Merry, Happy Everything

The last shreds of wrapping paper have been swept away, the crispy tree was chucked away and the drooping stockings have been folded up until next year. Horrifyingly, most of the chocolate has been eaten. Christmas is definitely over. Heck, it’s a new year (happy new year!). The post-holiday hangover is here in full force.  

Ohai

Usually we celebrate Christmas with my parents, but this year we were on our own.  This is a bummer. On the plus side, the Noodle, who is now two and a half years old, provided enough Christmas spirit for everyone, even my light-one-Hanukah-candle-on-day-three-Baruch-Hashem-Adonai-Elohim-and-fuggedaboutit husband. Because who doesn’t love Christmas?

Indeed it was jingle bells all day, every day from the instant we opened the first window of her little advent calendar. As she said (a lot): “Happy birthday Jesus! Merry Christmas! Santa is coming with PRESENTS.”

Noodling around

The young Banana, who is not yet three months old, was surprisingly disinterested in proceedings. Nonetheless we filled her stocking for the look of the thing, and her big sister ransacked it after her own was empty, so I’m pretty sure we’ve established what will be a tradition for the next few years. And Christmas is all about traditions, right?

 I’m afraid we failed to properly transmit the Real Meaning of Christmas to our children (Giving, right? Or was it redemption. I can never remember), but in our defense it’s difficult to explain to a two year old. 

Skyping with the grandparents on Christmas Day

I thought that for now it would be enough to convey that Christmas is the birthday of Jesus, but even this was kind of a sticking point, because there is zero overlap between that story and the story of Santa, which she of course also learned about. It's a mess. 

You see, Noodle, we are celebrating the birth of Jesus whom we say is the son of God, plus Santa brings us presents, plus also in Austria Baby Jesus is the one who brings the presents. 

Sisters

Noodle and I were reading and singing this picture book of traditional Christmas carols that my mom gave her, and she kept trying to find Santa. She points to Joseph – is this Santa? Nope. The angel – is THIS Santa? Nope. Shepherd? Nope. Other shepherd? King Wencelas? Three kings? Nope, nope and nope, and the camels aren’t reindeer either. 

In addition to the Santa story and the Jesus story, there are a decorative indoor tree and oversized socks. Also diverse numbers: Advent is the 24 days on your calendar, and the five candles in this wreath, but we sing a song about the twelve days of Christmas (side note: why so many birds?) , and also Daddy is into the eight days of Hanukah. 

So yes. All in all, thank goodness for presents. They really tied the season together. 

More soon! xx

After the first snowfall of the season. Happy New Year!

Rituals and Poop

After a crazy couple of weeks worrying about work-related stuff I can finally concentrate on really important things again, like making sure I take enough videos of my kids. This is key because they are pretty cute these days. 

The basic dynamic is that the Noodle descends closely upon the baby like a swarm of giggling locusts, cooing and patting and poking her in the face. Because she is still just a tube-monkey, the baby's only natural defense in the face of obvious danger is to be adorable. Thus just as the horned toad squirts blood into the eyes of desert badgers (we don't employ fact-checkers around here), the Mini Muffin, unable to roll over or accurately manoeuvre her tiny, balled-up hands, frantically smiles at her sister. It usually works in the sense that she is still alive.

The Noodle (having turned all her angst against her increasingly desperate parents) loves the baby, but it's not a problem because babies are remarkably resilient. I was sure you couldn't bend such tiny arms that way without causing lasting harm, but apparently its fine. Also you can give a newborn an "indian burn" of love (in typing this I just realized that I spent my whole childhood saying this vaguely racist thing...what do the kids these days call it?) and she'll just spit up. 

But Noodle's very favourite part about the baby, it seems, is watching me change her diaper. It combines her two favourite things: rituals and poop. 

This morning, for example. (By the way, these days Noodle usually uses just one modal verb of her own invention, "moo-de", regardless of language, meaning or tense. It comes from the German "muss" but really applies everywhere, I moo-de tell you.) 

