I've never been here

A couple days ago, we hit our year mark of living here in London. I can't believe how much has happened and both how much shorter and longer it has felt! Does that even make sense? When I look back on our DC home and our routines there, my full time job, etc. it feels like a million years away, but it also feels like we just got off the plane on that grey London day in September 2013.

Anyway, we are settling into our second official flat here in London. I can't believe we moved again, but moreso, I wish that we would have been smarter the first time around. I loved living in Highgate but we were hoping for baby #2, and it was just too small and far away from city life for my taste. But we did get a good dose of quasi suburban life, and it was nice to be away from chaos after our last neighborhood in DC which was, as I've been describing it lately, "crime-y".

So far in this week of living in West Kensington, I've been to so many new places I would've never gone before, just because it's an awkward trip from Highgate. To name a few, Brook Green is lovely, our little neighborhood is just charming, and we're just a quick bus ride away from Kensington High street, Kensington Palace and the amazing Princess Diana memorial playground. And let's talk about the grocery stores. They are HUGE down here. We had just a tiny little Sainsburys by our place in Highgate, and I didn't think there was such a thing as large grocery stores in London. But the Waitrose, Tesco, and Whole Foods have blown my mind and meal planning just got so much easier.

We have lovely big windows and high ceilings that let in so much light, and even though it's an old flat, it is (mostly) charming and I'm happy to be here. Just need to find an IKEA wardrobe for the bedroom and then we're pretty set up.

We have our first appointment today at the new hospital, and seeing as how I'm nearly 34 weeks pregnant, I'm going to feel much better knowing we are settled and close to a great hospital with a comfortable and private birth center. Maybe that will make the fact that we're having a baby seem more real. (Living in denial currently.) We still need to find somewhere for the baby to sleep, some diapers, and a few soft receiving blankets to snuggle her, and then hopefully I can feel some peace of mind.

Photos of the flat to come, once it's not a total disaster!

We are moving!

The impossible has happened! We are moving out of our shoebox Highgate flat to a slightly larger shoebox in West London! I have the contract sitting in my inbox right now to review, and we should have it signed, sealed, and delivered by next week, then we move mid-September. I'll be about 32 weeks pregnant at our move.

Definitely one of the craziest decisions we ever made was to move to London, and we really had no idea what to expect other than - they speak English there, how hard can it be? Turns out, kind of difficult! It is hard to move to a different city, and even harder to move internationally and figure out how to do banking, grocery shop, navigate a new culture, and be a foreigner. We have grown to love it here. I think summer sealed the deal for us. 70 - 75 every day and the occasional rainstorm to keep it real. One thing that attracted me to our current Highgate flat was the natural light and white walls. It is something I realize that I need in my life: lots of light. I did the english basement thing for a year, and I was scratching the walls by the end of our year-lease. Side note: they call basement apartments "garden flat" here. Isn't that much more appealing than a dank basement? ;) While I'm happy to be moving on, I will miss the leafy quiet of Highgate and our first little flat here in London, with all its quirks (weird neighbors, foxes going through our garbage, middle of the night dance parties in the flat above ours (or clogging?! someone hates us upstairs).

Our new flat is just the next step I was hoping for. In terms of square footage, it's not too much bigger than our current place, but we have a huge front room/dining room combo, a nice big bedroom for us (a long narrow bedroom for the nursery), and most of all huge windows in every room on a second story terraced home. I cannot wait to move in and get settled before the arrival of baby girl.

I was talking to my sister in Virginia the other day (who is currently getting induced and should have her new baby here any minute now!) about how small our homes feel. She said to me: our place is just so tiny, I just wish we could move. Our place is only 950 square feet!
I just couldn't help but laugh. Our NEW place is 720 square feet and it feels like a palace to me! I think our current flat is somewhere around 600 square feet.
Funny how perspective can change your mind about something.

