our second day, Kim, Zach, Janice and the girls ventured first thing to the top of the Eiffel Tower. Our family got around a little slower, so we bought some pastries and met them in the park and took some pictures of Viv since it was the day before her birthday.
We tried to take a nice family picture.
From there, we strolled the Champs Elysees and Lauduree, the macaroon shop.
Then is was time to catch our train home.
Like I said, fast and furious.
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Where we stayed:
http://residence-charles-floquet.fr/
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in addition –
Although the public transit is easy to understand we found it a little on the dirty and dark side at times, in comparison to other places we’ve been.
And for me, Paris is the least walk-able city we visited this year. Everything is spread out, so you have to rely on some sort of transit to get from one thing to the other. Unlike London, Rome, Amsterdam, Dubrovnik, and Munich where you can easily walk from one thing to the next.
The rumor is that the French are rude. And while I’m sure there are millions of nice people in France, I found them to be short on patience with English speakers and with kids. And for this reason, it is not the most kid-friendly place to take them. Plus, finding a restaurant that has 1.An English Menu 2.Items the kids will recognize and 3.Room to seat us – proved frustrating at times. Enter, super crowded McDonalds in Paris.
But I knew all this going in – especially since I had a warm up trip with mom. On top of that, honestly, there were quite a few homeless and that’s always hard to discuss with kids.
Paris also has a bad reputation for terrible pick-pockets. While we did not experience any sort of thing, I had a complete stranger warn me on the subway that my purse was open too much. “This is the subway in Paris, girl.” He said. “Watch your bag.”
On the subject of reputation…. lots of people from the states ask us if we are afraid living over here in Europe. Or if we were afraid to travel here.
And our answer is no. First of all, you can’t protect yourselves or your kids from every little thing every second of the day. The control we think we have is really only just an illusion.
Second of all, what good does it do for us to live afraid to go anywhere? My being afraid means that I keep my eyes out. I watch myself and my kids like an eagle. I take precautions. I communicate with my spouse and the other members of my group. And then after that, there is nothing left to do. For the record, I would never take my children to a place that I didn’t feel was safe. Even though Paris has unflattering sides, we are still glad we took the oppurtunity to share this special city with our children.
There is evil in this world, everyday, all around us. And if we let it, the evil will take the world from us. Is that how it’s going to be? No, we will show them the world anyway. And we will teach them to be smart and careful, but not afraid. Know the risks and travel on.
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England
We carved out some time while family was here to venture to a few places here in England. For these trips, we wanted to lighten our load a little. So, Theo and Viv had to stay back with a sitter and miss out.
With my mom, dad, and brother we drove south to the coast and visited Bodiam Castle and the Chalk Cliffs of Seven Sisters.
When we moved to London I promised the boys that we would visit a castle. I searched for the most castle-y looking castle. The one that I thought THEY would have in their head as what a castle should look like. Once I found this one, I knew it’s where we had to go. Look at that castle! It has a moat! It was built in 1385!
The boys absolutely loved it. And the adults did too.
Bodiam Castle
Yes, that is a teddy bear with an orange hoodie on it. 
This castle happened to be near the southern coast, so we decided to head to the nearby chalk cliffs.
Chalk Cliffs at Seven Sisters
In case you didn’t catch that, I did say THAT WE DROVE.
And… I look forward to NEVER driving in England again. Rich rented the car online, and then called me, “Ya, I got the car. And.. oh, hey babe. You have to drive because my license is expired.”
I was like
Huh.
Ok… ok, alright.
Hummm.
Ok. Ok. I will be driving then…hummm hum hum..”
I drove. I DID. I drove the car, in England, with my husband, two children, mother, father, and brother in tow. On the wrong side of the car, on the wrong side of the road. I started out ok with it. The city roads, I wasn’t worried about. The country roads, I was definitely not worried about. But it was the merge onto the “motor-way” that had me the most anxious. I was also super nervous about all of the city round-abouts. A few tight spaces had everyone holding their breath, but overall getting out of the city was fine. Getting onto the motorway was also ok because I had four adult helpers watching out all sides.
