Thoughts and Words Ill-Sorted

Sydney arrived late last night, a bit worn out from long lines at the border and a flurry of activity at the airport in Copenhagen (he said half the flights to London were canceled).  We took a nice loop around the parks as a family this morning, enjoying the deep fog and the quiet parks (apparently slushy footing keeps the regulars away).  After a long job season and lots of winter travel, we’re hoping to ease into a less stressful breed of normal for awhile!

I’ve been getting a lot of requests from Katherine to read “The Tale of Peter Rabbit.”  I recently bought her a nice collection of Beatrix Potter’s stories, and we’ve worked through a handful so far, but Katherine always returns to the Peter Rabbit story.  Can’t say I’m surprised that she’s not riveted by stories of a tailor whose mice sew the waistcoat (the story was stuffed with millinery terms!  good grief!!) or a hedgehog who lives in the hill and (surprise!) spends her days ironing the other animals’ clothes, but it does make me laugh that Katherine loves the Peter Rabbit story so much.  I mean, for all the nods to obedience (Flopsy, Mopsy, and Cotton-tail, Peter’s sisters, were good little bunnies, and at the end of the story they are rewarded with a supper of bread and milk and blackberries), the story is filled with the antics of Peter.  So much for obedience: he eats all sorts of good things, has grand adventures, and the only bad thing that happens to him is a tummy-ache that lasts the evening.  Such a lovely English story, with the large kitchen garden of Mr. McGregor becoming the “wild” and “dangerous”–and very alluring–site of Peter’s adventures.  Like Flopsy, Mopsy, and Cotton-tail, we’ve gathered our blackberries on walks through Oxfordshire, and we’ve had our own currant buns.  Everything about this story looks different to me now that we’re living in England, from the illustrations of the robins (much smaller than American robins) to the dominance of cabbage in the garden!  So many classic children’s stories are English (Peter Pan, Winnie-the-Pooh, Alice in Wonderland), and it’s quite a treat to be here now, at this point in our children’s lives.

Erin

What’s better than having one kid working on molars?  How about two?  When your spouse is away?  Both kids are following me around the house, crying piteously, so it’s making it a bit difficult to envision this weekend as one big play session, but I’ll do my best, with the help of a playgroup or two.  This is Sydney’s fourth work trip in two months, and we’re all looking forward to having him home for a more normal routine in the near future.

We’re also having one of our few cold spells, so neither kid is thrilled about stroller rides.  Me being me, however, I tell myself it’s important to get them out, regardless of weather, so they resign themselves to lots of blankets and bitter winds.  Good for preparing them for North American winter!

On the other hand, both kids have been growing a lot recently.  Nathaniel fits perfectly in his 18-month clothes, and the top of Katherine’s head is at my waistline.  He is responding to his name and favorite words (like “ball), and she is undertaking more and more complex “missions” for me in the house.  Yesterday I asked her to tell Sydney that supper was ready, and, after she had disappeared for twenty minutes, I found her settled in on the top floor with her dad.  She had taken the opportunity to camp out with him before conveying her message: “Supper ready!”

Erin

The kids and I did an evening run to the grocery store last night.  Bad idea.  We joined the checkout line somewhere near the back wall of the store.  I noticed some odd behavior by some men on the street, so I was eager to get home.  Later, after everyone was in bed, I heard a lot of activity outside, followed by bagpipes and cheering.  Turns out it was Burns Night, so I was vigilantly guarding against invasion by haggis-eating, Scotch-whisky-imbibing, kilted folk.

Both kids are off their feed as a result of their recent colds.  I had been trying to remain firm about them eating their veggies, so it took me all day to realize that this was more than just an attempt to hold out for yogurt.  Until, precisely, I finally offered them yogurt–and they turned me down.  Sometimes I’m a bit slow on the ball.  We’ll hope that they’re back to normal soon, since I clearly don’t have what it takes to keep up with them!

Erin

You may be wondering whether we’ve disappeared off the face of the earth or, more importantly, why we’ve posted no pictures recently!!  Things have been busy, lighting has been poor, and Nathaniel comes running as soon as he spies the camera.  But he will be celebrating his first birthday very soon, and I plan to take a lot of pictures to celebrate that fact.