Anyway, this post is quite rambling, but I wanted to record my thoughts on how happy I am to be finding a new little spot in London, looking forward to exploring West London and finding our favorite parks, cafes, hidden gems, etc. that come along with a new neighborhood. It's hard to believe we've been here nearly a year.l

Hampton Court Palace

A few weekends ago, we woke up Saturday morning with a blank slate and I put in my vote for Hampton Court Palace. Unable to think of anything else quickly enough, Mark was forced into a Saturday of train travel and palace gazing, under the rainiest of skies. The rain held off for our entire hour-long journey out to Hampton Court, but as soon as we got off the train to walk the 5 minutes to the palace, the skies opened up and that was pretty much the end of any hopes for a dry day.

We spent most of the day hopping between huge palace kitchens, Henry VIII bedroom and great halls, and even got outside to admire the gardens (so many amazing gardens - even a hedge maze, my dream come true). We learned more about the strange life of Henry VIII and more about his 6 wives and how they made the palace their own during the short or long stints as queen. Did you know he was married to his first wife for 20+ years? I didn't know that. And that he only became moody, head-choppy Henry VIII after a bad accident that rendered him with a bad leg and possible brain damage. We watched a PBS documentary on netflix about Hampton Court palace and Henry VIII last week and it was a nice companion piece to this tour.

Anyway, I digress. The palace was beautiful. The gardens were breathtaking. Henry (the 2 year old, not the former King of England) loved running around outside when the rain would break for a little while and we had a little chase through the hedge maze that I will always remember. We loved the strangely manicured triangle trees behind the palace, the koi pond, the royal tennis courts, and the huge palace kitchen. The palace is set right by the Thames river so it is quite idyllic and peaceful. I can see why it was a favorite of the royal families for a time. Just a simple country house away from the hustle and bustle of London. Right. 

Lots of photos of our day out below! Including a photo of yours truly with a barely there bump (oh how things have changed) and a happy frolicky Henry. And gardens. Lots of gardens. 

Life lately.

I look around my house, and I see scattered strawberries and watermelon bits on the table where a certain two-year old got sticky fingers...cookies that need to be baked...laundry to be done...toys scattered everywhere...sand bucket and shovel on the ground waiting to be taken to the sandbox...a new doughnut cookbook begging to be used...windows open letting the fresh warm air into this little flat.

It is summer. Everything in my life just lazes along right now, like summer does. I'll get to the messes later. I'll clean sticky fingers tonight. We'll take that bucket and shovel and strawberries straight to the park and enjoy these warm, sunny days that have finally graced us.

And I've got some serious doughnut-making to do. I'm trying to find my soul-doughnut. It's important to have that kind of stuff figured out.

Today I was laying down next to Henry before his nap and I said Henry is the best. He looked at me and said Mama is the best. And we laughed and my heart fluttered with happiness.

June, is that you?

Hello from Camp Will-it-ever-get-warm-here AKA Camp Whines-about-the-weather-too-much.

I knew what I was signing up for when we moved to London, I did. But my body won't get on board with it. I'm waiting for the clouds to part, the sun to shine, the heat to tell us "get thee to the pool", but instead it gently nudges. Hey, girl, slip on that cardigan and mosy on over to the wading pool where it will be icy cold, but hey - your toddler doesn't really care. So that's how we found ourselves in the Hampstead wading pool this morning, Henry stripped down to just a diaper, running gleefully around in 65 degree weather wading his little piggies in cold water.

Was he happy about it? Yes, he was. Since Henry is Mark's child, and I merely carried him for 9 months, birthed him, and raised him to the current stage of his toddlerhood, Henry prefers to be in cooler weather with clouds. I'm sure of it. Mostly because every time we step out into the sun, I get this grimacy face. (see it?)

So, we are just carrying on. Keeping the sweaters out, donning our trousers instead of shorts and summer dresses, and telling myself - hey, maybe I'll never sweat again. I'll live a life of comfortable weather with no need to go to the pool or eat a drippy popsicle or any of those dull summer tricks. I'll never feel that blast of cool AC walking into a building from the humid 100 degree DC streets.

