A Fraught Conversation About How We Talk and When and Why and Things

Parents always celebrate their children's major firsts: teeth, steps, words, drawings, dances. These days, I'm celebrating that both of my children are now fully conversational. They have not just the vocab, but the code-switching and the drama. Oh, and the swearing--but I'll get to that later. 

We were in the US for a two-week getaway last month (and it was magnificent). Since then I've been slightly horrified but mostly amused to note my children's adoption of the North American female vocal fry (I may have let them watch too much TV...I had to work).


DISCLAIMER: I definitely do this sometimes; I disagree with video lady that it's "obnoxious"; I also don't want to hurl turds at vocal fryers. I just think it's a kinda dumb-sounding voice habit.   

My three year old, the Nugget, frequently drops some Valley Girl cadence and fry these days. Like last week, when she popped up beside me one afternoon: "Did you, like, maybe, like, forwget, Mommy? I did bwing my stuffed penguin home fwom kindergarten," she says, hand on hip, finger up. "Sewiously Mommy. Bewieve me. I definitewy, like, baa-wang it." 

She ba-WANG it, y'all. 

"Well, I do believe that you seRiously bROUGHT it home, because you're holding it," I say.

Big sister manifests, jumps into the fray. "No, that one's MINE. She LOST hers."

Nugget, clutching fluffy pink toy to chest: "I didn't lost it sewiously. I bwang it home and this is my-HINE," she said. 

"No-HO...that penguin is my-hine," replies the Noodle. 

The Nuggets wails. "Nooo!"

The Noodle continues. "BUT Nugget's must also be at home because I'm going to tell you why, mommy," says Noodle, busting out her countin' fingers:"FIRST, Nugget brought her penguin to kindergarten. SECOND, she did really because I saw her. THIRD, she carried it in her hands remember? FOURTH, she did bring it home ask daddy but, FIVE, she left it somewhere because this one is mine because I put mine on my bed and this is that one, and SIX, I'm not lying. SEVEN, really. Make her go find her OWN penguin." 

Seven righteous fingers are held before my eyes. The Noodle exudes the cool neutrality and calm confidence of one who knows they've just dropped a vicious logic bomb. 

The Nugget folds. She has no case. She collapses into tears. Still arguing, though: "This is my pengwin, I hate you, you're mean, etc."

"That means yours is at home, Nugget," says the Noodle. "It's probably in the other room. Just go get it." 

Me: "What other room? Y'all didn't even go look in the other room? We only have three actual rooms!"

Nugget stops crying. She delicately lifts the hem of her T-shirt to dab her tears. And then she turns on me, outraged, because why not: "Mommy! Dat's what I said alweady! I told you I was SEWIOUS, mommy! I DID BWANG IT HOME AND YOU DIDN'T BELIEVE ME."

"But...I did believe you," I say. "Enough. Go find your penguin. I'm busy."

"BE SEWIOUS MOMMY! YOU have to find it!" she says.  

"Actually, I don't have to find it," I counter.  

Noodle, with impeccable logic: "Yah, you don't have to. But it's the fastest. And you have a lot to do." 

Nugget beams at her sister. "Good job Noodle. Sewiously, mommy. It's fastest."

After weighing my options for a moment, I sighed resignedly and got up to help find it. Our apartment is the size of a three-winged shoe box. Nonetheless, finding it took an age. This is because it was wedged in deep under a dresser. 

"Ohhh. I fowgot I put it there," Nugget said, slapping her forehead. "Siwwy me. Thank you mommy. I love you mommy. Want a hug? I hope we eat a lot of vegetables for dinner."

I returned to whatever it is adults do all the time. About 5 seconds later, they were arguing again. 

"Mommy, the Nugget called me a Pfau," says the big Noodle. 
  
"She called you a peacock?" (Pfau means peacock in German*.)

"No, just a Pfau. It's a made-up word. She just, like, makes up words to call me. But...EYE know what it actually means." 

The child's mouth is serious, head tilted, eyes wide. Five year olds are such tattle tales. 

"Tell me," I say. She's gonna say "stupid" and I know it. 

"...I think she means FUCKER." 

"WHOAH THERE COWBOY. WHAT??" 

"Fucker. I know. It's a REALLY bad word," she said, shaking her sanctimonious little head. 

