Gotta love the grandparents!

Time for another obvious assertion: grandparents rock. In the eyes of their grandchildren, sure. But also, equally, in the eyes of their granchildren's tired, overwhelmed parents. I.e. us. Again and again, these blessed individuals -- who at 42 Eton avenue go by the names of Meme, Pepe, Nama, Grandpalicious, Grandpa Pete & Grandma Diane -- have helped Karen & I survive the last few years. The past week was no different as the elder Howells flew to the rescue, injecting a large dose of warmth, storytelling, bathgiving, feeding, bottle-filling, dishwashing and advice-giving into our lives as we tried to make the most of this Thanksgiving-away-from-home. Sadie is of course thrilled to see them again, and Parker is now calling Meme and Pepe each by name. Of course, having them around also serves to remind us -- as Karen put it clearly yesterday morning -- "how much easier our lives would be if we lived in the same place as our parents!". True that. It is surely not happenstance that both of our siblings with kids now live within a 15 minute drive of free babysitting and the "help mom!" phone call. Lucky them.

But such being our geographic fate, we tried to make the most of my parents' visit this week with a mix of neighborhood and central London activities, including a walk through Primrose Hill; a visit to the National Portrait Gallery; Thanksgiving dinner in the theatre district followed by an Oscar Wilde play (An Ideal Husband); a visit to Sadie's ballet class; "Toddler's World" at the leisure centre; a visit to the local pub (me & dad); and high tea at Brown's Hotel (Karen & Mom plus Mom's friend Naomi). We'll get help for anoter couple of days which is great as I am hitting the road again, this time to Moscow (where I am now, having just arrived) and Stockholm.

Until the parents' arrival, the last few weeks had not been particularly easy as the weather has turned cold and various of us have been battling illnesses (me with sore throat/laryngitis, finally doing better; Karen with something similar as well as trouble sleeping and a sore arm; Parker with a cold, stomach bug and more teething). Only Sadie has been reasonably healthy, although she too has issues: we've declared defeat in toilet training, with a resolution to return to the world of underwear and the potty in a few weeks. Perhaps in a related development, Sadie has also taken a new interest in testing boundaries, violating parental requests, seeing what she can get away with, and other such behavious appropriate to two-and-a-half year olds and teenagers. I am hoping we will get some kind of hiatus between those two stages. As for Parker, he turned 15 months old today and is doing great despite his bugs, starting to get focused on talking, with a vocabulary that increases by the day, albeit still limited to single syllables. His walking remains highly unstable but no one told him that, and he has now started trying to run, which invariably ends with a wipe-out.

The next couple of weeks will be busy I try to complete various "year ahead" prognostications at work and we get ready to head off for the holidays... before we know it we'll be on a plane headed back across the pond for a nearly month-long visit to DC, Buffalo and (briefly) New York. That travel will bring its own difficulties... but we're definitely looking forward to it.

Some words about words (and some other stuff).

Parker is about to be 15 months old. It's really hard for me to believe this, yet I know it to be true: Sadie was 15 months and a week when Parker was born. At that point she was stringing two or three words together to communicate her needs. Looking back, she seemed so much older than little Parker does now, and unfortunately we treated her as if she was much older than she actually was. I have a tremendous amount of Mommy guilt over rushing her out of baby-hood and into toddler-hood in preparation for a new baby to join our family. And unfortunately, I think I'm repeating that mistake by rushing her into the land of being a "big girl". This morning after yet another pair of soaked underwear and pants, she looked into my frustrated face and said, "but mommy I'm NOT a big girl." "Oh yeah, " I replied, "than what are you?" "I'm just a toddler." (Said with perfect adult-quality diction and clarity.) She's a toddler all right, but a really darn smart toddler.

In contrast, I'm eking out every last bit of baby Parker before toddler Parker takes over. Thankfully, he doesn't seem to want to move forward too quickly into this next phase of his life either. We tried a few weeks ago to start weaning him from his bottle, replacing his pre-nap "ba-ba" with a sippy cup full of milk. His reaction to this was to repeatedly push it away and shake his adorable oversized head no. Preferring to have him sleep than to have him weaned, we caved and returned to the "ba-ba" once again.

