The Number Field

Touring Buckingham Palace has been on my to-do List ever since I found out it was an option 11 years ago when I was studying at Lancaster. The problem was that the tour is only available in August and September when the Queen is at her palace in Scotland, so it was first on the list this time around. We had to wait until the appropriate time of year and after that we thought it best to wait until the Olympic and Paralympic crowds left town. I was so excited when I went to finally make the ticket reservations I almost cried when it said they were SOLD OUT! Didn't they know how long I had been waiting for this? Luckily, it was just one tour company that was sold out; there were plenty of other companies selling tickets--all for the same tour and at the same price.

I booked the tour for mid day to allow time for: sleeping in, getting lost, eating, child meltdowns, parental meltdowns, etc. We arrived with plenty of time, got our tickets and had a quick lunch before heading in. The security to get in is pretty similar to airport security: long lines, metal detector, x-ray machine and all.

After security we picked up the audio tour (there was even a children's version for Elena) and off we went into the Queen's house. We entered the palace through the diplomatic entrance. The inside of this working castle is truly indescribable. It was amazing to walk into each room and learn the history from the audio tour. Although we didn't go anywhere near the private apartments, they did get pointed out when we were learning about the inner courtyard. There was a special exhibition for the Queen's Jubilee that featured several of the Crown Jewels. This part was almost impossibly gridlocked, but it was amazing to see the state diadem , which the Queen wears for official ceremonies.

About half way through the hour tour, Elena lost interest and Roman fell asleep in Mark's arms. I tried to entertain Elena by talking to her more about the pictures and items in each room, but ultimately she did what she always does when she gets too bored--she pulled the trump card of needing to use the restroom. Sadly, using one of the Queen's potties was not an option, but by hurrying through the last four or five rooms we were able to find accommodations outside.

To get back out to public space, we walked all through the Queen's backyard. It was big, with lots of walkways and ponds. It took a good 20 minutes of steady walking, and there was even a place to stop and get ice cream in case we were too weak to carry on. We distracted Elena as we passed it. Overall it was immensely enjoyable, everything I have been looking forward to for the past 11 years.

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Jenny has been filling out Roman's baby book; as part of her research she looked up the meaning of the name Roman (a citizen of Rome) and then for fun checked on my name (from the Roman god Mars). She also learned that a sixth century King of Cornwall was named Mark, at least in the legend of Tristan and Isolde. He's the villain of the story, but at least he got to rule over the beautiful land of Cornwall.

The thrill of travel is in gathering new experiences--those that are wildly new, not just mildly novel variations. It's the difference between walking onto Red Square for the first time and eating a Big Mac with cabbage instead of lettuce. The cliffs of the Cornish coast are like nothing I have ever experienced before; on one side and hundreds of feet below, the wild Atlantic Ocean; on the other, flocks of sheep grazing in their pastures spread across the rolling hills. When we visited Cornwall earlier in the summer, I was busy and didn't make time to go see for myself what Jenny was raving about, but since I had a few days to myself and a more free schedule I went for some runs along the coastal pathway. The path itself is hundreds of miles long and must make for a great long backpacking trip; one morning I saw some travelers leaving a Bed and Breakfast, packs fully loaded, probably headed out for the day towards the next town along the path.

As nice as it was to spend a few days on my own, I was excited to pick up Jenny, Elena and Roman from the train station on the day they came to meet me. They had some excitement getting onto the train--my telling doesn't do it justice. They left home a few minutes later than Jenny had planned for, but she didn't think it would cause any trouble until she arrived at the train station and noticed that the station clock was a few minutes faster than her cell phone, and their train was already pulling into the station. It was on the other platform, requiring that they use a bridge over the tracks to get there. Jenny picked up Roman in his stroller and made a run for it, telling Elena to follow as best she could. As they descended to the proper platform, it looked like they were going to make it. Then Elena's umbrella fell off the stroller where it had been hanging, and then she lost a shoe. Jenny told her to pick them up and run for the train, which she did, and they both made it! The adrenaline rush following that experience lasted for hours--Jenny still gets nervous at the memory, and Elena still talks about how scared she was.

After they had a day to recover we took a road trip. Our designation was Penzance, in the southwest corner of Cornwall, but we took a longer route so that we could take a break from driving to watch the Tour of Britain. We pulled off to the side of the road at the top of a little hill and waited for the riders to come by. There were five or ten other cars in the same area that had stopped to spectate, a far cry from the throngs at the Tour de France. It was much less stressful, but still exciting enough when the first escape group, then the peloton reached us, followed by the entourage of team cars.

