It’s been a slow week around here.  Some of us having been feeling a little bit under the weather, and well then there is THE weather.  It has cooled of significantly and we have been able to close the windows and the curtains at night, which makes for a quieter and darker night’s sleep.  But it has also been rainy all week- so no park crawling this week.  In addition to our usual library and market excursions we went to a children’s centre with Nicole and her gang and did a fun little craft project, inspired by Lori.  

I can feel summer fading away as the weather cools and school approaches.  All my friends on FB are posting “first day of school” pictures and it makes me excited but sad.  I can’t wait to see London in the autumn, and I’m exciting for school to start, but I’m not looking forward to taking the bus to the kids school three times a day.  

Monday I spent getting everything squared away from our last IKEA trip.  A few more things here and there in anticipation of our first guests! My parents are coming in three days and the kids are so excited.  I’m excited too, both to see my parents and to have them be part of our life here for a bit, and I know my parents will wholeheartedly embrace it.  Both of my kid’s “Bacas” are hands-on grandmas and I look forward to having another adult to share some of the day to day labors of parenting with while Richard is at work.  

I’m just waiting for a few photo prints to arrive in the mail and then I think the house will be adequately (though not ideally) decorated.  Just a weird side note- I can’t seem to find what I would call a “top” sheet, or “flat” sheet.  It seems the British only use fitted sheets and comforters? Someone correct me if I’m wrong here…

Nicole watches other children during the day, and has an assistant named Maria.  So when we went to the children’s centre Maria and the extra littles came along.  Maria asked me if they have “children’s centres” in the states and I couldn’t really think of anything equivalent.  From what I understand, a children’s centre is a government funded program/location designed to build community and help parents.  During summer holidays they have carnival type events like the one we went to, where they had a face-painter, an entertainer, a bounce house, and provided lunch.  During school term they host playgroups for mums and children who aren’t in school yet.  They encourage good parenting skills, like engaging with your child during play, and have other resources for parenting.  It’s all “free” to the public,  (I say free because it is obviously paid for by taxes.) I was impressed though.  Nicole and I joked about participation being mostly parents who don’t necessarily need the things being provided (education and lunch) but while we were there I felt like there were many families benefiting from the program.   

I remember hearing a podcast once about some of the basic parenting skills that middle-class, educated people take for granted, and how some moms are raised in such dysfunctional homes that they really have no idea how to be a good mom. It is easy for me to criticize other mothers for this or that- but really I have only my paradigm to relate to, and its likely that they are giving as much in the ways they are capable of, as I am.   

Whoa soap box!  Anyway- I’m giving credit to the UK government for offering this to it’s parents and kids, and I look forward to taking Simon to playgroups and meeting other mums. 

Wednesday was library day, and then the Farmer kids came over so Mindy could go to a Dr. appointment.   They played so well-  we are going to miss our American friends when they leave next week. 

Thursday we painted canvas bags (per Lori’s suggestion) for library bags.  At first Cameron didn’t want to do it- too cool I suppose, but then he saw how fun it looked and jumped on board.  Mim picked polka-dots, the easiest option that required no patience, waiting for me to tape it.  I just copied this tutorial. 

Eli chose chevron, Cameron wanted chevron but I persuaded him to just do a rectangle pattern (that’s what you get when you come late to the program) and I just chose stripes for Simon.  

I told them they could paint their names on the other side of the bag, so we’ll probably do that today and then I’ll take pictures of the finished products. 

Doing crafts with kids when you have OCD tendencies can be something of a challenge.  It’s funny how when it comes to important things I can see a need for allowing my children to make mistakes.  But apparently for a simple art project allowing them to make mistakes is neurological torture.  

I can’t believe another week is in the books.  We will probably lay low this weekend.  When my parents are here I am sure we will be doing all sorts of fun touristy things.  On Thursday we leave for Scotland, where will be for five days!  I can’t wait…

On Sunday afternoon we were restless and had no obligations so we decided to take a drive.  I suggested driving in the city, just doing a few passes by Big Ben, but Richard told me that the CCTV will take photos of your license plate and issue congestion penalties.  Yikes.  

So we picked a park and drove there.  We chose Crystal Palace because it is reasonably close and we’d never been there.  Richard says he feels like he is missing out on a lot of our park excursions so it seemed like a good way to pass the time.  

