We made it to London

We powered through our 24-hour delay in leaving for London and got to the airport all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. Having been upgraded to first class because of the insane air traffic control outage messing everything up, we checked in and went to the fancy, preboard lounge for snacks. 

The boys were besotted by the Shirley Temples and general fanciness of it all, and we then eagerly boarded the plane to New York. Row 1. Wow.

And then we waited. And waited. And the auxiliary power control broke. And the heat crept up to 88 degrees F in the cabin. And not one person was offered a snack. An hour or two in, the coach customers got a beverage. Nearly three hours after boarding, and after listening to the flight attendants talk rudely about the passengers (oh what you can hear in Row 1) and basically ignore us all, we took off.

I love taking photos from airplane windows.

So many people on our flight missed their connections, a number of which were to locales abroad. As it was 9:30pm when we finally deplaned at JFK, I'm sure lots of folks had to wait until the next day to get another flight. Fortunately, we made our connection to London, but I think it goes without saying that that first leg really sucked. I'd have been furious if I'd paid for those first class seats. Damn! Air travel has sure become largely un-fun.

That said, international first class is off-the-hook fabulous. We each had a large, comfortable, massaging seat that reclined fully into a bed. We got pajamas, the option of food at any time, individual TVs/movies/video games/noise-canceling headphones, and two bathrooms for just seven passengers. It's absurdly lovely. The kids were beside themselves. Ol and T fell asleep almost immediately; I wasn't long to follow. J stayed up videogaming with manic glee. 

seriously??

First class is definitely the way to most enjoy long-haul flights. I told the boys to savor every bit because they will likely never fly this way again. And did I mention that as compensation for the original canceled flights which took a day from our vacation, we got to extend our trip and fly back business class? Mahgah!

Once in London, we moved in to our B&B, part of a gorgeous home in Kensington, and immediately went out to foil jet lag by keeping ourselves occupied. We walked along the Thames, through Belgravia and then to Kensington Park before succumbing to exhaustion and returning home by way of La Cave au Fromage and a separate, non-cheese but very lovely market for other goodies.

albert, in kensington park

I was asleep by 7p, the boys and Tom by eight; Jack and Ol slept for 13 hours, as did I with the kindly assistance of a midnight Ambien. Jet leg is such a bitchy side effect of the otherwise fabulous fortune that is international travel.

Today we met an old friend at the British Museum and roamed its endless galleries: the Rosetta Stone! the Elgin Marbles! an Easter Island bust! elephantine Assyrian gates! Sutton Hoo riches! It's so nice that museum admission here is free of charge; it's especially liberating when traveling with kids because you can come and go as you need to or please. I will say, however, that the BM's complete lack of garbage cans is vexing and odd.

The boys spent a long time wandering the gift shop, deducing how best to spend the first of their saved money. Oliver ultimately decided on a working catapult pencil sharpener, and Jack chose the same sharpener, two small Egyptian scarabs (I love scarabs) and a quill-and-ink set. He feels one step closer to Hogwarts.

Tomorrow: the Warner Brothers studios for a tour of the original Harry Potter sets.

Summer Makes Them Smarter, Year 2

Summer Makes Them Smarter, year 2

Well, it’s that time of summer again. The time at which most of my friends’ kids have gone back to school, and we are just leaving for our family vacation. We have four.weeks.left. people. FOUR.

In this snail race to the finish, I am again of the mind that year-round school is a terrific idea for so many reasons:

• no summer “melt” when your kids forget everything they just spent 9 months learning
• no “what day is it today” blank-face stares because their regular schedule left with the last school bus back in June and their brains are haywire now
• no wild-eyed fatigue of their continued bickering about who gets your bathtub and whether or not each person takes his own head off the toothbrush or is allowed to leave it standing: they have too much time on their hands

Enough already.

You might recall my post from last August 14 (funny how without planning a matched date, I started writing this in the same week, one year later) about all the ways in which summer makes kids smarter. This summer is no exception, people. Here you go; you’re welcome.

I knew things were really coming along when I suggested a very inspired, if I say so myself, art project in which the kids would sketch in their art journals, all the things they loved about summer. Jack went for the gold, and I was thrilled.

Then I spied it: SUMER.

Amazing. This fourth grader is ON IT, people. He loves sumer and all it involves!

Oliver drew this masterpiece. I don't think his sophisticated work needs much explanation.

After a week of playing “Boujad and Piney: Where Did He Go?” an inane game that involved Piney (Oliver) walking around with a weird, butt-out posture and asking in an odd baby’ish voice, “Where is Boujad (Jack)? Where did he go?” it was, mercifully, time for Camp Calleva.

Oh to be in my quiet home for hours and hours while they were blissfully outdoors, kayaking, rock climbing, horseback riding and shooting bows and arrows. They burned loads of energy every day and came home filthy, bedazzled with all manner of woodland ornament.

It was all really wonderful except that it’s made me seriously ponder two somewhat terrifying questions:

1. Will Jack ever show interest in being clean? And, will he ever successfully bathe himself?
2. Is Oliver a hoarder?

Q1: Jack’s feet, neck and hands were about nine shades darker than his torso and thighs. His face looked like he’d cobbled together camo paint from natural sources. Dust and degraded plant matter snowed from his hair whenever he sneezed or nodded with even the slightest gusto. And yet he insisted, with a somewhat feral growl, “I am not dirty, Mom.” Did he lose his eyesight at camp? Does he not smell himself?

I decreed, on the very first day, “Baths happen as soon as we get home and then you can play and eat.” The water was so shockingly gray-brown that Oliver was moved to video it one evening. I dare say our tubs may never return to white.

