Thoughts and Words Ill-Sorted

I get used to seeing odd things around Oxford: hordes of women in pink tutus and pink shoelaces, running to raise money for breast cancer; university students going to exams in tuxedos with carnations in their pockets (white for the first years, pink for the second, and red for the final-year students); movies filmed on the street while tourists take photos of the filmmakers; and, of course, the comedy show that is girls in formal dresses (long, short, full, and barely-there) going to balls (their footwear usually garners some commentary from the Penner household).  This morning, when I took Nathaniel out for our walk, I saw a huge banner hanging from a prison-like building:

EXPERIMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY

OPEN DAY

In need of test subjects?  No, I finally remembered, they’re just opening their doors to prospective Oxford students and their families.  But, still, the looming concrete block didn’t let me quite shake my first reading.

Erin

Recently I decided it was time to reclaim my early-morning hours (now that Nathaniel is sleeping through the night) and sneak out for early-morning walks in the park by myself.  The kids are getting heavier in the stroller (the children and stroller together weigh about 100 pounds), and I knew I would enjoy some quiet, unburdened walking, at my own pace, before returning to a busy house.

About the same time I decided on this new plan, however, Nathaniel started trimming an hour or two off his sleep at night.  We know he’s getting teeth, but the boy who would sleep until about 8:30 suddenly started getting up at 7:30, 6:30, and even, on one or two bad nights, 5:30am.  I’ve tried moving bedtimes back, but it didn’t seem to help.  He’s settled into a wake-up time of about 7am, which is a good hour or more before Katherine and Sydney want to get up.  Although nursery in the fall will have us leaving the house around 7:30, I’m not ready to inflict that schedule on us just yet, so I’ve been taking Nathaniel outside to get in a walk and buy the rest of the house some sleep time.

So I’m still pushing a stroller, though it’s lighter, and I’m still bribing a child with crackers, though he’s often content to just look around at that hour of the morning until I stop to let him out to play.  Within three days of this he had the routine down.  From the moment he wakes up, I have about five minutes in which to throw on clothes and gather our shoes and jackets before he starts making enough noise to wake the house with his: “Out!” “Down!” “Out!” “Walk!” commands.

On bad mornings, I lock him into the room with me while I try to buy another few minutes of rest, and then I eventually stumble outside with him only to find myself standing at the locked gates of the university parks (they apparently only open at a more decent hour), wondering why on earth I am there.  On better mornings, I enjoy getting to share the fresh air and parks with Nathaniel, I love getting in a walk before the rest of my day, and I am grateful to have a small creature pushing me out the door each morning to get my exercise in.  He is great motivation, I have to say: if I don’t get up immediately after getting him out of the crib, I know I thereby risk letting him put the vacuum extension in the toilet, ripping the Christmas ornaments (stored under the bed) into tiny pieces, or, my favorite, dragging a chair over to the kitchen door to unbolt it and let himself out into the garden.  So, outside we go!

Erin

Although we’ve tried to make Oxford our home and really enjoy this new place, the demands of small children and work haven’t left us much time or energy to make a lot of friends in Oxford–particularly those who might be here for more than six months or a year.  We’ve been fortunate, however, to have many friends from “home” swing by as part of their own travels.  Last week Jared and Rebekah, who live in Virginia, stopped here on the first leg of their travels through Europe.  They were very patient as we tried to combine sightseeing around Oxford with two small, wriggly, “no!”-asserting creatures.  Later, when Katherine appropriated them for book-reading purposes (she makes most visitors to the house read to her), I realized that our three-year-old was sitting between two teachers.  I am guessing that that had much to do with their patience as they read (and re-read!) stories to her.

Other friends are here for work, though we take every opportunity to distract them from it.  Flora has been in Oxford for the last six months, and, though she was Sydney’s classmate at Cornell, I’ve decided to steal her from him.  Flora likes food, walks, children, and study sessions, so she and I developed a routine of meeting up at the library a few mornings each week to ensure that each of us actually got to the library on a regular basis.  Other days we would meet up (sometimes with kids in tow) for a walk and tea and whatever treats she and I had created or unearthed.  She found really good dried mango in town, makes wonderful homemade pretzels, and likes oatcakes almost as much as Nathaniel and Katherine.  Early this morning, however, she took a plane back to Ithaca, and I’m really going to miss having her drop by on a regular basis.

