Thoughts and Words Ill-Sorted

Katherine has been keen on following me around this past week, since her coughing is making her a bit clingy.  Thankfully, she doesn’t seem to mind if I just do household tasks while she follows, with regular stops for cuddling and book-reading sessions.  But somewhere in the middle of her running commentary on life, peppered with “why?” questions, her observations have become more astute:

When watching me fish a bit of peppermint leaf out of Nathaniel’s tea: “Why do only grown-ups get to stick their fingers in the glass?”

When watching me set out work clothes for an upcoming trip: “Why don’t you wear those on normal days?  Why do you need special clothes?”

When watching me examine the spots that have popped up all over Nathaniel’s stomach and face in what looks like (sorry, Sydney) chicken pox: “Why are you laughing?  His spots aren’t funny.”

Ah, Katherine.

Erin

Yesterday we took Nathaniel back to the hospital to have his cast removed.  Katherine found this whole process fascinating, particularly since the nurse who removed the cast did so with a very large pair of scissors–and really exerted herself in the effort.  I think Nathaniel was a bit concerned about all this huffing and puffing over his leg.

After another round of x-rays, the doctor told us that he doesn’t think Nathaniel actually broke the leg (no sign of healing in the bone), so he guessed that this was more a matter of bumps and bruises.  I think Sydney’s disappointed at such an underwhelming conclusion to the story.  Nathaniel, for his part, is moving around a bit gingerly as he starts putting that leg back to work, but he seems glad to be able to crouch and climb again.  We celebrated with a nice long soak in the bathtub.

Sydney leaves tomorrow for a conference in New Orleans.  He doesn’t seem sufficiently thrilled to be going to the land of blues, pralines, and decadence.  Sigh.  I hope that he is, at the very least, able to get some rest in a hotel room all to himself, since the kids have recently done a number on our sleep here at home.

Erin

I can’t believe it, but our little guy turned two today.  I’ve been thinking of him as two for quite awhile (since I got funny looks when I said he was one), but it still feels different now that it’s official.  One of the things I love most about our little guy is that he’s still cuddly even though he’s big enough to wriggle out of my arms and run off.  It feels even more special now that he volunteers hugs and leans in when I ask if he’d like a cuddle.  Free will just sweetens the pot; who knew?

Erin

By now, Nathaniel is walking around, shuffling a bit awkwardly when he encounters one of the many sloped floors in our house.  By the time he gets his cast off next Monday, he should be ready to run again.

Yes, Katherine is looking a bit tired here (a new cold from school is keeping her up), but, given our recent track record, I’m not going to wait around for a “perfect health” day!

Erin

I keep looking for cute things to post, particularly for the friends (worse than the grandparents, actually!) who demand pictures of the kiddos.  But our house has been filled with other things recently, so I’m just going to get this list out there:

– Sydney brought the flu back from the US.  It nearly killed him off.  Then he gave it to me and, judging from his expression, I didn’t come out looking so hot, either.

– Sydney developed an ear infection.  I may have one, too.  I tease him that we’re preparing for old age: “SYDNEY!  HEY!  GIVE ME YOUR GOOD EAR!”

– Nathaniel broke his leg.  He’s actually been a sweetie about it, though he’s now starting to give us the sense that he thinks of his family as a lineup of servants as he points imperiously to things he wants.

– Last night we had–how do I put this–violent vomiting from both kids.  It seems they’ve picked up the norovirus that has the UK in a grip right now.  They’re recovering, I think, but it’s still a bit unpleasant for all.  I’m now compulsively scrubbing all surfaces of the house.

Here’s hoping that we can duck out of the illness and accident assembly line soon.  Plenty of other good things are going on, but it would be nice if we had the energy and good health to appreciate them!

Erin

Well, he almost made it to two without an emergency visit.  We took an early train yesterday to have brunch with a friend in the Cotswolds (including a lovely walk through hedge-and-field-covered sheep country), and Nathaniel fell down while playing in the living room.  A perfectly ordinary fall (standing next to a couch, playing with buttons), but he cried and couldn’t stand up again after it.  So, when we got home in the evening, I took him to the emergency room while Sydney stayed with Katherine, and we went back in again this morning so that Nathaniel could get a cast on his leg.  X-rays didn’t show broken bones, but the doctors said it’s fairly common for small breaks in toddlers to show up on x-rays only after the breaks begin to heal.  So Nathaniel is down for the count for two weeks or so, sporting a bright-red cast the length of his leg.  He’s been a trooper, though, playing patiently in waiting room after waiting room, and Katherine is diving into her role as caretaker and toy-retriever.  As exhausting and worrying as the ordeal has been, I saw plenty of much more serious injuries to children during our hours at the hospital, and I’m grateful that this is the first (and worst) hospital visit we’ve had to make with our children.

