Passport love

I love my passport.  If it didn't feel like some sort of international crime, I would post a picture of it.  Before August my passport had a few forlorn stamps in it - now pages are crammed full of stamps due to all of my business travel.  I'm having fun watching cultural stereotypes play out on the pages of my passport.  Italian passport control officials smile, whip out the stamp, and randomly thunk it anywhere, sometimes barely on the page.  I have 'in' and 'out' stamps from Italy in all sorts of random places in the passport.  Germany passport control officials have been carefully lining up the 'in' and 'out' stamps in a tight little section on a single page.  'In' squeezed up against 'out' for one trip.  Next line, perfectly aligned in and out.  Ink evenly spread.  No mistakes.  England is in the middle - an attempt to stamp right side up, on the page, and with actual working ink, but nothing so crazy as to put the stamps on the same page.

Shall I update with each new stamp? I'm sure this is FASCINATING.

Lasterday

Here is Oliver yakking away to me....

One of my favorite terms from Oliver is "lasterday." He made this term up to describe the whole mess of days that came before yesterday. I love it and may just have to pick it up for general use. It points out that it doesn't really matter if what he's referring to happend 3 weeks ago or 1 year ago....it happened "lasterday."

Life lessons

Last night was our town's "Late Night Holiday Shopping Fayre."  The English, especially in adorable towns like ours, welcome every opportunity to spell "fair" as "fayre."  Today, FYI, is the school "Christmas Fayre."  Anyway, back to the point. Amelia learned a very important life lesson last night.  In the fishing game she (of course) earned a prize.  You could pick any of like 15 prizes.  She picked something glaringly pink called "Fashion Beauty Set" after agonizing for as long as we allowed her to agonize.  When she got home, she sat there with shoulders slumped saying "Great.  Nothing is real.  This is worthless."

So, the life lesson?

If a toy you pick out says "Design for the children all are fangled and in the high quality welcome you use our products" on the front, steer clear.  It may not be the quality you are looking for.

She got very thoughtful about it at night.  "Sometimes I feel like I imagine everything better than it turns out to be, and I'm always disappointed."  Mary gave her some really good thoughts to help her turn this around....maybe when you're older you can design toys for children that will be high-quality? 

Oliver meanwhile took about 5 seconds to pick his prize.  He got a tube of trucks and then spent every second until bedtime playing with them.  He's lucky to be apparently immune to agonizing and self-doubt so far....

Super Guinea Pig the beloved

Oliver's second best friend (after his sister) is his sidekick Super Guinea Pig.  Out of the dozens of stuffed animals he has enjoyed in his three years, most notably Bunny, Toastie-Toast, and Superbear, no one has made him burn with passion like Super Guinea Pig.  They go everywhere together.  He discovered Super Guinea Pig sitting innocently at the Berlin aquarium gift shop, where Amelia and Oliver were each allowed to pick one inexpensive gift.  Oliver's eyes lit on Super Guinea Pig and it was immediate love.

My eyes lit on Super Guinea Pig and I thought "That looks more like a hamster to me."  But Oliver was already crowing "I love Super Guinea Pig!  Can I please get Super Guinea Pig Mama, please?"  One might wonder what he saw in the scruffy little thing to indicate super powers, but he's been certain from the start that he has them. 

Super Guinea Pig looked four years old within a few days, and now three weeks later he looks 10 years old.  He sleeps with Oliver, hangs out with him during the day, goes to Nursery school with him in the afternoon, and accompanies him on adventures as you can see here:

In case you were wondering, Super Guinea Pig is strapped to the bike using one of Amelia's hair bands.  Oliver explains that Super Guinea Pig likes to pretend that he's flying...and not only that - he can shoot laser beams out of his tummy in case bad guys advance on the pair of them. 

Super Guinea Pig talks in a high squeaky voice.

Super Guinea Pig has decisively proven to me that our household is not yet ready for a small rodent pet, like, for instance, a guinea pig.  I was half toying with this idea as a holiday present for Amelia.  I would not be able to live with myself when I walked outside to find the real guinea pig frozen to death, strapped to the balance bike. 

A few more pictures.  Oliver is his own little guinea-pig-loving superpower-worshipping person.

My legs have been chopped off...

We went on a family outing to Warwick Castle this past weekend and returned with a tiny fierce knight who has chopped my legs off countless times.  He would, of course, prefer to fight a dragon or a "bad knight" but lacking those he has resorted to dismembering us.  See below for tiny fierce knight Oliver:

The trip itself was a ton of fun despite bitter cold and a depressing (for Oliver) lack of huge knight-on-knight battles raging.  Apparently they have huge castle-wide battles during spring break, so we will likely be heading back. 

