Thoughts and Words Ill-Sorted

We have been pretty focused on getting work done and keeping children happy around here.  But this week our world suddenly got quite a bit more complex.  On Tuesday we’re planning to visit the American Embassy in London in order to get Nathaniel registered as an American citizen and get the process started for a passport.  We hope to keep things simple and not plan a big London visit, but we’ll probably stroll through Kensington Gardens and Hyde Park to unwind after the embassy appointment.  And then I’m going to return to the UK Border Agency and try to figure out whether we need a visa or other paperwork to travel with Nathaniel.  I’m planning to visit my parents in a couple of months, and Sydney’s parents may be going with us on European adventure, so we need to make sure we can bring Nathaniel back into the country!

This morning I picked up a foam mattress cover that was advertised by another temporary Oxford resident.  When I picked it up I recognized her from a recent chat in our doctors’ waiting room.  She and I laughed at her shirt, which said “New York City” (she’s actually from the West Coast), and which she bought in town here recently.  Ah, the ex-pat life.  Oh, and our bed is far, far more comfortable now.  Thank goodness!  It was worth walking the mile home with the rolled up foam, through a field of pink-wearing, cancer-fundraising female runners (pink socks, pink shirts, pink tutus, pink hair ribbons, pink dog sweaters) on a day that’s in the 80’s.

Erin

Nathaniel and Katherine are just starting to get to the point where they’re interacting.  It’s fascinating to watch.  She is thrilled when he looks in her direction and gets ecstatic if he tosses in a smile “‘miling!  baby!  ‘miling!”  She shrieks when he cackles, and mimics his grunts.  She also imitates his crying when he’s upset (that’s what we needed: more crying), looks concerned, and interrogates us: “‘happy?  baby ‘happy?”  If she listens to my replies she’s going to spend the rest of her life saying, “UNhappy.  UN. HA. PEE.”

Today both little ones went on a sleep strike.  They’ve been pretty terrible sleepers for a little while, but today there was just no napping.  Nathaniel had me up for good, hours before my 8:30 doctor appointment, and only had a couple of ten-minute cat naps to get him through the day.  It was maddening.  Katherine, meanwhile, “entertained” me for hours when she was supposed to be napping, reciting all of the songs she knows, identifying the colors of various objects around the room, and counting her toes (“One.  Two.  One.  Two.  One.”).  When he cried she started jabbering at him from the other room, trying to offer comfort.  When she cried he just cried in response.  With this kind of team effort they’ll have us killed off in no time!

Erin

Here’s a chart depicting the drop in crime rates in the U.S. in recent years:

Quite striking, isn’t it? The drop of the last few years is especially interesting, since usually crime rates spike during recessions.

Lots of theories have been proposed to explain the drop over the last two decades. Here’s an interesting one: A researcher from Amherst College has looked at childhood lead exposure rates and crime rates — making use of the fact that different states have different lead exposure histories — and concluded that phasing out leaded gasoline was responsible for a 56% decline in violent crime from 1992 to 2002.

How? Leaded gasoline was the main source of lead exposure from the 1950s through the 1970s, 90% of children in the 70s had lead levels in their blood that would cause concern today, even minute childhood exposure is linked to aggressive and violent behaviour, but in 1974 the EPA mandated a timetable for the removal of lead from gasoline. The result? A 99% reduction in gasoline lead exposure by 1990.

Why did the crime rates only go down in the 1990s if the phasing out of leaded gasoline started in the 1970s? Because toddlers aren’t the ones committing crimes, even if they’ve been poisoned by lead. Rather, 20-year-olds who were exposed as young children commit the crimes. Hence the lag time. (If you have the appropriate institutional arrangements, you can read more here.)

Oh, and by the way, we already knew about the dangers of lead in gasoline back when it was introduced in the 1920s. But oil companies decided profits were more important.

I’ll leave you with a closing quotation from one of the esteemed presidential candidates of the United States of America, Michelle Bachmann: “What we need to do is pass the mother of all repeal bills … And I would begin with the EPA, because there is no other agency like the EPA. It should really be renamed the job-killing organization of America.”

This article (http://www.slate.com/id/2296644/) pokes a bit of fun at yuppie lovers of good-for-you foods, particularly in their most faddish forms.  It points to a lot of the foods that we got used to, living in hippie-Ithaca.  The article made me laugh because Sydney and I have been drinking redbush tea for several years.  One of the good-for-you elements this article forgets to mention: it’s caffeine-free, a great thing for those of us trying to limit our caffeine, particularly when pregnant and/or breastfeeding.  Oh yes, and it’s not bitter, good for those who aren’t keen on either coffee or green tea.  Thus far it isn’t expensive, either.  What’s not to like?

Erin

Out of necessity, Sydney and I have been “covering” for each other a bit in the past few weeks.  He helped me carve out time to prepare for a job interview, and now it’s my turn to help him find time for a laundry list of things as the term and academic year wind down (end of term here is later than in the States; we finish up in about a week).

