Haircut – before & after

At times it looked cool, others it looked less so, and watching him trying to casually flick his hair back out of his eyes was highly amusing. But we decided it had to go, although barbers don’t seem to understand the idea of cutting a little bit off, so most of it went. Still, it’ll be back soon. This was him on Friday on the left, today on the right.

Opening day

We may be in London now but we’re not neglecting our baseball, not one bit of it. Consequently this past weekend was opening day here in London.

He’s got allocated to the Mets team, as luck would have it and he bagged the number 5 shirt (David Wright, the big hitting third baseman for those of you who don’t know). The parents are almost all American ex-pats here in London (financiers or various types and lawyers), although during our roll call he was one of the only kids actually born in the US among our clutch of 7 and 8 year olds.

They’ve let me be the assistant coach which means I too get one of these fabulous shirts:

You’ll have to ask him why he’s not looking that thrilled about it in this picture (taken with a phone, hence the quality), but suffice to say he had a great time getting back to throwing, catching, but most of all, hitting.

Evolution

I showed the boy a recording of the 10 minute sequence in David Attenborough’s recent film, Charles Darwin and the Tree of Life, as I thought it was a great way of showing a kid the basics of evolution. It’s available here for all to see. He was tired after a long day but still watched attentively.

At breakfast this morning with his little sister, I overheard the following snippets of conversation as I walked in & out of the kitchen:

Him: “It started in the water, and some creatures came out to live on the land….some of them became reptiles…..after that [the event that wiped out the dinosaurs] the only ones that surviced were ones that could fly. And they became birds!….did you know there are 75,000 species of insects, alone?”

Her: “Wow”.

Thanks, Mr Attenborough. There will be no images of Adam & Eve riding around on dinosaurs in our house!

Xmas and New Year

We spent Christmas in Erie, PA, where the temperature and the snow depth fluctuated wildly over the course of 10 days. We got there just before a big dump, as it were, and 6 days later it was 60 degrees at 10pm.

Anyway we had a lot of fun, ate and drank a lot as per usual and the kids loved spending time with their cousins. At one point in the house we had 7 adults and 7 kids staying there; it’s easier when you’re not outnumbered. I put some pics on the site here and there’s a great sequence of her singing a song from High School Musical (don’t ask me which number) on the outdoor sound stage that is Grandpa & Grandma’s front porch, feeling the emotion of each line in the lyric, until her brother comes along and tackles her.

Here’s a taster of the performance:

Belated Halloween update

We had a great Halloween here in old London town. We must have had 10-15 sets of kids – probably 40-50 kids in all – drop by for some trick or treating.

That’s way more than we ever got in new York, although living in a Manhattan apartment building obviously makes the whole experience somewhat different than we would have had had we been in the ‘burbs.

And they were all so polite, even the teenagers, only taking one thing, despite Sally urging them to grab a handful! – and saying ‘thank you’ each time. One group that dropped by, addressed me as Mr Man: “thank you, Mr Man,” they chimed.

We met more of our neighbors, including another American woman married to an English bloke.

Next year we’ll have a proper party of our own.

Next up: Guy Fawkes night……

Vote early, vote often

So having waited 12+ years as a disenfranchised taxpayer, then having left the country clutching my new passport I voted in this election. I think. In fact I think I voted twice.

I sent in a write-in ballot via the Democrats Abroad website – by scrawling Obama/Biden’s names on the thing, which seemed a little odd – which then registered me to vote in New York, and then I got one of these with which to vote for a second time:

It all struck me as a bit like Chicago under Mayor Richard Daley Snr, who was fond of saying “vote early, vote often.” I’m proud to say I did both.

Let’s hope it and all the others count for something. I mean, it’s not as if anything could go wrong with the voting procedure tonight, is it?

The little one was on the computer at the weekend and saw a picture of Obama and exclaimed, “Oh, Obama baby, I hope he wins!” Not that she’s a policy wonk at 4 years old; she just became a fan of this video earlier this year:

Inaugural rugby festival

Kids’ rugby festivals, for the uninitiated, involve multiple teams playing a bunch of games throughout a day. A day in this case lasted from 9.30 to about 3.30. Thankfully the weather was pretty much OK, but from my nephew’s experience, I know they can involve long Saturdays or Sundays spent sitting and standing around  on windswept, wet playing fields. That’s for the future, I’m sure.

Today the lad had his first rugby festival experience down in leafy Surrey right near an idealistic little development called Whiteley Village, a place where Postman Pat wouldn’t look out of place. He was part of Rosslyn Park’s Under 7 team playing tag-rugby, hence those tags in the pictures. Very much like flag football for our US-based readers.

Here he is in full flight and there’s many more like it here for those with a password, plus a sneak preview of his birthday celebrations:

This weekend


IMG_0138

Originally uploaded by fulham

What a great weekend we had. Much of it was spent outdoors, appropriately enough given the weather we had – 70 degree in mid-October in London! Football Saturday morning,rugby Sunday morning, two visits to Palewell Common for yet more sports.

And then I had last night’s surprise. A big thank you to everyone who came last night – it was a total surprise for me and I had a great time.