Currently, I’m going to focus on feeding, playing, and walking with the kids; Sydney was surprised by a third interview, which will take place tonight, and then he’s off on a three-day work weekend to the coast.  Sounds kind of nice, right?  Unfortunately, he’ll need to pour out a paper over the weekend, a paper that will be presented next weekend on the Continent, so there’s some pressure to make the most of the work time (which may keep him from birdwatching as much as he would have liked).  But I am very proud of him: he just added another journal publication to his CV, and he’s been braving some teaching this term, in addition to interview preparations.

Since I’ve had the kids more mornings recently, I’ve been taking them to a variety of playgroups around town.  It’s wonderful to see them interacting with other kids, to see Nathaniel walk the length of a church nave (quite a feat after his practice in our tiny house!), and to hear Katherine singing the playgroup songs all the way home.

Nathaniel really does not sleep well unless one of us is right next to him, so I have to choose between freedom during his naps and, well, a nap time of any real length.  Thankfully, my recent work is all about reading (which I love, especially after what seems like years of just writing), which I can do with him next to me.  We’re going to try getting him to sleep without his pacifier, since the thing falls out all the time anyway and wakes him up, and then we’ll try getting him to sleep without us around.  Yes, it’s sweet when he sleeps with us, and I love cuddling up with him . . . but it’s just not possible to get him to sleep except when Katherine’s also down, and that leaves us with no just-Katherine time for puzzles and books more suitable to her age group.  So, we’re making strides (no more 1.5-hour feeding intervals, and more sleep at night), but we’re going to see if we can afford to shake things up in order to get us all a bit more independence.

Erin

“Gentle, gentle, ‘thaniel.  Just like yesterday.”  [as in, like I told them yesterday, when I handed over the biscuit tins that will serve as toy boxes for our house]

That little exchange is the only evidence I have that anyone heard my instructions . . .

Erin

“There is no ‘finished,’ anyway: There’s just the latest FedEx pickup time on the day before your deadline.”

Erin

http://www.nytimes.com/schoolbook/2012/01/20/dear-governor-lobby-to-save-a-love-of-reading/

This is very sad.  I went to public school, learned a great deal from my teachers, and was encouraged to range far and wide in my reading–and rereading.  I thought only little kids mistook reading for a competition, but it seems that grown-ups are just as susceptible to trouble.  The comments from the authors’ children’s teacher, admonishments to keep students reading precisely at their level, and to never let them re-read, are exactly at odds with everything I strive to teach my students: that reading at a clip says nothing about your reading skill at best and, at worst, indicates that you missed out; that re-reading is key to a deep literary experience; that “difficulty” in literature has do with a great deal more than whether it’s worded for children or for adults; that there is more to works of literature than how easily they can be made to fit “love conquers all” or any other theme you might bring to the table.  No wonder students are confused.  Sydney will likely use articles such as this to persuade me to home school our kids . . . and then we’ll get to console them when they fail their state examinations.

Erin

This evening, in a rare moment of peace, Sydney and I both sat in the livingroom and watched Katherine employ Nathaniel in a game of imagination: she fed him “pear-plum pie” from her bowl, with her favorite spoon, and he obediently opened his mouth each time the spoon neared.  Katherine was delighted at his participation, though Sydney and I wondered how long Nathaniel would put up with that before feeling betrayed by the empty spoon.  I don’t think he’s quite on board with imaginary food.

Erin

Our weekend didn’t go quite as planned, so I’m afraid none of us are as refreshed as we might have hoped.  It’s a good thing I don’t believe in fates, otherwise I might think they were conspiring against us!  This weekend was the weekend before the full start of the term, which the students apparently take as an opportunity to party.  So we heard a lot of noise outside the house until well until the middle of the night.  In addition, Nathaniel developed a cold, so he had me on several-nights’-little-sleep coming into things.

