You’d have to laugh. All you have to do is say to Baby Jane: “would you like to go on the…” and she explodes into “waah, waah, waah,” in the cadence of tram­polin­ing! Her Uncle John thought he would be doing her favor by buy­ing one for her very own back­yard, how­ever… she is tire­less! Annabelle, Avery, Cici, Jill, plus every other adult nearby was nec­es­sary to keep her from sim­ply careen­ing off the sides. We played count­less games of “Red Rover, Red Rover, send Janey straight over to…” who­ever! Except that she refused cat­e­gor­i­cally to go to Uncle John. I think he’s too large.

There could be noth­ing more beau­ti­ful than those girls, any com­bi­na­tion of them, hair fly­ing, smiles stretch­ing from ear to ear, to be together again after their year apart. There was Avery’s golden brown mane, Annabelle’s thick black tail, Cici’s tow-headed cap. And way, way down low, lit­tle Janey’s two tails (when she left them in!)…

Happy days…

Swim­ming! The South­bury Munic­i­pal Swim­ming Pool is the place to be. Espe­cially if you’re 17 and a half months old with a dot­ing aunt to devote her­self to your amuse­ment for hours on end. And ten­nis, you can be a ball girl! Actu­ally this photo is cheat­ing because John wasn’t able to be at home dur­ing our babysit­ting for Jane, stuck in Times Square as he was.

Here’s the story: Jill and Joel needed a lit­tle down time just the two of them. And noth­ing could please me more than hav­ing Jane all to myself, so they took them­selves off to Lake Mohonk, a classy and beau­ti­ful resort with spas, restau­rants, hik­ing trails, and the like, to spend a cou­ple of days, while Avery and I played with Baby Jane.

Suf­fice to say I had no idea how much energy she has!

Now, Avery was a placid, quiet baby. If I sat her down with a pile of books and a cou­ple of squashy toys, I could go take a shower, check email, make beds, what­ever, and when I got back, there she was, right where I left her. There was the time she crawled to the kitty dishes and sam­pled their pel­lets, but that was the excep­tion. Now Jane is another story. She reminds me com­pletely of Baby Jill. We have a home movie of Jill run­ning from one end of the liv­ing room to the other, tak­ing knobs off the tele­vi­sion, unscrew­ing the lid of a jar of Vase­line, unfold­ing blan­kets, knock­ing over piles of books. Jane is just the same! She wants to know if she can lift up a cof­fee cup, take all the boxes off a shelf, start the rock­ing chair rock­ing, unfold laun­dry. All this is accom­plished with a max­i­mum of laugh­ter, squeal­ing, run­ning to you for hugs, tak­ing her pony­tails out. She is, as you will have gath­ered, com­pletely per­fect in every way. So Avery and I took her down to the tram­po­line, but that was too nerve-wracking with just the two of us to keep her from careen­ing off the edges. Eas­ier to kick a ball back and forth. She and John, before he left, played for­ever in the hose water. She had her first pop­si­cle, cov­er­ing her­self from head to toe in rasp­berry lemon­ade. We went to the pool and she dashed about in the baby-level water, and scrubbed down a util­ity door with a wet paintbrush.

Finally Uncle John had to be dri­ven to the bus stop to go back to New York, sob, and after that I saw what life with two chil­dren is like, and it wasn’t par­tic­u­larly pretty! I just don’t have the knack of talk­ing on a nine-year-old level with one per­son while cut­ting food up into toddler-appropriate bites and mak­ing din­ner for myself and fold­ing laun­dry! But all too soon it was bed­time for Jane, and then we were back to bor­ing old us.

Next day we took Jane to the library, this being the eas­i­est place to enter­tain her, I thought, on a bru­tally hot day. Well, it was an eye opener! She has a way of say­ing “Groo bee [some­thing],” which means “Great big what­ever,” and she found LOTS of “Great big books” to whip out of the shelves, peruse with a lightning-quick glance, toss to the side, and move on to the next. Avery and I ran after her at first replac­ing them on the shelves and then finally just leav­ing them on tables for the lack­lus­ter spotty shelf girl to attend to. Jane kept wav­ing her plump lit­tle hand at this paragon of library labor, say­ing, “I” [for “hi”] over and over. The girl just didn’t tum­ble. Finally I said, “Please say hi back to her,” and the girl mut­tered some­thing that Jane inter­preted as an endear­ment and we were able to leave.

