Meet Swiss Baby James!

What a blog hiatus! I promise I have a good excuse. We are overjoyed that our baby BOY James 💙 is now nearly two months old! It has been a whirlwind few weeks getting acquainted with this little cutie who arrived a few days late, but his big blue eyes were worth the wait.

These pictures were taken by some of our very talented close friends that we met in Geneva (they move back to the UK this week 😢and will be dearly missed!) You can follow his celebrity photographer Paul on Instagram @paulmckayphoto !

Every cliche about how much your heart grows with these little delights is true and we are completely obsessed with this smiley little bundle. James is a healthy, happy, and generally very chill baby – we’re very fortunate. And he’s been a busy guy!

Both sets of grandparents were here to take care of us all and love flowed all around …

His fairy godmother came to town to spoil him rotten…

We had great checkups and are measuring in at well beyond the healthy weight for his age…

We held our breaths taking a two hour train back to Bern to the US Embassy for a passport… the Swiss really hate noise, so we worried he might scream relentlessly. On the contrary, he was a ⭐️ – and is now an American citizen! The Swiss require residents to live in the country for 10 years, or to have a Swiss parent, in order to dole out citizenship, so he has American citizenship only. Since Switzerland isn’t in the European Union, you don’t really get the cool benefits of skipping airport lines anyway. But James’ passport does list Switzerland as his birthplace, so he officially has a cool fun fact when asked in an uncomfortable future school/work icebreaker exercise, and now he’ll have no trouble running for President someday!

First Passport Picture!

American sweater for good luck!

Mom and James Bern Clock

And we took our first big road trip!We all drove through France and Italy and visited Lugano – a beautiful lake town in the Italian speaking part of Switzerland for his first Easter. James even took his first boat ride around Lake Lugano and cable car up San Salvatore. The trip was incredible – full post coming soon! And it was a great confidence booster for us to be able to travel with our little angel baby, while he’s still mostly immobile, anyway.

Hikes look different now – traveling with my own little kettlebell

While getting our thrills watching him grow everyday, with our time in Europe starting to tick down, we still have lots of travel coming up! Mom and Dad are taking an overnight solo trip to Leukerbad, Switzerland when James’ paternal grandparents come to town again to babysit, and we’re going on a group trip with our expat friends at the end of May to Piedmont, Italy – home of truffles! We’re also heading back to Spain (no Madrid this time – hitting Asturias, Seville, Malaga, and Mallorca) and hopefully Norway (to see Oslo and the majestic fjords) this summer before going to the US in August to meet more of our family and friends. We can’t wait to see everyone and introduce our little bear to his true home country! Thanks so much for all the love sent our way, we truly appreciate every ounce of it!