Posts from — October 2012

Welcome back to IComLeavWe. It stands for International Comment Leaving Week, but if you say it aloud, doesn’t it sounds like “I come; [but] leave [as a] we”? And that’s sort of the point. Blogging is a conversation and comments should be honoured and encouraged. I like to say that comments are the new hug–a way of saying hello, giving comfort, leaving congratulations.

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1. Stirrup Queens (twins, books, writing)
2. Feeling Beachie (life, humor, family)
3. Dancing My Way Through Life, Loss, and Books (loss/ttcal, books, ballroom dance)
4. Life With Roozle (parenting, writing, food)
5. IVF Over 40 (genetic testing, scientific research, pregnancy)
6. Survive and Thrive (baby after infertility)
7. A Passage to Baby (ivf, surrogacy, ramblings)
8. Waiting For Baby (IUI, vasectomy reversal, PCOS)
9. Carneyexploits (IVF, life, blessed)
10. Patience is Not My Virtue (ttc, infertility, gluten-free)
11. The Barreness (art infertility contemplation)
12. The 2 Week Wait (infertility motherhood humor)
13. Life of an Army Wife (infertility, army, crafting)
14. Dear Finley (neonatal death, grief, life after loss)
15. Breathe Gently (1st-pregnancy, IVF, PCOS)
16. 1000 Oceans (ivf vet, baby loss, rpl)
17. Growing Griswolds (IVF #2 better work)
18. It Is What It Is (Or Is It?) (pg w donated embryos, short cervix, pg @ 46)
19. the misadventures of missohkay (adoption, parenting, miscarriage)
20. Genuine Greavu (infertility, miscarriage, faith)
21. Thought Provoking Moments (IVF, loss, life lessons)
22. Stupid Stork (infertility, ivf, shenanigans)
23. Tesseract (life, humour, philosophy)
24. Team Harries Beats Infertility (hiatus, faith, waiting)
25. Follow Every Rainbow (unexplained infertility UK)
26. Bébé Suisse (pregnancy after loss)
27. Crazycatladywantsbaby (ttc, fertility, funny)
28. Hobbit-ish Thoughts & Ramblings (parenting after RPL, books, cooking)
29. (Still) Trying to Conceive (faith, IUI, unexplained)
30. Ready For My Bundle (pregnant after ivf, family, smc)
31. Our Journey Through This Lovely Life (ttc adventures life)
32. Arete Aspirations (divorce, motherhood, prepping)
33. Pollination Chronicles (IVF abroad, FET for baby #2)
34. Three Quarters Full (parenting after IF, life, diet)
35. Our Work of A.R.T. (pregnancy, IVF, infertility)
36. Life in Little Hispaniola (life, faith, social justice)
37. Dreaming of Dimples (inspiration, IVF, infertility)
38. Believing in June (infertility, marriage, TTC #2)
39. Gonna Do it for Baby (pregnancy, infertility)
40. Simple|South (simplicity, lagniappe, mindfulness)
41. A Daily Miracle (infertility, pregnancy, blessings)
42. Waffle-Wednesday (kids, art, poetry)
43. for all the things we hope for (endometriosis, infertility, doula-ing)
44. Home Grown Love (infertility, iui, home)
45. Pepibebe | nurturing by nature (TTC, lesbian, miscarriage)
46. A Glamorous Mommy Life (fashion, food, fun)
47. Wandering Wonderment (family, politics, local news)
48. A Bliss Filled Life (infertility, adoption,  motherhood)
49. Creating a Family (infertility, adoption, adoptive parenting)
50. Unexplained Rantings (loss, infertility, adoption)
51. A Virtual Hobby Store and Coffee Haus (life, news, food)
52. Life is Simple, It’s Just Not Easy (preemies, twins, life)
53. IUI to Roux-en-Y (pregnant after WLS)
54. We Three Crabs (life, love, adventure)
55. What Am I? (adoption, openness, babies)
56. Sweet Dreams are Made of This (adoption, recipes, life)
57. My (In)fertile Confessions (twins, treating pcos naturally, clean eating)
58. Comatised (life, love, family)
59. The Buggy List (bucketlist, humor, pregnancy after loss)
60. One day at a time (male factor, adoption, IUI)
61. Who Is This Fertile Myrtle (unexplained secondary infertilty, loss)
62. It’s The Journey (infertility, TTC, fur babies)
63. Emma in Mommyland (ppd, life, parenting)
64. Frozenoj’s Concentrated Life (ttc, infertility, life)
65. Gypsy Mama’s Misconceptions (Cancun, infertility, IVF/ICSI)
66. If You Don’t Stand For Something (MFI, geekiness, general life ramblings)
67. Upper Middle Mom (parenting after IVF, twins, travel)
68. Old Lady and No Baby (infertility, decisions, ivf)
69. Journey to the Finishline (twin pregnancy, IVF/infertility, humor)
70. Life As I Know It (twins, toddler, life)
71. InDueTime (life, infertility, grief)
72. Scrambled Eggs (infertility, miscarriage, pregnancy)
73. finding the peace to the puzzle (infertility, love, hope)
74. The Quest for the Golden Egg (infertility, IVF, emotions)
75. Compromised Fertility (FET, reproductive immunology, PCOS)
76. Things Couldn’t Be Better (donor embryo, FET, humor)
77. Enjoying the Course (running, life, health)
78. The November list is now closed.  The December one will open on the 28th.

