Poppie and the piggies

While Finn got the biggest thrill from the tractor rides, Poppie was pleased as punch to meet the piggies at BJ's farm. She laughed at their squeals and babbled at their grunts for food. And they in turn followed her along the fence line wherever she walked.

This is how you drink tea in England

Traveling with kids

When Nick and I first had kids, we were under the innocent impression that we were not like other couples and our children were not like other children. We were not going to let kids slow us down in our passion for travel. And besides, we call two different countries home, so it is necessary that we travel. A child's home is where ever the parents make it, we believed. Children are portable, we'll strap the kids on our backs and off we'll go, we eagerly convinced our parents who indulged us with only a very slight raise of the eyebrow.

Ha.

Two kids and many transcontinental trips later, we are humbly eating our words. Traveling with kids is exhausting. You cannot just strap them and off you go. Not if you need sleep. Which we did not need for the first two weeks, but we now covet sleep like a wolf eating prey, or wolf-eat-wolf which the past two days have been between darling hubs and I. Our biggest spat is who gets to sleep on the hide-a-bed in the other room (it's my turn tonight, by the way, so expect a perkier Jenna to engage you tomorrow).

Kids need consistency and a routine and a bed that smells like them to be their normal selves. Which you have none of when you travel. And bless our sweet children, they hold it together all day, game for whatever new adventure we introduce them to, being little darlings to their grandparents and in general looking totally acclimated.

Until night hits. Poppie is a sleeper and prefers the dark, quiet and being alone when she sleeps. Finn needs the light on, a soft noise in the background and prefers one of us to be within arm's reach at night. I will leave it to your own imagination to guess how well this works when we all share a room in a foreign place.



However, if I was writing this well-slept and feeling perky, I would be writing about what a fantastic time we are having and how impressed I am with our children's versatility. Because we are having a fantastic time and the kids are amazingly versatile. I am shocked by how quickly Finn has changed the structure of his language to be better understood. English and American English are very different languages when your vocabulary is smaller than an adult's. Finn quickly learned to replace American words with English ones so people will know what he is talking about without having to ask him to repeat it. He is loving all the parent-time and has been so well behaved, especially this last week once he got more settled into the routine of travel.


And little Poppie has been through a major growth spurt since arriving and her little personality is just busting out all over the place. When Finn went through a similar growth spurt at her age, I remember it being extremely difficult for him (and us) and yet Poppie is being very graceful about the wild changes happening in her little head and body. She is becoming quite the mini-me and will even reprimand Finn with an 'es-stoppp' if he is doing something that I previously told him to stop earlier.



And despite how exhausted we are, neither of us want to stop traveling with the kids. Our pillow talk is about how we can improve our planning next time, how we can make this small tweak or that little change to make it easier on the kids (and us) in the future. And I am sure we will. This phase must be the hardest phase, surely (cue: someone with experience telling me toddlers are the hardest to travel with of all the ages). The memories that we are all storing up on a trip like this will last a lifetime and at the end of the day it is well worth it.

Digging on the beach with his new digger

Finn was rewarded with the most amazing sit-on digger from Auntie Sarah and Uncle BJ for a pageboy gift after their wedding. It barely fits in the trunk of our rental car, but is a must-bring for every single trip we take. And we have taken a lot of little day trips since arriving in Cornwall. The beaches here are perfect for digging and so picturesque. Golden sand beaches protected by ancient harbor walls and overlooked by castles built in the Tudor era. If only he knew how lucky he is to dig in such beautiful sands.























And of course, we can't forget little Popps who is quite happy to chew on seaweed while everyone is watching Finn dig.

Poppie playing on the beach

Mountain goat Finn

A day at the Charlestown beach

Our trip home to the UK has been wonderful so far. We have had birthday parties and weddings and much-needed time catching up with friends and the countryside and grandparents lovingly doting on the children. Nick and I even got a moment to bring the children to Oxford, where it all began, and felt the nostalgia of a life we once had go crashing into the life we now lead. It felt amazing and we wouldn’t trade one moment for the other.

This has been the first trip back where I have felt a strong desire to move back here with the kids at some point in our family’s future. When we pass a little farm cottage in the Cotswolds, I can picture our chickens running through the yard and our children dressed in their school uniforms waiting to be collected from school. Our community here is as vast and loving as our community in the States and I would love to give our children an opportunity to feel as strongly British as they do American.

Finn has a tough time with transitions, but this has been a fairly easy one for him. He has had lots of situations where he has to behave a certain way, and for the most part he has been amicable to the expectations. He adores his UK family and hasn't missed a beat with any of them. I am so proud of him.



Poppie has developed into a different little girl since we have been here. She is fiesty and loving and has definitely departed babyhood and entered childhood. She has learned how to get what she wants and adores Finn to no end, which Finn reciprocates. They are real pals. I am equally proud of the little girl Popps is becoming.

Finn has quickly picked up on the colloquialisms of his other country. ‘I don’t need to wear shoes, mommy, the grass is lovely and soft’ he says to me as he leaps off the porch. Or ‘right, mommy, we are off’ as we adventure out with his new sit-on digger gifted from the lovely bride and groom for being so good in the wedding. Although his accent is distinctly American, he has wasted no time in picking up little words here and there that sound British to me.

Perhaps one day we will be so lucky to be dual-continental. In the meantime, we are loving these trips home and only wish we had more time to spend with everyone while we are here.