Thoughts and Words Ill-Sorted

Katherine and I walked with Nathaniel to the grocery store the other day, leaving the stroller at home.  I was glad I took the backpack, since he needed to be carried part of the way, but for a long time he and Katherine walked hand-in-hand down the street.  I think he really enjoyed his experience, since he’s been playing “grocery store” ever since.

The kids have been spending a lot of time out in the garden since the weather warmed up, which has been a great help to us.  We have to break up a lot fewer fights if they can roam the yard while we cook.

Sydney showing Katherine an unusual butterfly:

Erin

We’ve been working on all fronts recently, trying to get things prepared for our arrival in Kentucky, trying to wrap up research projects, and trying to make the most of our last bit of relatively stable time as a family.  We know all too well that once the kids get on the airplane in early June, they’re not going to come back down and behave normally again until sometime this fall.  So I’m pushing the fresh veggies and the “yes, please” and “no thank you” language in preparation for a yogurt/fruit/bread-filled summer of wildness with them.

I’ll spare you the blow-by-blow of my packing efforts, but I recently had the chance to combine a few items on our to-do list when I left the house with a copy of an article I needed to revise and headed to a wonderful little bed-and-breakfast called The Parsonage.  They serve the best afternoon tea, and I did the whole thing: the finger sandwiches, the cakes, the scones, and the big pot of house tea.  Thankfully, everything was small, but it was wonderful to work my way through such delicious snacks as I pushed through the first several pages of my article.  I did the same thing about six months ago when I was up against another tricky project, and, I have to say, I’m really going to miss a good afternoon tea when working at my desk or in a library just isn’t cutting it.  I cut through the University Parks on my way home and saw a game of cricket on my left and one of croquet on my right, just to complete my Perfectly English afternoon.

Erin

One of the few things we haven’t been able to fit in during our time in Oxford is a trip to the nearby Wytham Woods.  An old forest with many, many species of birds and butterflies, and trails and paths throughout: it seemed perfect for us.  So, Sydney finally found a way to get us there via public transportation, and we made a day of it today.  Both kids were cranky after a rough night, and they didn’t seem impressed by the woods.  So they spent the first hour making us regret coming–and that was before Nathaniel defied Sydney by burying his face in a patch of stinging nettles and yowling once he realized why Sydney had warned him away.

But things improved rapidly.  Nathaniel took a surprise nap, and the rest of us were able to settle in and enjoy the walk in peace.  With plenty of snacks and water, we had a great time.  It is just the sort of place that we like, and it is tricky with small children who have limited attention spans and stamina.  But on days like today I can see those kinds of walks re-entering our lives.  I made both kids walk a good mile or more at the end of the walk, which secured their docility on the bus ride home (“Oh, such peaceable children!” said the elderly lady sitting nearby).  Did I mention that today is also the first truly sunny day in months?

Erin

We confirmed this week that the kids will be able to attend a day care down the street from Asbury on week-day afternoons.  We’ll also be renting a house from the university, so from the house to my office to the day care is less a half-mile walk.  We’re doing well on the live-local front!  I am looking forward to keeping some things simple as we adjust to a new country, new jobs, and new community.

This morning the kids helped me make pumpkin rice pudding, so we counted in the eggs in the following manner:

Nathaniel: “One!”

Erin and Katherine: “One.”

“Two!  Three!”

“Two.”

“Four!  Five!  Six!”

“Three.”

“Seven!  Nine!”

“Four.”

And so on.  He was up to twelve or thirteen by the time I got to nine.  I was reminded of the way I used to rattle off numbers when my mom was counting out cups of flour when I was a kid: “One, Two, Four, Seventy-Seven!  Six, four, three-and-a-half!”  I was trying to annoy her, but here I think Nathaniel was just impatient with my slowness.

Erin

Sydney’s a bit skeptical that I will pull off all of the things we have planned for this summer.  I don’t blame him for the skepticism, but I’m like a kid in a candy store who can’t bear to set anything down.

This week a friend of mine who is a writer let me read one of her novel manuscripts.  It was wonderful!  Even better?  She said she’s currently reworking it, so the version I thought was great is going to get even better.  I can’t wait to see it.

