Hooked on phonics

I'm not sure whether it's luck, timing or some kind of impressive stress response, but sometime during our moving-stravaganza, L has clicked on the concept of phonics, and now he's trying to read everything. Street signs, the yogurt container, graffiti on the train - suddenly they're really interesting, and we need to talk about what they say Right Now.

He loves to have us read to him, and had gotten really good (back when we lived in the Old Country) at lying in bed looking at books in the morning, but had always insisted that he did not want to learn how to read himself. "It's too hard" and "You can read to me!" were the most common reasons, but I think mostly it was just that he didn't get it - this shape makes a sound? Except in English, where it makes a different sound?

He's also trying really hard to make English "th" and "r" sounds, which he hadn't gotten a lot of practice doing in German, and he's trying hard to disentangle prepositions (he was using an all-purpose "where", pronounced "whirr", to mean "that", "which", "who" and "where"), so it's language development central over here. I have this nagging feeling the English development is coming at the expense of German, since we really haven't been using it since we left, and I feel guilty about that. He learned so much! Curse you, ridiculously high tuition at the bilingual private school!

Relief, mostly

So after a job search that started last September, during which I sent research proposals, statements of teaching philosophy and curricula vitae to distinguished institutions from Victoria, BC to the south of France (and during which I threatened to apply for a job in Finland, but that was mostly to get a reaction out of C), I have a job! A pretty good job, actually, where they seem really interested in my work. All I have to do is move to the complete other side of the planet, again, with C and L in tow, again, and then in 3+ years I'll start looking for a new job, again.

This is a huge opportunity, and I hope I can make the most of it. Right now I'm feeling some whiplash from the sudden change in perspective from a discouraged thinking-through of backup plans (work for Google? go off-grid and raise llamas? teach high school?) to excited what-ifs, watching travel shows about the new city, trying to picture L with the new accent, and an all-in commitment to my research. The structure of academic science is terrible, and there is nowhere near enough room at the top of the food chain for all of the people down at my level, but that's kind of neither here or there right now: it's time to go do my best, because that's what I like doing. Whether or not I get the job I want next time I go through the grinder, the next few years are going to be worth it.

New perspective

I had a realization the other day that surprised me. I tend to get carried away when I'm worried about things (no, I knew that already, that's not a surprise), and back when L was a baby, I would worry sometimes that I was going to be a terrible parent because of all the stuff I didn't already know. I got really hung up on not understanding elementary school-aged kids, and when I told C that I was going to be a bad parent! because I don't know anything about 10-year-olds! he told me "you do have ten years to figure that out".

L just hit the halfway point in that timeline, and it occurred to me that "big kids" are a lot less incomprehensible than they used to be. I can see ways that they're just bigger kindergartners, and aspects in which they're totally different from littler kids, but I can picture L getting there from here.

Whirlwind weekend

I know that plenty of people spend their weekends in constant motion, because they've been cooped up all week in a cubicle and there's so much fun stuff to do, or because they have two kids in three sports and life is just a constant soc-vol-swim-ball minivan roadshow, or because they have ambitious DIY plans for their house or yard. Plenty of people, sure, but not me. Pre-kid, I spent as much weekend time as possible with a huge Sunday newspaper and a pot of coffee.

Lately we've been trying to get out on the weekends (Nice weather! Local cities to explore! Not giving L couch-potato habits!), and we're falling into the typical German pattern. Grocery shopping on Saturday (stores are closed on Sundays), some time for going out Saturday morning, but Sunday is the main day for doing weekend things. This last weekend we finally got out to the outdoor swimming pool by L's kindergarten, which we've been meaning to do since last summer, and had a great time. There were a lot of other people there, but there was space for everyone. The pool is big, and split up to make room for serious lap swimmers, loungers, and splashing kids, and there is a huge lawn for people to lie around on. We did a little of everything - splashing, showing L some swimming basics, lying around watching the clouds - and immediately started planning to go back.