The requisite children-in-stocks images:

And here is the castle from the viewpoint that can be achieved if one has climbed 530 stairs with two small children.  They both made it all the way...well, actually Oliver made it about 520 stairs and then said "Mama, my leg hurts!" at which point I hoisted him the rest of the way.  The descents though were extremely steep and dangerous, so we carried both of them and my quadriceps are still sore. 

And a final picture of the children being highly entertained by the jester, who tried a funny opener about being tall, to which Amelia dryly replied, "You're standing on stilts."  He was hilarious though and it was equally funny listening to Amelia answer his question "Where are you two from?"

Oh, and for her souvenir Amelia picked a jar of "slimy organs" from the castle dungeons and a quill.

The Great Debate

Here they are having, of course, a "lollipop party."  They got themselves dressed in these getups, which perfectly illustrate the ongoing Great Debate in our household. 

I find it extremely amusing to listen to their endless debate over whether fairies or superheros are better. They're so firmly passionate about their point of view and so derisive of the other point of view (but not of the other person). Neither of them, to their consternation, has yet proven that one can trump the other! But it's a hilarious brain vs brawn argument. Amelia thinks - why waste energy zooming around and using super strength and powers when you can simply sprinkle a little magic dust and solve the problem? Oliver thinks - why die of boredom sprinkling dust when you could fight and "do new challenges" and almost die but then WIN?


Oliver: The superhero will ZOOM through the air and BLAST the bad guys with his SUPERHERO LASTER BLASTER EYES!!
Amelia: (rolls eyes) Mmmm hmm. And the fairy, resting gently on a flower petal, will just stop him with magic.
Oliver: But he'll use his SUPERHERO SHIELD to block the fairy's magic!!
Amelia: (sighs deeply) Superhero shields don't work against fairy magic, which is the strongest magic in the world.
Oliver: But fairies aren't even REAL, they're just pretend!
Amelia: (deeply wounded) They are SO real! Superheros aren't real, they're just made up.
Oliver: (horrified) Superheros ARE REAL!

....ad nauseum.

Trip Report #3 - Berlin!

I had a work event in Berlin that was to last a week, so we tacked a family weekend on before it.  That weekend in Berlin was pretty cool timing - it was the 20th anniversary of the Berlin wall coming down.  I can't say that the kids 100% absorbed the solemnity of the occasion, but the anniversary did bring even more sights to Berlin and we all had a great time. 

Comparing Cambridge to Venice to Berlin...Berlin was the biggest and most spread-out and without question the least child-friendly.  We flipped through a guide book and found a page with the humorless warning "Germany has one of the lowest birth rates in the world.  Berlin has the lowest birth rate in Germany. This is not a city set up for children."  Thus forewarned we set off to make the most of it! 

Soon after arriving it was time for the children to be tossed about on the hotel bed.

The next morning we immediately found a neat outdoor fair, where Amelia, Oliver, and I took a tube ride down a huge temporary snow slope and then the kids found this:

We then headed off to see "the dominos" which were set up for the huge city-wide celebration Monday night.  Each domino was individually designed and there must have been thousands - we walked for a long time and only saw a fraction of them.

Oliver oddly enough was drawn to a soccer one!

We spent some time at the Jewish memorial - it was really striking.  I have to say though, moments that would have been moving were altered by having to run around after two very easy-to-lose children.

Pausing for thought at the Brandenburg Gate

We stopped for lunch on the street and of course two nice steins of beer....

Then we were off to the Reichstag - the parliament building with a gorgeous glass dome designed by architect Norman Foster.  The kids are on the top of the building, having come up all the way through the spiral ramp on the glass dome.  Note their German flag pins that they were given upon entry.  As I was admiring the view at one point I saw a group of Japanese tourists clustered around Oliver.  They were taking turns taking pictures with the quintessential little German boy, who was happy to comply. After a round of high fives for everyone he came back.

The family relfected in the dome-center mirrored cool thing (not sure of the technical name).

ACTION BOY zooming across the plaza in front of the Reichstag.

The next day we took a double-decker bus ride around the full city.  Amelia was, as usual, enthusiastic.  She loves traveling!  She had a great time changing the language on my headphones every time I turned my head.

Amelia appreciating a beautiful mosaic in the Kaiser Wilhelm church which was almost fully bombed during WWII.  We all really enjoyed the exhibit. We have established a new family ritual of each of the kids lighting a candle at every church we visit and making a wish for the world.  Amelia's tend toward the grandiose and Oliver's tend to be a touch self-centered.  Age might have something to do with it.

Final day, we went to the zoo which would have been fun but it was FREEZING and raining. Note the hats - I bought them for $2 at a cheapo stand.  They are adult sized.  The children have large heads.  Luckily the zoo had a great aquarium, so we spent the entire time there.

And...the last picture, new luggage stickers included!  They each have a Berlin sticker plus they loved the characteristic little 'walking man' guy from German crosswalk lights, so have one of those as well.

