Guests

July has been quite the busy month so far. The first half of the month was essentially entirely devoted to entertaining guests. My pal Ian Johnston and his family came to stay with us for a couple weeks as part of their American vacation. Ian and I became friends when I lived in London, England in the 90s. He's since moved to South America and then to Portugal, while I moved to California, New York and Maine. In any case, we caught up with each other again.

We started readying the house at the start of the month, but no amount of preparation could have readied us for the inscrutable force that is the Johnston clan. Being somewhat new homeowners and parents, we had little context of how to host a family with two small children (3 and 5) while caring for our own 5 month old. It was quite overwhelming at the start, but things began to settle down into a pretty nice groove by the end of it.

Pictures will be posted soon, but we lent our camera cable to Karen, so we can’t upload photos right now. For all the Alden fans out there, he is doing well. He can roll over now and is enjoying rice cereal (brown organic!) and milk every night. He's decided he prefers sleeping on his side, despite attempts to place him in his crib on his back. He rolls in his sleep and wakes up angry and confused when he ends up face down. (Alden - "Tummy Time? At 2 am?! What the hell??" Ilana, groggily - "You got yourself into this mess, you can get yourself out of it... Alright, alright, I'm coming".) He's taken a shine to metal and glass (perhaps because they are cool and it’s been warm lately) and continues to be very mellow and charming.

A long video of not much going on.. you know, for the Grandparents.