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Looking for the comment section? It has been closed on this post. Use the form in the directions to add yourself to the list.

Where do you stand on reading someone’s private journal after they’re gone?  Will you read your loved one’s journals if you find them upon going through their personal possessions after death?  Would you be okay (once you’re gone) of someone finding your old journals and reading them?  Not the words of your public blog, but the words that you’ve written in private paper journals, only known by you.

What about the journals of a celebrity?  If the family chose to publish them upon someone’s death, would you read them, or would you eschew the entries unless the publication of the diary was the expressed wishes of the deceased?  If you were a celebrity, do you think the public would have a right — especially if you influenced popular culture — to understand you better after you’re gone and read your private thoughts?

Where do you stand on journals post death?

*******

And now the blogs…

But first, second helpings of the posts that appeared in the open comment thread last week.  In order to read the description before clicking over, please return to the open thread:

• “Screw You” (Hakuna Matata)

Okay, now my choices this week.

Journey to the Finish Line has a post about graduating from her fertility clinic.  It is bittersweet, saying goodbye to a place she never wanted to be and yet a place that has changed her completely.  She writes: “Today was my final ultrasound at the RE’s office. I walked in to a half full waiting room wondering where all of these couples were on their quest for parenthood, how long they have been on this path. I wished them all luck, silently. Then we waited.”  I smiled reading this post.

The Road Less Travelled has a response to the Huffington Post piece about mothers being in photographs, namely that it applies to a lot of women, whether parenting or not.  That some people have a tendency to always be taking pictures of others but don’t step up to have their picture taken, admitting they don’t want how they look at the moment documented.  She implores adult women to step in front of the camera, allow themselves to be seen, especially if they are other child-free women.  She asks at the end of the post an important question: “If you disappeared tomorrow, what sort of photographic record would remain of your life?“

Two posts looking back on a series of years caught my brain this week.  No Kidding in NZ has a post documenting ten year jumps to her 50th birthday.  Patience is Not My Virtue has a post on her anniversary looking back at a relationship.  I loved the rhythm of both these posts.

Lastly, Child Bearing Hips has a beautiful post about a family she knows who is moving from their home because it holds too many difficult memories.  She looks back at what has occurred in her house, how her daughter died in that house and her ashes are buried in the yard, and yet it is also the home where she can mark where she lived out favourite memories from her marriage.  It is the saddest days and the happiest days all mixed into one space, and she cannot imagine ever not living in that space despite understanding the need some people have to leave places behind.

The roundup to the Roundup: How do you feel about reading someone’s diary (or having yours read) after a death?  And lots of great posts to read.  So what did you find this week?  Please use a permalink to the blog post (written between October 19th and 26th) and not the blog’s main url. Not understanding why I’m asking you what you found this week?  Read the original open thread post here.

It circles through the ALI blogosphere, after a pregnancy is achieved, after a child is adopted, after a person decides to stop treatment and live child-free, after a surrogate gives birth, after and after and after all of the afters that follow wherever place your journey began.  Every blogger has a start, a place that is comfortable, a place that they know and others know them, and their blog fits snug around them.

