Thoughts and Words Ill-Sorted

We’ve been working on all fronts recently, trying to get things prepared for our arrival in Kentucky, trying to wrap up research projects, and trying to make the most of our last bit of relatively stable time as a family.  We know all too well that once the kids get on the airplane in early June, they’re not going to come back down and behave normally again until sometime this fall.  So I’m pushing the fresh veggies and the “yes, please” and “no thank you” language in preparation for a yogurt/fruit/bread-filled summer of wildness with them.

I’ll spare you the blow-by-blow of my packing efforts, but I recently had the chance to combine a few items on our to-do list when I left the house with a copy of an article I needed to revise and headed to a wonderful little bed-and-breakfast called The Parsonage.  They serve the best afternoon tea, and I did the whole thing: the finger sandwiches, the cakes, the scones, and the big pot of house tea.  Thankfully, everything was small, but it was wonderful to work my way through such delicious snacks as I pushed through the first several pages of my article.  I did the same thing about six months ago when I was up against another tricky project, and, I have to say, I’m really going to miss a good afternoon tea when working at my desk or in a library just isn’t cutting it.  I cut through the University Parks on my way home and saw a game of cricket on my left and one of croquet on my right, just to complete my Perfectly English afternoon.

Erin

One of the few things we haven’t been able to fit in during our time in Oxford is a trip to the nearby Wytham Woods.  An old forest with many, many species of birds and butterflies, and trails and paths throughout: it seemed perfect for us.  So, Sydney finally found a way to get us there via public transportation, and we made a day of it today.  Both kids were cranky after a rough night, and they didn’t seem impressed by the woods.  So they spent the first hour making us regret coming–and that was before Nathaniel defied Sydney by burying his face in a patch of stinging nettles and yowling once he realized why Sydney had warned him away.

But things improved rapidly.  Nathaniel took a surprise nap, and the rest of us were able to settle in and enjoy the walk in peace.  With plenty of snacks and water, we had a great time.  It is just the sort of place that we like, and it is tricky with small children who have limited attention spans and stamina.  But on days like today I can see those kinds of walks re-entering our lives.  I made both kids walk a good mile or more at the end of the walk, which secured their docility on the bus ride home (“Oh, such peaceable children!” said the elderly lady sitting nearby).  Did I mention that today is also the first truly sunny day in months?

Erin

We confirmed this week that the kids will be able to attend a day care down the street from Asbury on week-day afternoons.  We’ll also be renting a house from the university, so from the house to my office to the day care is less a half-mile walk.  We’re doing well on the live-local front!  I am looking forward to keeping some things simple as we adjust to a new country, new jobs, and new community.

This morning the kids helped me make pumpkin rice pudding, so we counted in the eggs in the following manner:

Nathaniel: “One!”

Erin and Katherine: “One.”

“Two!  Three!”

“Two.”

“Four!  Five!  Six!”

“Three.”

“Seven!  Nine!”

“Four.”

And so on.  He was up to twelve or thirteen by the time I got to nine.  I was reminded of the way I used to rattle off numbers when my mom was counting out cups of flour when I was a kid: “One, Two, Four, Seventy-Seven!  Six, four, three-and-a-half!”  I was trying to annoy her, but here I think Nathaniel was just impatient with my slowness.

Erin

Sydney’s a bit skeptical that I will pull off all of the things we have planned for this summer.  I don’t blame him for the skepticism, but I’m like a kid in a candy store who can’t bear to set anything down.

This week a friend of mine who is a writer let me read one of her novel manuscripts.  It was wonderful!  Even better?  She said she’s currently reworking it, so the version I thought was great is going to get even better.  I can’t wait to see it.

I also got in the mail this morning a CD of the music from the concert Sydney and I attended last week, as part of our date night.  When people are lined up all around the quad of the biggest college in Oxford, and these are people who already bought tickets, you know it is going to be good.  Like most people there, we were sitting off to the side of the singers, tucked into the wings of the massive cathedral, so we did what everyone else did: listen and look up to enjoy the beauty of the cathedral.  This is what it looks like in the day, but you can imagine how it looks at night, lamp-lit:

Erin

Okay, one trip to the emergency room: kids will be kids.  But now we’ve had a second.  Does that move us to “danger! danger!” territory?  This morning, while I was up early, sauteeing leeks in my pajamas for our lunch with a new family, Nathaniel walked into the kitchen crying, with blood trickling down his forehead.  He had apparently tried copying Katherine, who was jumping from a small table onto the couch.  I gather that Nathaniel, who has been accident-prone all week, missed the couch and hit the radiator.

After I got a good look at the cut, I realized he’d need stitches, so in about ten minutes I’d called Sydney down, called a taxi, and he took over cooking (five minutes after getting up) while I whisked Nathaniel to the emergency room.  He’ll be fine, and the emergency-room people were very nice to him as they glued his cut shut (they even gave him a teddy bear to take home), but I’m feeling a bit traumatized.  This happened while I was on duty!

Nathaniel and I got home just after our company arrived, and we found Sydney gamely entertaining after pulling off all the cooking in my absence.  I can only imagine how the scene must look to our visitors, a family with one child, and that one just a year old.  We really are a bunch of hooligans!  Now I’m trying to figure out whether I should pledge not to do any dishes or anything that involves taking my eyes off the kids, or whether I just need to do more praying as I work in the kitchen.  While I’m sorting that out, I’m sure the kids will grow and change and we’ll move on to another phase, but I really can’t say I like seeing my little guy all banged up.