We didn’t do any research about the park before we went, and we really don’t know much about the surrounding neighborhoods.  But the park was pretty dilapidated.  There were these brick structures and broken statues and it looked like ruins of a once majestic structure.  So I did a little research and it turns out that the park was the home to the Crystal Palace exhibition building from 1854-1935 at which point the amazing glass structure burned down and has never been rebuilt.   It was actually kind of sad when I learned that.  It must have been quite a sight in its day!

By the time we finished the maze we were all ready to go home and eat dinner- so we tricked the kids into running by playing red-light/green-light all the way back to the car.  

While doing my research about the park, it turns out that we missed the Victorian life-size dinosaur statues in the park so maybe we’ll have to go back after all.  

After we found out we were moving I bought numerous books on Amazon about London and Europe.  One of them wasn’t so much a book as a small box of cards.  It’s call 50 Adventures by Foot – City Walks with Kids.  It ended up in a box that was shipped and I was so anxious for it to arrive.  I picked one for Saturday and we made a day of it.  

Each card focuses on a small area of London, easy walking distances for kids.  It tells you the tube station you need to go to and usually includes a family friendly restaurant choice.   

It took us over an hour to get there.  There are plenty of ways to plan a route to your destination.  Google Maps works really well, especially if you’re planning on using the buses.  There are a couple of different smart phone apps that I look at.  But usually what works for me is just looking at the tube map and figuring it out myself.  The reason for that is because my priorities when traveling with the kids are 1- Minimal train transfers and 2- Limited or no use of buses or National Rail.  Train transfers are hard with the kids- they usually involve a lot of stairs and walking through tunnels, which isn’t all bad but sometimes it’s the destination we’re anxious for and not the journey.  We use buses all the time when traveling around Lewisham, close to home, because I’m familiar with them and the routes.  But in the city it’s more complicated and honestly I usually would rather walk a bit further than take a bus.  And lastly, the National Rail is the only public transportation in the central zones that requires tickets for the kids, which cost money and confuse me.   In other words, sometimes the route I pick isn’t the fastest, just the simplest.  

Our first stop was the Leighton House Musuem.  It is the home of the late Lord Frederic Leighton, an artist who lived from 1830-1896.   He commissioned all different artistic types to help him design and build it, and he incorporated tiles, artwork, furniture and decor from all over the world, but most specifically the Far East and Arab lands.  

The house was quite breathtaking, there were tiles on the wall from Damascus c. 1520 and beautiful artwork of Leighton’s and both artists before his time and his contemporaries.  I loved it for it’s total impracticality and elaborate artistic design. Lord Leighton was a bachelor and quite a shame I thought- that he had no family to enjoy it with him.  He was part of a new style movement called “Aestheticism” that thought the Victorian style was too square and boring, so the house was bold and bright.  The kids weren’t so much into the art, but it was our good fortune that there was a children’s art fair going on that day in the house gardens, so Richard took the kids while I wandered through the house and then we swapped. 

There was no photography allowed in the house, but if you’re interested you can see photos here and all the artwork displayed throughout the house.  

After the kids finished their “tile mosaic” and Shakespeare books we went to lunch.   The card had recommended a place called “Sticky Fingers” which was a rock and roll type American diner with wings and milkshakes.  It was soooo good to have wings again.  Richard and I couldn’t stop sighing over them.  

Our plan was to go to Holland Park next, but we were running late and Richard had to be at the church at 3:00 to help clean.  I decided to take the kids to the park by myself and sent him on his way.  (Keeping in mind it takes an hour to get home.) 

Holland Park is in Kensington which is another posh part of the city.  It’s so clean and well kept and seems to be somewhat of an art center.  The park was full of artwork and exhibits.  

Holland park is known for its peacocks and we saw a few but none that had their feathers spread.  TRIVIA: The peacock was the symbol for the Aesthetic Movement. 

The Kyoto gardens are meant to be a peaceful place for meditation and reflection so I was “Shhh”-ing the children the whole time.  But they did love the fish! 

Once we got through they were quite ready for some play so we found a “Nature Playground” first.  I’ve actually seen this at other playgrounds too, but there are posted signs saying adults are not allowed in the playground unless they are accompanied by children.  It’s a nice way to keep creepers out and keep crowd control I suppose.  

I guess a Nature playground consists of fallen trees and stumps.  The kind of playground my kids are used to when we’re camping.  But I suppose many Londoners don’t do much camping… 

After the nature playground we found the Adventure Playground which was busting with people and the kids were a bit intimidated.  It didn’t have anything particularly amazing or exciting and it really was hard to enjoy with me looking every which way for my kids and them having to stand around to wait their turn on zip lines and swings.  We stayed less than an hour but we did meet some other American expats.  