And then I found myself in this long and fraught conversation. It was only fraught for me, of course. I'm trying to argue from my high horse, but in fact I'm on foot, possibly ankle-deep in the mud, to be honest. Hypocrisy is so terribly trying. Everyone knows I talk saltier than Black Beard on the high seas. 

Sure, there is a perspective that says that five year olds probably shouldn't know the F-word (they all do) and that I could set a good example and never swear. There's also a perspective that says "ladies" don't swear, but since I have a job and drink beer and generally try not to let the having of ovaries hold me back etc., Ima cuss like a 3D whole adult person, too. There are situations that demand certain expletives. The word "fuck" has been in the English language since at least the 15th century. It's clearly handy.  

Cuss words denote sincerity of negative feeling, and most standard swear words are a totally normal way to violate norms in the culture. At least where I live and work. If I was raising my kids somewhere else, I'd probably have a different perspective--but I'm raising them in my culture. 

I do have total taboos: For example, if I were ever to hear my kids use the c-word or a single racist, homophobic, or anti-religious-person slur, for instance, I would not find it funny. For me, those words have no place in the mouths of people who strive for peace, know their history, wish for equality, and believe that none of us can be free until all of us are free. I would go into conniptions. There would be long lectures, dreary documentaries and possibly even PowerPoint slides about "othering" as a political tool that the powerful use as a tourniquet to stanch their loss of privilege. That leg is turning green and has got to go, though. Quizzes. Essays. I would bore myself. They would rue the day, y'all. My point is, I get that the taboo-ness of language is relative to environment. 

So from now on, I'm teaching my child this whole other nother perspective. It's not available on standard-issue mom blogs, so gird your loins. 

I have smoothly decided that I've always believed (see what I did there) that we should teach that there is a time, place and target audience for high-impact cuss words, and it is good and right for children to learn what that those are. 

Behold my screed: 

Bad words can sometimes be okay if used appropriately. They are not okay if used in a reflexive, uncontrolled way--that's like not being able to control your desire to punch someone. It's a sign of weakness. A good example of the unacceptable use of swear words is when mommy drops something and whispers sh**. She really shouldn't do that in front of her children. She sees that now. It is suddenly clear. 

PERMISSIBLE: You may scream these words into your pillow at your leisure, if it helps (in our home the rule is that being super angry is fine, but hitting or yelling hateful things or tantruming is not; our kids are supposed to go holler and beat up pillows in the privacy of their room).

NOT PERMISSIBLE: It is never okay to use bad words as insults. Also never in kindergarten, school, church, or anyone's office; if you are under the age of 12, also not when you are around adults and especially not when you're in Texas, around your grandparents or any of mommy and daddy's important-looking professional acquantainces (okay, that last bit needs work). 

IF YOU HAVE QUESTIONS, come ask me. Very, very quietly. 

IF MOMMY uses bad words in violation of any of the rules above, you are free to call her out. 

Boom: a parenting philosophy is born....I mean, what could go wrong. Right? 

Right?


...

* You'd have deduced that on your own, I trust. But just in case. 

Bibi Blocksberg: Keep Your Money

Yesterday the whole fam trooped off to see Bibi Blocksberg: Hexen Hexen Überall ("Bibi Blocksberg: Witches, Witches Everywhere"), and since my children cannot read, Ima tell you how it really went. 

It was a picture book Saturday in February, air crisp, sun shining. The Nugget was fever-free (hallelujah!). We were thrumming with excitement for our kids' first ever musical theatre experience, at a location no less storied than the Wiener Stadthalle, where huge common-denominator acts like Elton John, Kiss and David Hasselhof (it's a thing here, don't ask) are slated to perform this year. 

For those outside the German-speaking realm, Bibi Blocksberg is a beloved character originally created in 1980 for a series of audio dramas. Bibi is a little girl witch with a heart of gold who lives with her witch mom and not-a-witch dad, who gets up to the usual child-friendly adventures. Her last name, "Blocksberg," is the old name for a mountain in Germany (now called Brocken) that is mythologically associated with witchcraft--it shows up in Goethe's Faust, for example. 

People my age grew up listening to the cassette tapes at bedtime and in the car. The tapes later became a TV cartoon series of the same name, followed by a spinoff show, "Bibi und Tina." There are picture books, magazines, full-length feature films and tons of merch. (As Alex said when I expressed surprise that the musical could pack out the Stadthalle: "Bibi is like Mickey Mouse. Everyone knows her.")