Not the typical kids & food post

Last weekend was Easter, which (since we're not what you'd call religious people) involved egg dyeing, egg finding, stashing a basket of candy in Liam's room while he was sleeping, letting him eat jellybeans at breakfast, and gardening. It's Wednesday night, and we've still got most of a chocolate bunny and a couple of chocolate eggs in the kitchen cabinet. Heck, we've still got halloween candy in the kitchen cabinet. Are we stingy with sugar? Sort of, but we (C and I) are also kind of forgetful, and Liam seems to have picked up the out of sight-out of mind gene. He doesn't ask for candy or sugar much, in my perception, and we've been letting him have easter-basket candy when he asks (as long as he isn't tired or otherwise unlikely to handle a sugar rush well).

The philosophy we've been aiming for in general is that of course we have sweets sometimes, but it's not a big deal. This is just one part of an overall philosophy that's at least a little informed by Ellyn Satter, where we aim for intuitive eating, an acceptance and enjoyment of variety, and nutrition (integrated over every day or two). There's some conflict with Liam's kindergarten's philosophy, which has a very black-and-white "healthy"/"not healthy" food classification, while I have no interest in endorsing cultural messages about food and morality.

Of course he'll change as he gets older, and who knows whether he'll broaden his tastes, or how many all-cheese or no-veg phases he'll go through, but for now we're all about emphasizing what we like about food, the pleasure of cooking for oneself and for friends, and the good it can do for your body. We'll just have to see whether he winds up with as many forgotten things hiding in the back of the pantry as I tend to have.

I knew we should have stayed vegetarian!

I was putting Liam to bed tonight (which involves reading a book or two, then turning off the light and holding his hand until he's asleep or at least mellow enough not to mind my leaving, and sometimes singing Beatles songs), and he had a very unexpected response to a Dr. Seuss book.

He's funny about bedtime books: obsessively in love with whichever books are newest, and downright insulted if we try to read one that's not on the current favorites list. Surprisingly, though, he let C read "One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish" to him this afternoon, even though it is not new. He wanted to read it again at bedtime, and when I got to the page with

I do not like this one so well.
All he does is yell, yell, yell!
I will not have this one about.
When he comes in, I put him out!

he said, very matter-of-factly, "when he comes in my house, I will punch him." I demurred, and said that really, you just have to put him outside so you don't have to hear the yelling, and he upped the ante: "I will make him dead."
"What? No."
"With fire. I will cook him and eat him."
"What? Okay, time to turn the page."

And he was happy and attentive for the rest of the book, and didn't seem to want to cook or eat any of the rest of the characters, but wow, I wasn't expecting that. He's been talking about superheroes and punching for months now (thanks, big kids at school!), and about punching ghosts and monsters, and hey, if it makes him feel better at bedtime, I can go along with it.

He started with the subject of death a few weeks ago, and we're completely improvising: it's something that happens to everyone, but nobody he knows will be dying anytime soon; it's sad to have someone you love be gone, but that's why it's important to love them and have fun with them now while they're alive; hey, look at that bird over there! I hadn't expected him to put food into that context, and it's pressing all my guilty quasi-vegetarian buttons.

Cookie Countdown

Liam and I have made 200-ish cookies since last Saturday, for Christmas presents for his teachers at Kindergarten, for a contribution to my office party this afternoon, and just because hanging-around-the-house-type vacations are better with a big box of cookies on the kitchen counter. We've made three types so far, and we might just have to make some more while he's out of school.

• First, we made chocolate-vanilla swirl butter cookies, with a recipe out of an old Cook's Illustrated (it doesn't seem to be online). They came out pretty well, and Liam really enjoyed rolling out the dough and seeing the swirl pattern.
  
• Second, we made gingerbread, following this recipe from Bon Appetit. It's way too mild and needs a lot more ginger: 1 tablespoon of ground ginger, plus a half cup of chopped candied ginger, is nowhere near enough for 6 cups of flour. I should have seen this coming. Liam loved rolling out the dough and using the cookie cutters, and he's also distributing the cookies very seriously. A star for him, a tree for C, and a heart for me? Perfect.
  
• Lastly, I made these peanut butter cookies last night, and they're really good. I think I'll just have one more before I head off to run errands.
  

It's a secret

Liam is (mercifully) not flipping out on the way home this week. I don't know if he's feeling less tired at the end of the day, or if he's just handling it better, but it's a big relief. There's a very real possibility that he's only doing it because otherwise he can't open the day's window in the advent calendar, but I'm sure that there's a difference between effective motivation and bribery. And hey, either way, he's getting practice at dealing with feelings rather than freaking out, and he's also not giving us more grey hair than necessary. Win-win.