Next stop...........Paris!!

Halloween party!

Yes, Halloween was several weeks ago, but I cannot  let it slide without mentioning our Halloween party.  We treated it as a bit of a "welcome to us" party and invited all of Amelia's school mates and their parents plus other friends and a few neighbors.  This was the shocking part - we invited the entire families.  Women clustered around me at school dropoff for a few days "So....you would like all of us to come?  How....lovely!  Well, that's just so.....lovely!"  Apparently here in British townville you either have a kids party or you have an adults party and never the twain shall meet. 

We then quite enjoyed ourselves for two weeks or so, knowing that two dozen people were in a tizzy over what one should bring to a party like this that broke all the rules.  Not only was it a kids + adults party, it was also a Halloween party (which are quite rare, Halloween not being a big deal here) PLUS it was to be hosted by the two Americans.  At least we got them talking.  Mary asked casually two days before "So, how many people are coming?"  Mary now knows to never trust me with RSVP duties.  "Umm, I think somewhere between 10 and 40" I said", totally seriously.  Mary looked at me with that special look that makes me really know she loves me.  Then she sighed heavily and turned on the vaccuum.

Anyway, finally the fated day arrived. We did in fact have over 40 people in attendance, including 18 small children.  I would post a picture of all of them lined up, but I don't have all their parents' permissions.  Halloween is definitely less of a big deal here - all of the children were either witches, pumpkins, or cats.  But all totally adorable.  Mary and I had set up a table full of food with decorations, decorated around the house, and made a haunted room upstairs with creepy music,  a black light, spiderwebs, bats, and skulls.  The kids loved that room.  They also loved playing outside on the climber when it got dark with flashing lights and glowsticks - less energetic kids had a wall covered with paper, Halloween shapes, and markers to go to town artistically.

It was a ton of fun and I think we might just do it again next year! 

The two little ones ready for the party to start!

Amelia was, by her own invention, "Amelia the Newborn Fairy"

Oliver was SuperBoy Oliver.  This is his "ACTION!" pose.

Look at these adorable cupcakes Mary made!  Cupcakes are, by the way, called "fairy cakes" here.

The entrance to the spooooooky haunted house.....

You are probably wondering if Mary and I dressed up?  Why yes indeedy!  We were blonde cowgirls of course.

Cowgirl Mary holding adorable baby Theo

Amelia was lucky enough to have a sleepover with friend that night....here are the twins.

Our boy is 3 years old!

Oliver turned 3 this week.  He was looking forward to his birthday for a very long time...his parents had more mixed feelings.  I remember with Amelia feeling that the 3rd birthday was such a big deal - in fact I went on and on about it on this blog.  Chocking hazard apparently ceases abruptly at age 3 (look at toy packaging). Maturity arrives suddenly the day a child turns 3, when they are immediately welcomed into no-parent classes like soccer, gymnastics, etc.  It all seems a bit momentous. 

In this case it seems momentous in another way - I have to start to grudgingly admit that Oliver is not really my baby.  I still call him 'baby' frequently enough that the other day he said "Why do you still call me baby?"  I was able to wriggle out of it but I also may need to reasses his maturity level.  But he has chubby cheeks and loves to snuggle and is the smallest child in this family....here is my little guy clinging to a last vestige of babyhood yet somehow also attempting to look like a cool teenager.

Oliver had a great birthday.  Mary made cool cupcakes for his entire class, so he got to celebrate at school.  I came home a bit early from work so I could pick up the kids from school, and when we got home Mary had colorful balloons all over the house plus a cake prepared.  We got right down to business of Oliver opening presents!

Some highlights...

Hard at work on his very first Lego set the day before his birthday, which he LOVED

Playing with the completed pirate raft in some real water to make it more fun and messy, double bonus!

These days he's into dinosaurs, legos, and superheros. This newly-turned 3 year old can handle the ages 5-8 Lego kits just fine!  He's extremely into pretending and I've been struck by the creativity of his imagination since sometimes I pigeonhole him mentally into "active." He's very good at thinking from various points of view in a pretend scenario and he does all the voicing of thoughts and dialogue with characters (dinosaurs, lego people, planes, cars) that Amelia never did. It's fun to listen to.

Here is how the birthday boy dressed himself (with a bit of fine motor skill help) on his birthday:

Here he is swimming in the birthday balloons Mary set up for him:

Oliver's Lego situation is much improved thanks to generous friends and family!!

And finally...cake time!

There is something in the water....

See these flowers?  Someone brought them over to our Halloween party (which I haven't managed to post about yet).  When was our Halloween party? October 31st of course.  What day is it? November 19th.  These flowers look exactly the same as they did the day they were given to us.  The flowers are not fake; I actually checked after my disbelief had grown enough.