Then the story continues, and you step away from the beginning into the next turn in the journey, and you fear that others will not be able to find you because you are no longer where you used to be.  Where you started.

You ask where you fit now.

You fit into the You-sized space you always fit into.

The one only you can fill.

Yes, this post keeps kids in mind when touring London, but you can easily do all of these things sans kids.  This trip is for anyone who wants to explore the history of London via literature (as well as pop culture such as the Beatles).  It’s obviously written by someone not from London, which I assume — if you’re a Londoner — is as painful to read as it is for me when people write “I Went to D.C.!” posts.  So… er… skip.  Or add in more tips in the comment section below.

Some general tips for traveling to London before we jump into an overview of the trip.

• Write up an itinerary before you go that contains all the facts you want to convey to the kids.  Believe me, when the days begin blurring you’ll forget all the cool trivia you meant to tell them while you were in Westminster Abbey or at Trafalgar Square.  Even without kids, my itinerary has always made keeping track of what I did on the trip so much easier when I put together a photo album upon returning home.
• Have your kids look up information on every site you’ll be visiting before you go.  It will help them to gather enough background information to appreciate what they’re seeing.  For instance, while we told them that they’d see the Rosetta Stone at the British Museum, we didn’t tell them why the Rosetta Stone was important.  Which meant that when we got to the museum, they didn’t realize why we were dragging them to see a stone.  I think we just expected them to get excited because we told them that it was exciting.  We then had to discuss the importance of the stone for ten minutes until that information clicked, and then see the stone again.  We could have avoided a lot of this if we had taken time before we left to have the kids learn about important sites or items at home.
• Most kids rise to the occasion when they sense their behaviour will be determining what they are allowed to do.  You know your kid better than anyone else.  Don’t put them in situations where they’re doomed to fail.  If they are the sort who need to run around outside, there is plenty here outside.  If they are the sort who can tour an art museum, by all means, take them to an art museum.  But always ask yourself before you decide on a site whether you’re asking too much of your travel partners.  For instance, we really wanted to see Churchill’s War Rooms, but knew that was too much for the twins.  They would have probably loved Legoland, but I wasn’t giving up a London day for that.  So we all compromised and tailored the trip so everyone could be reasonably happy with our personal limits kept in mind.
• There are many Tube closures on the weekends (for instance, while we were there, we couldn’t take the District or Circle lines).  Make sure you look up travel directions before you go but also have a back-up plan in mind.
• There are plenty of great neighbours to stay in, but we found Kensington to be fantastic for kids.  We could walk to the park, it wasn’t that crowded and therefore noise was at a minimum at night, and there were plenty of kid-friendly restaurants.
• Be realistic about money.  London is a very expensive city.  The entrance fees to sites will blow your mind if you’re accustomed to US museums.  You can save money by packing a bag lunch and eating breakfast in your hotel room, purchasing tickets ahead of time, and opting to visit free sites with a few paid sites sprinkled in.
• Bring more than one kind of camera.  We brought along a point-and-shoot which fit in my pocket and an iPhone and ended up having the perfect picture depending on the lighting without having the camera take up a lot of space.
• Rent a wifi device.  Instead of using free wifi (always risky) or paying daily for the hotel wifi, we rented a portable wifi device.  This saved our ass many times when we had to look up information on the fly, but it also enabled us to skype with people back home and send photos right as we took them.
• Rather than have the kids keep a detailed journal (they were pretty exhausted by the time we got back to the hotel each night), we made an audio journal as a family.  It’s about two hours long.  Each night, we’d sit on a bed with the recorder in the middle and talk about our day, telling what we did and the random funny things we noticed along the way.  We got a lot more detail than we would have gotten if we had written for ten minutes and the audio journal became one more souvenir from the trip.

I wrote out where we sprinkled in daily Harry Potter stuff below, though I’ve sectioned out the pictures and details into two separate posts.  So know that information is coming.  And to make it easier to plan a Harry Potter trip, I’ve designated what was Harry Potter book sites (meaning, trying to find the real Diagon Alley or Ministry of Magic) which I’m calling HPBS and what was a Harry Potter movie location (such as where they filmed the Leaky Cauldron scene in the first Harry Potter film) or HPML.

