my uk life

when i grow up...

we are in copenhagen with our friends michael and susan, who have a son, malcolm, who almost five. on the way to dinner this evening he said "when i grow up, i am going to be a knight, and madeline is going to grow up to be my princess." richard and mike, who were in the front seat, misheard this conversation and thought maddie was going to grow up to be president.

either one is fine by me.

[written Saturday 14 April; typed and posted 16 April]

copenhagen

due to bad luck and a broken reverse thruster, it took us ten hours to get from london to copenhagen, but we finally arrived this evening and are thrilled to see denmark and our friends mike, susan and malcolm.

[written 13 April; typed and posted 16 April]

itchy feet

i can think of nothing to write about tonight, so in lieu of coming up with a lengthy descriptive, i thought i'd brainstorm the places i'd like to go on holiday in 2007. richard and i haven't really made any plans, and we need to, but here is a pick list of 10 places i think we should research:

1) norway: i love scandinavia, but haven't been here and am told it's gorgeous. it also is probably relatively baby friendly? we wanted to go here last year but ran out of time so i think this is one is a real possibility.
2) morocco: no idea why, but i'm fascinated. probably less baby friendly, but not a long-haul flight so not completely crazy.
3) new york: i love new york but we usually pick places to go we haven't already been, so if we do this, we'll probably combine it with #4.
4) boston: believe it or not, this is one place in the usa i haven't been. richard has though so that may be a mark against it as a destination.
5) berlin: short-haul flight and richard and i are interested in the architecture. i've been to germany quite a few times, but not berlin.
6) pompeii: we're not going here, as richard correctly pointed out that this is likely to be the least pushchair friendly place ever, but i've been interested since i picked this as the topic of my 6th grade research paper.
7) florence: i love italy and haven't been here. short haul, and the italians love babies.
8) antibes: richard and i visited this little town in southern france before we were married and really liked the village and area, but it was a rush trip and we didn't have enough time. could be worth a revisit.
9) sydney: okay, okay, so it's definitely not a child friendly flight and we won't have the many weeks we need to do this right. but can't a woman dream?
10) croatia: this seems to be a popular destination at the moment. i'm quite intrigued.

[written 5 February 07]

over the river...

...and through the woods--and fourteen hours on an airplane--to grandmother's house we go. we just got back from a brief but extremely nice trip to see my grandmother in iowa. madeline got to meet her for the first time, and we had 19 people around our thanksgiving table. i'm so thankful for having so many wonderful people in my life.

i love thanksgiving, particularly when i get to spend it with family. our family traditionally gathers at my grandma's, although the numbers have been waning in recent years and even richard and i have missed the last few celebrations. this year, all of my siblings and i made it, along with my parents, my aunt, and my cousin sara and her family. grandma celebrated her 88th birthday while we were there, and not only does she still live alone, but she prepared six homemade pies and an amazing thanksgiving spread.

city notebooks

these new city notebooks from moleskine are seriously cool. they make my itchy feet even itchier than normal.

siente la energia!

my team from work was meeting up in madrid last week, so madeline and i flew there for thursday and friday to see them. it was maddie's first flight, and she was amazing. she particularly seemed to enjoy the in-flight magazine and the nice spanish man sitting next to us.

the only negative was that when we arrived in spain, our pushchair wasn't outside the gate as planned. it had been sent on to the baggage carousel. being the "smart" traveler i am, i hadn't checked any bags but rather had carried everything on in a large backpack. i was glad that i had lifted weights in a past life when i had to carry this backpack and my 20-pound six-month-old 45 minutes through the new madrid terminal. we finally rescued our pushchair from an old man who was pushing it around on a trolley near baggage claim, and i sighed a huge sigh of relief when i put madeline into it. the rest of the trip was a breeze after that.

it was great to see my team, and to be in spain again. we tagged along for an afternoon at the reina sofia museum, where we had a private guide for the picasso exhibit currently commemorating the guernica's return to spain 25 years ago. it was incredible.

as fun as the trip was, i was very pleased to see england outside the plane window and to touch down at heathrow on friday night, and i was even happier to see richard waiting for us at arrivals.

next stop: a week in a house in the cotswolds, then seattle in august!

worth a tri

over the past couple of years, there have been several times that i've considered participating in a triathlon. i'm not sure why, but i'm quite drawn to an event that combines swimming, biking and running in one go. i even went as far as to register for the danskin in seattle with plans to fly back on the right weekend last year, but my belly started to swell and all serious plans for taking part went out the window.

