The surprises!

Today Pete climbed to the top of St. Paul's--something like 530 steps, many of them big and irregular. It's a tough climb; I did it a couple of months ago and didn't think Pete could handle it.

Good parent or bad parent?

Last night, after dinner, Pete told me that before going to bed, he wanted "to learn more about the history of the world." I got him to narrow the field a little bit: maybe Asia? he said. Camels? So I gave him the (long) Wikipedia entry on camels. To my surprise, he loved it and read the whole thing. ("Pop! The Romans used camels in war because they scared off horses!") So I may have just created a six-year-old Wikipedia monster.

Some bets are worth losing.

Pete, on the trimming work outside our window: "Oy! Papa! The trees are bare! . . . It's so embarrassing for that tree, I bet."

Relativism

Yes, Carolyn got to talk to Michael Palin at Pete's school. But I got to talk to students about their course selections for next semester, and who's to say that isn't just as exciting?

Some places are hard to leave

Pete, on the plane out before takeoff: "Bye, Venice! I hope we see you again!" And then he nuzzled the plane window.

Happy Halloween!

Pete's day: Venice. Train, bus, plane, shuttle bus, shuttle bus, plane, train, train. Hampstead--just in time for last ten minutes of trick-or-treating in Venetian mask.

Paris

"HOW IS THIS POSSIBLE?"

--Pete, on the sparkly night-time Eiffel Tower

We all have our strengths and weaknesses.

I'm going to have to start explaining to Pete's teachers that he knows Yahtzee math. Avoid asking him to work with numbers greater than six, and he'll be just fine.

His autobiography is going to be something.

from Carolyn

Pete was rehashing his favorite soccer moment from the spring: how Jackson was about to kick a goal in and Pete came out of nowhere to kick the ball out of his way. (To be fair, it’s Erik’s favorite moment of the spring soccer season, too.) But it’s the one moment that Pete likes to replay, and this time he was taking me step-by-step through it, ending with a little testament to how he got the job done: “with my speed, and my special abilities in soccer, and my bravery . . . .”

Inheritance

Introduced Pete to British supermarket trifle. This must be how other fathers feel giving a son a first football, or chess set, or gun.

Is that London or New Hampshire?

You pop the boy in a British primary school for a couple of weeks, and you get this!

After attending the Poetry Show, we all went to the National Gallery, which stays open late on Fridays. Out front in Trafalgar Square, it was Malaysia Day! Music and food abounding! Inside, it was a mellow, uncrowded National Gallery, with Pete-entrancing audio tours galore. On the way out, a (non-Malaysian) fire-juggler. Not a bad London evening.

I think we've found our local.

Just returned from an evening dinner at one of the great traditional London pubs. This included a conversation with the owner that lasted approximately 90 minutes. The conversation constituted an 18th-century novel in his voice that included these chapters, not necessarily in chronological order:

III. Wherein I Welcome You, My New American Friends, To My Public House.

IX. Wherein I Play National-Level Competitive Rubgy for England

XII. Wherein I Send Your Child Upstairs to Play with My Child and Perhaps a Couple Others, Who Knows, While We Finish Our Drinks.

XIV. Wherein I Am Robbed by a Las Vegas Prostitute, Prevent Her from Leaving the Elevator, Receive a Major Head Wound from Her Stiletto, Am Unjustly Arrested and Eventually Acquitted, Have Visa Problems Because of the Arrest, but End Up Owning a Sweet Penthouse in the Bahamas.

XVII. Wherein I Survive Hurricane Irene in the Bahamas and Cook a Delicious Rack of Lamb with a Butane Stove.

XXI. Wherein I Reveal That I May Be Unusually Talkative Because I Have Been Drinking without Sleep for 24 Hours, Thanks to the Ongoing Rugby World Cup.

The pub turned out to have really good, moderately priced food as well.

Also, the school is different from Fairview Elementary in Grinnell.

Pete starts school Monday. The entrance form has a section for "language spoken at home" that lists 25 options.

The end of six years of hypocrisy

Erik, to Carolyn: What would you like to drink?
Carolyn: Diet Coke.
Pete: Can I have Diet Coke?

Erik: So, water all around?
Carolyn: Water all around.

Obviously, we're hoping he can transfer to Grinell.

Pete got into Carlton! Primary school.

"Literally" in the literal sense

You've got to get up pretty in the morning to get something past Peter Simpson. I mean that terribly, terribly literally.

London living

Pete now loves Stilton almost as much as Angry Birds.

He's going to love frequent flyer incentives.

Totally unanticipated difficulty of London: Pete has become a museum maniac and now has more stamina than we do for them. We went to the Keats House today, and I was giving him a little introduction to what we were about to do as we walked over. It started to sink in, and he turned to us and said, "IS THERE AN AUDIO TOUR?" Because we all now understand that if there's an audio tour, the boy is going to listen to all of it, precisely as instructed. He was captivated by the Brighton Royal Pavilion a couple of days ago, or the audio tour thereof. In a twist, however, it turned out that the Keats House no longer has an audio tour, but they do have a quiz book for kids, and if you complete it, you win A BADGE. The only problem is that Keats is not alive to articulate the resulting intensity of a boy's love for his badge.

Oddly, nobody else seems to be playing the same game.

Some parts of adjusting to London have been hard. I always have trouble with new places, even when they aren't that new to me. It's been up and down for all of us, including Pete, who has been delightfully excited about England but also sometimes cranky, understandably so given that the trip made him so tired he fell asleep at dinner yesterday while carrying pizza from his plate to his mouth. The best part for me has been taking walks to play baseball (specifically, "Giants vs. Dodgers" simulations with a tennis ball) on Hampstead Heath.

Completely out of nowhere. Seriously.

Pete: “When I was in Mama’s stomach, I thought marbled paper was made in the toilet.”