Kernovich Abroad: Homemade Goodness

We are trying to settle back in here in London. Tyler's schedule is still off and he is sleeping in until about 8am and having a really hard time going to bed at night. The extra time in the morning is nice though. I'm about 2/3 through a great book and am enjoying the extra time in the morning to read. JJ and I are now pretty much fully adjusted to the time and I'm sure Tyler will be waking up at 6am in no time so we will enjoy it while we can.

Now I'm trying to tie up loose ends to really start life here. We are getting the flat a little more organized, putting pictures up and getting the final things unpacked. I'm also trying to find a babysitter around here so JJ and I can finally experience London post 7pm. That will be exciting! And we are signing up for local activities. JJ is inquiring about local soccer teams to play on and I found a yoga class, "buggy" workout called Pushy Mothers, and a potential gym that we are going to check out this weekend. As part of the gym deal I get 1 session/week of free use of the creche (daycare) and we also get access to Toddler World, an open gym for the toddlers. As for Tyler, we went to a Gymboree class today and have our first music class tomorrow.

We are also adjusting to the English food. As those of you know who we stayed with over the holidays, Tyler developed a love for waffles. He eats a whole Eggo sized waffle along with his fruit and oatmeal every day for breakfast. I was disappointed to find they don't have frozen waffles here - only these potato waffles that looked like they had a lot of sodium and other bad stuff. So then I looked into pancake mix and found that they only had Aunt Jemima and it cost a small fortune. That prompted me to look into making pancakes from scratch. In fact I'm learning how to make a lot of things from scratch that I usually bought in a box. So far I've made delicious whole wheat pancakes and macaroni and cheese that Tyler couldn't get enough of. The ingredients are so simple and I'm loving that I'm forced to make these things from scratch here both because there isn't processed food option and because I want to control the ingredients that Tyler eats. Tonight I'm making homemade sloppy joes. The funny thing is that the recipes I find for babies are usually the best tasting for us too because they are simple and are good for you. I feel like my whole dinner playbook has transformed and hope to keep this up even when we return to the states!

The last thing we are transitioning to this week is cows milk for Tyler. I thought he was going to be a tough baby to wean because he loves nursing. Yesterday I tried giving him "semi-skimmed" milk in a sippy cup instead of a nursing session for the first time. The kid pounded the sippy cup (there was milk dripping from the corners of his mouth). Guess this won't be so hard after all... We are going to give up one nursing session per week so my body will be completely mine again around the first week in February! Won't that be nice!

Now here are some pictures that we took recently and also that I found still on the camera from our trip back to the states.