Given the fame-level of this franchise, the location of the show, and the fact that we paid around 40 euros per ticket for second-tier seats, we were expecting A Show. We weren't expecting Cats or anything (the tickets were too cheap for that), but a rollicking good time. 

Thus we arrived bright-eyed and bushy tailed along with approximately 2000 other little children and their parents at the Stadthalle, gamely stood in long lines to check our coats, buy snacks and purchase overpriced Bibi schwag (the magic wands are kind of amazing, actually--they have more settings than adult-only magic wands, and even the handle blinks!). 

In front of the Stadthalle

We found our (comfy!) seats and waited an eternity with music pumping to get everyone excited. "Where IS SHE!" the Nugget whispered urgently, her face about to explode. "I CAN'T SEE HER!!" It was very rock concert. We were excited. Finally, FINALLY the house lights went down, the stage lights went up, smoke machines whirred, children waved their wands. 

The whole place clapped along as other characters entered stage middle (the only stage entrance there would be, as it turns out) and sang and danced, and then finally, FINALLY, parted to reveal young Bibi (played by a grownup) who.... Totally blew her first note. It was inaudible, then shaky, though she rallied by the end of the first song. 

Well. Excited as all the ticket-buying parents and super-Bibi-fan children were to make the most of their day out, Alex and I agreed we would sum it up as "pretty good for a high school musical." 

Pre-show excitement in the front section! There were about 3x as many seats as you can see here.

It was two hours long, interrupted by a 20 minute intermission, during which Nugget fell asleep and other parents urgently fed their children candy. 

The plot was nonexistent. During the first half, seven characters (total) find out that they are going to host an international witches conference and argue about whether it should be traditional, as the two old witches want, or involve a disco, as Bibi and her bff want. That's literally all that happens. They just argue, through like 10 songs.  

In the second half, all the characters are now at the castle where the conference will take place, where they continue to argue about the conference agenda for a further 40 minutes. It was like being at work. At the last possible moment, the young witches win the day ("Young Witch Power!") and then the disco takes place, which is when the lights turn on to the audience, which is expected to BE the disco/witches conference, if you see what I mean. These last five minutes were the only good part: little girls flooded down to the stage in their hundreds and formed a mosh pit of wand-waving fans, while disco laser lights lit up the whole space and a single firework went off on stage. Whoot! 

Nugget at intermission

It was all just so CHEAP. Actually the performers did an admirable job (mostly in tune and with lots of enthusiasm), but they didn't have much to work with. 

For example, one of the two old witches from Act One--these are central characters--was simply missing in Act Two, with no explanation of why. I mean, the actor appears as a different (new) character towards the end, so I guess that explains that. What, they couldn't afford one more actor? Or a script that makes sense?  

The whole thing was comprised of 60 indistinguishable songs that each lasted 20 seconds, two of which were direct rip-offs (homages?) of the songs I Love Rock and Roll and something else that I've forgetten now, because no one cares. The lyrics of the songs were then repeated verbatim through the spoken word immediately afterwards, in order to move the "plot" forward. The choreography was like maybe six different dance moves that were reassembled for each number. 

There was no use of magic on stage, because I guess special effects would have been expensive. At no point did anyone fly on a broomstick, not even once.

The costumes were apparently made by someone's mom and/or purchased directly from a halloween shop (why was the Mayor of Neustadt dressed like Count Dracula? We'll never know). 

The wigs--oh my lord the wigs--would have made Ru Paul sit down and cry. 

The set change between acts involved nothing further than covering the old set with  pieces of paper/cloth that were painted to look like stones--I mean they couldn't even be bothered to, like, roll a table over to the other side or anything. 

The lighting was vigorous except for the scene where the President of the International Witches Association makes her first grand entrance. For the first 30 seconds, she sang with her face in a shadow and only her torso lit like a birthday cake. Why? 

The magical wand was pretty sweet, though.

At the very end, during the applause, when the cast generously gestured toward the light booth, then the sound, and then the set, I wondered if maybe all three of those things were just one guy named Helmut who'd been given a budget of 2000 bucks.  