But then we had to veer off of the motorway onto the English country roads. Which were going to easy peasy.
Except I was completely wrong. The English country roads that we drove on were, like, not in a big open field with lots of visibility. Na Ah. They were windy crooky around all these little villages and stuff. They were about the width of a car and a half, and they twist and turn so bad. You can only see about 40 feet in front of you before the road winds again. And most of the road had tall shrubs or a wall right on the side of the road. A shoulder is non-existent.
SO your car can’t fit on your side of the road. You can’t see on the road up ahead because of the turn and because of the walls and the shrubs. If a car comes, you can’t move over. And you have no warning. I don’t understand how this flies. It was like driving in a tube slide that is not wide enough for two cars to pass. And the Brits are just flying around these blind turns, like no big deal. When we met another car, literally and actually, one car had to wait for a little break in the road side wall and pull over so the other car could come through.
I built up a line of at least 8 cars behind us, at all times. There were times when I felt (as I heard another ExPat friend say) frozen in fear. Our whole life was in this car and it was impossible. I had to pull over a couple times and give my white knuckles, tense shoulders, and nauseous stomach a break. Trying to drive on those blind country roads sort of broke me. I couldn’t do it.
Rich (and everyone else in the car!) kept complaining that I was driving too far over and that we were going to slam into the road-side wall. And I can’t blame them. Honestly, to not-used-to-it Americans, it was F’n scary.
“I don’t know what else to do!” I would shout. “Ride the middle, and get in a head on collision!? I can’t see!”
“But if you keep driving so far over, we’re going to hit the wall!” They would say.
Here’s the truth, after a few rounds of complaining, I pulled over and had Rich start driving on his expired license. After not even a few turns he goes “Oh wow babe, you’re right. This is really hard. Really hard.”
See? Thank you.
I drove all the way to the castle. He drove for a little while and then we switched back and I finished driving the last half hour to the cliffs. When leaving the cliffs, my anxiety at driving home had me in tears, so Rich finished the trip home from there. If he got pulled over, my plan was to plead insanity.
We didn’t get a scratch on the car, or die in a crash, or get pulled over… SO it all worked out in the end.
Will I be able to face those country roads again? It’s hard to say. I don’t like that they defeated me so badly. The competitive and adrenaline-junkie side of me wants to try again – without kids in the car. But the normal, rational me definitely wants to avoid them for all eternity. I’ll be just fine if I never drive on those roads again. And I will surrender to the fact that I can’t do it. You win, roads! You win.
My blood is pumping right now at just recalling the memory…. so I’m not hopeful for victory in the future.
UGH!
That’s that.
ANYWAY.
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A little later in the summer, we traveled BY TOUR BUS to the English city of Bath and Stonehenge with Rich’s family. Comfy, air-conditioned, reclining seats. And no driving required.
BATH
Bath is an adorable little town centered around the old Roman Bath house. Rick Steves has a great episode on Bath, and it was my reason for wanting to go here. Look it up on YouTube.
Bath often wins the National Competition for the prettiest flowers. It’s extra unique because every building in Bath is required to be built out of white bath stone. It also has an amazing Cathedral, easy cozy pubs, and impeccably clean streets. It’s beautiful, arty, chill, and fun.
We loved it and I would love to go back.
In fact, we liked it so much that all of us have decided that we are going to retire here. Wish us luck with our retirement in Bath.
Stonehenge
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Stonehenge was more for the adults to appreciate. But the kids had a great time here too.
Mostly because it was just an open field.
That is always fun.
If you’re into history or mystery or aliens or quiet places or being outside then you will like visiting Stonehenge. It’s a world heritage site and a “wonder of the world,” for goodness sake. If you’re over this way, it’s worth the trip.
They had a little village of how the people building Stonehenge would have lived. The boys saw it as a great oppurtunity to play in the rocks. 
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We toured with Day Tours London. There are lots of tour bus companies. We were very happy with this one. Would recommend!
Stonehenge
http://www.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/places/stonehenge/
Bodiam Castle
https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/bodiam-castle
Chalk Cliffs
http://www.sevensisters.org.uk/
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