Thoughts and Words Ill-Sorted

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

I’m working in the living room, Katherine is in her crib on the middle floor, and Sydney is working on the top floor, with Nathaniel stretched out next to him, asleep.

But the whole house is filled with “Eee–iii—ee–oooo.  And on that farm . . . Happy Birthday to you . . . Hop, little bunnies!”  Sydney send me an email that reads, “at what age do you think Katherine will realize that singing involves the occasional piano, even pianissimo, passage?”  She has been belting every song she knows for the past hour-and-a-half.  Clearly there will be no sleeping Katheirne during naptime today.

I only just refrained from reminding Sydney that my gospel choir started up again this week, and I’m going to be singing lots of crazy stuff (at high volume!) all around the house, so it can only get worse 🙂

Erin

I thought that, once you become a parent, all parents would look alike.  Some would be more or less frazzled or stylish, depending on the temperament of both parents and children, and some would opt for noisy toys and others for wooden ones from Scandinavia, but the basic dynamic would be the same in all cases.  When I take the kids to playgroups, though, I see a difference between parents of one child and those of two or more.  Undoubtedly those who have more than two (3, 4, and beyond!) notice their own differences (anyone care to share?), but I don’t see as many parents in that range, and I’m not one myself, so I can’t speak to those.  And I’m sure the same can be said for parents with children at other ages; our neighbors have a daughter who is sixteen, and I am occasionally bowled over by the sight of them on the street: walking along, holding hands, no progeny in sight.  It’s incredible to me, since it will be a long time before Sydney and I can do that.

What I do see is that the doting of parents who have one child is different from those who are outnumbered.  When I go out with my kids, the parents (often mothers, though not always) of one child are always right there, interacting, proffering jackets, and making the most of every learning opportunity.  I recently saw one mother teaching her daughter to do cartwheels–by doing them herself (I wonder if I could do that without falling?).  Sometimes I long to be that parent again.  Things were frenetic with just Katherine (a force unto herself, I must say!), but I did occasionally find the time to do long-term planning with her, arranging for day adventures out and learning activities and lots of fun.  But it’s a bit like the shift from baby to toddler: when I meet a mom with a small babe in tow, we smile, but we can’t really relate, since her child is sleeping and mine . . . well, mine never are, and they’re inevitably both on the move, in opposite directions.

I wouldn’t say I’ve given myself up to chaos, but I’m often not up for talking with other moms, since it’s already difficult enough to divvy my attention between the two kids.  I am one of the few non-nannies in some playgroups, but I feel like I should wear a shirt that says: “She is friendly and will not bite, but please do not feed, pet, or distract the mother when she is working.”)  During the singing time today I let Nathaniel roam a bit while I helped Katherine play along, and I saw panicked looks on some mothers’ faces as they held their child in their laps and wondered why such a little man was on his own.  But I can only hold one kid at a time, and roaming won’t hurt him; other times it’s Katherine who is across the room while I tickle Nathaniel or help him navigate a new skill.

What I have learned to do is to find “quiet” in the shift from one child to another.  When Katherine’s bouncing off the walls it’s sometimes nice to turn to my little guy to give him a squeeze and a cuddle before I dive back into discipline and distraction.  And when he’s doing the I’m-going-to-cry-until-I-get-fed act, it’s great to turn to Katherine with a conspiratorial smile and slip her a snack as I run to his rescue.  On very rare occasions I see them playing together, completely oblivious to my presence, and I get a tiny glimpse of what the future might hold.  But those moments are short, and then I get to decide whether to first admonish or comfort when the peace breaks.

Erin