A Day Between

After six days on the go we have arrived back at our home base in Leicestershire.  We took the day to just kind of hang around and catch up on laundry (my job) and imaginary play (the boys').  We also took a walk into town and found a playground.  After that we stopped for a cold drink and to buy some kleenex.  Sadly we all have colds, although the boys and I seem to have it worse.

I think the boys enjoyed Canterbury and London, but were perhaps a bit overwhelmed.  That was mostly in London.  Harry and Robert are visibly more relaxed in this smaller town.  There are so many people and such noise in London and our boys are small town boys.  At the same time I think they found it all very interesting.

It was nostalgic for Kevin and I to be in London.  We were last there when we lived there while working at Lambeth.  We were newly married and relatively care free.  It is a different thing traveling with children.  It really was lovely to show them some of the places we loved and to see Harry so excited to be in the British Museum and see the Rosetta Stone.  Robert just seems to be along for the ride sometimes, but he also is looking around and you can tell how comfortable he is by how often his thumb goes into his mouth.  I wonder as we go along, what they will remember.  At the same time, I think we are growing together as a family and figuring out how to deal with changes and living together under different circumstances than normal.  We perhaps notice things about each other that we don't notice as much at home, where we all have places to retreat to to be alone.

At any rate, for the stress I feel when trying to get the boys on and off trains or to walk along at a decent pace (both of them seem to alternate on going as slow as snails some days), I am happy to do be doing this with them right now when they are relatively young and getting the chance to see things through their eyes a bit.  Sometimes this means being bored after being in a church for just a few seconds, but then we find the unusual stone baptismal font and they look at it with as much interest and aw that I do and I know that it may not be alot, but things are coming through.  They also stop me sometimes and make me notice that almost anything can become a toy or a place to play.  There are wonders all around us, but often they are not what we notice right away.