I was trying to be optimistic, so, on the first night, when it became clear that he was going to be keeping me up, I thought, “Well, even on bad nights, he usually settles down by about four.”  Katherine woke up crying at 4:30.  So, it’s perhaps not surprising that, when I finally settled into a library with my computer, I could barely keep my eyes open and focused on the screen.  I also, ahem, get a very short fuse when I’m really tired, so I further hurt my case by reacting unhelpfully to everything that went wrong: the washing machine breaking, my computer cord breaking (which left me with 20 minutes to fix it before my computer died) . . . The more that things went wrong, the closer I stuck to home, which apparently just made Sydney’s job harder (since Nathaniel howled whenever he heard the door, or a squeaky stair, or anything else that he thought might be me).

But.

There were some really nice things that managed to happen (despite everything else!) this weekend, so I’m going to list some of them.

– I got to spend time in several libraries: the Bodleian (with its large reading rooms and giant windows), the Radcliffe Camera (the perfectly-round building that you see in all pictures of Oxford), the Social Sciences Library (which is quite ugly, but open later than the others), and the new underground tunnel that links the Bodleian and the Radcliffe (which has nice work areas, and it allows water!).  It felt wonderful to be back in a library again.

– I had tea and lunch in a nice sandwich shop on Saturday, and I treated myself to full afternoon tea (with the sandwiches, scones, cakes, and all things cute) yesterday.  I love tea, and it was great to settle in with a pot and a hard copy of my article to wrestle with language and meaning in such a cozy environment.

– Sydney took Nathaniel one of the nights, so I got to sleep through the night for the first time since September.  I holed up downstairs, in our livingroom, and when I woke up in the morning, I realized that 1) I was awake earlier than everyone else 2) I could just get up and make tea if I wanted to 3) I could even leave the house. It was marvelous.

– I took a nice three-mile walk by myself every morning, before everyone else was awake.  It is cold in Oxford this week, so I got to enjoy weather that would give me pause if I had the kids.  A heavy frost made every tree, twig, and blade of grass stand out like crystal.  A wonderful way to start the day.

– On Saturday, after a long day in the library, I stopped by New College for an evensong service.  We have been struggling to find a church home since we arrived in Oxford, but this may well be a good source of church time for me if I can go on a regular basis.  New College has a renowned choir, and I loved the liturgy and the time for quiet prayer and reflection, even if I was a bit confused.  I was  reminded of a time that seems very long ago now: the evensong services I attended during college with Lauren and Sydney, as well as the Episcopalian church that Sydney and I attended when we were at Yale.  Same liturgy, but a very different place and time in my life!

– I also got serious work done for the first time in several weeks.  It’s difficult to express how important that was to getting my mind right-side-up again, after a hard season of job applications and post-graduation drift.  It is great to really dig into an article, and I really made some progress.  It’s not done, but I should be able to get it finished up and sent off this week.

Erin

Sydney had a Skype interview yesterday, and we all took a deep breath when it was over.  The pressure leading up to it (and my rather desperate attempts to keep the kids quiet during it!) have taken a bit of a toll.  Last night Sydney surprised me by proposing that we each take a work-vacation of a few days this month.  The idea was that each could be gone a few days to somewhere not terribly far or terribly expensive, where it would be easier to focus on work, and the other would take care of the kids.

We both have papers to write this month, and we’re both struggling to get the juices flowing, so this seems like a great idea.  I am going to take my vacation this weekend, but I’m going to stay right here in Oxford.  I just want the chance to work in a library for long stretches, maybe have lunch in a cafe, and enjoy some uninterrupted time to wrestle with my article.  I couldn’t be more excited!  Sydney, bless him, seems game for kid-care, and even mentioned the possibility of doing laundry.

I will have a hard time finding a place to roost, since all of the libraries have short hours over the weekend, and there isn’t the cafe culture here that there is in the States, but I am coming up with quite a list of wonderful places in which to work around town, intermixed with nice walks by myself.  I hope that this opportunity will allay some of my anxieties about work and, frankly, give me some time to peel myself away from my rather clingy little ones so that I can restore my patience and energy.  I will be more than happy to reciprocate, since I know Sydney has a lot on his plate this month, but I am extremely grateful that he let me go first!

Erin