But my absolute favorite high school musical moment was when, during the final song of Act One, an arm holding an iPhone extended slowly out from behind the painted-paper set and took a picture of the audience (Helmut? Is that you?). Except that would never happen during a high school musical, because Mr. Marinucci would have killed us. 

Throughout the entire performance I kept looking over at my children with a big stupid grin on my face, bopping my stupid head along to the music, in an effort to rouse enthusiasm. So much fun! At some point the Noodle actually rolled her eyes at me. 

She did love it for the first fifteen minutes, but then hid her existential despair behind terse lips and a polite smile, because we're raising her right. The Nugget said it was "borwing". Alex told the kids it was "very fun" and then muttered that the Cirque du Soleil show we're seeing soon better be a hell of a lot better. 

I said I was going to blog about this. 

"No, that's so mean," said Alex. "They're just high schoolers."   

Damn.

Our cats have not been well. Last week Alex had to take them to the vet almost every day because, as is common for elderly house cats, their kidneys appear to be giving up. Both Shiva and Shanti are seventeen. 

Shanti

It is just

I just want to stop here and point out that I didn't name these cats. They came with the then-boyfriend (now-husband) 14 years ago, when they were already three years old. 

I can't possibly imagine what the inspiration for such names might have been back then (some mysteries will never be solved), but it turns out that the respective namesake gods were channeled fully. 

completely

Shanti has always been a peaceful sun-spot sleeper, and Shiva has spent most of her life trying to destroy creation in a profound cosmic cycle of handbag->urine->new handbag, the experience of which has helped me personally to emotionally detach from my material possessions, like purses and these damn cats*. Om Namah Shivaya.  

Anyway, so Shiva and Shanti were taking antibiotics and infusions and painkillers, and generally were not doing well. The vet told Alex we might have to put Shiva down. 

inexplicable. 

My children love these cats, and so I thought I should tell them now that they might not be with us for very much longer. This is a tough conversation, so I took a moment to centre myself. 

"Hey girls, I need to talk to you," I said. "It's about the cats. They're very sick."

I looked at the the Nugget, my three-year old. This was totally gonna crush her. She loves those cats with all of her heart, because unlike the five-year old Noodle, Miss Nugget only has these kitties to hug and love and squeeze forever. 

"They're very sick," I said again. 

The Nugget looked up at me. And then she put on her cape and flew off to save the world. Nevermind, I thought. She's three. I'll talk to her later. 

Nugget and Shiva in her cardboard cat house (thanks, #CraftyDad)

I turned my attentions to the Nugget, who was literally humming in an attempt to ignore me. "They're both sick, but Shiva is really sick," I said. "If she gets sicker, she might not be with us for much longer." 

The Nugget stopped humming. "She might die," she said. 

"That's right," I said. "We hope not, but it might happen." 

The Nugget looked at me with her big, cow-like blue eyes. I was so ready. 

"But if she dies..." she said. 

"We will be very sad," I agreed. 

"...Then we can get a puppy," she continued. "I've always wanted a puppy." 

"Um," I said. 

As usual, my husband, Namer of Cats, was in the background choking on his coffee and cackling. This always happens when I commit acts of proactive parenting. 

Noodle and one of the cats I thought she loved <3

"Ooh ooh, or can we get a bunny rabbit?", she asked. "I've always wanted to have a cute little baby bunny rabbit that goes squeak squeak and it can sleep in my bed and we'll feed it carrots!"

"Wow," I said. 

And then I got up to put on a sweater, because that s*** was cold. 

----------------------------

*I don't actually consider cats to be material possessions, because I don't think that we can own other living creatures. I don't even think we own ourselves, only the things we choose to do. Also, to be 100% clear, this paragraph is intended to make fun of myself and not any aspect of other peoples' faith. 

P.S. The antibiotics seemed to have worked and both cats are now doing much better and are eating and drinking. Thanks for asking. I appreciate that you, unlike my stony-hearted children, might actually care. Ha! 

P.P.S. I know, I know, they do care. 

About Time

I haven't blogged in a week because one thing got in the way of another. It started with the Noodle getting sick for a couple of days, and the cats getting sick, and then everyone just generally being under the weather. As I result, I did everything I had to do, but not everything that I wanted to do. 

It might seem hard to understand how two days at home with a five-year old could be so much less productive than two days working from home. I mean, most of the time she just lay around on the couch and watched TV. But that is not how that works.