While Sadie was virtually composing poetry at 15 months, Parker's words are few and mostly unintelligible for everyone except me. I had compiled a list of words Sadie said clearly before she was 1, but it seems to have gotten lost in our move. I vaguely remember that list being close to 50 or possibly even more. She had some pretty hysterical sayings too, like "baygies and keem cheeps," for bagels and cream cheese. Parker's list is considerably shorter. And he uses A LOT of homonyms. For example, for a while "da-da" could mean Andrew or the ever-important giraffe we've mentioned in previous posts. Now he only uses it to refer to the giraffe, having replaced Andrew's moniker for "Dot". "Chee" can mean cheese, or teeth. For the most part though the little guy just wanders around the flat (or anywhere else we happen to be) in search of phones or other devices with buttons, saying "boom? boom?", or "butza? butza?" Perhaps it's a bit too early to tell, but I predict he's not likely to be a great orator. Computer programmer in a call center, maybe?

Hitting the road

Here's one clear benefit to being in London: easy access to all kinds of interesting places, "emerging" and otherwise, within a few hours flight. In our household, this benefit has accrued only to me so far, with a trip last week to Istanbul (and, less glamorously, Frankfurt). Hopefully before long all four of us will get a chance to hit the road, and we do hope to make it to a few destinations in Europe and possibly beyond next year (in search of sun, which we haven't seen much of lately).

This time, I spent two days in Istanbul in what is a rather typical work routine for me (unfortunately): dashing around from one meeting to another, lots of time in conference rooms presenting my latest spiel about emerging markets, seeing the city in a rush, through windows (of conference rooms, taxis). But even such a perspective allows for a certain feeling about a place, and there's no escaping the sense that Turkey is doing very well these days. Such a contrast from the mood in most of Europe (or for that matter the US): the economy is bouncing back rapidly, people are generally optimistic about the future, unemployment is falling, the currency is strong (which means Istanbul is no longer the cheap city it was when I first visited as a student in 1991: mojitos at one neighbohood bar cost $18 each!). Visually, Istanbul is a truly stunning city, like no other with dramatic hills, the deep blue Bosphorus separating Europe and Asia, and architecture of many different civilizations piled one next to the other, with each day punctuated by the exotic sounds of the call to prayer emananting from the minarets... wonderful. After these glories came a rainy day Frankfurt which was completely forgettable.

And then back to London, where Karen seems to have held up the fort admirably. One major improvement to our routine occurred yesterday night when we hired our first babysitter (sitters.co.uk) outside of our usual nanny, and it worked out great. The babysitter (from, of all places, Turkey) was excellent, the kids didn't freak out, and Karen and I finally made our first trip to the neighborhood pub and the Indian restaurant around the corner since we arrived. Namaste.

Ketchup

When the DeBoni Family visited us in Maplewood in the summer of 2009, Bruno spent an ENTIRE morning cleaning the old condiments, of which we had many, out of our refrigerator. I kinda feel like it's time for me to do that with some blog entries I've been storing up in my head: it's time for me to catch up.

BALLERAY!

A few weeks ago, Sadie started taking ballet at the local Community Center (not to be confused with the local Leisure Center, which is essentially in the same building.) From what I can tell she is the youngest in the 45 minute class of 2-and-a-half to 4-year-olds. There really isn't much dancing taking place, but there seems to be the basis for some formal ballet moves being woven in. Hysterically, she is required to wear the full get-up: leotard, tights, skirt, slippers. During her first two classes she was befriended by another 2-and-a-half-year-old who fancied herself qualified to assist the instructors in keeping the stragglers (including Sadie) in line. This prompted several chuckles by me and each and every time I would let out said chuckle, Sadie would yell from across the room, "Mommy, what's so funny?" It's hard to know whether she enjoys this new Saturday morning ritual, but this is what people do here. Kids start ballet, or football (soccer), or piano lessons, or yoga, or swimming, or all of the above, at a VERY young age. For your amusement:

POTTY TIME!

As mentioned in a previous post, we started actively potty training Sadie. No one warned me just how stressful and messy this process can be. Almost a full year ago, we started putting her on her potty once she started showing some "readiness signs" - I'll spare you the details of what those were.We took a hiatus from it though because we knew the move would be a difficult enough transition, and because the potty took a nice leisurely journey across the Atlantic with the rest of our belongings. In retrospect it might have been a mistake to have waited. I guess hindsight is 20-20 (there's a REALLY bad pun in there somewhere). So, I bought a book, I took Sadie shopping for some big girl underwear, and the next day - POTTY TIME!

The big girl underwear proved to be a bit of a mistake actually. On day 1 - Sadie very excitedly donned a new pair and like the excited little puppy that she was, peed all over the place within five minutes. No worries - look at all these other new pairs of underwear!!!!! For Sadie, soaking through a pair of underwear simply meant she got to wear ANOTHER pair with some fun cartoon character or flowers or butterflies on it.

