Hard hearted girl

Tom has of course been an utter sweetheart for the past few days. I've bought him a couple of giant jigsaws and he wants you to know that the rainforest puzzle is 4' long, which means he is growing fast. Which means, R thinks, that I was perhaps too much of a hard hearted mother in characterising our only son as a monster! (Though still, he does have his moments....)



Richard and I went to see "Atonement" last night. I know Margaret and David that you loved it, and lots of friends advised me to take the tissues along. But I was strangely unmoved, because I couldn't quite believe the two leading characters. I came out muttering about it being a sumptuous cliche from beginning to end. Hard hearted girl. We talked about it a lot over a jolly fish supper at "Hook" and as the wine worked its way into my system, I agreed that it was utterly beautiful, and physically moving, and the war scenes were incredible. I just still don't think the actors lived up to the story.

Still, very lovely to have a night out with R and for all three of us to have the day off today. Yesterday we had the Potomac Mills experience, and bought Tom shoes & snowboots & T shirts & lego. And bought sofa fabric for ourselves. Thrills. Now it's another bright blue day, freezing cold but gorgeous, so we're off to the park and lunch.

love to all

PT x

That January feeling

So Tom has been under the weather all weekend, as we booked into a hotel in Baltimore for the three days off. We had a lovely combination of a five year old dragging his feet all around the aquarium during the day, and drunken company executives rampaging down the corridor of the Marriot during Saturday night. Sometimes the best laid plans lead to sleep deprivation!

Despite that I still really like Baltimore. The aquarium wasn't as grand and light-filled as Chicago or Monterey but did really well on the unexpected things - a great exhibition of frogs, where you had to focus really hard to realise that the jewel coloured poison dart frogs were actually miniatures, sitting right in front of your eyes among the foliage - and a new Australia exhibition where you entered into a soaring glass roofed room, and realised that the birds and bats were roaming freely in there with you. The incessant chorus of "when are we going for lunch?", half an hour after breakfast, slightly marred the wonderment.

Tom can be charming, engaging, funny and bright. He can also be a little monster. He was particularly surly at times with our latest visitors - Richard and also Helen & Tim - and we felt embarrassed. Time, we decided, to tell him that he's getting to be a big boy, and that we expect better manners. We never had the terrible twos, and so we've never thought about methods of dealing with bad behaviour as such. I've always assumed that setting a good example, and explaining everything clearly would suffice! We decided that the best sanctions would be loss of screen time - so foot stamping loses TV time and so on. Have to see how it goes!

Uncle Richard is here!

And in his honour it is due to hit the mid sixties today and seventy degrees tomorrow.
We are planning galleries and walks - but at the moment a somewhat jetlagged bro is planning more caffeine. Had a good day out at the Sculpture Museum and Gardens with Tom yesterday, then the two Richards and I headed to Blues Alley for the evening to see the Mose Allison trio. A thoroughly nice evening - though as REL pointed out on the way home , all he needed was a vocalist!

Happy New Year

A year in which Richard does all the work! He's been at it all week including a double shift today ending in an hour presenting BBC news. Then he has tomorrow off, before being on for another eight days. The fun thing about the freelancing is that we can count it off, that's the plane fare home this summer, that's the credit card bill...! At least he can look forward to the next break, since we've just booked an amazing rail trip to Florida in March where we take the car with us on the overnight trip from DC.

Tom's holidays end on Monday - back to Mrs Bailey's orderly ship. We finished today with a trip to the Natural History Museum, where I was most taken with the photography exhibition and the awesome Hope Diamond, and Tom was most taken with his ability to slide down bannisters from the fourth floor to the first. Mummy "look at that amazing whale skeleton!" ; Tom "can we go back and do the stairs again?"

The Lincoln Memorial

After the White House, the World War II memorial, the Reflecting Pool, and the Lincoln Memorial, the Lister-Sturk clan was finally asked to leave town....

Billy Goat trail at Great Falls park

I made the boys go out on a big walk today, and we made it back before the rain. Just a bit further on from our usual overlook trail at Great Falls, we went onto the "Billy Goat trail". Only a couple of miles to cover but up and down rocks, along a cliff by rushing water, and even up a steep cliff face! We got lucky - it wasn't a day for Tom to drag his feet and ask to be carried every ten minutes, but a day when he decided to be "mission leader". It was his job to spot the blue flashes on the trees and rocks showing us where to head next, and he just bounced from rock to rock. We felt we deserved more Christmas food when we got back...

Baltimore

We dropped Helen at the airport and went on to the city. The harbour was such an eye opener. We meant to go to the famous aquarium, but since the sky was blue, went walking instead. We parked right next to a huge ship, showcased as the last coastguard vessel to survive Pearl Harbour. Then walked around the harbour, through Little Italy (huge lunch of Italian Momma's lasagne and spaghetti meatballs!), and onto Fell's Point, a fantastic neighbourhood founded by an English ship builder back in 1726. Cobbled streets, gas lights, an old paddle steamer called the "Black Eyed Susan", vast harbour views...all the quaintness you could ask for but with a sense that it's a thriving neighbourhood not (just) a tourist trap. We didn't get to the Aquarium, the Science Museum or the children's museum called Port Discovery but promised we'd go back.