Why? 

Because time, man. 

I just started reading this book my dad recommended called About Time, by physicist Adam Frank. I'm only a few pages in and think that it's heading in a sort of "OMG why does math explain reality?" direction (could be wrong; I'd read the blurb but you know, Kindle and apathy). 

But as of whatever page I'm on, it is about how time is mediated by our (culturally-determined) interaction with the material world. How we engage the world determines how we slice up time--which in turn affects our culture. For example, early farmers realized that celestial events could show them the best times to plant. This discovery then affected their mythologies about those celestial events, which in turn shaped the way they spoke of and measured time. The division of time into night and day, into growing seasons, into multi-year planetary orbits, into hours and seconds, was brought to us by our own cultural evolution. 

What's my point? Good question. I wrote that last paragraph before cooking and eating dinner so I need to group...Okay. My point is (and I may be making a jump here) kids have time and I never have any. For example, having just asked my kids to "give me ten minutes"--they have returned every 5-10 seconds, which has made the last three minutes feel simultaneously like no time and also like infinity, depending on who you ask. 

So last week, time was but a treacly morass for my poor sneezy Noodle, an eon of daylight followed by an age of darkness. Whereas I, a modern woman, was trying to get ish done by CoB. At my workstation at the dining table, I had to-do lists and deadlines and appointments (now cancelled). Instead of doing those, I kept hopping up to fetch water or cut fruit or dispense medicine or read books or move handfuls of clothing from station to station along the Infinite Laundry Loop. ("Hey, what did you last week?" "Nothing.")

Over in Noodle World, the afternoon was measured in cartoon episodes, each one simultaneously a whole lifetime and also the mere blink of an eye. 

I glanced at the clock. "We have to leave in a minute, sweetheart," I said.  

"I have to go to the bathroom," she says. 

"Huh?" I'm in the middle of an email, talking and typing. "...You have to what? Oh, that's perfect. Let's turn off the TV, you use the restroom, I'll finish this email, we'll get dressed and pick up your sister, then we have to stop by the post office and the grocery store, okay?

The Noodle's eyes open...and close. And open...and close.

"I have to pee," she says. 

"Great!" I grab the remote and turn off the TV. "You do that, I'll wrap up this email, I need socks, you start getting your shoes on, let's not forget the bag for groceries, and then we'll head out okay? It's quarter to, so we should get going." 

I return to my email, stopping on the way to register that the hotel confirmation arrived (sweet!), shoot a "haha" back to a mom group on FB messenger to indicate that I've been paying attention, and also answer a quick question on WhatsApp because it's been like 7 minutes since they wrote and I don't want to be rude. This is adulthood. Our seconds have seconds. Our effing downtime organizes itself into micro-draining micro-obligations, which take up micro-time in our micro-schedules. Micro-ha!

Boom! Email done. Close laptop, grab socks...

The Noodle is on the couch. Her eyes open and close. 

I say, "Babe I know you're not feeling well, but we have to just power through and actually we really need to get going so can you get your boots on?"

"Mom!" she says. "I can NOT get my boots on. I still need to pee!" 

"Dude! Go pee! We gotta go!"

Her eyes open. And close. 

"I'm tired," she says, and looks at me with big, weepy eyes. Every time she breathes, a little rivulet of snot jerks back into her nose. She's so fragile, like a baby bird. 

I sat down on the couch and gave her a hug. We missed the post office and the grocery store, CraftyDad picked up the other kid, we ordered in and it really didn't matter. I didn't get s*** done last week, and actually, come to think of it, it's FINE.

It's also FIN.  

And the moral of this story is (gird your loins): I've taken some time to realize that we have to to make time to have time. Now is the time to take a time out, lest we run out of time to take time in. I forget that, like, all the time.  

Alex, #CraftyDad King

I am not feeling very well and so, after an ill-advised and generally very weak sauce effot to work out this morning, I came home in defeat and took a super long nap, kindly sponsored by my husband. 

When I finally lumbered out of the matrimonial cave, these were the first words I heard: "Well, the panda bear idyll is finished."