OK - Day 2 - change of plan. Sorry Sadie, there's only one pair of underwear here. At this point however, she started to actually say, I have to go to the potty. Unfortunately that usually meant it was too late. I considered this progress - at least she knew she had gone. She spent most of that week with the nanny Andrea - bless her patient soul. She was more than willing to persist with this seemingly monumental task. And Andrea was not deterred from leaving the house with the underwear-clad Sadie AND Parker while this process was going on. Which meant dragging poor Parker along to the loo with Sadie every 15 minutes when out in public. It also meant returning home with a wet Sadie and at least one extra pair of wet pants. For about a week Sadie wore almost every pair of pants and every pair of underwear daily.

So I resorted to bribery. A piece of candy every time she went pee-pee in the potty (thankfully Halloween had passed and we had lots of smarties, gummi bears and lollipops lying around) and a LOLLIPOP for a successful poop. Not surprisingly things suddenly seemed to have clicked with her. She started going to the potty herself (sometimes) and on more than one occasion has perched on the pot for more than an hour waiting for something to happen.

It's been about 3 or 4 weeks and we're by no means done with this, but dryer days await. Now, if only it would stop raining....

NURSERY SCHOOL!

Perhaps foolishly, I started potty training Sadie at roughly the same time she started "school" at the Belsize Square Synagogue. That's right, Synangogue. Sadie just came home from a playgroup one day and declared, "Mom, Dad, you never had me baptized, so I've decided to become Jewish." Not really, but had she done so, I might have been a little surprised about her knowledge of religion, but I wouldn't have minded. Thus far her only exposure to religion has been a few passes through a church here and there - where she points to various statues and exclaims, "Look! It's Grandpa Pete!"; and our nightly attempt to say grace before dinner. So her exposure to any sort of religion is just fine by me.

There were a lot of emotionally difficult things about leaving the life we had built in Maplewood, but perhaps the most difficult thing was having to pull Sadie out of her "school", Buzzing Bees. This was a delightful in-home daycare run by a Guyanese woman Sandy, and her 20-something daughter, Ginny. Sadie absolutely LOVED Sandy and Ginny and very much looked forward to going there every day, for 8 or 9 hours a day. She never once cried when I dropped her off there. Oftentimes, I felt that she was better cared for there than at home.

I didn't expect that she would have a problem attending a nursery school daily for only 3 hours a day. When we went to visit the school, they insisted that I stay or an hour or so at drop-off during Sadie's first week while she "settled in" to the routine of nursery school. I knew immediately that this was a bad idea. After the first day it was clear that Sadie believed this nursery was MY school as well. I tried to explain to the head teacher that this gentle settling-in period was not going to work on Sadie and she looked aghast when I told her that I had never even set foot in Buzzing Bees: Sadie and I said a quick goodbye at the door and that was it. As expected, extricating myself from Sadie's grasp on days 2 and 3 was EXTREMELY difficult and I could hear her screaming and crying from down the street.

Since I had already had some success with bribery,

I thought I'd give it another chance. I promised Sadie that if she didn't cry on Monday morning when I dropped her at school, she could have "pink milk" (a la "Charlie and Lola" - a British cartoon) when I picked her up. We also developed a goodbye ritual whereby she chooses the type of kiss I give her when I drop her off (monster kisses, tiger kisses, a certain number of kisses: usually 40...) Well, lo and behold - this WORKED! Come Monday morning, we arrived there...took off hat, gloves, coat...put our fruit for snack time in the communal fruit basket...and Sadie looked up at me with a huge grin and said, "Look Mommy! I'm HAPPY!!!" We did our monster kiss (to the horror and disbelief of some of the other mothers and the head teacher), I promised her the pink milk (again - looks of horror and disbelief), and she was off to go play with the train set that had been laid out. For those of you wondering, monsters give each other raspberries on the nose...

More sleep issues...

This was taken the day Parker was born. From the looks of him you'd think he'd be quite good at sleeping. We were recently telling a friend who just had her second baby about how Parker slept 22 or 23 hours a day for the first 2 or 3 months of his life. He must be a sleep camel. The day after Andrew posted his sleep post Parker decided to boycott sleep again. It's really true that we often take one step forward and two steps back with these kids. The sleep seems to have leveled off a bit - helped in part by having turned the clocks back. For some reason I think he just prefers this to daylight savings. He still gets up WAY to early, but it's manageable.

