Me and the Boy

Life is new and wonderful

I am officially in week three of stay-at-home-momhood and after a little bit of a transition period, I am absolutely loving it. The kids are too, and have rewarded me with impeccable behavior and great little attitudes for the past two weeks straight. We have found a daily routine and a rhythm and are finally catching up from what felt like months of exhaustion.

Finn has started preschool two mornings a week and is thriving. So much so that I am considering extending one of his days so he can have lunch and more social playtime with his friends. He is getting more mellow by the minute and is clearly being given the right tools to manage life (and his emotions). Our routine, although it changes in content, is pretty consistent and he does really, really well with the structure.

Another little change we have made with Finn is completely giving up on a strict sleep situation. He wants to sleep with us, so we let him. And for the first time in his life, he is sleeping 10 hours solid. Poppie is sleeping 13 hours solid. And if we weren't so desperate to spend some alone time together, Nick and I would be sleeping 8 hours solid too. (Instead we stay up too late talking or working on a project together or combing Redfin for a new house that we can't even afford).

Poppie is starting to talk and is in that phase where she learns 5-10 new words a day. She is a lot like her brother, who was also an early talker. I think it has something to do with being extroverted. These kiddos need their voices because they have a lot of socializing to do. Poppie will charm a bus load of silent-riders or collect a crowd of Asian women to our cart at Goodwill within less than a minute. And then Finn will swoop in for the finale: That's my baby sister. Her name is Poppie. I'm Finn and I am almost three and Papa's going to take me golfing when I get younger. Meanwhile Poppie nods and looks at him adoringly and then back to the crowd and waves and coos and I get a million compliments.

I used to be an extrovert. I used to think I was an extrovert. But after being out with my extroverted children all day, who collect old and young friends by the hundreds, I suddenly need to be alone and quiet at the end of the day. Nick (another extrovert) laughs at how easily I get overwhelmed by it all and lets me go be alone for a few minutes while he plays extroverted games with the extroverted children of ours.


Sorry for the long absence. I am re-learning how to 'do it all'. Turns out being a busy working mom became my second nature and now I have new props, new rules and new projects that I have to balance (one of which is a new blog that will be launching soon!).

Twins

The other day while at BJ's farm, I got some quick snaps of Daddy and Poppie sporting some uncannily similar facial expressions:

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.