#CraftyDad and the kids were sitting in the family's usual rainy-day position around the coffee table, surrounded by half-used packages of FIMO, a near bucket of clay tools, and a bunch of knives. Alex was putting the final touches on a bear. Noodle was rolling out the trunk of a tree. The Nugget was hacking away at the corner of the table with a blunt knife and saying "Oogie woogie oogie woogie"; it's the thought that counts, I guess. 

These are idyllic pandas baking in the oven.

If you've never played with FIMO, you definitely should.

These are the technical drawings on which they are based (#CraftyDad initial draft, and then his apprentices' versions. The last one is crumpled because the Nugget, in the spirit of Gerhard Richter, initially showed it with pride but then, after I said she did a great job, thought I was lying, freaked out, balled it up and threw it away). 

You may have gathered that this post has no real point other than to show off #CraftyDad skills. But they are kind of amazing. He has an unlimited capacity to delight little children. It's amazing. 

Last night, the Noodle's bff slept over and he made all three girls FIMO bracelets with jewels in. 

Also FIMO

And most importantly, last week he made <3 ME <3 a present. I know why I married him, everyone. Why he married me is a mystery beyond all comprehension, but it happened and he's f***** now, so no one tell him that he has made a terrible mistake. 

Here is the gift he made me. It lives physically in our most overgrown orchid, but its spirit dwells in my heart until the universe returns to darkness.  

Constructed of a purple button, red silk flower and more FIMO

And now, I'm off to vegetate. 

I hope to regain the powers of higher-level cognition, sentence construction and blog post composition very soon. Until then, me and the little button nose dude are resting. Thanks, #CraftyDad, for the little dude (anyone have a name suggestion?) and all the other things. I love you*.

Foreground: Bubblebears. Background, from left to right: foot of sleeping Nugget, Noodle face, and a pic of me that is pure fire

*#CraftyDad, if you're reading this: Every word of this is meant from the heart. Also, I could use a tea. Those are totally unrelated comments. 

The Nature of Fun

Weekends are sacred, and not just for adherents of Abrahamic religions. That precious Friday-evening-through-Sunday space is, for many of us, the only time that we can briefly return to our senses and perhaps remember that we are alive, actually alive. On the weekend you can spend your hours attending to the feel of air on skin and ground under foot. Communing with God(s). Noticing this our only world as if its lifeforms were alien and new. 

Or, or, OR... you can hang out with your kids. 

We went with option B. 

On Saturday, we went with old friends to the Kunsthistorisches Museum. We did NOT go see the Bruegel exhibit, because that's just played out and overrated (by which I mean we couldn't get tickets). 

Instead, we saw All the Art in the World Except Bruegel, and let me tell you, our children did not give a flying banana. The field on which their given f***s grow was utterly fallow. They were briefly intrigued by the vast age of Ancient Egyptian artifacts and slightly horrified by the smallness of baby heads sculpted in Rome, but they yawned their way through Ancient Greece, were actively complaining at the Wes Anderson exhibit, and were downright surly by the time we reached the great Italian and Dutch masters. These kids did not care, and may actually hate art for the rest of their lives. 

My friend's four year old, who is a hero, bore up stoicly under the strain. My elder daughter looked terribly, terribly sad, held my hand limply and, every gallery or so, would whisper plaintively: "I wish we could sit down, mommy." 

The younger daughter actively wept. "I want to go home, mommy," she said, over and over, in tones best suited to a WWII drama. "Please, please let me go home." And when we wouldn't take her home, her skin turned green, her eyes bulged out of their sockets, her head rotated 180 degrees and she crab-walked up the wall while vomiting bile. Something like that, anyway. 

The grownups did their very best to absorb culture with appropriate interest, but frankly success was limited, at least for this grumpy grownup. But afterwards, we all agreed we had had a lot of fun!

This is the gang taking a break from culture, photo courtesy of Dushan the Great, who taught me something super interesting about Vermeer and the camera obscura but my kid was tugging on my sleeve the whole time so I couldn't fully get into it. Thanks anyway, Dushun. And Denia and Mimi and Alex!

On Sunday afternoon we bundled the children up like wee turduckens and took them out of the city and into the woods in Purkersdorf. By the time we got there it was about 2pm, which at this time of year means we enjoyed the very last rays of light before sunset. But with the sky a wet eiderdown of clouds, instead of the golden hour we enjoyed more of a freezing, tarnished silver. 

