Arrival in Claremont

Thanks to what you might call unscrupulous business practices, we beat the movers down to Claremont by a day and a half. All the crud you see here is stuff I brought down in the car. This was our first morning in Claremont. London is eating little white donuts and drinking apple juice by the fireplace.


Face and hands smeared with powdered sugar, soles of feet filthy from running around barefoot: does it get any better than this?


Mumpa and Tiny parked in the shade to watch the movers.


London has a little plastic cell phone that he likes to talk on. He'll be playing happily by himself and then we'll hear him talking on his phone, usually recounting whatever we've been doing that day.


Friday night we had a driveway picnic of fish sticks and tater tots. I set up the telescope so we could get a gander at the moon, and the moons of Jupiter.


The good camera was still packed, but the cheapie did okay.

Here are some of London's recent words:

Start swallowin' that neck! - We have been reading a book called Grandma and the Pirates, in which a little girl and her grandma are kidnapped by a gang of dull-witted pirates and hilarity ensues. At one point the little girl and her grandma try to escape by stealing one of the rowboats. The pirate captain declares, "It's not nice to steal!", to which the little girl quite rightly replies, "You steal all the time! You stole me and my grandma!" The pirate captain barks back, "She's my grandma now! Start swabbin' that deck!" The first time I heard London yelling "Start swallowin' that neck!" at some of his toys, I couldn't for the life of my figure out what he was talking about. So I asked him, and he told me it was "about pirates", and eventually I figured out that "Start swallowin' that neck!" was his approximation of "Start swabbin' that deck!", probably because I forgot to explain to him what 'swabbing' and 'deck' mean.

We have fire!? - At our first dinner in Bradford, when the waitress lit the candle at our table.

A double-decker bus has two sides with chairs--and upside with chairs, and a downside with chairs. - Explained to me on the street in Bradford.

San Fran Skisco - How London says San Francisco.

I haffa poop, cuz I'll be right back, and don't come with me. - He's very independent now.

Minga don't BE hot! - The other night Vicki was carrying London's pudding (minga) when she went back into the kitchen to get him a spoon. He thought she was taking it to the microwave, hence the shouted warning.

We had a lot of fun teasing the Taylors about their accents, and getting teased about ours. The only time it led to a misunderstanding was when London was throwing balls in the garden (back yard) and he lost one in some tall grass. He was looking around for it and Mike said, 'It's in the grawss." London said, "Grawss?", and I explained that 'grawss' is English for 'grass'.