Penzance did not live up to our hopes; in particular, it was not very pirate-y. The town center looked much like any other, and the walkway along the harbor edge wasn't particularly scenic. We wanted to visit St. Michael's Mount , but it isn't open to the public on Saturdays, and there was a Festival of Sport all around it, so we couldn't even walk around near it. We didn't find out about these problems until the day before, and didn't have time to make alternate plans. Jenny has vowed to return there someday for a tour.

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My parents are both educators who have significant portions of their summers free, and when I was growing up we lived far away from our relatives. As a result, my family spent a lot of time on cross-country road trips. We didn't generally stop at tourist traps or amusement parks along the way, but we would frequently visit historical sites. I'm afraid that I didn't learn as much from those experiences as I might have, and complained much more than I should have. However, those memories help me want to be sensitive to the needs Elena and Roman have now when I, as a grown-up with a wider perspective, have found myself more interested in things historical. I suspect that something similar is true for Jenny, even though we are not always successful in balancing our interests with what's best for the children.

Since we hadn't been able to find an inexpensive photographer or portrait studio to take pictures of Roman for his first birthday, Jenny decided it wouldn't be too terrible for me to be the photographer for the photo shoot. I foolishly decided that we should take the pictures at Fountains Abbey , a World Heritage Site, even though Jenny sensibly suggested that it would definitely be easier to take them in the park right next to our house. However, she eventually agreed to my plan. Not surprisingly, we were already stressed out by the time we got to the ruins of the abbey, but it was a beautiful day and the place is just incredible. It's amazing to see this place that must have been magnificent when it was fully functioning, and realize that it was occupied for hundreds of years, that it was an old, thriving institution when Columbus first reached the shores of the New World, and that it's been abandoned for almost half a millenium, longer than it was ever occupied, and yet the masonry still stands and tells the story of the place and the people.

Today we might think of that as needless overengineering, but it stands in stark contrast to the ephemeral task that we were there to do, capturing a single moment in time by taking digital photographs, which transform photons into electrons that are stored by making invisible changes to spinning platers of magnetic material or chips full of tiny circuits. Data might be irretrievably lost in five or ten years from now if we don't take careful care, but Fountains Abbey will probably look much the same in another century. All in all, despite the stress, the pictures turned out very nicely. If Jenny allows me to take pictures for the next milestone, I will let her decide the location.

Another fun thing about Fountains Abbey is that the Studley Royal Water Garden is located on the same site, although it's much newer, dating back only to the 1700s. After we wrapped up the photo shoot, we took a stroll around the rest of the grounds and had some ice cream at the far end. There were pheasants all over the place, which Roman and I especially enjoyed looking at.

On a different Saturday we visited York, where the first thing we went to see was the Minster, a church where construction was started in the thirteenth century and took more than two hundred years to be completed. Various sections have been restored and renovated, sometimes several times, but it is an amazing and still mostly ancient structure. The stained glass is especially impressive, as are the miniature grotesques in the chapter house. Elena and Roman were not especially interested in the Minster, but we tried to liven things up for them by looking for horses and dragons amidst the tapestries and artwork.

Our second stop in York was the National Railway Museum . Like any toddler, Elena is fascinated by trains, and we were with some friends whose son is about the same age as she is. The trains that they liked the best were the coin-operated Thomas the Tank Engine rides that were strategically placed in several locations throughout the museum. Roman found a nice set of stairs that led to an elevated view of the display area and scampered up it as quickly as he could. For Jenny and I the star of the show was the Wizard Express--a train that was used as the train to Hogwarts in the filming of the Harry Potter movies. It was also pretty cool to walk under one of the trains and look up at its guts from below.

We did some other sightseeing around town. St. Mary's Abbey wasn't visible, because it had recently been used as the backdrop for the Mystery Plays , and the audience seating was still up all around it. At a chocolate shop in the heart of the old town we learned about the rich heritage of the chocolate trade in York and Elena made and decorated a giant chocolate lollipop. We walked a section of the ancient city wall, which for me may have been the most thought provoking part of the whole trip. How strange and dangerous a world it must have been where it made sense to build an enormous wall around an entire city! I have never been an avid student of history, but visits to places like York and Fountains Abbey make me want to become one.

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Elena started back at preschool, although here it's called nursery, the first week in September after the six week summer holiday. She was so excited to go, she asked me every morning the week leading up to the first day if that was the day she got to go to preschool. She has decided to wear dresses to school every day that she goes, which is usually Monday, Wednesday and Friday. There are several other girls there that I frequently see in dresses, so I think that has influenced her current fashion. We'll see if she stick to it as the weather is starting to turn quite chilly!

