English weddings

Lots of weddings this month. Last weekend we saw our friends Melissa and George get married, but forgot our camera so these not so great iphone pictures will have to suffice.

Here's me in church (which hasn't happened in at least six years), looking very religious with the candles in the background. It was a very beautiful church and Melissa and George looked very beautiful and handsome respectively. There were lots of hats and hymns that had familiar words and unfamiliar tunes.


After the wedding, we were lucky to be able to catch a ride in the chartered coach (which was meant to be for the older people, but since we hung around talking to friends until after most of the other wedding guests had moved on, we were still there when they realized that they had some extra room). The after ceremony drinks were at Leadenhall Market outside of a pub with a Mariachi band playing. Very fun! I wasn't drinking, but I did scarf down a lot of delicious appetizers and got to chat with Melissa, the blushing bride.


Thus end the pictures, but not the party. We headed off to dinner and were seated at the 'random' (Melissa's label) table with Melissa and George, our friend Keren and various other foreigners. We had great conversations and met a lot of really nice people during dinner. And the food was delicious. Especially the pear tart with ice cream. When I was a kid I used to be sad when I got to the end of my dessert, but I hadn't had that feeling any time recently until I got to the end of my pear tart with ice cream. I just didn't want it to end.

Sadly, due to slightly too much wine at dinner on Jim's part and just general tiredness on my part, we headed home just as the music and dancing were getting started. We had a great time at our first English wedding, though and look forward to our second English wedding tomorrow. And this time we will remember to bring our camera.

Babies Babies

We have a new niece and I should have blogged about this last week, but I am just such a slacker. Her name is Cora and she is BEAUTIFUL! We can't wait to meet her in real life, but so far we've seen lots of pictures and we got to marvel over her on Skype. She yawned and slept and squirmed around a little bit and we were smitten. Evie was mildly interested, but she'll be more interested when she meets Cora in real life.

Here is Cora after her first sponge bath. If you could put a picture of Evie having her first sponge bath next to Cora having her first sponge bath, Evie would be the one screaming her head off. Cora, on the other hand, looks like she might even have enjoyed it a little.


Sleeping:


And with her beautiful mama, my sister Kate.


In other news, we also have our own new baby...or one on the way: Evie's little sister or brother, who will be joining us in about six months. Hello baby!

My head has been in an ash cloud

...

Yes, that's my excuse for not blogging for SUCH a long time. But really, although the freakish Icelandic ash cloud has been significantly disrupting many people's lives, I've just been super busy and super tired. I'll try to make up for the lack of blogging with this one, which will give a recap of the past week.

Evie learned about English animals in her Culture Kids class. For some reason the bunny ears that she not so enthusiastically donned looked like something that would be perfect for Mardi Gras. I liked them!


A few days later, Evie and I went with our neighbors Simon and Jack to see some REAL English animals--rare English breeds at a farm outside of London.

A couple of turkeys:


Some friendly chickens:


A toddler game that involved squatting:


Peering at some goats:


Running up and down the ramps through the animal corals was very exciting:


Evie decided to brave sticking her fingers through the mesh, despite the warning sign which read, 'these geese peck.' Fortunately her mother was around to prevent said pecking.


She also insisted on bringing her bag of moldy bread for the ducks, which was a very good idea and much appreciated by the friendly lake ducks and geese!


From the looks of it, these two had a good, tiring time. They both took epic naps which started in their car seats and lasted into the afternoon.


We've been having really nice (sunny, not rainy) weather lately, so my homeys decided to take advantage of it on Saturday and head out for a walk and to the picnic. I also took advantage of their departure to go to the gym and take an extended shower, during which there was not a small person peering at me through the glass shower door or doing something that she was not supposed to be doing while I frantically tried to get the shampoo out of my hair so that I could leap out and intervene. Ahh...it's the little things.


The binky is ever present these days and that is something that we will address when we get back from America...but not before because I need the binky for the plane ride! I keep seeing these kids who are way too old with binkies, though and it makes me determined that Evie will kick her habit sooner rather than later. She still looks cute, despite her oral fixation.


Playing in our garden (in her socks! You can tell that I wasn't around for this! Jim was probably out there in his socks, too. Sigh...).


More potting...but our garden is pretty shabby and unkempt at this point (note the dead plant in the pot that Evie is diligently tending), so I'm sure it wasn't as satisfying as her gardening experience in Italy.


Sunday morning was also nice because Jim let me sleep in...hooray! When I rounded the corner of the living room, I caught Evie's eye and she gave me this big, wonderful, pleased grin. She and Jim were playing in the free and, so far, most successful toy of all: the box.


Another beautiful day so much fun was to be had at the playground. Evie can climb up the stairs onto the top of the slide and then, without any hesitation to make sure that there is someone at the bottom, will catapult down head first. She is very fast so we have to be very fast, too.