To the grandparents: don’t worry.  He’s fine, and he’ll be even better in a few weeks.  And when he gets out of his cast, Katherine will get him up to speed by running his legs off in the parks.  So don’t worry.

Pictures to come, but not until I get in some work and laundry first.

Erin

“I think you’re a bit of a wimp when it comes to pain.  I’m just sayin’ . . .”

For those who think that childbirth without pain medication gets you bragging rights, I’m here to tell you that it doesn’t when you have married a husband like mine.  Sigh.

Erin

Yes, I know, I’m getting ahead of myself.  But on our walk back from nursery, the weather was very different from the rain under which we left the house at 7:30 this morning.  Katherine, my little trooper, did scooter the 1.7 miles to nursery, though she had a conniption when she realized that her socks and trousers had gotten a bit wet at the end, until she thought for a moment: “But that’s why you have extra clothes in the backpack!”  On our lunchtime walk back, we spotted four kinds of flowers in the parks, and I discarded my jacket toward the end (though that may have more to do with my fever and Nathaniel’s recent weight gain than the temperature outside).  It is really lovely out, and I’m thinking that in the next two weeks spring will be officially here.  Given my recent nightmarish experience with the snow (miles to walk in a country where nobody shovels, sands, or salts), I’m ready for it.

Apologies for being a bit quiet on this front.  The kids are lovely, keeping us busy with lots of “why?” questions.  Sydney returned from a recent job fly-out, but then has spent the past two weeks camped out on the couch with first the flu (thank you, US germs!) and a cold that he and I are currently sharing (the kids are definitely getting the upper hand at the moment).

For those of you who have any interest in the academic aspect of what we do, I have a story for you.  It involves two articles: one that I wrote for a graduate course back in, oh, the spring of 2007, and one that I’ve been thinking of off and on but only sat down to write in January of 2012.  The first article went through a number of permutations, becoming the first part of my dissertation, and then revised into an article that I’ve sent out to a couple of journals.  I was getting a bit discouraged, since I was told it was good work by my advisors and encouraged to get it published, but each journal found something wrong with it.  My most recent attempt resulted in its being sent back to me–but accompanied by reader reports and a letter from the editor, who encouraged me to revise and resubmit it.  That’s academia for you: promise nothing, but raise hopes on the condition that you put in a great deal of work.  At any rate, a revise-and-resubmit is considered a victory in my field, so I was excited, if daunted by the revisions.  But the second article, the one I wrote over Christmas, was submitted at the end of December and I just learned that it’s been accepted for publication.  Best of all?  No revisions required.  So much for a standard way of doing things.

Erin

Katherine lost no opportunity to put our weekend guest to work; after two days Lisa had read through a sizable pile of the books in our house, some of them several times.

Katherine was, as always, a bit giddy from the excitement of having a friend over, so she didn’t do much sitting still.

Nathaniel, on the other hand, enjoyed his chance for extra cuddles.

He also enjoyed his backpack ride in the snow.  Until recently, he’s been too fidgety to do much backpacking (and he’s heavy enough to throw me off-balance if he’s wiggly), but in the last week or two he’s settled in for the ride, so I’m hoping for more stroller-free outings this spring.

Erin

This past weekend Oxford got a significant amount of snow.  More unusual yet, the temperatures have stayed low, so the snow-turned-ice is still here.  I’ve had a pretty arduous trek to nursery in the past few mornings, and my knees and ankles are a bit wobbly after all of the sliding around.  England’s snow policy seems to be that the stuff really only comes a week or so a year, so it’s not worth making too much of a fuss over.  No shoveling, no road crews.  If need be, things just shut down until the temperatures rise and the problem disappears.  I saw one or two people sprinkling salt by hand near office buildings, and they looked for all the world like they were feeding chickens.  It’s quite a shift from Ithaca, where snow treatment consumes a good chunk of the county budget.

I felt a bit silly touring town this weekend with my college roommate, Lisa.  She didn’t come from Switzerland to see snow in Oxford!  But we had a lovely time all the same.  With the help of a babysitter, Lisa and I took a walk up the canal on Saturday, stopped for lunch, took in the view from the top of St. Mary’s church (our perch was just above the clock in the picture below), and settled in for tea and scones in the cafe once we reached the ground again.  We returned home to some pretty wound-up kids (Dadda’s gone!  We have company this weekend!  Fun new babysitter!), but Lisa helped me wrangle them into bed–and then we settled in with good Indian food we had delivered.  Yes, it was a food-filled weekend.  Thanks to Lisa (who both remembered her camera and shared her photos), I have even pictures.  I’ll post some from our walk below and more of Lisa and the kids in a second post.

“It’s so flat!”  Lisa’s gotten accustomed to the Swiss geography, so the Thames river valley struck her as strange country.

Erin