In the meantime every day of sun we have, we spend it all outside. Last Saturday we went to the Princess Diana memorial playground - Henry asked to go again today ("playground with sand? big ship?"). It was a beautiful day and when we came home, I tried to wipe the specks dirt off Henry's nose, and realized it wasn't dirt, it was a few brand new freckles! I died!

Obsessed

Every day, several times throughout the day, I look at the weather app on my phone. I'm obsessed. I always have London and Washington DC and always compare the two. When we're having our millionth day of Spring here (seriously, how many days of 55 F can one person take before protesting in a Tshirt?), DC has been heating up to the 80's and even 90's! If I were back there, I could be beaching it up and living in summer dresses already! Instead, I'm protesting by staying inside most days, huge sweater wrapped around me, thick socks, and thinking of soups for dinner.

Every couple of weeks I put different cities on my weather app to get an idea of where I should be traveling for better weather. So far, it's too cold for the green waters of Cornwall (maybe July), still cold in the Lake District (though, we're going in a couple of weeks anyway for some R&R), Corfu is pretty perfect, Seville is getting there, and it's WAY too hot to travel to Marrakech right now - 100 F every day.

I can't be the only one who does this, right? The perpetual dreamer of going other places with perfect weather? Is it a British thing?

They're calling for a heat wave this weekend. It is supposed to be up to 70 F. Seriously. HEAT WAVE.

Springtime in Regents Park

I think my favorite thing about London has to be its parks. Might be my current buddy really prefers running around to being pushed around in a stroller around the city, but who knows. :) Each park has its own reasons to fall in love with it - the well-kept gardens, the wild craggy trees, the ponds, the funny looking birds that have us guessing what they are, the list goes on and on.

Last month while Papa was in town, we headed to Regents Park for part of his birthday celebration. We brought some bread to feed the birds (who will eat the bread out of your hands if you're not careful), walked around admiring the tulips, and just taking in one of the sunnier Spring days we've had here this year. I love Regents Park for its quiet beauty, seemingly endless paths to explore, and the rose garden that blooms in the late summer months which is obscenely beautiful. 

Family in town

Today, and for the next couple of days or weeks, we are coming down from our visiting family high. We've had family in town for the past month and not a day passed that wasn't completely fun and fulfilling. Marks parents were in town for a week and just left yesterday. We woke up this morning to an empty house. Mark back at work, no air mattress in the living room, no grandparents to play with Henry and dote on him. Just me and Henry - the OG. So we did our best to make the most of it. We watched a little trains, then took a bubble bath, then took ourselves out to lunch at Sable D'or for fancy sandwiches and juice. I mean, it's not much but it's a pretty perfect morning in my mind.

I need to dig up some pictures to post, but we toured the heck out of London this past week. Tower of London, Borough Market, St Pauls eventide, Matisse at the Tate Modern, the V&A, the British Museum, the Natural History museum, Hampstead Heath, afternoon tea at Fortnum & Mason, Liberty...we were all pretty beat by the end of the week, but happy to have enjoyed great company, only one rainy day the entire week (museum day! perfect.), and Henry had the time of his life. He keeps asking for Tootie and Pop Pop this morning, even though he knows they left. I think he must think it's easy to just go see them - what are we waiting for? :)

Anyway, transitioning back to just the three of us is a harsh wake up call, but lucky for us, May is just around the corner and I can practically taste my first British summer. Come to me, sunshine and warmth!

Primrose Hill

Last month, the Saturday forecast was 70 degrees and sunny, so we trekked over to Primrose Hill for a picnic. It was the nicest weather we'd had since we moved here in September, and it was the nicest weather we've had since that day! It was a warm weekend, flowers blooming from the earth and on the trees. It turned cold again, and it's been in the 50's and 60's for the past few weeks, so I am glad we took advantage of that fleeting sunny day when we had the chance! Primrose Hill is the most beautiful spot of earth, looking onto Regent's Park with amazing views of central London. Not the easiest place to get to, but I like to make it even more difficult of a trip by swinging by St Johns Wood for bakery and produce items from the famous Bread Shop and nearby gourmet grocer. It's a beautiful area and if we move anytime soon, I wouldn't mind living close to these sweet little spots in London. 