When I resurfaced from interview notes and sample teaching demonstrations I found a husband who looked a bit worn: scruffy, sleepy, with one arm around Nathaniel and the other hanging onto the book Katherine wanted him to read.  Now that it’s my turn I’m probably going to join him in the scruffy, sleepy, worn department.  For now we’re taking for granted that heavy two-kid time will result in some wear and tear on the parent in charge.  Maybe we’ll get better at this, but for now we find it exhausting!

So far I’m doing well: I’ve run to the grocery store twice and have the fridge stuffed with lots of food to get us through the next couple of days.  I want to make sure we get out a lot and enjoy the long evenings available to us this time of year.  But both kids have decided to stop sleeping well, so we’ll see how I fare.  Nathaniel must be doing some serious growing: he gets pretty unhappy if he isn’t fed every hour-and-a-half or so, day and night.  Katherine is starting to make him smile, though, and today she played with him very nicely while I cooked: ten whole minutes of smiling, pushing him gently in the swing, and patting his head before her impatience came tumbling out and she tried more “enthusiastic” swinging.

Erin

I’m probably jumping the gun a bit, but I’m already looking forward to the dissertation defense in late September/early October.  The addition of a second small child and a transatlantic flight have made my getting to Ithaca to defend a bit more of a logistical dance than I’d expected: I’m planning to visit my parents for several weeks prior to the defense and may leave both kids there while I fly to Ithaca and back.  Sydney may or may not be going for any or all of this adventure, since tickets aren’t cheap and he may have other duties here.  At the moment I’m trying to keep my head down and focus on the remaining writing, but I couldn’t help but allow myself to order some “fun” reading from Amazon to be sent to my parents’ house.

Books along the themes of my dissertation (grief, mourning, and elegy):

– Joyce Carol Oates, A Widow’s Story: A Memoir

– Joan Didion, A Year of Magical Thinking

– Roland Barthes, Mourning Diary

Books by recent Cornell classmates from the writing program whose novels are making a big splash:

– Tea Obreht, The Tiger’s Wife

– Alexi Zentner, Touch

A collection of short stories (I’m a sucker for inter-related short stories) recommended by a colleague:

– Erika Dreifus, Quiet Americans

And, finally, a writer whose short stories were admired by both Faulkner and Woolf, and whose influence can be felt in their own stories:

– Anton Chekhov, Stories of Anton Chekhov

Your guess is as good as mine as to whether I’ll actually get to finish any of these books during my stay (while taking care of little ones, preparing for a defense, and visiting old haunts and friends), but at the moment I’m feeling optimistic.

Erin

Nathaniel had me up early, but then finally settled in for an hour-long nap before I had to get up.  Good snuggling.

I was out the door for an interview at one of the colleges, in suit, heels, and pearls.  No job, but some great contacts for the future and a really fun half-hour talking literature and pedagogy.

Back home to sprawl with family in bed at the top of the house, Katherine and Nathaniel wiggling all around us.  Man, that little girl has pointy knees, elbows, and feet.

Kids in bed for a nap, and I made popcorn topped with butter, cinnamon, cumin, paprika, and a bit of sugar.  It was delicious.  We bought popcorn before we realized that it’s a choking hazard for kids of K’s age, so I’m now working my way through it over lunches while Sydney eats in college.

Out with the kids to run errands, including getting passport photos for Nathaniel.  “Official” photos of babies are a riot, since the trick is to keep both drool and the parent’s hands out of the picture as the baby is hoisted aloft.  We head to the embassy in London in a couple of weeks to get his passport and citizenship papers taken care of.

A walk with the kids in the park, with Katherine alternately catching a ride, “helping” push the stroller, and running to catch up anytime I left her behind.  We passed fragrant trees, luminous white flowers, horses grazing, and we walked right past (no intervening fence) some large black cows that had either broken out or were in a new grazing area–right on one of the major walking paths in Oxford.  The English and their cows . . .

Evening time with the kids while Sydney was away for a dinner.  I was wielding a screwdriver, fixing the lamp, while singing my way through K’s repertoire.  She has a book of kids’ songs and she flips from one page to another, commanding me to sing particular selections with a firmly-pointed finger.

Finally N’s asleep, and I’m headed there soon.  But a quick bit of reading as I start my final read-through of my fourth chapter before sending it off.  This one has been a bit of a pain, not coming together like I’d like, but it’s time to get on with things and see if it look different when I encounter it again in my rewrites.

Erin

After watching much of North America wilt under heat waves in the past week I’m wondering if we will survive our trips home.  Our warm weather earlier this spring has given way to mid-sixties days that, though lovely, have me wearing more socks and cardigans than sandals and skirts.  England is also apparently experiencing something of a drought, so we probably shouldn’t assume that our sunny days are representative of normal English weather.

Erin

I sincerely hope that I don’t sound like this when I read aloud.  Surely my students would have mentioned it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5OxcqK9Ui3o

And Nathaniel, asleep.  I have to say, we haven’t seen a lot of that recently.  Given how he goes after all things that might fit in his mouth, we have to wonder if there aren’t teeth coming in.  Is the honeymoon over?

Erin