Um, so what is in the water?  Couple this with the fact that flowers are about 50% the price here vs in Seattle...and you have a very good investment. 

A new species is discovered

Oliver introduced me to this new species a couple of weeks ago, but I realized I wanted to capture it on video - so here goes. He's very into dinosaurs these days but it was really hilarious seeing him turn other things into dinosaurs.

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Crazy Oliver the blur of energy

I got to spend some quality time with my quality son today. He could not be more different in inherent interests from Amelia. It's action action action. We spent an hour outside playing "superhero pirates." He was Superhero Captain and I was Superhero Matey. We had superpowers to shoot web out of our wrists, blast fire out of our eyes, steer a ship through intense storms, and a huge dungeon on the ship into which to toss the bad guys who captured. Oliver sees nothing odd about pirates who have these powers and who regularly encounter dinosaurs, black panthers, and all sorts of land-lubbing creatures in the middle of the "sea." Plus we had to go around the garden yelling out Oliver's ever-present superhero theme song "Duh duhduhDUH duhduh DUH duh duh!!" and blasting the bad guys out of the bushes, then taking them back to the dungeon.

Then there was 45 minutes of riding his balance bike (aha Super bike with laser shooters) up and down our long street looking for bad guys and monsters. Then he was a monster for an hour whose job was a "Monster Airplane Controller" having races with his airplanes and Hyperdash game. It was sort of complicated and hard to understand.

A favorite quote today that I heard him saying to a monster who had attempted to attack him, "Thank you monster! That was a challenging attack, but I still got you!" Heh heh. Challenging.

Then I finally got him to eat when he had turned into a "Spitty Cat" (that's right, a cat who spits, awesome) by serving up "cat food." He finds it hilarious that he came up with Spitty Cat after rhyming it out from kitty cat.

Then he went in and put on a CD and he's doing this amazing dance with his "light saver" (light saber) and spinning and jumping.... and shouting...
"ACTION IN MY ENGINE!!! ACTION!!!"

My colleagues have a lot less energy....

More Teacher Appreciation commentary

One of the greatest gifts as a parent is to have a teacher who is fond of your child. I don't mean adores your child - being fond of the child is good enough for me. I am feeling so much appreciation for our teacher right now because she is genuinely fond of Amelia, and she finds her quirkiness amusing and cute in the way that you can tell she tells the stories to her boyfriend at night. This is such a huge relief as a parent when you have a child who does 'quirky' things. Amelia does many quirky things so rather than posting a 5-page long blog I will just share two from the past two days Amelia was in school:

Quirky thing #1
Miss Honke was reading the basic story of Guy Fawkes Day to the kids. She read through the story in what was, I'm sure, a child-appropriate version. She said she read past the part that mentioned that he was hung for his crimes. She was turning the page when Amelia's hand shot up. "Excuse me Miss Honke, could you please read that part again?!?" Miss Honke, telling this story, smiled warmly to me. "She's so morbid!"

Quirky thing #2
Mary picked up Amelia yesterday to find her teacher still giggling. She said that earlier that day she had said "Amelia, are you ready yet?" about something and Amelia turned and deadpan said "I was born ready." Apparently the teacher almost fell on the floor laughing. Mary said "I wonder where in the world she go that?" and Miss Honke said with a smile "Probably from one of her books!"

Dinner time pleasantries

Family dinners together are of course the stuff "happy childhood" legends are made of. Everyone sitting serenely around the table, forks/knives clinking along with gentle laugher and engaging stories.

We absolutely adhere to family dinners every night but have found it's really exhausting to have a pleasant relaxing dinner. After our "pleasant and relaxing" dinner I'm checking my watch for how soon I can reasonably start bedtime.

For one, Amelia has always been extremely tough to get specific information out of, so we built coping mechanisms a long time ago. For a while it was a deal where we each told each other the 3 most interesting or funny or odd things that happened that day. This is in fact how I discovered she had started reading - she told me she figured out how to read as her #3 one random day.

Now we (yes, this is incredibly cheesy) do what the Obama family does after reading it in an article about his family that I read to the kids around electon time - "Roses and Thorns." At dinner everyone shares their roses (good things) for the day and thorns (bad thing). This type of formulaic approach really suits Amelia as otherwise her mind goes in a million different directions and you get a sentence like this that makes you want to stab yourself in the thigh with your fork:

"Well, today I did - well actually it was like something from yesterday - or it could have been the day before yesterday because I think we had Show and Tell - and did I bring my mask back? - Oh yeah! Of course I did because I was telling Oliver - but my interesting thing - I think it was yesterday because we had ICT and when we do that some of the class goes to ICT like Lucy, Sophie, George, and Henry except this time not Henry because he was home sick today and ...."