Getting to know Highgate // Waterlow Park

The first month we spent in London was near the financial district (Barbican), and I knew I had to take advantage of being in a prime exploration location. We took full advantage - trips to museums, historical sites, cathedrals, markets, restaurants, etc. You name it, we did our best to get there. Now that we are officially North Londoners, and on that pesky black Northern Line on the tube that can sometimes be a little temperamental, we are now shifting our focus to exploring North London. And I'm ecstatic about it.

One of the great things about Highgate is the parks! Within a mile of our flat we have our choice of 4 really great parks. The first one we found, is one of the sweetest little parks - Waterlow Park. Equal parts manicured to wild, there is no shortage of beauty and good people watching here. About a 10 minute walk from our house, we like to hit the playground first for some swings and merry go round action. There's a small playground (with swings for King Hen), a nice cafe with indoor and outdoor seating, some fountains and even a sundial. Lots of dogs playing fetch and that sort of thing. It's a really lovely spot. We go there a couple times a week.

I'll be posting about the other Highgate parks over the next month, and some other topics about how we're transitioning from DC to London, if you're interested. It was hard to find much information about what Highgate offered besides green space, so I hope this might give some insight into what it's like to live the expat family life in Highgate.

4:00

It is completely dark here by 4:00 every day.
Somehow this makes those wiggly 5-7pm hours so much harder to do.
Mark gets home sometime between 7:30 - 8:30, and sometimes, I'll be honest - I just turn on a movie when Henry wakes up because WHAT ELSE IS THERE TO DO.

We are going back to DC for Christmas and even though it's only been 3 months since we left, somehow this seems like the most welcome treat of my life. Family, good friends, and great food - what else is there?

I love London, and really this winter has been pretty mild so far - no snow, not a lot of rain, and we even see the sun most days. But. The meteorologists are calling for the worst winter in modern times starting at Christmas time (what do they know, right? RIGHT?) and I'm afraid that coming back to London after the holiday will be extremely hard on our sense of well being. Cold, snowy, darkness until Spring? I doth protest.

The silver lining is that when we come back, the sun will have started to set a little later every day. Maybe it will even be light until 4:15! Just think of the possibilities.

Things that have happened

This poor little neglected blog. Between chasing around a toddler all day, searching for jobs, and settling into our house, who has time to blog?

I will say that I've even written a few posts, but decided they were moot or unimportant, which is most of what I blog about anyway, but I just haven't felt the fire lately.

I've learned the art of online grocery shopping. Coupled with daily stops by the local market to pick up a few things, I am finally feeling like I can cook for my family. I even started baking my own bread and making our granola, that's how square one it's become around here. Scary, even for me. I used to want to be this way, and now here I am, making my own bread, and cooking beans in water. Don't worry, I still have the cans of beans because who knows that they want beans for dinner 8 hours in advance? Not me.

I hung up a gallery wall that I like 80%, which is enough for me right now. Once I figure out a way to hang up this world map, and once we find a rug, the living room will be complete. I still need to paint our bed, hang up a few pictures in the hallway and in Henry's room, and oh speaking of Henry's room it has sadly become somewhat of a storage area since our storage solutions here are non-existent.

Speaking of Henry, he is a little angel. We've been spending most mornings in our pajamas lately, and we watch a little choo choo with breakfast, then it's play with cars and trains, music/dance, reading, we play hide in mamas room, read in mamas bed, snuggle, eat lunch, then it's naptime and I zonk. It's been raining a lot lately, mostly in the mornings, so we play inside in the mornings, then we go outside for a walk after he wakes up.

This post is also boring, but wait! There's more!

