This Boy's Life

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.