Thoughts and Words Ill-Sorted

Last week a friend asked if Sydney and I subscribe to any particular parenting methodology.  That gave me some pause, since I don’t doubt that we have particular goals in our minds, even if they don’t fall neatly under particular branded parenting philosophies.  So far our style is pretty easy to tell: we like to feed Katherine what we eat (excepting, perhaps, her father’s ice cream and her mother’s chocolate bars!), we prefer to backpack our kids rather than stroller them (although, now that we have two and city errands to run, a stroller is key), and we’re not keen on filling our house with lots of toys (since I spent half of my babysitting years picking up piles of toys).

But much of the parenting thus far has come as a response to Katherine’s needs.  She responded positively to the backpack, allowing me to get out of the house when I felt like a crazy new mother.  She preferred the spicy foods that we enjoy to any of the bland baby products out there, and she quite clearly cut me off breastfeeding when she wanted to move on.  Even now we make two plates for dinner: one for Sydney, and one that I share with Katherine.  She will eat a far, far greater range of things if we’re eating them together than if I’m feeding her on her own.  And she is somewhat ho-hum about toys, seeming happiest when we’re out and out in the town or at the park–or deep into the kitchen cupboards, cooking for real or for pretend.  Ithaca-style discipline doesn’t seem effective for our sturm-und-drang kid, so we’re having to try other things, including physical restraint, spanking, and time-outs.  I have to wonder what our “parenting style” will look like with regard to Nathaniel, who is currently a creature of a very different mold, and how we will respond to the children as individuals without seeming to raise them in two completely different households.

Setting aside my curiosity about whether we have a parenting style or whether the particular child necessitates a particular parenting style, I do have a number of goals for my kids, a list that has been growing as they grow.  I’ll list some of the things I have thus far, but I would be glad to hear of suggestions from you, since you are all people we respect, ones who know us well, and who might want to remind us something we forgot or get us to think about something we overlooked.  And I’m curious to know what’s on your list for your families (current or future).  This list isn’t exhaustive (God-fearing children, for example, is a high priority), but more likely represents things I’m afraid will get left out when life gets busy, and are things I would like to characterize our family.

– I would love for our kids to be in the kitchen with us, watching us cook, cooking with us, and, eventually cooking on their own.  How we eat is really important, and it seems that nearly all of my friends and classmates left the nest not knowing how to feed ourselves, how to set a grocery budget, or even what cooking avenues we might make into strengths of our own.  Though, to our credit, we’re figuring it out.  I knew several fantastic female philosopher bakers, and one classmate of mine got a KitchenAid mixer upon getting her degree–an acknowledgement of what she did to get through her tough work times.  When I was living on my own for the first time in college, desperately trying to cook decent meals for myself after work but a bit overwhelmed by everything that involved, a friend invited me over for dinner.  Her easy generosity (being able to invite someone at the drop of a hat, without making it seem a big deal) and agility in the kitchen left me with a new respect–and something to shoot for.  I would like our kids to be competent at cooking and find their cooking niches, so that they really do leave home knowing how to start their own lives.  Not to mention that, as I am finding out, a good home really is made better if there are two good cooks in it, so it’s best not to wait around to find the perfect spouse or roommate in order for your kitchen to get some use.  I am by no means the world’s best cook, and I can’t even say that it’s the thing I like best (since it’s the first thing to go when I get busy), but I decided several years ago that it was going to become a hobby of mine, whether I liked it or not, since I like to eat and since it’s such a huge part of life I would be stupid to ignore it and continue hobbling my way through mealtimes for the rest of my life.  So this desire is my version of “I would like our family to eat dinners together.”

– I would also like our kids to think of our family as an active one, with lots of family hikes, gardening, and long walks.  Everyday interaction with nature is important to my happiness, and to Sydney’s, and I’m guessing that Katherine’s energy will find its best outlet in good old-fashioned tuckering out outside.  I hope that being outside and active will be such a natural part of our kids’ lives that they keep up those rhythms after leaving home, exploring new places on foot and taking for granted that they will get to know a new country by the quality of its soil.  I also realized the other day how fortunate I am to have grown up in a community in which girls were very active in sports, whether or not you were a particularly gifted athlete (well done, Midwest!).  Now, many years after leaving those teams behind, I am surprised at how those early lessons in knowing my own strength and extension have served me in everyday situations.  I like to play pick-up volleyball games with Sydney’s community when we go home, and I don’t want to run after a stray soccer ball in the parks here without knowing that I have the ability to make a good toss or kick back to the much more fit college students.