Henry turns two next week and I'm so excited about it. I've been teaching him about birthdays for the past couple weeks. We read books about birthdays, sing the birthday song, practice blowing out candles, and we even watched a birthday party on youtube. Because I refuse to have a repeat of last year when he wanted nothing to do with cake and wished his first birthday had never come to him.

I'm really happy how Henry is turning out. He is so well-mannered and polite, I laugh about it often. I will pour him a glass of water and he looks at me and says "Thank you! without prompting. He says hello to new people and asks to run everywhere, except the way he asks to run is "Three?" because Mark plays this game with him where they count to three, then run. His vocabulary improves every day, and it's seriously astounding to watch it all happen. Today we re-read the book Romeo and Juliet a million times just because he wanted to point out "Juliet!" and "Wo-wee-wo". I think he gets his memory from Mark - he truly remembers everything and wants me to repeat it after he says it just to make sure he got it right. He dances when a song comes on, loves to sing and do the motions to Wheels on the Bus, Twinkle Twinkle, and Popcorn Popping. I spend all day with him and I can tell he's just getting smarter and more confident each day, and it makes me so happy and proud to be his mother.

For anyone interested in a good bread recipe, this one really killed it for me the other day (and who doesn't want bread in 90 minutes?)

Also, chocolate beet cake. If for some reason you have lots of beets laying around (we did!), it's a good way to use them up and a sneaky way to feel like you are eating healthy cake (you are not.)

I promise the next blog post will have pictures, don't you worry. So much catching up to do around here.

New home!

We've been in our house for about a week now. It's really lovely here. A leafy quiet little part of London, with secret parks on every corner to explore. I'm glad I spent all that effort selling most of our furniture in DC because we don't have room for much of anything here! It's a tiny place, but ironically it has the biggest and nicest kitchen of any place I've ever lived in. Thank you, London, I'll take it!

So now that we finally have a working bank account (it only took us 5 weeks to get it set up! Don't get me started on HSBC), it's time to fill in the holes and find a small desk for our computer and also...(wait for it)...a new sofa! Mark has resigned himself to the fact that it's sofa time, and he's just removed himself from the situation, which is probably best anyway. I've been looking on made.com, and Loaf. I've given myself this week to find "the sofa" in a random furniture store in London. You know, the perfect cute and comfortable sofa that costs around $200 and doesn't need any reupholstering or anything. I've been combing the streets of London on the dry days, and nothing yet. But tomorrow I head to Chalk Farm and Marylebone. If I don't find anything, I might even resort to an IKEA sofa, that's how much I'm trying to be flippant about this sofa situation. Last time was too much, though we did end up with a nice gray sofa that I liked, in hindsight. I'm really liking the rolled arm look, like this or this. We also need a bed frame, but the mattress on the floor is actually ok for now. Henry thinks it's his little playhouse, and we have a good time playing hide and seek under the covers and reading books on it.

We love having our stuff back. It already feels like a home here, even though we don't have a place to sit. On Sunday, my friend Cristy was in town for a visit, and she stopped by with a friend. They were our first official guests and they really helped our place feel even more home-like, even though we have piles of stuff littered around our living room, and we sit on pillows instead of sofas, and we hang out on our mattress on the floor in our bedroom as our lounge area. It's a little college-y, and maybe that's why I like it, for now. It feels like a familiar casual that gets you back in touch with your former self, you know?

Columbia Road flower market

As soon as we arrived to London, Mark scheduled a trip back to the States to go to a conference. I tried to focus on not feeling abandoned and rather hey - I'm here in this new place with new things to see everywhere! It worked about half of the week, but then Henry and I both came down with monster head colds, wherein the only thing that alleviates our grumpiness is croissants, Cars, and the playground. Luckily, there is a playground around the corner, a great bakery around the other corner, and Cars on the ready on my laptop. I'm not ashamed to admit we watched it 2 1/2 times today. Hey, man, whatever keeps us happy, right?