Meanwhile the entire time she's talking in a normal tone and Oliver is, at the top of his ample lungs, while stuffing food in his mouth, going:

"Today I - Today I - Today I - TODAY I DID SOMETHING REALLY INTERESTING!!!! MAMA! LISTEN TO ME!! MISS AMELIA STOP TALKING! TODAY I - TODAY I - TODAY WAS THE DAY..."

And I am saying "Oliver, please don't interrupt your sister. OLIVER please give her a minute. Amelia, could you speed up a bit? I really want to hear what you're saying. OLIVER USE YOUR FORK. What was that Amelia? OLIVER YOUR FORK IS NOT A SPACESHIP. Amelia, honey, would you start over?"

So we use the Roses and Thorns thing, take turns, and it all goes smoothly.

The one downside being Oliver completely absolutely makes up his rose and thorn. "My thorn is that today while I was playing outside the big boy Harry saw what I was playing with and came down to the Nursery area and punched me in the stomach and then he stole my shovel and well!! So I shot him with my laser shooter....I BLASTED HIM ZEEEOO ZEEEOOZEEEOOO BAM BLOO BAM BLOOO BAM!!! and then he didn't bother me anymore but that was my thorn because I also didn't have as many marshmallows on my cupcake as sister did."

Amelia's art

The big one is improving by leaps and bounds in drawing. She started drawing at a completely average time but did so only in red for a full year (her favorite color) and with extremely ...um..."confident" strokes so everything looked really intense and unrecognizable. Things improved a bit after 4 when she grudgingly started using some other colors, but her stuff was always very easy to pick out in preschool because it was very dramatic. Very dark and scribbly. Very - loose from a reality standpoint.

So it's quite striking to see projects from her like these come home from school:




This one isn't so complex but she can describe the expression she drew on the face.

At home she has notebooks full of drawings - a train with doors and windows racing across a field, trees in the background, a sky full of hot air balloons each with one person vomiting over the edge (probably the favorite Amelia topic of all time), even cars that she draws only because she knows Oliver loves them. I'll share them when/if I remember to photograph them!

Balance bike Oliver

Oliver doesn't like his balance bike (found on sale a few weeks ago). He doesn't love his balance bike. He lives for his balance bike. If possible he would take it everywhere. We've been on 2-hour long walks with Amelia walking and Oliver riding. Luckily he's trained to patiently wait at the corners - he is very fast. He's experimenting with different techniques, like gliding with legs out or tucked in, spinning around to stop sideways, going down curbs, and attempting to go up curbs.

Here's a short 30 second video taken during a walk last weekend. We were out for 2 hours with a 10-minute break for a quick snack. For some annoying reason when I rotated this it skewed the image, so Oliver looks much shorter and fatter than he really is.

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Amelia's parent/teacher conference

I went to the PT conference last night - only 15 minutes, but I thought I'd share a little about it.

Her teacher is young, 4 years out of school. She's not as well-known by the other parents because she suffers from comparison to the Reception teacher the year before, who is apparently the kind of teacher people write books about. Oliver will have her some day! Anyway, we think she is great. There are ELEVEN kids in the class. I'm still shocked over how much individual attention each child gets. I gave her teacher a ton of positive feedback about that but even so I don't think she took much credit - she just doesn't understand why you would do anything else. She said "Well, they're all very different aren't they?" Exactly!

Some comments about Amelia:
- very confident speaking in class, absolutely loves show + tell. Really likes feeling like the 'boss' of the class during her 5 minutes (surprise, surprise)
- affectionate with friends, well-liked in the class
- has a strong sense of justice that really stands out. After hearing a story or two I took this as a euphemism for "can be overly sensitive when she feels she's been wronged." Her teacher said that Amelia recovers well when she takes the time to talk to her about what happened.
- becoming confident now in her writing. She said she was very reluctant at the beginning of the year compared to all the children who did writing last year, but now she seems to feel comfortable. She showed me examples of writing in her writing journal and I was quite amazed! Her spelling is still not a strong point but she was writing some pages full which I haven't seen at home. There was one report on a field trip they had that must have been 5 sentences
- here's a shocker: Has the best cursive handwriting in the class. Um, what?? We don't see any of this at home, where Amelia's messy print is gradually reducing in size but looks totally average. She showed me her handwriting workbook with rows and rows of beautiful script letters - b's, q's, r's, etc. Crazy.
- Reading is exceptional, her teacher is now after half-term starting up a Reading Journal for her in addition to my parent log. After each book Amelia will draw a picture and write a bit about the book. She will also continue to give her the Year 2-3 comprehension packets a few times a month. She doesn't assess Amelia's reading level since she's clearly past the Year 1-3 reading scheme, so she just lets her pick her books from the Year 3+ school library.
- Strong in math- teacher discovered how comfortable Amelia is with place value and will now be giving her the 3-digit work rather than the 1- and 2- digit work the other kids are doing. She also said "she seems to really love mental maths - I give the children questions while standing in line sometimes and Amelia seems to especially enjoy this."