We parked in the wrong place. This meant our woodsy adventure actually started with a 15 minute trudge along the end of a country road down a sodden path of mud and leaves, with the air cold and wet and our hands freezing and the children asking if we were ever going to be there yet. 

At first, Alex and I tried to keep spirits high for the sake of the pumpkins. But after about the fourth time trying and failing to get the kids excited about something that was in no way remarkable ("Look, girls! I see a bent braaa-aanch!"), I grumped something at Alex who snarked something at me. 

It was in this mood, weary bordering on foul, that we finally reached the entrance to the nature reserve. The path in was at a 45 degree angle, consisted entirely of iced-over mud, and spelled utter defeat for our youngest child, all 14 kilos of whom we had to sort of throw up the hill. My stupid shoes were soaked through and I couldn't feel my feet. The snow was ugly, the sky was ugly, the trees were just sad. 

This particular park has roomy and fairly wide enclosures for a couple types of local fauna. It being winter, the animals gathered by the fence as we arrived, doubtless hoping for a snack. 

"Look, it's a reindeer!" said the Nugget. "Like the kind from Santa!"

"It's a deer," I said grinchily. "A regular old middle European deerus normalus."

"Do we have any apples?" asked the Noodle, her face a picture of precious anticipation.

"Nope," I said. Then I felt like a jerk, so I tried to muster up some cool facts about antlers, since one of the herd had a big pair. Turns out I don't know much about antlers. My children looked small and cold, and one of them said we should just go home. 

But we couldn't go home. We hadn't done anything yet. The deer lost interest and wandered away, and we kept plodding uphill and into the park.

I was particularly annoyed because walking in the woods was my stupid idea. Alex suggested ice-skating, but I foolishly said we ought to get away from people and into nature. Well here we were, wet and frozen and miserable, having fun. 

And then Alex spotted a fallen tree. We love fallen trees. You can climb them, balance your way down the trunk, pick grubs out of their mulchy ends, lay down on them to stare at the canopy AND--if your pops is Alex and the tree is sufficiently far from the madding crowd--you can even pull down your pants, sit on them with your butt hanging into space, and do your business like the Lord intended. 

Something about playing on this tree turned the tide. We started to warm up. We were laughing. And then I remembered that maybe, just maybe, fun isn't about remembering to bring apples, or seeing something amazing, or doing something you've never done before. Maybe fun doesn't come from a store--maybe fun means something a little bit more! And my little cold heart grew three sizes that day. The minute my heart didn't feel quite so tight, I started to relish the weakening light.  I stopped being a d***! I started to beam! Everything wasn't as crap as it seemed! 

We wandered on down to the wild pig enclosure. The swine showed up in force and smelled pretty unkosher! (I'll stop now). We cooed at the piglets, swung on the swings, met an apparently lost house cat and, when we were basically 10 minutes from dying of exposure, we turned around and trooped all the way back to our car singing "The Ants Go Marching Two by Two" over and over, with everyone (even the Nugget) coming up with lines about what the littlest one was doing ("making a poo! HAHAHAHAHAHA!").  



So I have to say, all in all, the weekend was a lot of fun. 

The weather was super duper!

The Ballerina Nugget

Yesterday our Nugget participated in her first ever extra-curricular activity: A ballet class for three to four year olds. Y'all, my heart nearly exploded.

It was the Nugget's Schnupperstunde. A Schnupperstunde is a free trial class, but Schnupperstunde is one of those examples of a foreign word being so vastly superior that I've decided it needs to enter the English language, like Doppelgänger or Schadenfreude. A Stunde is an hour (or a session), and schnuppern means to snuffle or nose around, like a puppy in a pile of leaves, so your Schnupperstunde is where you get to sniff it out. 

It smelled like roses, dude. 

The studio is less than a mile from home as the crow flies, but sort of silly to reach via public transport, so I brought a stroller and the babe took a power nap as we walked over. This was great news, because she's a (big) toddler and toddlers who are tired after a full day at preschool can really bug out if you plop them in front of a group of all new people and tell them to, you know, dance. 

So I was braced for everything to possibly be a trainwreck--not least because that morning Nugget had informed me that she hated dancing and didn't want to go--but it wasn't! It was a straight hour of cuteness. Right before class she woke up, ate a banana and said, "Thank you mommy for this delicious banana." I beamed. 