Day One

We took a night flight from the US and skipped the airline dinner so we could go to sleep immediately on the plane.  We got a few hours of sleep — enough to allow us to function the next day — and then hit the ground running once we reached London and checked into our hotel.

We started off with a little Harry Pottering because we knew the kids were excited for that.  We focused on HPBS, trying to find the real Diagon Alley (see the next post on Harry Potter sites in London for the details).  And we ended up walking to Trafalgar Square where the kids played on the base of the statue of Admiral Nelson, enjoyed the sunshine, and watched a chalk artist (was it Bert from Mary Poppins?).

Heads up — it’s a £500 fine if you’re caught feeding the birds.  There’s also legend that if Big Ben in the clock tower chimes 13 times, the bronze lions will stand up.

The Sherlock Holmes Pub is in this area if you’re into those books (you also can visit the Baker Street tube stop to see the wall mural and the statue of Holmes).  Afterwards, we went to St. Martin in the Field instead and did brass rubbings in the crypt.

And swung through the Portrait Gallery to see some kings and queens before dinner.

Day Two

We went to Buckingham Palace to see the Changing of the Guards.

And then to a few Harry Potter sites (again, outlined in the next post), finally ending up at the Tower of London.  We got a great Yeoman Warder for our tour and then saw the White Tower and Bloody Tower on our own.  The kids were fascinated by the story of the murdered princes.

There are a lot of places to eat in the area.  We ended up getting coffee and then walked over Tower Bridge at night, which was beautiful.

Day Three

This was probably our least successful day (hence the lack of pictures).  We went to the British Museum, a lot of which was over their heads.  Again, next time, we’ll pick ten items, have them research them ahead of time, and then go to the museum so they know exactly what they’re looking at.  We also went to the Victoria and Albert Museum of Childhood.  We thought it would be a big hit, but looking at cool toys behind glass doesn’t really excite kids we found out.  Lastly, we swung by Harrods, which was crowded beyond comfort.

Day Four

Seven hours at the Making of Harry Potter!  Er… this needed its own post.

Day Five

Started with standing at the location of the Ministry of Magic (again, next post), we walked by Parliament and the clock tower that holds the bell, Big Ben.

Then we went to Westminster Abbey.  The kids had worksheets to fill out and we had an audio guide to help them answer the questions.

Afterwards, we traveled to the Temple area to see more Harry Potter stuff and St. Clement Danes (“oranges and lemons say the bells of St. Clements”).

There was more Harry Potter stuff at Kings Cross station (important information on that in the next post), and finally Abbey Road where we crossed the street just like the Beatles and saw Abbey Road Studios as well as signed our name to the wall.

Day Six

Alice in Wonderland and a trip to Oxford — this also needed its own post.

Day Seven

Took a day trip out to Windsor Castle.

We caught another Changing of the Guard ceremony.  We got to tour the state rooms and see Queen Mary’s dollhouse and go to the church where the Queen Mum is buried.

After lunch, we crossed the river (a short walk) to see Eton College, an all-boys boarding school for ages 13 – 18.  It was where Prince William and Harry went to school.  We took the kids there because we felt it was as close as we could get to a school like Hogwarts — old stone buildings, formal dress.

The Wolvog didn’t think it was funny how often we asked him if we should put him down for Eton, but it did lead to an interesting conversation over dinner about boarding schools in general.

Day Eight

We spent the day wandering around London, spending it mostly outside such as chasing pigeons in front of St. Paul’s and watching an artist there.

Or seeing a lot of street performers such as a fire juggler…

…and a weird headless man and ate street food.

We walked over Millennium bridge in the afternoon (which is in the sixth Harry Potter movie) and loved the tradition of lovers placing locks on the bridge. (I know this is done in many places, but it looked particularly pretty here.)

We ended up at the Tate Modern.  While we saw the permanent collection, the twins wanted to spend most of the time inside a performance art piece that was taking place on the ground floor.  Like three hours in a performance art piece — that’s how much they loved it (and that performance art piece probably needs its own post as well).

Day Nine

We walked to Kensington Gardens to see the Peter Pan statue.

and then continued on to Bevis Marks, the oldest shul in the UK.

Afterward, we hopped a ferry for Greenwich where we stood on the Prime Meridian.