She took me through her Social Studies workbook, Science, Maths, and Literacy. Each one has writing, projects, drawings, etc. Get this. EVERY SINGLE PAGE that Amelia has done has an invididual response from her teacher commenting on something she wrote, or a drawing, or engaging with her on a thought she shared. All positive. Even simple things like "Amelia, I can see that you really paid attention during the medial e lesson - your spelling is very well done. You've used 3 words with medial e." on a page where Amelia was describing her weekend.

When looking through her class work, I paid attention to the quality of the work and it's all good; in other words Amelia is taking her time and not being sloppy. She clearly loves doing it and she's getting positive feedback on an individual basis. Things like drawing 4 different kinds of houses, writing the names, and then a sentence about which she would like to live in.

Overall comment from her teacher was that she's a great kid to have in class who focuses well and only occasionally gets too excited (but always for a good reason she said). She said "the thing with Amelia is just making sure to keep her challenged." She's starting the book report journal, moving her up in maths, and giving her more reading comprehension work. Overall a good start to the second half term!

And....now I want my kids to always have 11-child classes!!!

The Dancing Queen

Amelia has never taken dance lessons and has never asked to, but she loves to move her body. For her it's not about rhythm or technique (you'll see!) but about ....yes.....interpretive dance. She really thinks she's expressing her feelings about the music while dancing.

First, some "classical" dance - to accordians in Venice!

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Then some pop music dance. Please note that Amelia has been asking me to get a few of her new favorite songs (yes, we listen to the radio sometimes now that listening to the BBC is too disturbing with her asking qusetions!). I happened to see a bunch of these favorite songs on a "Dance Party" CD at the grocery store and both kids are now in love with it.

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Coming home

I have now left England and returned from another country three times since we moved here - to Scotland, Italy, and Germany. Once with family, twice on business trips. Each time I felt like I was coming home, wearily standing at baggage claim thinking forward through the drive from the airport.

I think this is some measure of expat emotional development. Or it just confirms "Home is where the heart is."

Trip Report #2: Venice - the fun!

A little sightseeing must be done of course...

The sightseeing is of course just so that one can access the very best thing about Venice. Better than gelato? Yes of course. Better than shrimp eyes and baby octopus? Yes, better even than that. And what is this wonderous activity? PIGEONS!!

Mary is, I kid you not, The Pigeon Whisperer. Not only is the picture amusing, but the video (second part in particular) is worth a million dollars. Make sure to have sound turned on at the end.

Photo and video editing at www.OneTrueMedia.com

Poor Amelia could sit with a loaf of bread on her lap in the middle of the square and the pigeons skirted her with terror. So Mary tried to help her get closer to them. Amelia finally gave up and decided to give bread to toddlers instead. She loves toddlers.

Oliver is immortalized in the permanent digital records of approximately 65 Japanese tourists' Venice memories. They were absolutely insane for him chasing pigeons with his bear. Mary and I found it hard to get to him through all of the paparazzi.


And finally, one of our best days was spent at the Venice Biennale, which is a fantastic and massive modern art exhibition. We all fell in love with the main exhibition hall. Modern art is perfect for children - so many things to talk about and discuss. I think you can see how much they loved it.

First of all, as Mary says, Amelia's face is how everyone should look when seeing art. She was SO into this.

Another example of the exhibit - this one was fascinating and we all loved it.


Oliver and me in front of an enormous painting.

Trip Report #2: Venice - the food!

This is going to have to be a multiple-entry trip report because there is just tooo much to share. Can I take a moment to celebrate the amazing fact that we live in a place where we can pop over to Venice for a long weekend? Not to mention for an affordable long weekend?

The first trip report will focus on 1) our enthusiastic travelers and 2) our enthusiastic eaters. The kids were so happy to set off with their luggage - they played airport for the two days leading up to the trip. We kept finding Oliver's luggage in a corner somewhere filled with half of the food in the house. He explained that he needed a snack.

Here are the enthusiastic travelers ready to set off:





And returning from the trip, each proudly sporting a new Italy sticker on their luggage:





Now for the eating!

I'm not really sure how many times the little gluttons had gelato. Five? Six? Seven? It feels appropriate to not count. To their credit they tried a different flavor each time - pistachio, chocolate, strawberry, cherry, vanilla, panecotta, etc. I may have partaken a few times myself....

They were not impressed by the pizza. Mary and I ate our weight in good Italian pizza but the kids mostly abstained. They did, however, LOVE anything seafood-y that was offered to them. They ate clams, mussels, squid ink pasta, baby octopus in a million varieties, fried sardines, shrimp with heads....the list goes on.

First, the gelato-fest!