We went inside and she told the teacher, "Hello, I am the Nugget and I am three years old." I beamed some more. 

Because she doesn't yet own the standard pink outfit that the other kids have, I let her change into this horrifying tutu thing with Elsa's face on it that she loves with all of her heart. And the other kids goggled at her, so she beamed. Most importantly, her outfit gave her strength, because the branded crap kids wear somehow imbues them with the powers of the characters represented on it. 

I think this is why when little kids watch TV they'll tell each other which character they are: "I'm Daniel Tiger"; "I'm Ladybug"; "I'm Cat Boy no no no no I mean Gecko". While watching Frozen, all kids are always Elsa -- I mean duh. Anna doesn't have ice powers. And then kids will Rocky Horror mime out the cartoons they are watching, too. (By the way, if you think I just made up all those characters in this last paragraph, you clearly need to get out more, you philistine.) 

Also, I wonder to what degree a kid in her favorite Spiderman jammies is or is not different than a person who wears e.g. a silver picture of a saint on a chain around their neck. That's not meant condescendingly at all, by the way. Me, I buy products because famous people advertise them, and that seems like just a more abstracted form of the same impulse. On the more concrete end of things, some people kill and eat the toes of the ones they love most, or honor the greatness of slain enemies by cannibalizing them. People want to consume the people they admire, sometimes literally, in order get a little of that ineffable something extra. I bet this urge to absorb admirable others, if not physically than at least by using their lip liner, is some weird evolutionary holdover from humanity's most infinitely distant past: Once upon a time we were globby, Jabba-like cells, picking not just nutrients but also information from the bacteria we subsumed. As humans that behaviour would be pathological, so instead we try to channel others by surrounding our bodies with their trinkets. 

(Did that last paragraph sound convincing, like maybe there's a straight line from the evolutionary imperative of single-celled organisms assimilating bits of genetic information from one another straight up to humans wearing religious icons? I want to be clear that I have no idea what the hell I'm talking about, so #FakeNews. Get media literate people.)

Also ALSO, I wonder what would happen if I gave my kids T-shirts that had me and their dad's smiling faces printed on them --in large size, in full color--presented as if they were cooler than a Hatchimal. "Sorry, kid," I'd say. "They were all out of Elsa. But here's a dress with MY face on it!" Imagine the side-eye we'd get from other parents. Ha! 

Anyway, back at ballet class the kids were taken out of the waiting and changing area into the studio and the heavy wooden door was shut in our faces for the duration, but since I was the new parent in the group I'm ashamed to say I spent a few minutes with my eyeball pressed against the keyhole, where I watched the children warm up by pretending to be the tiniest cats and the jumpiest frogs, and by golly it was effing adorable. Equally adorable is the idea that three year olds need to warm up. They are warmed up from the moment they pop out of bed at the crack of down until their bodies pull the emergency brake on their consciousnesses some time at night. I guess it's more like burning off the extra energy so they can focus for the rest of the class. By the way, I'd share pictures, but this is the Internet and those are other people's kids, and if I ever stoop to photographing strangers' children through a keyhole, I invite you to beat me about the head. 

So my view was mainly of the waiting area, which had soft, colorful couches and poufs. Mid-way through the hour all the little girls thundered out of the studio because they simultaneously realized they had to pee, so that was ten minutes of unpacking and repacking them in their outfits, and like three extra minutes of all the kids un-wedgie-ing themselves. At one point this kid wandered out of class, singing to herself, suddenly realized that class wasn't over and that she'd temporarily lost her mind, shrieked and ran back in. Another one came out of the class about five times so her mom could blow her nose, equally mad at her mother each time that her nose was still running (geez, mom, you're such a d***). There was a one year old in the waiting room who grinned at me the whole time while bopping to the music emanating through the classroom door. And when it was all over, there was a bowl of small apples for the kids to take, which brought both joy and sustenance. It was perfect. 

As we were leaving, I told the Nugget she did a good job listening to the teacher, and that I bet she danced well even though I couldn't see her. "What did you think about it?," I asked.

"I danced gweat," she replied. "It was much gweater dancing than I 'spected. I didn't thought so it was going to be good but it was!" 

What I said was, "Mmmhmm, you didn't think it, honey. You were gReat."

But what I meant was that I was proud as punch and I hope we can go back.