And learned a lot about time before heading over to the Queen’s House to see if we could catch the ghost on the Tulip Staircase.

And finally, we headed back to London, to eat at our favourite Italian restaurant in Kensington, pack up, and head back to the US to tackle the enormous quantity of laundry spilling out of our suitcases.

Fini.

Coming up: Harry Potter sites around London, spending a day at the Harry Potter movie sets, and an Alice in Wonderland tour of Oxford.

A month or two ago, we were at shul and the woman in the row in front of us turned around at the end of the service and said, “your children are amazing.”  They were pretty damn amazing.  It was a night service, and it was past their bedtime.  They had nothing with them, so they had to sit in the adult service, which was entirely in Hebrew and try to seek out letters they know in the prayer book (hint: not many).  But they sat there silently, swinging their little legs off the end of their chair in a picture of patience.

“Oh,” I said, looking down at them.  “They’re just acting this way because we told them that if they were mature enough, we’d take them with us to England.”

The twins can now return to armpit poking and pulling hair; there is nothing to hold over their heads any longer, behaviour-wise.  We’re back from London.*

*******

We picked England as our first foray into international travel with the twins because it was one of a few soft landings.  We wanted to go somewhere that was just different enough but still had some ties to life at home, and we wanted somewhere that Josh and I had some familiarity with to make planning and navigation a tad easier.  We didn’t want a language barrier on their first trip.  England, Ireland, and Israel all fit the bill, and England won because it came higher up when we placed them in alphabetical order.  Actually, we wanted to do a literary vacation, one where you read a bunch of books and then go explore the setting (either the one in the book or where the author wrote the book), reenacting scenes from the book or trying to discern what about the space influenced the story.

So we read three of the Harry Potter books, Mary Poppins by PL Travers, and Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll.

Before we left, I typed up a 9-page itinerary with Josh detailing everything they would see while we were over there as well as important facts to know while they’re in each space.  We did this because we wanted them to feel empowered while they were over there; equal travel partners who were in the know.  This was a great idea in theory (and we’d certainly do it again) but we found on this first trip a bunch of chasms we hadn’t considered until we fell down them in the moment.  So… yeah… I think I need to document the chasms for myself (to re-read before the next trip) and if they help you to not make the same mistakes we made, all the better.

We also ran into a bunch of random luck on the trip, hitting the right person at the right time and receiving information that made our trip magical.  In other words, we would have never found Platform 9 3/4 or found the door that Alice ran through if not for the random directions from strangers, and even returning home, I haven’t been able to Google and find this information online.  So I want to write that stuff up too in case anyone reading this (or Googling for the information) wants to find out too.

I’ve broken down our trip into

• The next post which is an overview of the trip, a bunch of non-book-oriented stuff we did, and overall thoughts on travel.
• Harry Potter: how to visit all the film sites in the area as well as places such as Charing Cross Road to look for the real Diagon Alley.
• Making of Harry Potter: we spent 7 hours on the actual film sets for the movie and the pictures are just cool.  Plus a few heads up if you’re planning on making the pilgrimage.
• Alice in Wonderland: how to plan an Alice in Wonderland trip to Oxford.

You may notice that there is no Mary Poppins day.  There was very little Mary Poppins-related to do in London with the exception of seeing where Mr. Banks worked or running into a chalk artist.

One thing you should know is that with the exception of the Making of Harry Potter day, we sprinkled in Harry Potter sites daily on our way to another London location such as the Tate Modern or Trafalgar Square rather than chunking it together and having full Harry Potter days.  But you’ll figure that out when you see the next post which is an overview of the trip.

One last thing, we planned this trip with kids in mind, though I probably would have taken pretty much the exact same trip if the twins weren’t with us.  I love books that much.  And we’ll take another literary London trip in the future, this time swapping in Tolkien for Carroll while in Oxford.  Or the Narnia books.  And of course Austen and Dickens and…

* I know some people who are reading this are actually from London, and were there while I was there.  We may have even passed each other on the street or sat next to one another at Wagamama.  While I thought about trying to get a bunch of bloggers together, the reality is that we went from early morning to late at night without much of a break.  I’m not sure how we would have worked in anything else since there was ultimately so much we ended up missing this trip.  Which is more reason to go back.