Erin

After a few days of wondering what I’ve gotten myself into for the summer (so many projects, so much traveling, and so little time), I am feeling quite happy with things here in Oxford.  To be perfectly honest, I’ve finally gotten some article revisions going after having them haunt me for several months, and that has done a great deal to make me feel fabulous.  I know: nerd heaven.  But we have several things going on this week that would make even normal people happy:

– Tomorrow, April 10th, is Katherine’s birthday.  She’ll be four years old!  She has requested blueberry muffins for her birthday (hey, can’t argue with that), and we happen to have invited another family over for lunch that day, too, so the house should feel quite festive.  Katherine is keen to meet and look after the toddler who will be joining us, and she’s already started lecturing Nathaniel about being careful around the baby.

– On Friday I’ll be having a pair of Asbury students over for tea.  I met one of them last week, and really enjoyed the chance to talk Asbury, Oxford, and literature.  I don’t usually bake for my students, but you can’t really have English tea without a good scone or some other baked good, so we’ll see what I can come up with.

– On Saturday, Sydney and I have tickets to an early-music concert by a great group called The Sixteen.  The concert will be held in Christ Church Cathedral, or, the rather grand Oxford college in which the Harry Potter movies were filmed.  Even more significantly, it will be a date!  One of very few in our house!

Erin

We’re having company later this week, so I thought I would hide some of the moving boxes we have sitting in our living room (the first flush of the work to come!).  I, ahem, had a bit of trouble lifting the boxes onto the freezer, and, in addition to worrying that that meant the boxes were closer to 80 pounds than the 70 they’re supposed to be, I thought, “Oh, no!  Has living in England made me soft?  Or is getting closer to professordom made me feeble?  How on earth are we going to move house this summer if I can’t carry my beloved book collection?”

Maybe I’ll need to invent some games in which I pick up the kids (33 and 43 pounds) more often, just to get me in shape for the move.  Sad, but perhaps quite entertaining for them.

Erin

Nathaniel doesn’t like the song to end, thus the unhappy expression and “I don’t want to” instead of “Goodnight.”

Katherine’s usually pretty reluctant to sing on demand, but this time she made it through the song without dissolving into giggles or “No!”s.

Erin

Plans for our move are coming together fairly slowly, since there are a lot of things that are up in the air and will be for awhile.  But we have arranged to rent a house from Asbury, and it’s only a block from campus.  So, while we might want to be careful about stepping out our front door when not prepared to interact with students, faculty, or anyone else we know, we should be able to make a quick dash to class when we’re running late.  And if Katherine or Nathaniel throws a hissy fit at the top of his or her lungs, we’ll know about it whether we’re at home or at work.

Erin

As we’ve been making plans to wrap up our time here in Oxford, the kids have been doing their part.  Nathaniel has recently taken to launching himself from his crib–nose-first.  He’s apparently ready to fly.

Katherine has suddenly gotten quite curious about where we live, where we are going to live, and where her grandparents live–so I’m going out today to get a good map book for her.

Both kids have figured out that moving will have some advantages for them.  They’ve been enjoying my cupboard-clearing efforts, since I’ve gotten a bit more creative with my cooking.  And then there are days when Sydney decides to use up my stores of tahini by making hummus and halva (really?  we needed something that looks and tastes like fudge just sitting in the fridge?), or opts to make a pineapple crisp for supper.  As you might guess, the kids are enjoying the dessert-as-supper days.  And as the weather has gotten a tiny bit warmer I’ve been trying to take them to all of our favorite parks and playgrounds in town.

After several years of living with the uncertainty of not knowing where we will be moving next, we are enjoying a great sigh of relief as we prepare to make a home in Kentucky.  I’m joining the English Department at Asbury University, and Sydney will be doing what he does best–a lot of things at once.  He’s going to be teaching philosophy at Asbury, continuing his research, and he has his heart set on a farm as soon as we find land that we can afford.  There is a lot about our future there that we don’t know yet, but we have a chance to do what each of us likes most: I’ll get to throw myself into teaching and research and the life of a department, and Sydney will get to fashion his desired proportions of academic work, farming, and a host of other interests that have been waiting in the wings during our time in Oxford.  I’m eager to see what he comes up with, if a bit apprehensive about the scale of his ambitions 🙂  The kids will be in preschool some of the time, but the administrators at the university have already made clear that they will do everything possible to work with us on teaching schedules so that Sydney and I can work out childcare between us.  The university has been very welcoming to us as a family, and I think we stand a better chance there of being able to juggle family and work than in just about any other place that I can imagine.

We’re particularly excited about this move because, after three years of being largely on our own in Oxford, we’re now moving to a place where we have good friends: David and Lisa Swartz and their four children (two of whom happen to be roughly the ages of Katherine and Nathaniel).  When I interviewed at Asbury last month, hugs from David between meetings (he also teaches as Asbury), and an early-morning walk out to their house to chat with Lisa, really kept me grounded–and sane.  I also played games with the kids and realized that I should keep an eye on their oldest boys to get an inkling of what parenting will be like for us as Katherine and Nathaniel get a bit older.

At the moment, our heads are filled with the complications of what amounts to a Great Migration from England to Kentucky, but I know that, once we actually arrive in Kentucky, everything we do from there on out will be part of making a home and community, and that gives me great peace of mind.  Just to give you a sense of our crazy summer, we’ll be spending time with both families (Nova Scotia and Iowa), I have two academic conferences (Virginia and Mississippi), we have belongings to move (from both England and New York), and Sydney doesn’t yet have permission to live and work in the US (U.S. immigration, you’re going to be hearing from me if it doesn’t happen soon).  So, you will hear more on those fronts (relayed in, I hope, a spirit of adventure rather than complaint, but no promises) as the months pass.  But it will be a short summer: Sydney and I have a lot of academic work to be done here before we leave, I depart for Nova Scotia with the kids in early June, and classes at Asbury begin in mid-August!

Erin