And the seafood monsters:

Amelia picked seafood soup for dinner one night (mussles, squid, fish chunks, etc):

Amelia having a delicate conversation in fish language with a fish she plans to eat later that day:

A huge pile of fried squid, sardines, and many other things:


Amelia showing off her love of eating fried shrimp eyes. Yes, that's fried shrimp EYES:

Their favorite dinner - a huge bowl of clams:








Amelia and her squid ink pasta. This is the 5 year old who scans quickly past the pizzas, spaghetti bolognese, pasta alfredo, and settles happily on squid ink tagliatelle.

Oliver eager to dive into a big plate of octopus and other seafood appetizer:



So...they may not be cheap dates, but they're fun to travel with!!

The class clown?!

Look at that sweet little face. The child who in this picture taken during a quick stop while shopping is singing an ode to her 'babycino' [foamed milk] and fluttering her eyelashes at it in faux lovesickness. She has always been very funny and bordering on insane around us, but for the first time I got a glimpse into the level of confidence and happiness she has at school now.

I picked her up just before lunch on Thursday as we were off on a short family vacation to Italy (more on that to come of course!!). First I peeked into her classroom door. The children are all quietly working on a writing activity. Except for one child. As the teacher makes notes at her desk, head down, Amelia is balancing two pencils between her mouth and nose and dancing her head around in front of nearby classmates for a laugh. The boy closest to her is giggling behind his hand and the very well-behaved girl near her is stealing appreciative glances at her. Amelia's writing page is sitting quietly unfinished. I glance nervously at the teacher. She hasn't noticed. I both want her to and don't want her to.

That would have been an amusing glimpse into Amelia's daily world, but I was totally unprepared for the performance to come. I walked into the classroom and another child saw me first: "Amelia! Your mum is here!" Amelia leapt out of her chair, clasped her hands to her chest, and said "Italy!" She then duck walked around the room making odd noises while I gaped in horror and the entire class erupted into laughter. Some of them started making the odd noises back to her. Others jumped up from their chairs to watch her display. She swooned around the room, saying things like "Goodbye my darling Sophie! Goodbye Lucy, I must leave!" and hugging each of her favorites dramatically, kissing on the cheek, etc. Other children piled in to join the hugs. I couldn't settle on either staring in shock at her teacher or at Amelia. She continued to duck walk around the room and cause big group hugs. Children were shouting out "Amelia! Amelia!" or making the noises back to her. I made eye contact with her teacher and mouthed "Sorry!" She said, in a marvel of British understatement, "She's been very excited about her trip." We finally left the classroom in a cloud of goodbyes and final hugs.

Walking back to the car Amelia was her usual self and completely excited to get in the car with her family. I was still in shock. Here I was thinking at 6 weeks in she's starting to come out of any early integration shyness and maybe even get to know some of the children who have been together for years. I had no idea she was playing the role of ringmaster to a circus of crazy 5 and 6 year old ducks.

She loves her school and can't wait to go back - too bad there is another week and a half of term break!

The swelling sun and a swelling brain

Amelia announced recently that when she grows up she would like to be a scientist who studies why the sun is expected to swell up. This came from a cool science book she found and devoured, after which she's been sharing interesting things with us. She's never been a 'facts' kid so it is very disarming to have her discussing the periodic table of the elements or DNA with me. Let's just say there may be a gap or two in my knowledge base.

Meanwhile, she's reading just as much as ever, and luckily has access to the full school library. I think they have her reading mostly 4th grade level books, which work perfectly as she finishes them off in a day or two and does comprehension questions which I note in her reading log. Her teacher reads/discusses with her every single day AND writes a personalized note to us. I still can't believe the one on one attention and consistent differentiation in reading.

Yesterday for a change of pace she sent home both a higher level reading book (something really intense about the military and a mission but somehow child-friendly) plus something new. A simpler book, more like 2nd grade level, but with a thick 'comprehension pack' that they usually use in the Year 3 class. There were 10 pages of questions, crosswords, fill-in-the-blanks, etc for her to do based on a single read of the book. Although writing isn't her favorite I was shocked by how perfectly she recollected everything, even when the comprehension packet tried to fool her like "True or false, there was not paint in the cans." She did 4 pages at night and then I sent her off to bed, only to find her coming out of her room at 6:30am begging to do more before getting dressed! Who is this? She polished it off, the packet her teacher had intended her to use for the week.

So that's all going on and meanwhile she started asking if she could do math games. I got a recommendation from a friend and signed her up for an online math club/site thing where she gets two math quizzes a week. She's just doing one year above her age but she loves it. There are only two a week so then I signed her up for yet another free program and she wants to do that one all the time too. It's not like she's blowing me away with her mathematical genius - but it's just really really weird how much she's wanting to do at one time. She's always been in the category of "gets the concepts really fast but doesn't seem to want to do math stuff." Now she's manipulating all sorts of concepts and numbers in her head and loving it. Insert shocked motherly face.

