London Museums: The Movie

Producer's note: no children were harmed in the production of this movie.

Scoot

A pretty good couple of weeks round here. Major milestone was Sadie's accomplishment of a goal that has been four months in the making: getting potty trained at last (more or less). A whole week of dry pants got her a much-anticipated purple scooter that she has started to use a little inside, although she's still a little reluctant to use it outside.

Her reaction to achieving her promised reward has been beaming pride, mixed with moments of hesitation. The night after she got the scooter she woke up crying in the middle of the night, sobbing "take the scooter back, I don't want it anymore". She never explained why she said that, and had changed her mind by morning, but my interpretation was that she is finding the process of growing up to be a little stressful at times.

All in all, we've been quite busy. I had a fascinating but exhausting trip to Nigeria which I'll write about later. Karen has started medical classes which (I assume) she'll also write about. On the weekends, we have been sticking to our usual neighborhood routines like ballet as well as a couple of trips to museums (London Transport last week, British this week). We had dim sum with some ballet friends, Hunter, Jenny and Sophia -- and last night hosted our first dinner party with big Parker and some friends of his, Charlie and Shana (who live in the area and have a son little Parker's age).

Today we just got a bit of a curve ball with recent unwelcome news that Sadie's nursery is closing down after the summer. A part of life that we thought was settled has just become unsettled again. 

Drugs.

As part of the volunteer work I'm doing with Prisoner's Family and Friend Service, I had the opportunity to meet one of the only judges in England who's running a "drug court". The phrase makes it sound slightly more sordid than it is really. In short it's simply a diversionary court that deals solely with low-level criminal offenses that are motivated by drug addiction. Today I spent the day observing this court in action. The takeaway is that the Brits are far better at treating their "criminals" like human beings than Americans are. Judge Phillips made an effort to ensure that everyone who appeared before him received a hug before they were released back into the community. Most were also given a lecture on the impurities of street drugs nowadays, so why waste your time and money? I'm not sure how successful this approach is at keeping addicts on the straight and narrow. And the idea of any NJ judge hugging any of my former clients is truly laughable.


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Location:West London magistrates court

Posh weekend

Not much to add to Karen's post except to say that, yes, that was one great 24 hour getaway with my Valentine. The Four Seasons Hampshire is a posh weekend getaway about an hour from London, in a converted historic Georgian estate surrounded by gardens and with a great spa and restaurant. Not exactly a budget weekend, but worth it in the name of survival...

K & I took off after Sadie's ballet class on Saturday morning, taking the tube to Waterloo and a 45m train ride on to Fleet, a small town in the Hampshire countryside, and from there a short ride by cab to the hotel. Andrea (our nanny) watched the kids until our return during early afternoon the next day.  Everyone had a good time. Short but very sweet.

Back in London, I must say that it finally feels like we're finding our rhythm. Everyone's healthy, Karen's starting classes soon (more to come on that) and kids are doing well. Actually Sadie is still 2 year old for a few more months and it shows; she's become harder work lately -- lots of crazy energy, a surge of attitude and defiance after several more agreeable months. But hilarious, incredibly verbal and most of the time lots of fun. She's slowly making progress in potty training and it feels like we're getting closer (an accident-free day today!). Parker is affable, well fed, sleeping like a champ at last, and almost done teething (one eye tooth to go!). So no complaints this week.

Four seasons.

Someone once told me that to truly be secure in a relationship you should spend a full year, or four seasons, getting to know one another. After spending a night away at the Four Seasons in Hampshire with Andrew, eating decadent food, drinking good wine, taking a lovely countryside walk and a late night swim, I can reaffirm that our relationship is secure and I love him deeply. I'm sure he'll have more to add about our weekend jaunt, but I just wanted to try out my new blogging app!
Happy Valentines Day Andrew!




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Location:Hook,United Kingdom

Hangin' around

Not a whole lot to report this week. Which begs the question of why post anything at all... but in honesty I just wanted an excuse to post this picture of little P, taken today in the back yard as I attempted to rake leaves (which consisted of much more throwing kids in the pile than raking). Weather's continued to be quite warm, which has allowed a little exploration of our garden and looking forward to using it as much as we can this summer. Also had a fun time today with Joe Proctor, who came over with his two kids Katya and Will (a few years older than Sadie and very good with her, so she had a blast).  Other highlights of the week were a good 24-hour biz trip to Prague for me (as usual I didn't see much of the city, although I did walk across the scenic Charles Bridge to get to dinner), and a trip to the British museum for Karen. But mostly hangin' around. Parker's in final throes of teething, Sadie's focused on potty training... but all healthy.