– The third thing that stands out to me is the desire that we work together as a family.  Cleaning, fixing, moving, whatever needs done.  That our kids work by our sides in the normal, everyday aspects of life and therefore learn 1) how to work with others 2) that work is a natural part of family life 3) that their parents are not their servants 4) how to take care of things for when they have a home or life of their own.

(I’m going to take for granted here that our kids will grow up with music and books.  I know they may well introduce their own hobbies into our family, but I’m hoping that they will submit to their environment in accepting these two hobbies/obsessions of their parents).

Erin

This morning I was escorting Katherine up to the top floor to play, since Nathaniel was sleeping in her crib.  As we climbed past the first floor Katherine turned to me, put her finger up to her lips, and said, “Thhhhh.  Baby ‘leeping.”  I can’t believe I just got shushed by my toddler.

Erin

P.S. Her memory must be short: she was soon making whooping noises of her own, heedless of any sleeping baby.

Lisa brought shirts for the kids when she visited this week.  Perhaps she knew that neither Sydney nor I have loyalties to particular sports teams, so our kids were up for grabs!  Can you guess her hometown?  Katherine modeled both shirts with appropriately windblown hair:

And some really cute clothes arrived in the mail from Jim and Maryann.  Thank you!!  Nathaniel is particularly grateful, since I was still squishing him into his 6-month clothes, and he was wondering how much he would have to grow for me to go shopping.  They included a teether and bib in the package, and I thought, “Oh, surely not for awhile.”  But just in the past few days Sydney has started commenting on Nathaniel’s drool and crazed chewing on fingers and hands.  We’re still a bit scarred from Katherine’s teething, so we aren’t quite ready for another round!

Katherine has just mastered “orange” and “monkey” (okay, okay, for the latter she just makes monkey sounds), so she’s really keen on this outfit.  All day long I heard “boo cah” and “ooownge car” and “ooh ooh ooh ah ah ah.”  No wonder the little guy finds her a bit alarming.

I also gave Katherine her first haircut.  Slippery toddler in the tub, scissors, and far too much movement.  But we all survived.  I just trimmed the back a bit until the rest of her hair grows out, but the recent warm weather has brought out the curl, so it looks short all-around.

“There was a little girl who had a little curl right in the middle of her forehead.  When she was good . . . “

Erin

Eight months into our English experience, Oxford feels very much like home.  That is particularly odd to me because 1) I don’t have a job that ties me to the town or to the university 2) we haven’t made a lot of friends yet, much less any that aren’t American or Canadian 3) we haven’t gone to any concerts or enjoyed many of the museums or other cultural riches on offer 4) the college system here, with its porters and closed gates, does mean that more than half of the town is closed to visitors 5) a large share of any of the people you see on the street are not part of the town at all, but tourists from Japan, Russia, France, or Spain.  I’m surprised to find myself loving the languages on the streets, both those I know and those I don’t.  And, for the record, American accents are pretty common here.

I’m realizing that I feel fiercely loyal to and nostalgic for places where I’ve done a lot of walking.  I don’t think of my hometown in Iowa, per se, but rather of the back roads that I walked, ran, and biked as a teen.  I remember routes from my college to my department or other points around the university when I was in New Haven, with favorite benches along the way, and the long, tree-lined, uphill walk to the divinity school, where I would meet Sydney after work on Fridays.  And Cornell has two places in my brain: the on-campus routes from car to department to library, and the long, curved country walk I would take several times a week from our house, down the steep hill, across the meadow (both gorgeous and, in winter, breezy), past the horses, the sheep, and the trailer park, and back again.

Here we walk everywhere, and my love of country is mitigated by my appreciation for a life where I can walk to groceries, parks, work, etc.  All of the jobs to which I’ve applied have meant short, interesting walks around town, some just a few blocks away, and some as far as a mile-and-a-half.  We’ve already learned that the hospital involves a nice walk through the parks and suburbs, with the occasional horse or cow and meadow.  Longer family walks take us up the path along the canal to Port Meadow, or down to Christ Church Meadow, where there are lots of open spaces and old, old trees along the paths.  Not to mention that I love being in a place that has paths: a place where walking is part of the culture, and not just something you do for exercise.  And it’s hard to overestimate the role of the university parks, a five-minute walk from our house, a place where I can take the kids for a picnic or a stroll, where I walk with Nathaniel most mornings.  It’s filled with more kinds of trees than I will likely ever learn, but each month or so the change of seasons highlights a new one that I hadn’t noticed before.  I still hope to become integrated with the university life, to visit the museums, and, good grief, to go to a few concerts, but even without those things I’m finding a lot of wonderful things about our current home.