Sitting on some steps with the ever present pink ball:


A new way to travel--she LOVES the giant backpack that Jim bought her. Good thing we now have every baby carrier known to man...


We met our friends Jackie and Piotrek and some of their friends (who were very nice!)in Hampstead Heath for a warm picnic. There were lots of lobster red people all over the place, enjoying the sunshine and taking advantage of the fact that it also wasn't cold. We've had a lot of sun lately, but it hasn't exactly been WARM sun. I'm not complaining (too much) though, because sun beats rain and it's so much easier when it's not raining to get through the day with Evie. Anyway, at our picnic, Evie was in her element.


She really thinks willow trees are funny:


The picnickers!


The cutest two headed monster heading home.


And my homegirl, who put my sweaty Cleveland Indians hat on all by herself and proceeded to drag her giant legos around the house. She's funny!


SO, as you can see, life has not been super exciting since we got back from Italy, which is why I haven't been super motivated to blog. But we LIKE it that way. After all the excitement, illnesses, delayed flights and general exhaustion we are happy to just be bored for a while. We DO have some weddings coming up, so that at least Jim and I will get to be glamorous Jim and Claire and can pretend like we actually sometimes groom ourselves and have nice clothes. You may have noticed the absence of pictures of me in this blog. That's because I'm sick of haggard looking pictures of me so until a really good one comes along, I am staying incognito.

Until next time! Which will be soon! I promise! Especially if Kate and Andy send me some pictures of that baby!

Cora

Today our tiny niece Cora Virginia was born! We are so happy for Kate and Andy and will post some pictures as soon as we get some!

Evie and her show

We let Evie watch about 20 minutes of TV a day before she has her milk/books/brush teeth/bed routine and the show she likes to watch--In the Night Garden--usually elicits this type of response.

An Italian..err..adventure

Last weekend was Easter weekend, so Jim had a couple of days off of work and we thought we should hop over to Europe and enjoy the warmth of Italy. It sounded like such a good idea. It really did.

We should have known it was going to be a challenging trip when we got to the airport and found out that our flight was delayed by two hours. We have learned a lot since this trip and the first thing we won't do again, if we have a choice, is plan an evening flight. Our original flight was supposed to leave at 7:55 pm and put us into Florence at 10:55 pm. Late, but not TOO late. So with the two hour delay, we knew we were now getting into the 'kind of more late than we were comfortable with' territory. Despite that, we decided to power through and stick with our original plan. We settled down for a leisurely dinner at the airport and Evie was happy and excited to be someplace as thrilling as Gatwick Airport.


As things tend to go in these situations, our flight was then delayed a further two hours. The only one who actually had fun sitting in Gatwick airport for six hours was Evie. Jim tried to stay upbeat and I just was in a foul mood. I kept thinking that if we pushed Evie around in her stroller, she would go to sleep and then WE could go to sleep in the seats in the airport until our flight finally left. And that was not the case. Evie was full of non-stop, Gatwick-fueled energy. It seemed that was the way with all the babies on our flight. Evie had a little pow wow with them as well.





When we finally got onto the plane, the inevitable meltdown happened. Evie cried and screamed so much that she started to hyperventilate. The man who was sitting next to us just fell asleep anyway (he was traveling with his four kids), so at least there was that. Eventually, Evie slept for about an hour before we landed in Florence.

Obviously, in Florence at 3 in the morning there were not a lot of taxis stopping by. Additionally there was a huge clock next to the taxi stand and we watched as it went from 3am to 3:15, 3:30, 3:40....and yes, Evie was awake. When we finally got a taxi (note to selves: next time RUN to customs and RUN to the taxi line before everyone else on the plane does. No one feels like being nice to the couple with the screaming baby at 4 in the morning)and checked into our hotel, it was 4:30 in the morning. The guy at the front desk actually made us stand there while he wrote down all of our passport information. In the room, I could hardly muster the energy to brush my teeth, but Jim, ever the romantic, was hanging out of our hotel window taking pictures of the river below.


The next day, after some sleep but definitely not enough, we staggered out onto the streets of Florence, determined to make the best of our day there before we headed to Cortona on the train. I think Evie, in this picture, pretty much sums up how we were all feeling. And no, she wasn't asleep. And no, she didn't take a nap that whole day.


Saying hi to the horse.

Jim is a huge fan of Ponte Vecchio, an old bridge that has lots of shops on it. My attitude towards Ponte Vecchio is that it's a tourist trap and once you've been there once, you don't need to go again. It's super crowded and the stores on the bridge are tacky. It's a great place to get your pocket picked and it would be pretty from a distance if said crowds were not all attempting to take the perfect picture from all vantage points around. Anyway, in honor of Jim, here is the bridge:

And here are Jim and a very interested Evie standing on the bridge:

Fortunately, then we went to get some lunch.