All the kids in kindergarten are apparently working on gifts for their parents: during breakfast this morning, out of the blue, he looked at me and said (in German, though) "it's a present for mamas and papas." "Is that a secret?" I asked, and he nodded gravely and put a finger over his lips. I want to take him to buy a Christmas present for C, and I'm sure he'll give up the secret (hint: it is not a skateboard), but I don't really mind if he's going to be so cute about it.

Productive?

After Liam's epic crankiness last night (and impressive, as-predicted 13-hour night of sleep), he woke up this morning, wandered in to our room while I was getting out clothes for the day, and promptly threw up. Mostly on himself, poor guy. So I'm home today, and he is acting perfectly fine, and I don't really mind the surprise sick day too much. I feel like he and I don't get enough time together during the week, so (although I haven't brushed my hair yet today) I'm feeling all right. I've also gotten more done than I expected.

Today I have made:

• lots of coffee
• the world's ugliest pumpkin pie
  
• more progress than yesterday on my current writing project
• the discovery that I have a lot to do before my meeting tomorrow
• a lot of clean laundry
• oatmeal!

Wish I could help out

Liam appears to be dropping his nap (noooooo!), and now that I've said it out loud on the internet it'll probably be true (noooooo!), and it is causing all kids of wee angst and drama. At kindergarten he's got the option to lie down after lunch, but he's apparently not availing himself of the opportunity lately. By the time C or I picks him up after class/work, he's too tired to deal reasonably with the little injustices of life, like "yes, you have to put your shoes on" or "now it's time to get out of the tram". Poor kiddo, he seems so overwhelmed. Tonight, he fell asleep right after we got home, at 5:30, before dinner, and judging from the times he's done this before, he'll sleep right on through and be unbelievably cheerful, but ravenous, in the morning.

He had a maddening phase of passive-resistance protest last year about this time, where he'd sink to the sidewalk in a boneless pile if he didn't want to do whatever. Yes, even if it was snowing. Yes, even into a puddle. Yes, especially if there were concerned-looking strangers around to judge us. I have no idea why it ended: I'd think our concerted, united front of "that won't get you what you want" would have had quicker results. He's a persistent kid.

This is different, though, and I think the only way out is through: if he's really not napping at school, then he'll adjust (eventually?), with hopefully less of the public fit-throwing and being so tragic about things. The 13-hour nights of sleep are pretty impressive, though, and I'm more than a little jealous.

Public transportation, private space

The first time I moved to Germany (in 1999), I was absolutely flattened by culture shock. I hadn't spent that long learning the language, and thought everyone sounded so angry all the time. I couldn't figure out why shopkeepers always had to say hello and goodbye to everyone who came in, and I could not imagine why people were content going to 13 different specialty shops every day instead of one big all-in-one store. What a crazy place! What a waste of time! And then I started doing it too, and when it was just the way things were instead of some weird new requirement, it was fine. Yeah, American grocery stores freaked me out a little when I moved back the next year.

My most persistent culture-shock issue this time around has been the lack of personal space afforded in public. People step right in front of you to get on the bus, they'll stand unbearably close in line, and (most maddeningly) they get up early on the tram, walk over to the door, and loooooom over you until you let them stand closer to the door, even though you're still two blocks before the stop. Where do they have to be that's important enough to climb over a stranger to get there?

Interestingly enough, though, nobody talks to strangers on the tram. I may get jostled when the tram fills up, but I've never been asked what I'm listening to, or what I'm reading, or what my phone number is. My personal-space bubble may be small, but apparently it's soundproof. Liam is the exception to this rule: he says hi to people, particularly old ladies and babies, and is actually pretty good at making conversation ("I'm going to kindergarten. My socks have pirates on them!"). He's the quickest way to draw attention in public, and is pretty charming about it.