She still loves school. Her teachers have commented how uncommon it is to integrate right back in after being gone for the summer break and other holidays we've been away on. With the start of the new school year there has been one sad aspect of preschool: several of her friends that were a year older have gone to start real school, called reception, which they start attending here at age four. She had one friend, Sam, in particular that she spoke about all summer and when she went back, she learned that he was off to reception. But there are lots of kids to be friends with and she seems to like everyone, both children and adults!

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My worry that a cold, rainy autumn was just around the corner didn't come to fruition. If anything, the rate of our family adventures has increased since I wrote that. Here's a brief summary of what we've been up to since then, to be followed with additional details in separate posts:

We took one-year-old photos of Roman at Fountains Abbey, the ruins of a medieval monastery. Elena made a chocolate lollipop in the historic city of York, where we also toured York Minster, walked the ancient city wall, and saw the Wizard Express train engine from the Harry Potter movies at the National Railway Museum.

We made a trip to Cornwall in the southwest. I went down a few days before Jenny and the kids and enjoyed my time alone by exploring sections of the South West Coast Path . Once they joined me, we traveled to Penzance, stopping along the way to watch the Tour of Britain as the cyclists raced through Devon.

Our return trip included a stop at Stonehenge as we were on our way to London. In London, we toured Buckingham Palace, did some window shopping along Jermyn Street and Savile Row and real shopping in the open air markets of Piccadilly and Camden Town, and visited the London Temple . The final leg of our trip home included one last stop at Woolsthorpe Manor , the place where Isaac Newton was born and grew up.

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Her: Daddy, have I already had juice today?
Me: No Elena, you haven't had any juice.
Her: Daddy, can I have some juice with dinner?

Jenny brought to my attention a habit that Elena has started to develop. When she wants something, she might ask a preliminary question--to which she already knows the answer--as a way of preparing us for the main request. As we tried to figure out this interesting communication pattern, we realized that we employ a similar strategy when leading her through a thought process towards a logical conclusion, for example

Me: Elena, is that food?
Her: No.
Me: If it isn't food, then it doesn't go in your mouth. Please take it out.

The fascinating thing is that she isn't just parroting back to us the things we say to her; she's co-opted the whole pattern and adopted it for her own purposes. She envisions a desired outcome, and breaks down the steps of her reasoning so as to lead us along a pathway of thoughts maximizing the likelihood that we will agree with her conclusion and comply with her request.

In response to her problems with staying in her room and falling asleep at bedtime we came up with an incentive program. Any night that she stays in bed, she gets to choose who tucks her in the following evening. If she gets up, she loses that choice. I haven't kept close track, but it seems that she's more likely to begin the nightly tucking-in discussion with the question Did I stay in my bed last night? when she knows the answer is yes, and leads off with I want Mommy to tuck me in tonight! when she knows that she already lost the right to choose.

Elena is at a stage where she wants to understand the world around her. She asks about where everything comes from: Where did my scooter come from? quickly followed by Did Heavenly Father make it? Most of the time, the answer to that second question is no. When I wonder about where she, my fast-growing daughter, came from, with new ideas in her head every, my faith is affirmed as I answer about her that same question with a yes.

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In this region summer doesn't ever take a firm hold, and it's already losing the tenuous hold it had and soon will be fully supplanted by autumn. In practical terms this means that now there's almost always a good chance of rain, but we don't let that keep us from planning and going on excursions. Often there's a mix of sun and rain, and we just have to be creative and flexible. So far things have mostly turned out better than expected.

It must have been a year ago that I promised to take Elena out in a boat, but only fulfilled the promise a few weeks ago. We had seen a place that rented out rowing skiffs big enough for the whole family and finally made boating a priority activity, even with possible rain in the forecast. I did the lion's share of the rowing, but Roman tried to help some, Elena took an oar a few times, and Jenny took over for a while and handled the vessel quite well. After the boating, we had lunch on the castle grounds and did some shopping, where our big score was a new set of fairy magic books for Elena.

Sometimes the rain starts and stops every five minutes, but Elena and Roman just need to get out and run their wiggles out before bedtime, so we take our chances with a little walk in the park. Recently we were rewarded with beautiful evening rainbows two days in a row.

Last Saturday we rented a car for a major excursion that Jenny in particular had been looking forward to: a visit to Pemberley. More precisely, we planned a trip that would take us to Lyme Park, which served as Pemberley in the 1995 BBC version of Pride and Prejudice and Chatsworth House, which filled the part in the recent film version and is mentioned by name in the book as being another house that Elizabeth Bennet toured while on vacation with her aunt and uncle. We planned our route so that we could drive as much as possible through the scenic Peak District in which they are placed.