Anyway, before we came down with these stupid colds, we had a grand old time exploring our new city! Last Sunday we walked about a half hour to the Columbia Road flower market in Shoreditch (or Hackney? not sure). I'd heard from a new neighbor that it was "not to be missed". Oh boy am I glad I listened to her! Beautiful fragrant cut flowers and planted flower pots, ornamental trees, ferns, ivy, you name it - it was there! It was suuuper crowded and I had a stroller, so it was sort of like swimming upstream, but we made it out with a perfect bunch of happy pink peonies. And besides the flower market, Columbia Road is awesome! The best shops - vintage, handmade, local, high-end, low-end all kinds of anything, and so much good food. Henry ate a croissant the size of his head, so you know he was happy (and he has a big head, so!) and we sat down a watched an adorable East-Londony band perform their fun music. Henry was dancing in the middle of the street, it was so good.

You'd better believe I'm dragging Mark back there next time we get a free Sunday. Officially in my top 3 things I've done in London!

Our flight to London and jet lag

The great thing about flying to London, Mark always said, is that you fly the red-eye and you arrive right in the morning like you never missed a beat. But, while that may work for him, it really doesn't work for our family! Boy, oh boy.

We took the 6pm flight - which was our first mistake - and arrived at like 6:30am London time. Too early to leave and too early to arrive! Henry was ok on the flight, but he was extremely preoccupied and excited, spent about 30 minutes poking around behind us (see above photo - you'd think the passengers in that row would be delighted to see a cute baby face, but they didn't even say hi, and Henry just kept waiting for them to talk to him. So sad!) and didn't fall asleep until nearly 10, then we had to wake up him at 2:30am his time and he stayed awake once we landed. We were all walking zombies, but we decided we'd walk around in the morning and take afternoon naps. We put Henry in his stroller and he was zonked by about 11, so we went back to our apartment to take a nap. SEVEN hours later, we all woke up. And then it took us about 2 days to get adjusted, but Henry was sleeping in until 10 or 11 for the first week. It was pretty great, I have to admit.

Next time we fly, we will take the 10pm flight and arrive at 10am like normal people, thank you very much. And that's what I recommend for you people, too. Unless you are like my Dad and fly all day because you are retired and don't care. :)

Temporary

Mark's office was generous enough to give us a month of corporate housing while we found our permanent home. A month of living in this place - I'll take it! We love the light, the views, and the free British TV! But if you asked me would I take 2 or 3 weeks of housing if his office would put more funding into finding us a place to live, I would say YES! Don't even get me started on the crazy process of finding our home and how truly lucky we were to actually find a non-shoe box dingy flat in a weird neighborhood. But I digress.

The first day we arrived, it was Sunday (3 weeks ago!) and due to our flat being located in the financial district, nothing was open. No stores, no restaurants, nothing. No people on the streets. It was eerie. We were exhausted, and I decided I hated this weird grey city. Over the course of these past three weeks, I've come to love being here. We are close to Mark's office, which is the best part. We found a totally rad playground for Henry. The grocery store is seriously right around the corner. We have a favorite restaurant just up the street where we order the same thing every time: hummus and pita, avocado and halloumi salad with green olives, and chicken kabob. It's centrally located so you can be anywhere within 30 minutes or less. I've discovered east London, which has completely stolen my heart (I'm looking at you, Hackney and Shoreditch), but I've relegated this neighborhood to a past me, the me without a 2 year old that needs parks and well, other kids to play with if we're being honest.

Henry really has taken to this flat, and it's completely become his car haven. He lines them up on the window ledge. He lines them up on the sofa. He brings them to the table with him for breakfast. I'm getting a little worried that once it is time to play with actual human friends, he will want nothing to do with them...so...I should probably find a friend here with a kid so we can have playdates, right? We'll save that for North London, which should be teeming with small children from what I hear. We will just enjoy our balcony, proximity to Borough Market, and around the corner grocery store, thank you very much. We have about 10 days left here and I plan on enjoying every last one of them.

Now onwards to the Barbican flat tour. Don't mind that Sean Connery look-alike in our living room, he comes with the place (I wish, we miss you Papa!)