I also got in the mail this morning a CD of the music from the concert Sydney and I attended last week, as part of our date night.  When people are lined up all around the quad of the biggest college in Oxford, and these are people who already bought tickets, you know it is going to be good.  Like most people there, we were sitting off to the side of the singers, tucked into the wings of the massive cathedral, so we did what everyone else did: listen and look up to enjoy the beauty of the cathedral.  This is what it looks like in the day, but you can imagine how it looks at night, lamp-lit:

Erin

Okay, one trip to the emergency room: kids will be kids.  But now we’ve had a second.  Does that move us to “danger! danger!” territory?  This morning, while I was up early, sauteeing leeks in my pajamas for our lunch with a new family, Nathaniel walked into the kitchen crying, with blood trickling down his forehead.  He had apparently tried copying Katherine, who was jumping from a small table onto the couch.  I gather that Nathaniel, who has been accident-prone all week, missed the couch and hit the radiator.

After I got a good look at the cut, I realized he’d need stitches, so in about ten minutes I’d called Sydney down, called a taxi, and he took over cooking (five minutes after getting up) while I whisked Nathaniel to the emergency room.  He’ll be fine, and the emergency-room people were very nice to him as they glued his cut shut (they even gave him a teddy bear to take home), but I’m feeling a bit traumatized.  This happened while I was on duty!

Nathaniel and I got home just after our company arrived, and we found Sydney gamely entertaining after pulling off all the cooking in my absence.  I can only imagine how the scene must look to our visitors, a family with one child, and that one just a year old.  We really are a bunch of hooligans!  Now I’m trying to figure out whether I should pledge not to do any dishes or anything that involves taking my eyes off the kids, or whether I just need to do more praying as I work in the kitchen.  While I’m sorting that out, I’m sure the kids will grow and change and we’ll move on to another phase, but I really can’t say I like seeing my little guy all banged up.

Erin

After a few days of wondering what I’ve gotten myself into for the summer (so many projects, so much traveling, and so little time), I am feeling quite happy with things here in Oxford.  To be perfectly honest, I’ve finally gotten some article revisions going after having them haunt me for several months, and that has done a great deal to make me feel fabulous.  I know: nerd heaven.  But we have several things going on this week that would make even normal people happy:

– Tomorrow, April 10th, is Katherine’s birthday.  She’ll be four years old!  She has requested blueberry muffins for her birthday (hey, can’t argue with that), and we happen to have invited another family over for lunch that day, too, so the house should feel quite festive.  Katherine is keen to meet and look after the toddler who will be joining us, and she’s already started lecturing Nathaniel about being careful around the baby.

– On Friday I’ll be having a pair of Asbury students over for tea.  I met one of them last week, and really enjoyed the chance to talk Asbury, Oxford, and literature.  I don’t usually bake for my students, but you can’t really have English tea without a good scone or some other baked good, so we’ll see what I can come up with.

– On Saturday, Sydney and I have tickets to an early-music concert by a great group called The Sixteen.  The concert will be held in Christ Church Cathedral, or, the rather grand Oxford college in which the Harry Potter movies were filmed.  Even more significantly, it will be a date!  One of very few in our house!

Erin

We’re having company later this week, so I thought I would hide some of the moving boxes we have sitting in our living room (the first flush of the work to come!).  I, ahem, had a bit of trouble lifting the boxes onto the freezer, and, in addition to worrying that that meant the boxes were closer to 80 pounds than the 70 they’re supposed to be, I thought, “Oh, no!  Has living in England made me soft?  Or is getting closer to professordom made me feeble?  How on earth are we going to move house this summer if I can’t carry my beloved book collection?”

Maybe I’ll need to invent some games in which I pick up the kids (33 and 43 pounds) more often, just to get me in shape for the move.  Sad, but perhaps quite entertaining for them.

Erin

Nathaniel doesn’t like the song to end, thus the unhappy expression and “I don’t want to” instead of “Goodnight.”

Katherine’s usually pretty reluctant to sing on demand, but this time she made it through the song without dissolving into giggles or “No!”s.

Erin

Plans for our move are coming together fairly slowly, since there are a lot of things that are up in the air and will be for awhile.  But we have arranged to rent a house from Asbury, and it’s only a block from campus.  So, while we might want to be careful about stepping out our front door when not prepared to interact with students, faculty, or anyone else we know, we should be able to make a quick dash to class when we’re running late.  And if Katherine or Nathaniel throws a hissy fit at the top of his or her lungs, we’ll know about it whether we’re at home or at work.

Erin