I don't think that's how the song goes

We just got back from our first attempt to take Liam to a concert, and oy. It went pretty much like we expected, but how can sitting still be so hard to do? C's language school has a choir, directed by one of his instructors, and he's been meaning to go to one of their performances for a while now. Assuming we'd have to duck out early, but figuring it would be an adventure at least and a good time at best, we took off at 5 to get dinner and go to a 7:00 concert. We just missed the tram, naturally, but the walk into town was nice. We got to the train station just in time to rush for the bus, and the sight of C dodging through the crowd with Liam on his shoulders saying "wheeeeee" was great - I hope the other people around enjoyed it too.

We made it about half an hour into the concert itself, and then Liam got squirmy. We mostly kept him from flopping around like a fish on a dock until we could duck out at the next break, but I feel a little bad for the people behind us, who were having a hard time seeing the choir over the rising cloud of mutual frustration. Once we were out and headed home, Liam was under the impression that he had had a really good time. There was singing! People clapped! We have been informed that he will be playing us music, and we will need to sit still and listen, and then we can clap for him.

By the time we were in the tram headed back out to our neighborhood, he was singing. A...modified version of "Mary had a little lamb", because he gets stuck repeating the first two lines and can't make it to the end, and because he doesn't quite know the words. There tends to be a lot of "Everywhere Mary went, Mary went, everywhere Mary went, Mary went, everywhere...", but tonight's version was about me for some reason, and included the lyrics "Mama laughed and play, laughed and play, Mama laughed and play..." and "All the way, Mama went, Mama went, all the way - why you laughing?" Awesome.

Lucky timing

Lately, especially since the switch from standard to daylight savings time (or was the switch the other way around? I can never remember), I've been picking Liam up from kindergarten at dusk. We walk over to the train station to get our tram, and sit on a bench and wait. Often he wants to sit on my lap and just watch the world go by, and if we're lucky we'll see the big flocks of crows that swirl around above the city looking for a place to land for the night.

Last night we left a little later than usual (or maybe the birds cue off of sunset, which is getting earlier?), and the birds had made it over to the church where the kindergarten is. Liam got about two steps outside the door before pointing up and shouting "Look! Birds!" We watched them gradually settle onto the long ridge on the top of the building, and were turning to go when a treeful took off again and startled the rest back up into the air. It was really mesmerizing, and I'm glad we were there at just the right time.

Updates

I wrote about Jonathan Safran Foer's Eating Animals the other day, and lo: the excerpt I wrote about, that I thought hadn't gotten enough attention in the reviews, is in a Writer's Block podcast I just downloaded. It's really moving to hear him read such personal stories in his own voice.

Yesterday's festivities were a lot of fun: the kids had all made paper lanterns, and were so excited to have the teachers put little tea lights inside. We went around the neighborhood and stopped every few blocks to sing a song. We didn't have an audience per se, but Liam has been learning the songs for weeks and singing them at home, and he had a great time. C and I talked to one of the teachers, who was surprised to hear that we don't do Martinstag in the US (though he seemed happy that we do caroling at Christmas).

Vacation day

Well, not really. I've got a looming deadline and a stifling case of detail-itis: I need to write a general introduction, a few overview paragraphs and some specific plans, but I am having a hard time backing up far enough to gain perspective. I wound up working from home today, and the change of scenery (and the ability to take a nap) made a big difference. I did bail on both my Wednesday meeting, though. Sorry, guys.

Tonight is Liam's kindergarten's St Martin's Day parade, and they've been getting ready for a while now. The kids all painted paper lanterns, and have been learning songs, and we'll go out at the end of the school day and walk around the neighborhood caroling. There are treats and gluehwein for afterward, and hopefully it will be a lot of fun.

Food and memory

Some (not totally connected) thoughts about food as personal history:

• I have yogurt for breakfast every morning (except some weekend mornings, if C makes pancakes or eggs). We all do - Liam likes pretty much any kind (two kinds together if possible), with frozen raspberries and musli, C likes a lot of musli and apricot yogurt, and I like vanilla with a little musli. When I was a kid, vanilla yogurt with sliced banana was my mom's territory, something she didn't have all the time, but would have if she got the chance. I feel a connection to her in staking out the vanilla yogurt as "mine".
  
• Shrimp casserole was also a rarity, and a big favorite of mine (all that cheese!), so I made a version of it last night: switch the rice for pasta, the cheddar for an emmental/gouda mix, the soup for heavy cream steeped with garlic and sauteed onions. Just like when I was a kid - but totally different. It turns out that Liam is a huge fan of shrimp; we may have to move closer to the ocean.
  