this year, i have found a perfect event, and last week i sent in my registration. on 24 june, i will participate in the timex womenonly triathlon to be held in eton. they have a novice distance, which i believe i could do without any additional training if i had to, so the pressure to train is only moderate, but it still provides good motivation to get out and do some real exercise. it will also, hopefully, get me over my fear of an open water swim, with an event that is not too scary a distance. the swim is being held in dorney lake, the site for the rowing in the 2012 olympics.

i have no excuse to not train...unless of course a four-month old baby counts. training when you have a baby is easier said than done. i have a neighbour coming to babysit maddie for an hour and a half each wednesday morning starting next week so that i have more time to lengthen out my runs or get on the bicycle.

as of today, swimming is probably the most successful of the three forms of exercise: having swam throughout my pregnancy, i got back in the pool as soon as i was allowed to. since madeline has been six weeks old, i've gone down to swim whenever i have an opportunity. in fact, madeline and i just got back from the pool an hour ago. she sat at the end of the lane relatively patiently while i swam my lengths, and even let me get my shower before heading back home. we have gone a few times, and it works out generally well, although it does feel like a bit of a crap shoot. today the whole ordeal wore her out, and she fell asleep perfectly for her lunch time nap as soon as we got home.

now if i can just keep this up for the next couple of months, lengthen out my runs and dig my bike out of the garden shed, i'll be ready for the triathlon!

welcome dexter!

at around 11am on saturday 8 october, dexter elliott, our second nephew, splashed into the world in what sounds like a nearly perfect water birth. he was around 7.5 pounds, and one week early. we met him on sunday, and he's a very sweet little baby. apparently he has bright blue eyes, but he never opened them for us during our visit.

sarah, karl and big brother gus are all doing well. sarah looks fantastic, and didn't have to spend even one night in the hospital. gus was at our house much of saturday, playing with 1970s toys from my childhood. he particularly liked the three men in a tub.

we are thrilled to have another nephew and can't wait to get to know him better. congratulations sarah and karl!

solo travel

i love travelling on my own. this isn't to say that i don't also enjoy travelling with richard or my friends and family. but solo travel is special in its own way. it makes your destination seem more vivid. when i travel on my own, i notice things about the places i'm visiting that i don't see when i'm with others. i talk to people i wouldn't otherwise meet. and i spend more time listening to what's happening around me.

last week, i went to malta. i spent a day following a walking tour that was in one of my guidebooks, circling the capital city of valletta. i visited museums and cathedrals. i went to catacombs, saw a movie on malta's history, and saw stone architecture from 3600 BC. i followed in the footsteps of st. paul. i took the orange maltese buses around the island, and watched the countryside go by outside the bus window. i went to an internet cafe, climbing the circular staircase to the tiny balcony where i wrote email to friends and rich from an old Windows 98 machine with a monitor that was flickering.

i spent a lot of time on my own. but by the most strange coincidence, i also got to meet up with eissa and jali, my finnish parents from when i lived in finland as a 16-year-old exchange student. like me, they chose to go on holiday in malta last week, and we met each other for lunch at st. julian's, seeing each other for the first time in ten years.

the english christmas panto

last night we went along to a traditional english christmas-time activity--the panto! usually these are children's oriented theatre productions, with lots of audience interaction, bad jokes and double entendre. ours, “aladdin on the jolly roger” was an adult variety, but had similar themes. the online synopsis reads:

"flamboyant and colourful adaptation of the story of aladdin, transposing the action to a desert island, where he is helped by his trusty side-kick wishee-washee, yet faced by dastardly pirates, a royal party and some hungry canibals."

the panto was great fun, but we ended up sitting in front of a group of rather drunk 30-somethings from chelsea who spent much of the panto talking loudly amongst themselves. they really only paid attention to the jokes when their friend was on stage. during one of her scenes, the actors were singing a cheesy 80s love song, and one of the female neighbours nudged me on the shoulder, and said "let's sway!" begging me to join them in swaying back and forth to the music. it wouldn't have been out of place, but i didn't oblige.

part way through the second act, they made a mobile phone call. screaming loudly into the phone over the noise of the actors' voices (how dare the actors speak so loudly while on stage, after all? it really ruins the audience's fun) they passed the phone down the aisle so everyone in their little group would have a chance to speak. everyone else within a 30 meter radius gave them a good glare. what we should have done is given them one of these fantastic cards, especially designed to quiet obnoxious mobile phone users.