Chatsworth House was our first stopping point. Like many of the grand houses and castles of England, it is now a bustling tourist site with paid admission and a variety of activities, but that wasn't part of our plans for the day. We went for a walk through the fields in front of the house, threw rocks and sticks in the stream, took some beautiful pictures in the morning sun, and imagined what it would be like to be the Duke and Duchess that live there. I theorized that the original inhabitants built the house so large because it was the only way to keep from having to hear crying children in the middle of the night.

It wasn't long after we left Chatsworth that we encountered a rain shower and were thankful to be in a car and not out in the open. Even better, the rain ended before we had made our way across the Peak District and reached Lyme Park. The house was amazing, although touring it with Roman and Elena was somewhat stressful. They just aren't ready to spend so much time around delicate, centuries-old pieces of furniture that could disintegrate the next time someone touches them, with no protective barrier at all. There were some kid-friendly touches, including a room set up as a nursery where the kids could play with the toys and a stage and dress-up costumes.

We had read that there was a piano somewhere in the house there was a piano that visitors could play. Elena really wanted to do that, but we hadn't seen it by the time we reached the end of the tour, so we asked the volunteers staffing that area, and they directed us to the entrance hallway. The piano in there was beautiful, and the intention was probably that it be played by real pianists, but when we asked the volunteer there about it, he was happy to let Elena give it a try. She was appropriately gentle with the keys, and so happy that she got to play it.

We waited for another rain shower to stop before venturing into the gardens. The grounds were well cared for and the flower beds were beautiful, but we mostly wanted to take photos of the facade made iconic by the conversations between Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy. We were not disappointed in our photographic ambitions.

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It's hard to know what to do on a first birthday that will make it a special day for the celebrant, but I think we got it right. As usual, Jenny deserves the credit for decorations, refreshments, and gifts, although Elena assisted with choosing and wrapping gifts. She also helped unwrap several of the presents, but Roman didn't seem to mind. On the big day, Roman awoke to find balloons strewn about the apartment, conveniently placed on the floor and not stuck to anything, making it easy for him and all of us to play with them. He unwrapped presents right away, and although he liked each one better than the last, after a week of observation and reflection, the football (soccer ball) is emerging as a favorite. That's good, because when I need to distract him or move him out of my way I can ask him to go find his soccer ball, and he usually rushes off in search of it.

There wasn't an obvious choice for a birthday dinner--with Roman, it's hard enough to find something that he'll eat at all, much less something that he loves--so Jenny opted to prepare a pigs in blankets, because they're fun and festive and Roman always eats hot dogs. The traditional British pig in a blanket is a sausage wrapped in bacon, but ours were American-style with a twist: hot dogs wrapped in crescent rolls and slices of cheese. That's the kind of food that puts a smile on everyone's face.

After dinner, friends joined us for cake and ice cream. Jenny had wanted to make a cupcake cake for a long time, and used this as her opportunity. My main contribution to the festivities was that I made the cupcakes, but then Jenny applied her expert skill in unifying them under a beautiful shared frosting cover. Roman made a good effort to eat some cupcake and chocolate ice cream, but didn't eat them very fast and was soon distracted by the crowd of sugared up older children, and didn't want to finish his cake before he could join them. Our apartment only has one common area, and the adults had claimed it for our conversation, so we allowed the kids to play in our bedroom. Roman eventually found his way in there, and at least one time I heard Elena say "Daddy, he's ruining our party!" I reminded her that it was his party, although she was probably referring to the impromptu tea party that had sprung up in the course of playtime. Roman seemed so happy in there with all the big kids, rolling around on our bed while they all carried on, largely unaware of his presence. He'll never remember this day, but I hope it was a happy one for him. I hope we have many happy birthdays in the years to come, when he'll be able to remember more about them.

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A new day brought the challenge of rain to our Olympic experience. We had been lucky with the British weather so far--although there were a few moments during the rowing when the stands were suddenly full of open umbrellas, they were always put away after a minute or two. We thought we might escape again, as the threatening rain held off on the drive from our hotel to the Underground station, but by the time we emerged from the tube it was coming down in sheets. We were thankful for our umbrellas and the free ponchos the hotel staff had given us. Despite the rain and the noisy crowds, Roman took a nice nap in his stroller protected by one of the ponchos. Also, the rain dried up about forty five minutes into the race.

We didn't have to walk far before we found a good spectating location. The race consisted of three long loops and one short one, and we had chosen an area where the competitors would be going in both directions on the same stretch of road, so got to cheer six times. Spectators were about three deep on the fence line so we positioned ourselves next to a stone wall topped by an iron fence. By climbing up on the wall and hanging onto the fence, we had a great view of all the action over the top of the crowds.