We decided that an ice cream cone was the order of the day and ended up at Denmo’s, where Jane reached for her ice cream cone by the dip, not the cone! The lady at the counter was ready with a dish instead. Not hav­ing a sweet tooth, I had some shrimp instead, and Jane alter­nated dip­ping her spoon into her ice cream and into my tar­tar sauce! An equal-opportunity dip­per. We reached home just as Avery’s Lon­don friend Sophia and her mother Susan arrived for an overnight stay, and then we all played with Jane, until her mam­moth after­noon nap. I for­got what that was like. For about an hour you’re happy to accom­plish things, then you start look­ing at your watch and miss­ing the baby, then after two hours you’re pre­tend­ing to hear her every five min­utes until finally she gives in and gets up! Jill and Joel turned up, to Jane’s delight, and we all went to the pool. It’s fun to be there with the cutest baby among all the babies.

Susan made the best ever, most authen­tic risotto I have ever had. Joel kindly hon­ored my request for fresh thyme from his pri­vate crop, and the leaves and stems were so ten­der that they could be snipped right in, no pick­ing over required. Here’s Susan’s method:

Susan’s Sim­ple Risotto
(serves four)

3 tbsps olive oil
2 tbsps but­ter
1 cup risotto (arbo­rio) rice
2 cloves gar­lic, finely minced
1/2 white onion, finely minced
1/2 orange pep­per, chopped
6 but­ton mush­rooms, chopped
3-ish cups chicken stock
1/2 cup heavy cream
1 cup parme­san or pecorino cheese, grated
salt to taste
3 sprigs fresh thyme (or 1 tsp dry)

Melt the but­ter with the oil in a saucepan and saute the gar­lic and onions till slightly soft­ened, then toss rice until all is coated in oil. Saute pep­pers and mush­rooms slightly, then begin adding chicken stock, stir­ring over low heat and absorb­ing the stock grad­u­ally. It will take about 30 min­utes to get the rice to a slightly chewy stage, with a nice thick liq­uidy con­sis­tency to the whole dish. Do not worry if you don’t add all the stock. When the risotto seems ready to eat, stir in the cream, and 1/2 cup cheese, and snip the thyme over the dish. Serve with the addi­tional cheese on the side. The key is to stir nearly con­stantly, adding the stock slowly.

Then, sadly, the baby was taken home, and we were left just adults and old kids, with no one to rush around gig­gling or say­ing crazy things, or push­ing her fin­ger into the palm of her hand in her baby sign lan­guage for “help,” when she heard an ambu­lance siren. Jane is sim­ply divine.

So.

Didja miss me?

We’ve been here a month and it has been an absolute joy to be back.

“Back.” What to say? Can’t say “home,” because that’s sup­posed to be Lon­don. But it feels like home. This pic­ture is taken from the hotel room where John’s liv­ing this sum­mer dur­ing the weeks, where we had a roman­tic ren­dezvous a cou­ple of weeks ago. Bright lights, big city for sure. There are so many dif­fer­ences between Lon­don and New York. Num­ber one may well be sheer height. The build­ings are so tow­er­ing, one feels so tiny on the streets. I always for­get that, liv­ing in Tribeca where every­thing is Lon­don height, but in mid­town, namely 34th Street and 8th Avenue where this shot was taken, it’s all the Great White Way, and peo­ple are dwarfed. And prob­a­bly dwarfs, too, if it comes to that. That’s another dif­fer­ence. Odd­ity, strange­ness, any­thing goes, is the norm in New York, which I almost for­got. Not that Lon­don isn’t inter­na­tional, cos­mopoli­tan, etc. But New York? Times Square? Mid­town, in July? Just plain WEIRD. And it’s all normal.

So we’ve been back. It’s been a huge roller coaster. I may well need a vaca­tion from my vaca­tion because we’ve been a move­able feast, for sure. I have to admit to a huge iden­tity cri­sis: when­ever I see a photo, on a drama promo on TV, of the New York sky­line, I feel a huge surge of “that’s my home, that’s my town.” On the other hand, when all the recent crazi­ness hap­pened with travel, and start­ing from Lon­don, I thought, “THAT’S my home, that’s my town, and how dare any­one vio­late it?” A bit of a conun­drum. Of course, only in my life would my loy­al­ties be divided between the two towns on earth with com­pet­ing BIG RED X marks on them for inter­na­tional intrigue. Sigh. I love both my towns.

I’m going to start another post so we can show another cou­ple of photos!