Eli realized that we had left the kid’s artwork back at the restaurant and he really wanted his castle mosaic so we trekked back to the restaurant to retrieve it.  For Cameron’s benefit I’ll let the record indicate that he suggested a faster route to the restaurant but I didn’t trust him (wait a minute- has this happened before?) and he turned out to be right.  It would have saved us some walking.  

After getting the artwork safely back in our custody we bought some drinks and snacks and found the closest tube station and began the long trek home.  Miriam was so tired and insufferable on the train that when we got home I turned all parental responsibilities over to Richard for the duration of the day.  

The last week of May I went through the tedious process of packing the things I thought we couldn’t live without.  I delivered them to a warehouse on May 30, crossing my fingers that they wouldn’t get dumped overboard or sink in the ocean.  

Fast forward ten weeks and finally, AT LAST our belongings arrived.  A little bit of our old home to make our new home more comfortable and familiar.  We were all really excited.  But more than once the thought occurred to me that soon enough all these things would just mean more messes and THINGS to clean and organize.  And if we survived for ten weeks, surely we could survive indefinitely? 

But lets be honest, #firstworldproblems mean that we don’t just survive.  We get what we want usually, and we indulge, and chances are we will accumulate more THINGS in the next two years while we are here.   But I did read somewhere that being an expat teaches you the art of simplified living. 

I got an email saying our pallet would arrive on August 6th and the deliveries usually take place in the morning, but not always.  I really felt like a kid.  I was looking out the window every ten minutes all day long, especially if I would hear the sound of a truck outside.  By the time Richard came home from work, a little after 5:00, I was sure it wasn’t coming.  There was a sinking feeling, and I was so disappointed.  As I was writing an email to the company asking about the delievery, I saw the truck out the front window.  

By the time I got around to taking pictures, Cameron and Eli were long gone with their favorite things.  Miriam though, unloaded her things one by one until they were in a pile next to her empty box.  THEN she was long gone with her favorite things.  

Our shipment included 12 boxes.  Miriam and Simon were allowed one box and Cameron and Eli were allowed one box.  When I say they were “allowed” a box, I just mean that I put the things of theirs that I wanted them to have in the box.   I’m so controlling as a mother I didn’t really give them much say about it.  Let me rephrase that- I feel that I know my children well enough to determine which things they would most like to have, and then packed them myself in order to best utilize the space.  

SO for goodness sake what was in the other 10 boxes?  Just for my own personal record:

Kids sleeping bags
Blankets
Kitchen supplies
A select few books
Dishes
Winter coats
Scriptures and manuals
Towells/beach towells
Eli’s scooter 
Shoes/boots/cleats 
Board games 
Minimal Christmas/holiday decor
DVDs (that won’t play on our dvd player/T.V. here)
The Wii
Air mattress 
Limited office supplies, craft supplies and kids paints/markers
Bedding (which doesn’t really fit the mattresses and pillows here)

It was really kind of arbitrary what I decided to bring, and a lot of it was sentimental more than practical.  It’s a tricky balance trying to decide what is cheaper to buy than ship.  A few things we didn’t bring

Nearly all electronic appliances (because of the voltage differences) 
Furniture (Besides Mim and Si’s bunk beds which arrived on our pallet)
Most of our toys/books/holiday decor

Everything is unpacked and mostly put away.  We made one last trip to IKEA on Saturday and hopefully be the end of the week the house will be put together enough that I can take pictures and show you what it looks like now that we are living in it.  

After Monday’s outing to Ladywell Fields and in anticipation of our arriving pallet, we stayed home Tuesday to clean up and get the house organized.  Wednesday I didn’t do much besides look out the window.  So Thursday we went to Blackheath Beach with the Farmers.  One of those pumped-in-sand-without-water beaches.  The sand was worth it though.  it was more like powdered sugar than sand.  It was soooo soft.  

There was a little fountain so the kids could get their sand wet to build a sand castle.  We buried each other’s legs and exfoliated our skin.   Even though they limit the number of people who can come in, it was pretty crowded and there was a little tyke there who was determined to be a bully.  But we had a good time, and it’s always nice to talk to a friend without worrying about someone drowning. 

