(this story is a day late because i am all off from the time change!)

this sunday hank and i slept in until 7:30 am, which is practically mid day for us… typically we are roosters. (i think best early morning and hank is eager to have his breakfast and first potty of the day… he usually goes straight back to bed after - literally, he heads directly upstairs and curls up in my bed for a few more hours…he’s not very industrious with his mornings.) i was so excited about the extra sleep until i got into the kitchen and saw that the clock on my range didn’t match my phone. for some reason i never know when daylight savings is coming. this was the “bad” kind of daylight savings where you lose an hour, but it was also good because now the clock in my car is correct (i’ve been waiting SIX MONTHS for this) so i won’t have to adjust when i look at the time… i just have to remember NOT to adjust.

(hank and me in the morning)

(we used to call theo a rooster when he was a baby because he had a “hanenkroon”… now he happily sleeps until noon)

some clocks in my house are easy to change - like my cuckoo - and when i push the hands around the little bird comes out and gives us some extra chirps. i love this guy, even though he never recovered from the jet lag of moving to boulder from amsterdam and doesn’t ever cuckoo the correct amount. he DOES, however, appear precisely on each hour. 

saturday evening i went to the birthday party of a dear friend from amsterdam who serendipitously now lives in denver. she was always the one who could solve any expat problem: where to find cheerios? pilar knows! …at the black market british grocery. they DID cost about $10 a box but seemed necessary for a first time american mama with a toddler… of course i was just beside myself when theo would throw them on the floor or my first husband would absent mindedly eat whole million dollar handfuls of them. where to get a good facial or your nails done? (dutch women typically do these procedures themselves so there are very few salons like this in amsterdam) pilar knows! where to enroll in the all important swim lessons? pilar knows! what is the best bi-lingual pre-school? pilar knows! i can’t tell you how many problems she solved for me. and who makes the BEST flan? pilar does… she’s columbian! i haven’t seen her in SO LONG because of the pandemic and because i’ve become a weird hermit. it was so lovely to meet her friends and catch up and she has the SAME cuckoo clock from amsterdam (i’m sure she told me where to get mine) who also did not recover from the jet lag and cuckoos however many times he feels like it, but always on the hour.

(the window of the shop that sold cheerios and other american goodies like “libby’s, libby’s, libby’s”)

(theo and first with thousands of dollars worth of cheerios on the tray… theo isn’t even enjoying them!)

(theo at his swim lesson at the “zwembad”)

(theo’s pre school photo from the AMAZING 2 Voices… he’s in the center in the stripes)

(pilar’s flan)

(my ex pat children on a visit back)

(hank having his morning nap)