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.”

It wasn't so funny when the Coast Guard clipper pulled up to the house.

When Pete sneezed spraying chewed up cereal: “Some got away! Some got away! Mayday!”

Just walking around will be tantamount to this.

Pete suggests a method for greeting the natives when we live in London this fall: waving US flags and saying, "Hi, we're American!"

How tyranny begins

Pete: "If I grow up to be President, do you think I would say there should be a skee-ball place in Grinnell?"

Pondering the effects of early fame

Unfortunately, there seems to be no way to extract the photo from the slideshow, but Pete made the Omaha paper! He's, um, 11th up from the bottom of the thumbnails on the left.

The Lehman version of this wasn't so cute.

Time from Pete receiving first tooth fairy payout to devising scheme to put fake (paper) teeth under his pillow to fool TF: 11 hours.

Bad science, great poetry

Pete, beholding a bonfire: "I wonder whether sparks make fireflies!"

Division of labor

Off to Pete's first piano recital. His job: enjoy the experience and play the best "Sleepy Alligator" he can play. Mine: monetize it.