Meanwhile, at the ripe old age of 9+, Jack still requires coaching on the intricacies of shampooing one's own hair. Was this difficult for me to learn and I have forgotten the challenge? I think not.

Two weeks ago, he got out of the bath, drained the water and got dressed before I could check him. His hair was slicked with conditioner. He vaguely resembled Kenickie in Grease. Then, his hair dried.

If you would like to style your hair such that it resembles a shellacked rat’s nest, follow Jack’s lead. When I tucked him in that night, I tried to run my fingers lovingly through his blond locks. They got stuck. I managed to retract my digits; they were sticky and looked as if they had dandruff. It was vile.

Why did this not faze my boy? He is dirty- plain and simple.

Q2: It pains me to consider this, but I believe Oliver is showing early hoarder tendencies. At the very least, he is entirely too interested in bringing the forest back to his bedroom. I feel we owe Calleva about 90 bags of assorted natural treasure: mulch, rocks, sticks, pinecones, whatever those revolting shriveled-cantaloupe-looking seed pods are…

This is ONE day’s example of what he’d crammed into his backpack and lunch box. I mean, did he actually go to camp? Or did he wander the woods, picking this shit up? I do wonder. In case you're wondering, that shiny blue thing is a noisemaker. It never belonged to Ol or anyone in our family, and yet he blew on it many times. #yuk

I throw things out in the dark of night, after having moved them around the house strategically, hoping he doesn't catch on to my plan. He has taken to going through many of our trashcans and removing things he deems treasures. This is stuff like used straws, y’all. That were never his. Gum wrappers, frizzled yarn, tape coated with dirt and crumbs. #nottreasures

We will never need to collect kindling again.

Dear husband, during this time, ordered one of those Google cardboard thing. That ridiculous looking adult-viewfinder into which you put your smart phone. You then walk around wearing this contraption and looking like a complete dork. Naturally, the kids were as thrilled as Tom. Mah gah. With whom do I live?? Let’s pay even less attention to our surroundings, shall we?

Now we're off for that family vacation, y'all! Sayonara!!

**Epilogue: We spent five hours at the airport today but are back home now. Our bags have gone to London, and we have not because the air traffic control center for the DC-area crashed. For so many hours. We try again tomorrow night, to leave. ON THIS EFFING VACATION! Do you hear my relaxed tone?????

A swarm

I just scrubbed my table clean, which sounds much simpler than it was. Coated in pesto, blueberry muffin crumbs, salsa and all manner of grubby finger and food residue, wiping it down took some real elbow grease. As I sponged the kids’ side, I looked down onto their chairs and saw more crumbs, noodles now hard as crackers and blueberries mashed so deeply into the fabric that they’re now part of it. I sighed.

I got out the dust-buster, which is on its last leg. I glanced at the cardboard box-now-a-muffin-cart that Oliver made over the weekend. I saw a rumpled Harry Potter cloak infused with cat hair wadded up in the corner of the room, and two half-completed Blow Your Mind science kits waiting for what? To be finished? Hilarious.

I came across receipts and expired coupons and twigs and dust bunnies, a half-written birthday card that’s now more than belated, a blanket that smells of dog. A friend was to come for a visit and some tea, but she’s stuck at home with a diarrheic toddler; she is at the end of her rope, and I understand because I wondered this morning, as I dropped the boys at the camp bus, if ever I’d been so glad to do so.

Fruit flies are swarming my kitchen. I thought Tom and the boys would have eaten the last of the peaches while I was away, but like all fruits and vegetables I left for them, the peaches were ignored, and in the soft spots and thin seams where the skin just splits, fruit flies found a feast. I do not hate fruit flies like I do the mosquitos that make it a brave act to go putter in my back yard this time of year, but they are annoying. Like inside gnats from which you cannot escape.

It’s pea soup outside today, and I am glad I have nowhere to be.

Yesterday was my annual physical and a last-minute thyroid ultrasound because one lobe felt swollen. It’s fine, and I have a new medicine because I am a chronic underperformer in the T3 department. My internist said I was such a grounded, well-adjusted person. 
Yesterday I took a run, unpacked and showered.
Yesterday I started packing again, as we leave on Saturday.
Yesterday I made blueberry muffins, those that later caked my table and chair and car, because Jack adores them and I didn’t have time to refill our freezer stash before I left.
Yesterday I made a beautiful dinner for the boys and later one for T and myself. Yesterday T and I stayed up watching Bill Maher’s show from Friday and laughing ourselves silly and enjoying another glass of wine together.

This morning we were tired, and the boys were just awful. Awful and annoying, like those fruit flies and mosquitoes all wrapped into one mean swarm. My heart was sad during our drive, and I told them in no uncertain terms that should they consider acting like this in England, I would absolutely get a babysitter and leave them at home all the damn day long. I was not joking.

We talked about insincere apologies and how hurtful and damaging they can be. We talked about hoarding and why I didn't want Oliver to keep the half a lizard he found in Louisiana last month that was rotting in a jar and stinking so badly that I threw it out without asking him. He pleaded with me to take the old, broken pretzel out of the garbage can. And the expired coupons too. I do not understand. I did not expect these conversations.

When I try so hard and my kids hurt my heart, I feel blindsided. Every single time. That’s the thing about kids growing up. They can start to disappoint you in a way babies can’t. They can start to choose to upset you. And really, in that volition and decision-making is celebration of their burgeoning independence but also challenge like you’ve never seen before.

It’s a gnatty vortex. Sometimes you want to give it space and appreciation, but at other times, you just want to swat the shit out of it. You want it to be a round nail in a round hole that you can push flat and quiet and seamless against the wall.