The weather was perfect too, not to hot but warm enough to get wet and sandy.  We were so sandy in fact that I decided to walk home.  The “beach” is right across the street from our church and so we knew the walk well.  (No risk of getting lost.)  And it’s all downhill.  

Belmont Hill is the road by our house that takes us to church, and to the charming village of Blackheath.  But I just love these old brick walls and these ancient street signs.  

Nicole says she is on a Summer Park Crawl.  Kind of like a bar crawl, but parks.  You get it.  Anyway she suggested Ladywell Fields which is really close to where we live.  We took the bus though because we are lazy sometimes.  Sometimes we are not lazy but I’ll get to that later.  

The park has several playgrounds- parks are seriously so spacious here, have I mentioned that?  We skipped the first one because there was no shade and stopped at the second playground to eat our lunch.  There was a zip line, swings, and various other playgroundish things.   The zip line was the obvious favorite.  I had a fun watching my  kids zip their hearts out, but I also have fun watching little British kids “queue up” for these sorts of things.  They get the concept of the queue but still love to shove and cut, and then there is always the diplomatic child who tries to keep things in order.  

When I don’t have Richard around to make jokes about me becoming Japanese I tend to take way too many pictures.  

After we ate and the kids had their fill of this playground we walked through more park, crossed an overpass over the National Rail tracks, and into another section of the park with yet another playground.  This kind of playground is called an Adventure Playground, or what we Americans might call a lawsuit waiting to happen.  There was a man there (parks and rec type employee) who asked me to sign a waiver but it was loosely enforced and I saw many kids come  in and out of their own accord. 

The kids had adventures indeed!

The rope swing was another thrill for my little monkeys, even Eli liked it so long as he didn’t swing too high or too fast. 

Then of course- the sand.  Water-less beaches everywhere folks.  I do have to admit though, after watching the kids play here for a long time, it’s much less stressful without water.  I don’t have to be constantly vigilant about who is in the water, and are they drowning?  In fact, I wished I had a book with me this was so easy. 

Once we were exhausted we decided we would head out.  I was thinking we could exit the park on the opposite end that we came in from and walk home.  I wasn’t too worried about finding my way because I have a good data package on my phone now and I can use my maps wherever I go.   (You thought I was going to say that I wasn’t worried because I have a good sense of direction, didn’t you? Well I don’t.)

So when we stumbled across ANOTHER playground it was pure accident.  But I let the kids get their fill of this one too, while I tried to figure out what on earth the people were doing on the other side of the pathway.  

What WERE they doing? Picking wild blackberries! So we did that too.  Until our poor wrists and hands were all scratched up and none of us could imagine eating another blackberry ever again. (Until dinner at least because I used the FRUITS [see what I did there?] of our labors in a salad.) 

We finally exited the park, four hours after arriving at the park.  I had no idea where we were and my phone was being practically worthless so we just walked and walked and walked until Cameron spotted a bus stop, but I’m too proud so we kept walking and walking and walking until I spotted a bus stop.  Then we took the bus home, or at least to the bus stop by our house that is also by Percy Ingle where we all got delicious doughnuts and pastries because I’m sure we burned, like, 298,341 calories.  

And that was our Monday.  The end. 

Saturday we spent the day at home.  The Farmer kids came over so that their parents could enjoy a day of sight-seeing without three kids in tow.  It was wild around here with seven kids, especially since our stuff hasn’t come and we have virtually no toys.  But kids have good imaginations and then when they don’t there is always the telly.  

Richard had gone to buy a T.V. a week ago and the T.V. he wanted wasn’t in stock so he decided to order it online.  But then when he got online he saw that there was a much larger T.V. for the same price so he went for that one instead.  When it was delivered on Friday we weren’t home so they left it with the neighbor.  That is pretty typical I think, and very convenient since the neighbor’s door is approximately four feet from our door.   When we got home Friday night Richard went to get it from our neighbor she opened the door and stared at him blankly for a second and then said 

“Oh yeah! Huge telly!” 

After a couple frustrating hours of t.v. assembly, Google searching, reviewing the product reviews (I recommend doing this BEFORE making the purchase) we decided it was a bad T.V. and we needed to return it.  So on Saturday Richard and Cameron took it back and came home with a smaller, but better quality T.V. Suffice it to say that the kids were pretty excited to have a T.V. again.  

Richard also “mowed” the grass in the garden, which took all of eight minutes.  And that was probably only because it was his first time.  