• I've read reviews of Jonathan Safran Foer's Eating Animals, and they all bill it as stark anti-factory farming, conscience-shocking reporting. Truth, in other words, and high moral principle, and would that we all had the time and resources to live by our principles all the time. The excerpt I've read from the book was hardly mentioned in the reviews: Foer's hesitation and guilt at moving away from family food traditions in pursuit of vegetarianism. He tells this story by writing about his grandmother, who fled the Holocaust, who lived miserably but escaped in the end, who spent his childhood feeding him as much as possible, sweeping him off his feet in hugs so she'd know he was gaining enough weight. This is no cliched "what will I bring to Thanksgiving?" whine, and his conclusion is hopeful, forward-looking and old-fashioned: in his family, he will do his best to do the right thing. Food memories and bonds formed depend less on what's for dinner, and more on the time spent and care taken.
  

Well, that's a new twist

For years I have had this recurring dream, where I'm in a totally empty high-rise building and I can't get away from a tyrannosaurus. Go up the stairs, duck around the corner, look up - and it's there. Through the door, up higher, stop to catch my breath - now it's closer. It never eats me; the futile cycle of panic & run -> think I'm safe -> see the tyrannosaurus again just repeats until I wake up and think "Wow, I must be anxious about something. Better figure out what to do tomorrow."

Last night brought a new version of the dream: the dinosaur and I were out in town, with a lot of people around, and I had Liam with me. Same rules as always, can't ever get away but don't ever get eaten, but a lot harder to shake when I woke up. Subconscious: what are you trying to tell me?

Is this a test?

Where in the kid contract does it say that they can only get sick on Saturday night? Seriously.

Local customs

I wasn't sure whether people did Halloween here, so I wasn't really sure what we should do - get Liam all excited, only to discover that none of our neighbors is expecting trick-or-treaters? Keep it quiet, and then feel like the boringest parents ever when all the other kids at Kindergarten have costumes? There weren't a lot of pumpkins in the grocery stores, so when we saw a good-looking one we grabbed it. Liam did not want to help scoop out the inside, but he was pretty excited to draw a face on the pumpkin and pop out the little pieces after I cut them.


We've dressed Liam up for Halloween before, first in a little pirate costume we bought (and then used as pajamas for months - arr, sleepy pirate), and the next year I made him a hooded sweater with ears and a tail and called it a puppy costume, and he wore that for a long time too. In early October I was trying to think of something I could make in time, and I had a short list together: we have doctor dress-up stuff, or I could buy a black hoodie and fuzzy white fabric and make a skunk costume, or maybe I could make a spider costume? On a whim, I asked Liam what he wanted to dress up as, and he immediately said "a Christmas tree!" It's a great idea, easy to make from stuff we have, visually clear, and potentially confusing for the kids at Kindergarten who weren't expecting Christmas to start for a while yet.



We put our pumpkin outside with a candle in it, opened our front gate, set out a few more candles (since we can't figure out how to make our porch light stay on), and lo and behold, we got trick-or-treaters! They were mostly groups of little kids with a couple of adults, and they'd crowd up our steps and shout "Suesses, sonst gib'ts Saures" (basically "treat or trick"), then happily bounce off with their candy to the next house. Once I knew there were kids going around our neighborhood in costumes, I took Liam out, and it turned out that we'd done exactly the right thing in putting our pumpkin and candles outside: every other house in our neighborhood was either buttoned up tight or had put out a pumpkin and candles as an invitation. People were really nice, and though Liam was initially a little shy about knocking on people's doors and then talking to them, once he got the idea that they would give him candy, he was all for it.

Even though we've been here a full year, there are always new surprises, things we expect but don't happen, or things that are so obvious to the locals that they aren't mentioned, and then we're left to scramble. We've been surprised by Reunification Day (at the beginning of October) two years in a row now, because everyone knows about that (so nobody needs to remind you it's coming up). We've gotten better at improvising on unexpected holidays (when every shop in town is closed), but I still feel the American calendar more strongly than the German calendar. Anyone want to come over for Thanksgiving?