Oh, and here's another picture of the bridge from the OTHER side.

Eventually we lugged ourselves and our luggage to the Florence train station and hopped on a busy train to Cortona. Evie is not one, we are finding, to just sit quietly and take in the scenery, so she spent a lot of time trying to get out of the barricaded area we made with our giant suitcase and Jim, good father that he is, spent a lot of time walking around the train with her until it got too crowded. As you can see, I was feeling pretty unmotivated to move by this point.

When we finally got into Cortona (via bus from the train station), we realized we had forgotten to bring the information for the apartment that we were staying in. So, Jim and the giant suitcase went on Mission Find An Internet Cafe, which lead him up four flights of steep stairs (no elevator) to the top of the theater where a bunch of old ladies were playing cards. Meanwhile, Evie and I hung out in the village square, picking up confetti and preventing the picking up of cigarette butts.

The stroller and the streets of Cortona were not really a good mix:

Gleefully(at first), into the Ergobaby Evie went!


The good news is that we really liked our apartment. It was cozy and had its own garden and even though we were all in the same room, it was divided in a way that we felt like we had our space and Evie had hers. In theory, the relaxation was about to begin, but the next day we had plans to go to Jim's Italian architecture program for lunch. And I woke up with what I thought was a cold.

Castiglione Fiorentino is only one town over from Cortona, but, as luck would have it, we couldn't get to the train in time to get to lunch in time, so we had to book a taxi to take us to Castiglione Fiorentino. When we got there we discovered that there had been some misunderstanding and they were expecting us the day before for lunch. So, Jim didn't get to see his old professor/director of the program, but we still enjoyed looking around and had lunch with some of the other people who were there when Jim was there...so all wasn't lost.




I should point out that WE may have been feeling haggard, but Evie was having a BLAST at every point of the trip.

I was a little nervous about this photo op (that's me, blurring through the background). I thought putting Evie the destructress next to someone's model maybe wasn't the best plan, but we got the picture just before she started touching things.

We had to hang around town to wait for the bus back to Cortona, so we decided to go look at the Castiglion Fiorentino ruins...from times BC.

Then we walked around town a little more.


At this point, I would like to say RIP to Evie's pink and green jacket that she has worn in most of the pictures that we have taken since it got cold. On the bus back to Cortona, I started to get car sick and we moved up a few seats. Unfortunately, the jacket somehow did not. And then we unexpectedly had to switch buses and realized, too late, that the jacket was still on the bus that was heading off into the sunset. Fortunately, though, we befriended a really nice American living in Cortona who had a son close to Evie's age and loaned us one of his jackets. Unfortunately we were in such a rush that, although we returned the jacket, we didn't get to say goodbye or thank you for her kindness. So maybe she'll read this and know how appreciative we were!

Here are some pictures that Jim took of Cortona, which really was a beautiful little village. I was feeling pretty bad from my 'cold' and Evie and I stayed home while he was out taking pictures. He also attempted, that night (Good Friday) to catch the elusive Easter procession through the town, but after an hour of hearing the procession, but not ever seeing it (they were going down all the side streets) he gave up and came home.





On Saturday, our first day just to relax and enjoy the town without any other plans or trains or buses to catch, I woke up with the flu. I spent the entire day in bed. I missed the sunshine. I missed going out with Evie and Jim. I was very bitter. Evie and DouDou came to visit me in bed a few times. It was very disappointing to get sick, but it just fit in with the whole disastrous theme of the trip, so, in retrospect, it was kind of funny.


While I was in bed, Jim and Evie had a nice day out. I would say that one of the highlights was definitely gelato:


Another highlight was playing in the garden. Maybe Evie has a green thumb like her Nana! She definitely is interested in pots.



For the record, she didn't pick those flowers. They were already on the ground.

But the best part about the whole trip for Evie was when she got to take a bath in the bidet. She had been slightly obsessed with it the entire time we were in the apartment, so when Jim put her in it, she was so excited. A sharp contrast to the time she had to take a bath in the sink in Venice.


The next day was Easter Sunday. It poured, but before it poured we managed to do a quick Easter egg hunt in the garden. Evie was interested in finding the eggs, but more interested in opening them (they were empty).


Then our camera died. After that we headed back to Florence via train. And it continued to pour. We wandered around in the rain a little and were scolded by a couple of Italian old ladies for not having Evie's feet properly covered. We ate a good meal and called it an early night...which turned into a very late night after we realized that a. we were so hot in our room that we couldn't sleep and b. we couldn't open the windows because there was so much noise and partying on the street below and then c. Evie woke up at 4am and wanted to get in bed with us and d. we had to get up anyway at 5:30 to go to the airport. And basically we got back to London exhausted and so relieved to have that trip behind us! Evie got the flu the next day and we've all been hacking away all week, but this weekend we are just totally relaxing and recovering from our holiday in Italy. Better luck next time!