I call it the swelling brain. I think her brain is in the right place to go in any direction right now because she's very happy at school, loves where we live, and is really feeling confident and sure of herself in general. I drop her off at school and see her chatting with her friends, telling jokes, and that makes me happiest of all. Except of course for all of the British potty/toilet humor she has now added on to her already impressive American repertoire. And I quote:

Happy birthday to you!
You live in a loo!
You look like a pooooooo...
And you smell like one too!

She's as proud of that as any academic accomplishment as you can imagine.

Peace

Mary: What is peace?

Amelia: When life is quiet and just as you like it.

Oliver and the toilet

When, you ask, does Oliver most enjoy having a nice long conversation? While sitting on the toilet of course. I will try not to pigeonhole him by making any jokes about men and toilets. BUT I do have a few anecdotes to share from today.

He was sitting on the potty and I asked him if he was ready for me to wipe. He said "No, there are still a few drips." Then he looked up at the ceiling and got thoughtful and then said "Mama, did you know that there are some drips that aren't human but still have arms and legs?"

I repeated this to Mary later and she told me that last week they saw a public service commercial for saving water with a walking water drip. They didn't discuss it but now it makes sense where he got it! I was interested that he knew the world "human" as a classification as opposed to saying "person" which he uses in other ways.

After he finished with the walking drips he said "Did you know that I have a birthday coming up? I'm going to be THREE [emphasises with three fingers]. For my birthday I want to have two balloons, okay Mama? One will be a pee pee balloon so it will be a yellow balloon and and the other will be a poo poo balloon so it will be a brown balloon with brown spots. [serious look] I really like pee pee balloons and poo poo balloons."

Ew. But I guess we have a 3rd birthday party theme now.

Then finally, as he was still insisting he needed to sit for a few more minutes ("It's going to be a really really long time Mama") I said I'd go take the garbage out. Oliver put up a cautionary hand and said "No, Mama. Mommy [that's Mary] is the EXPERT at pushing the garbage cans. She can push black ones and green ones and also brown ones. She's the expert."

To boost up my self esteem after that hard knock I went and read Amelia's card ("I love you Mama" with rainbows and butterflies). I'm lovable even if I'm not a garbage expert!!

Amelia poetry

Amelia called out to me again from a dark room tonight. Apparently lying in bed is the perfect time for poetry writing.

Butterflies
Amelia, age 5

Butterflies butterflies
Tiptoeing through the field
Find out those eyes are fox's eyes


She then said "See, the fox is hidden in the bushes - it's watching them!"

Fever-induced delirium

Oliver had a bad case of croup and was sick for FIVE long days, with fevers for four of those. I can now talk temperature in Celsius pretty well....his fever was up to 39.5. (for those Americans reading that's 103.5) and he was up allll night coughing, miserable, trying to breathe hot, etc. When he did sleep he had terrible nightmares about bad guys chasing him in a car or climbing into his bed to 'get him." Poor baby. Which means Mary and I got very little sleep last week either. Amelia was fresh as a flower.

He has said some really odd things at breakfast recently, which I link to the fever having scrambled his brain.

Episode 1
Oliver looks up from his cup of milk to say "I'm actually French when I'm speaking in a good way. This food will make me not French anymore so I'm not going to eat it."

Pretty creative excuse for not eating his breakfast. He's had a very low appetite!

Episode 2
Patting my cheeks, "Your cheeks are like two mushy eggs. I can even see the yolks."
I guess that's better than Amelia telling me today I have a very big bottom.


And a very sweet Oliver quote:
I was telling him how yummy he is and I jokingly said "I love to eat you." He said "No, you don't love eating me - you love loving me."

Quote at dinner

Oliver, looking at his peas:

"These are not peas; they're capers - we always call peas 'capers' in French."

Amelia:

"Then what do we call capers?"

Oliver:

"We don't call capers anything"

An emerging artist!

Oliver suddenly started drawing this week. After hearing the dreaded silence for quite a while, I went looking for him. He called out "I've just been drawing on my Tootle that I found for a few minutes!" By which he meant the Magnadoodle that emerged from under some pile. I happened to have the camera nearby and I snapped a few pictures as he quickly drew and erased and drew and erased. I was surprised that with no apparent background he's quickly getting across what he wants to.

"This is me lying on my bed"


"Captain Hook in his pirate ship"


"A robot - see his arms and legs?"


"This is a really fast racecar"


"This is a slug looking backward"


"This is a man who just saw a spider and he's saying 'Oooooo!'"


Some rocket ships he drew for Amelia's alien picture

Another Amelia poem

I was just called into Amelia's room 30 minutes after lights out. "I've made up a new poem, Mama - I really need you to write it down for me."

Make out of these leaves
Two shoes for me
And some gloves too
So I can do
Anything with you