Long distance running is normally such a solitary pursuit, but the Olympic marathon offers no solitude. A helicopter hovers overhead, a truck precedes the leaders--it displays the time on its roof and there's a full complement of photographers sitting on makeshift bleachers in the bed. Crowds cheer every step, from the first runner to the last, and cameras observe and record the action on every side. The racers almost all had stunning musculature, more so than I've ever noticed on television, but some of them had such odd gaits that it seemed impossible that could be moving as fast as they were. Half the racers finished in under two and a half hours, and almost all the times were under three hours. For me it was an amazing illustration of how the Olympics celebrates the effort of testing the limits of humanity, at least in the physical realm.

The crowds began to disperse once the racers passed by us on their last lap. After eating our humble lunch of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, we set out for more sightseeing. Jenny took us to the Tower of London and Tower bridge. We took advantage of a tremendous photo opportunity: the bridge had giant Olympic rings hanging from it. After that, we had just one more main goal: to see the Olympic Park. However, we made a misguided effort to find an Underground station that would take us there without a transfer and ended up taking a long detour through Cheapside , the London financial district. Even though it took more time than we had hoped, all was not lost because we walked down Gracechurch street, which we knew of because it's mentioned in Pride and Prejudice .

Without tickets, we knew we wouldn't be able to get into the Olympic Park, but we still wanted to experience the energy of the place, and we knew that the brand new mall at the park entrance would be full of life and Olympic spirit. It was crowded, but lots of fun and we even saw some Olympic athletes, although nobody famous or recognizable and we weren't bold enough to say hello to them. One of the department stores had a big picture window looking out onto the park, from which we could see the stadium and the aquatic complex and not much else. (They were charging three pounds for this same view on the next floor up, but we're glad we didn't join the long line of people who had taken that bait--it was more fun to look at the Lego Olympic stadium.) While eating dinner in the food court, a Japanese man sat next to us and gave Elena what he called a Japanese happiness bell. Hooray for international Olympic goodwill! Our last stop at the mall was to make one very important purchase: matching London 2012 t-shirts to wear to the sprint canoe event the next day.

Watching the canoe and kayak racing was a wonderful way to bring our weekend to a close. It wasn't too crowded and we found a good place on the lawn near a jumbo-tron where we could relax with Amy and Heather and watch a sport that we didn't know very much about. When the races were going on, it was easy to find a spot right along the fence line with a great view of the athletes and all the coaches riding their bikes on the path alongside. Elena didn't understand why nobody was getting medals, so I tried to explain the concept of preliminary events; she eventually stopped complaining about it, but was still sad.

After the racing, we walked around the venue looking for fun places to take photos--for some reason, we thought that there was an Olympic rings display somewhere that we could stand near or even climb on, but the only one we found was behind a fence and wasn't even painted on the side facing us. The kids were getting tired, so we made do with it. Elena wanted another picture with a Wenlock statue , and I dusted off my language skills to ask some Russian fans in full team attire if they would take a photo with me. We were also treated to a drum band and a full military marching band , but after that had to endure the long walk back to the bus stop. The friendly volunteers cheered us along and we eventually made it, first to the bus, then back to the car, then eventually back home, full of memories that will last a lifetime.

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In his first eight days of his life Roman lived through an earthquake and a hurricane. With such an exciting beginning to things, we should have predicted a first year full of all kinds of adventure and excitement. In fact, it included:

• Being born and living in Maryland,
• Living in Washington State,
• Living in England,
• Visiting Portland, Seattle, and London,
• Learning to sleep in his Pack-n-Play--all night long,
• Traveling to France,
• Attending the Henley Royal Regatta, the Tour de France, and the London 2012 Olympics.

Recently, he has

• Learned to sign "more," "food," "all done," and "water,"
• Become a walker instead of a cralwer,
• Started to wave hello and goodbye,
• Had his lower front teeth come in,
• Showed his love for ice cream, ducks, and anything that resembles a ball,
• And demonstrated that he knows how cute he is!

Roman is social and likes to engage others with his smiles and inquisitive eyes. He loves his big sister Elena--and anything she is playing with. For all the trouble we had getting him to sleep during the first nine months of his life, a mom who was watching him for us one afternoon recently said she had never known a baby to go down for a nap so easily. It's been a crazy year and there were certainly some days (and nights!) that were hard to get through. But, here we are, with this little boy who is happy and loving learning more every day! We love you Roman! Happy Birthday!

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