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.