We set another goal for breakfast/scriptures this week and the reward was a family movie night.  At the beginning of the week I had been perusing through Amazon Instant Video and saw The Wizard of Oz, so at our trip to the library I got a copy of the book for Cameron and a simplified/abridged version for Eli.  I’ve made a rule at the library that each week I get to pick a book for the boys to read.  (WWII books and Sci-Fi don’t make for very well-rounded literary exposure.)  Both boys finished their books by Saturday night so we made cookies and popcorn and watched The Wizard of Oz. 

I think the kids liked it, Simon kept saying “The one with the green face is MAD, Mommy.”  And Miriam was a little spooked by those creepy monkeys.  I was too for that matter.  

Saturday night I started feeling pain in my ribs and back, which happens to me every three or four months.  It’s awful but I can take a muscle relaxant that keeps me from getting tense, because that makes the pain worse.  The medication works wonderfully but I become a totally relaxed zombie so I slept most of the day on Sunday and Richard took the kids to church by himself.  But by Monday i was feeling mostly normal again.  

Before we came over here Richard had a few phone calls with other members in his group at KPMG and someone told him that it took several months for him to be able to understand the English people.  When Richard told me this I assumed it was because of their accents.  British accents have been hard to understand, but what really keeps me from communicating easily with the people around me is that they use phrases and words I am unfamiliar with, my brain isn’t expecting them and I spend a lot of time staring blankly in confusion at the store clerk or bus driver.  I first have to sort through the accent to get the words, and then I have to decipher the meaning of the words.   I almost always ask two or three time “I’m sorry, what was that?”

For example, at a restaurant in the U.S. someone would ask “Here or to go?”  Whereas here they ask “Eat in or take away?”

They also ask questions differently, with a tone of suspense or expectation at the end.   It reminds of me of Spanish speaking missionaries who come home and ask questions using the same words of a statement but the manner of speaking makes it a question.   

Instead of “Have you been happy here in London?”  They say “You’ve been happy here in London, yeah?” 

They also speak softly, Richard and a friend joked the other day about how he can always tell the British people from the South Africans on a conference call because the British are so hard to hear.  A friend of mine at church told me that the best thing I could do to sound less American would just be to dial down my volume a bit.  Easier said than done of course. 

These are only a couple of things I picked up on so far and I’m sure there will be more.  Here is a list the kids and I came up with of translations: 

Bathroom: Toilet, Loo, WC
Car: Carriage
Stroller: Buggy, pushchair
Garbage: Rubbish
Pants: Trousers
Trunk: Boot
Shopping cart: Trolley
Mom: Mum
Diaper: Nappie
Rent: Hire
Line: Queue
Chips: Crisps
Fries: Chips
Parking Lot: Car park
Elevator: Lift
Yard: Garden
Popsicles: Ice lollies
Mail: Post
Exit (verb): Alight
Exit (noun): Way out 
Soccer: Football
Freeway: Motorway
TV: Telly

I’m sure we’ll come up with more as time goes on.  

In addition to British accents we encounter a lot of French, Nigerians, Portuguese and Brazilians, Irish, Scottish and South Africans.  I’ve made it a personal challenge to sort through various accents and try to place them when I hear them.  The easiest way to do this is to think of someone I know and compare their voices.  For example, at church one of the speakers sounded a lot like Jo, our agent, and so I suspected he was from South Africa, and I was right! Scottish and Irish are pretty easy to place too because I can think of which Downton character they resemble most. 

Does anyone have any experience with these sorts of lingual obstacles?

The legacy of Queen Victoria and her husband/cousin Prince Albert includes several museums, and the Museum of Childhood became the collection place in the 20th century for all things related to children and family life.  We took the tube to Bethnal Green and spent THREE hours in  the museum.  It was a really fantastic set-up because each exhibit had an interactive space for the kids, which always gave me time to read while they played.   

We were all hungry and thirsty by the time we left the musuem so we stopped at a little market and got some snacks and drinks and took them to the Bethnal Green park.  The kids had fun running around unrestrained- but it made for terrible timing.  We ended up on the Tube during rush hour.  We’ve done the trains during rush hour before- but only with Richard.  Fortunately people were considerate and accommodating so we managed to get home without losing anyone.  It was hot- but not as hot as the buses.  

When we got home we had cold cereal for dinner because I had a smashing headache and now the kids are in bed and I’m peacefully relaxed in my chair that reclines.