A few weeks ago, I ran after a woman on the street and, once I’d finally gotten her attention, confirmed that it was indeed my friend Maria, whom I’d known back at college.  She’s here for a master’s program and will be in town through the summer.  We’ve already had one great tea session (timed perfectly to coincide with nap time in my house, so that we could complete our sentences), and I’m hoping to meet up with her more before she, too, moves on.  Needless to say, I am very glad that I happened to take the kids for a walk down that street at that particular time, and that I let myself be “that crazy American woman” for a minute while I chased her down.

This fall I am guessing we will be very busy: Sydney and I will both be on the job market, and any spare time is likely to be taken up with teaching (Sydney) research, lectures, and other work-related events (both).  When I attended a recent English talk, one of the last of the academic year, I realized that I actually knew several of the people in the room.  Networking and mingling becomes a lot more pleasurable–and possible–once you have already built up acquaintances.  I’m already looking forward to the events in the fall, though Sydney and I are both glad to have the summer to take the kids outside and take care of some of our own projects before the school year starts again; we don’t finish here until the end of June, but we don’t start again until October!

Erin

When Sydney returned from Ithaca, Nathaniel shared his cold with him as a welcome-home present.  That cold, combined with the fatigue of travel, has kept Sydney napping each day.  But he finally recovered enough to let us take him to Headington Hill Park, the one that we ‘discovered’ while he was away.  We were all glad to share our favorite trees with him.

Erin

Our lovable, congenial, amenable little boy has recently turned into this:

Sydney arrived at home this morning, exhausted from a busy month leading up to the conference, a whirlwind trip in Ithaca, and a rough flight home.  We are glad to have him back, though I don’t think he felt terribly welcome upon first arriving.  I was upstairs, overseeing rowdy baths, and had left the chain on the door, so Sydney let himself in the outer door, found that he couldn’t get in the inner door, reached through the crack to re-screw the doorbell tight (the kids love to play with it), and then went back outside to ring the doorbell so that I would know to come down.  We’ve tried to make it up to him with home-cooked food, nap time, and enthusiastic hugging the rest of the day, but I think our normal, raucous life is a bit much for a tired traveler.

Erin

I know that lots of kids make and decorate crowns as an arts-and-crafts project when they’re little, but, I have to say, it feels a bit different when your kid–the daughter of an American and a Canadian Mennonite–does this while you’re all living in a country whose queen is currently celebrating her Diamond Jubilee.  At least the colors are still red, white, and blue?  Although I’m guessing that the colors are the result of a colonial past . . .

Funnily enough, most of the other parents huddled around the crafts table were also non-UK citizens.  Maybe we should have staged a revolt!

I wonder if the queen is also planning to pair her crown with a bloody lip?  If so, I know a good playground where she can get one.

Erin

The morning Sydney left, both kids were up by 7am.  Until recently, these kids hadn’t been getting up before 9, so this is a pretty major shift.  We’re out the door and back from the park well before I would usually have managed to get them rounded up for an outing.  Naps are early, and they are shorter than usual, but neither kid is going to sleep any earlier at night.  From what I can tell, both Katherine and Nathaniel have just willfully cut a good 1.5 hours of sleep from their daily schedules and, consequently, from mine.  I think part of Nathaniel’s problem is the new molars erupting in the back of his mouth, but Katherine just appears to be along for the ride.  Needless to say, we have plenty of time for play in our day . . .

In good news, we discovered a new park today, filled with ancient trees, birdsong, and lovely paths.  Headington Hill Park, the former grounds of a major estate and now city property, connects to the parks that the kids and I walk nearly every day, just by our house, so now we have quite a system of park walks leading to different parts of the city.  I have to hand it to the English: they have a long tradition of public-access footpaths in both city and country, and they’ve really built in good pedestrian walkways so that people can walk from home to town or work.  Very different from the American system, which ignores pedestrians in favor of car lanes.

Erin

Erin

“Katherine, you had a pretty hard fall at the playground.  Is your mouth feeling better?”

“Not just yet.  It will feel better in . . . maybe in four months.”

“Four months?”

“Yeah.  Like, half a day.”

“Four months or half a day?”

“Yeah.”