Erin

Yesterday we took a long family walk up Port Meadow, with more naan tucked in the bottom of the stroller and a telescope in Sydney’s backpack for birdwatching.  When we got to the meadow we were hailed by a guy carrying a radio.  He greeted Sydney with “What do you see?”  Sydney replied with “Dunlin,” and the guy nodded and replied by telling us that if we looked up to the east we should see an “Ascot” soon.  I assumed that the former was a bird, but it took me awhile to realize that the latter was a plane.  Turns out that this guy watches planes and listens in on the radio to track the trajectories of the various aircraft in this part of England.  The radio crackles were full of numerical codes for various towns, near and far, all of which this guy knew.  We parted ways at the top of the meadow, and Sydney told me that the guy was at the meadow pretty much any evening Sydney was there, and seemed to spend all of his free time walking and listening on the meadow–which was, apparently, used as a runway during WWII.

Today, on another family walk we walked the loop around Christ Church Meadow, and I admired a large, beautifully shaped tree near the path.  Sydney wasn’t able to nail down an identification for me, but we spent some time inspecting it a bit more closely.  As we started to walk on we were addressed by a wizened old lady who was sitting on a bench a ways away from us, surrounded by what I had thought was knitting or the newspaper.  Turns out that she not only knew the tree (a kind of elm), but she also knew the scientific name for the tree and all of its “relatives” around town.  It is apparently 200 years old.  She then showed me what we was working on: a detailed drawing of one of the other trees along the walk.  And she pulled out a dogeared sketchbook full of botanical names and descriptions of trees, and her drawings of them.  She said she’s writing a book of the trees of the colleges, and, when she learned Sydney was at Merton, immediately rattled off the name of one of the trees in the college’s courtyards and its elaborate history.  Fascinating, if a bit hard to understand in her heavy Russian (?) accent.  If the kids had not needed us to get home I could have spent quite a bit of time hearing about the trees of the town from her.

Erin

The sniffles quickly escalated into full-blown colds in the kids, and I’m now coming down with it, too.  Nathaniel just gives cute little croaks, but Katherine knows that something is wrong and sobs around the house, “Ow, ow, ow.”  I feel your pain, honey.

Dinner, however, was great.  Our friends were very easygoing, and the four kids were very entertaining; Katherine had one a year older than her and one a year younger, so she had great playmates.  We had salads, naan, a rhubarb-lentil curry, and cream-cheese stuffed apricots topped with pistachios.  Plus a walk in the parks.  We are really sad that it’s a farewell dinner, though.  Something tells me we’ll be having a lot of those in our academic lives.

Erin

We’ve been very lucky to have a number of friends swing by our place in their travels.  One of my college roommates, Courtney, happens to be finishing up her philosophy Ph.D. here, one of Sydney’s colleagues from Cornell, Flora, is spending the semester in Oxford and will be returning next year for a stint in London, and several of Sydney’s former professors have appointments here and have been very kind about having us over and cooing over the kids.  David visited us in April, and Lisa, my roommate and bridesmaid, will be spending the day with us next week.  We’re hoping to see more of Lisa since she’s just taken a position in Switzerland for the next few years.  It’s not England, but by our new standards it’s practically our backyard!  It’s great to have so many friends from home pay us a visit, particularly since our travel is now ruled less by affection and whim than by serious planning and three intercontinental (i.e., expensive) plane tickets.

Tonight we’re having dinner with Kevin and Allison and their two young children.  They’re from the States but have been in England this past year while Kevin is on a fellowship.  They leave at the end of the week, however, to return home to Idaho to resume normal life.  They have really made use of their time here, visiting numerous countries with their kids in tow; we hope that their sense of adventure rubs off on us!

Erin

We are struggling to keep up with the little ones while getting very little sleep.  We went from a cold a few weeks ago straight into a growth spurt.  Nathaniel has gained more than a pound and a whole lot of development–but he is also not sleeping more than a couple of hours at a time at night.  Katherine has grown, too, with dresses that were mid-calf now just touching the tops of her knees.  And now both kids have sniffles that are affecting their sleep.

Since my eyes balk at screens and books right now and neither Sydney nor I has the mental power for any big thoughts, work has slowed to a crawl.

Not that interesting of news, I know, which is why things have been quiet.

BUT

This evening I decided, on a whim, to try making peshwari naan, my favorite Indian flatbread, with coconut and raisins in the middle.  I had assumed you needed a big clay tandoor and all sorts of fancy equipment.  Turns out all you need is some flour and a super-hot oven.  So now I have a big stack of oddly shaped naan ready to be heated up for company tomorrow evening.  And, despite the frustrations of trying to cook with two little critters who only seem to need something once my hands and arms are full of flour, I’m quite happy that I managed to reproduce one of my favorite foods.  It really does taste like the ones I’ve had in restaurants!

Erin