Law, Partially

Sometimes, changes in a growing child happen in such small increments you hardly notice them. Sometimes, a change is as stark as black and white. And sometimes, along the evolving pathway, you note a benchmark against which a change becomes noticeable, whether gradual or not. The Christmas holiday marked a number of milestones, some we hope we can move past and some that we will cherish. It jolted our London routine, and now, back in London, we're still living in the aftermath. Thank you, Santa, for this bounce house (and for a fun cousin). Flopping face first into the new year like... It's natural and common that we prefer the happy memories. So when someone shows a camera to snap a photo, we all smile and pretend like we're really happy, regardless of how happy we really are at that moment. Social media is now infamous as a tool for us all to present only the happiest aspects of our lives, not to mention spin them so it all seems better than average. As I w...

Eating french fries and watching England play Colombia, 3 July. The match ended in a draw with Harry Kane scoring England's only goal. England lived to play several more matches, eventually making it to the quarterfinals. It was a very fun time to be in London. Bobby would agree. He got to watch a lot of football and have a lot of fries and cheeseburgers  at Ley Ley's  over the summer. Too bad Ley Ley's closed at the end of August to seek a lease in a higher traffic spot. One way to beat the heat is to get wet. Here is Bobby in the fountains at Granary Square; he's dressed in high-tech sports clothes courtesy of his nainai. Granary Square is part of large urban redevelopment site near King's Cross station, where Victorian industrial buildings, having fallen into disuse, have been refurbished into a modern consumer playground with restaurants and shops. This big building was formerly a store for grain, and from here it could travel by barge (on the Re...

While our little boy had taken ill on his long weekend in the Cotswolds, a healthy bouncing baby boy across the Atlantic was clamoring to meet him. Three best buddies hanging out at Rachel House. The London Linges have spent a good amount of time in DC over the years, making it our most visited city outside of the ancestral homeland in Cedar Rapids. Our last days in the US before moving to London were spent as guests of Gugu in DC. See last year's blog entry  and  the other . The year before, DC was the last trip of Mum and Baba before Bob was born. August is vacation time in Europe, more so on the Continent than in the UK, but August in a UK office is slow, and many London restaurants close for the month. So fourteen months after our most recent, very enjoyable stay in DC, we were packing up in London for a two week trip to DC. There we expected to find the 2018 Catalina Wine Mixer, with Linges from far and wide coming to adore the new babe, Lincoln Kevin. But ...