Andrew is off on his first multi-day jaunt across Europe since we've been in London. It was always difficult for me when he was away when we lived in Maplewood. Usually his traveling coincided with some phase of an ongoing construction project - and I was pretty much ALWAYS pregnant while he was away. Thank god for the kindness of neighbors, where I had to take shelter from floods or gas leaks or other such construction mishaps.

Luckily there are no construction projects planned for the next four days. But boy, I'll tell you - I need a whole crew just to get these kids in bed at night. It took me a full hour and a half from bathtime to sleepy-time for both of them. Andrew does it every Thursday night on his own, often with the help of Sadie's favorite show, "Super Why", played on my laptop for her while he gives Parker his bottle and sends him off to Ja-Ja the aforementioned giraffe. I'd have adopted the same tactic but for the fact that Sadie was banging on my laptop earlier in the day and as punishment I withdrew the promise of watching the show. During the bottle she kept shoving toys in Parker's face and planting "kisses" on the top of his head - behavior that he was not too fond of, understandably so. When he was nearly asleep she fell off the chair she was perched on next to us and started howling, which sent poor Parker into a panic. I had to toss Sadie into her new "big-girl" bed (which is really just the mattress on the floor since the real bed has not yet arrived) and spend the next 45 minutes trying to calm Parker out of his hysterics. For now, all is quiet, at least until 2 am when Sadie will inevitably start screaming for her bunny who will have fallen out of bed.

Boo!

Let's face it: when it comes to autumn, the northeast United States is tough to beat. Clear sunny days, vivid foliage, crisp apples, pumpkin patches, roast turkeys. While I'm sure parts of Britain are pretty this time of year too, London not so much. Lots of rain. Leaves mostly turning brown and falling off. Darkness before 5pm already. Fewer holidays and traditions (at least that we know of). We miss fall back home.

Having said that... we've managed to have a few season-appropriate escapades. This weekend we celebrated Halloween with our friends the De Bonis, visiting from Belgium, in a pretty impressive costume display involving all 9 of us. It was a tight competition for best dressed between Count Dracula (Bruno), an evil monk (Luka), two rather un-sinister witches (Karen and Ilona), a carnivorous cat (Katya), an itsy bitsy spider (Sadie), a bat (Parker), a chef (Artemy) and a pirate (me - but only briefly as Parker got very upset whenever I put on my mask. I have since been chastised for my age-inapropriate costume selection). The trick-or-treating itself was fun, as the kids had a blast, but it felt a bit like hunting late in the season. Not so many treats out there. A lot of unanswered doorbells. Halloween is a Celtic word, and according to Wikipedia many of its traditions originate from the British Isles, but it is only halfheartedly embraced in northwest London. Part of that is probably city living anywhere; trick-or-treating to a multi-family appartment, when someone has to buzz you in, does not work all that well. But this may be for the best, as it leaves fewer Mars bars to consume. In all it was good fun, and it was great to see the De Boni gang -- we are looking forward to visiting them on the other side of the English Channel soon.

In other activities, we tried out Zipcar once again for a trip to the northern outskirts of London to visit a children's farm/petting zoo (Belmont Farms), which made for an enjoyable morning (especially for Sadie) and nice for us all to get out of the city -- although it wasn't quite far enough away to feel like countryside. For that we'll need to plan something a bit further away, for a full day, which is still not too easy given the various nap requirements. (The tyranny of the nap!)

Otherwise life moves forward, and some important things have been happening. Karen spent much of last week training for an interesting volunteer opportunity involving the criminal justice system here, which she may spend a day or two a week doing. Sadie started nursery school at the local synagogue this week. And ballet class. And she is also deep in the throes of potty training (and making good progress, although the combination with a new school is a little tricky)-- these all topics that Karen (hopefully) will be blogging about as she's more on top of the details. Actually given how busy we are, we don't get to talk all that much so I am looking forward to seeing what she has to say. (Ok that's a joke, although not all that far from the truth.)

Parker is doing great, walking more and more confidently -- and can now pretty much make it from one side of the flat ot another without falling over, which is making him much harder to keep track of. He is also starting to give speech a try, tentatively, with a vocabulary at our count of 30 words or so. Some favorites: "goo" (hot beverage), "gmm" (give me that / read this); "boom" (phone/blackberry/ipod); "butz" (buttons).

As for me I've been battling a virus which got into my throat and took out my voice for a few days, although I seem to be on the mend. Heading to Turkey for a few days next week. Feeling behind at work and struggling to keep up with everything. But such a condition seems pretty unavoidable these days, for the forseeable future anyway!