"Noodle, get your boots on while I get your sister dressed. We have to go," I said, laying the baby down on the changing table. 

"I'm coming, baby!" said the Noodle. There are shuffling sounds in the other room. She rounds the corner somehow holding a piece of paper, a key chain, a toy stethoscope, a stuffed animal and a tangerine. No shoes. 

"Noodle, no more playing. You have to get to kindergarten. St. Nicholas is coming today! Get your shoes on please while I change the baby's diaper..."

Sharp, exaggerated, excited intake of breath. A dropping of many objects at the same time. "Diaper?" says the Noodle. "I moo-de see the diaper!" 

"But your shoes..." I say, helplessly, as the Noodle drags her little chair across the living room and next to the changing table. 

"I want to see the kaka," says Noodle, climbing up beside me. "A really BIG one." 

"No, you need to..." I start to say, again. Then I remember my parenting mantra ("Do you really care?"), rub my face with my hands and give up. 

"Do you think it will be REALLY BIG?" I ask. "Like, SO big?" 

Noodle's eyes widen. "Let's check," she says conspiratorially as I peel away the baby's diaper. 

Which does not disappoint. 

"Mommy it is blueberries and blackberries and blueberries and haha!" says Noodle. I have no idea what the hell she is talking about. 

"Hee hee," says Noodle. She doesn't laugh; she says "hee hee." Then she says, "Hee hee poo poo...and the blackberries and the strawberries and the blue ones." 

What. 

"You're so calm," I say to the baby, cleaning her up as quickly as possible. "I like it! Let's get a fresh diaper on you." 

"Glulck," says the baby, sucking her fist. 

"A fresh diiiiiaper, baby?" says the Noodle, who is, perhaps, just a tad frightening. "For the poo poo, mommy? The poo poo kaka? And the pee pee? Hee hee hee hee."

I fold up the used diaper and throw it away.  

"No!" says Noodle. "I want to see it! I moo-de see the kaka. The really BIG one the...the blueberries blackberries and the, and the...I need to go buy fruits and vegetables! From the supermarket, mommy." 

"You do?" I ask. 

"Oh yes. One minute, mommy, I moo-de buy the...we moo-de...And the big one. And the big one from the supermarket. Yes, mommy? Not the kaka diapers. The other one. The really BIG one."

If a two year-old lost her mind, how would you know?

"...And the blueberries and blackberries and a...a mango. I want a mango, mommy. A mango. And rice crackers. Now, mommy. Please mommy. Mango, mommy. Cheese, mommy. Not diapers, Tali. Don't worry baby. Rice crackers. Bread. Bread, mommy. Bread. Please. With marmelade. A big one. A REALLY BIG ONE." 

I'm beginning to get the picture. "Um, are you hungry?"

"YES, Mommy," she says, suddenly looking very pitiful indeed. "I SO HUNGRY MOMMY. I want bread."  

"Well, your breakfast is waiting at kindergarten so get your boots on and I will get you some bread for the way." 

"Hooray! Don't worry, Tali, there is breakfast at kindergarten! I moo-de GO!"

"Glulck," says the baby. 

And off we go, because we moo-de.  

The Puzzle of Parenting

t its most outcome-oriented, parenting very tiny children can feel like a game. Our one month old baby, for example, is kind of a Tamagotchi at the moment: all she needs to meet her milestones are breastmilk, burps, clean diapers and the occasional wipe-down with a damp cloth. When she fusses in the evening, we apply all of the above with increasing urgency until everyone passes out from exhaustion. The baby has no care for the finer things in life. Songs, numbers, letters, nursery rhymes: she really doesn't give a s***.

And that, ladies and gentleman, is the major development between babies #1 and #2. We have realized that shit-giving won't start for weeks. And until then, I'm living it up in the secure knowledge that the Sugar Puff will forget all of this, probably within minutes! 

For a few precious weeks my whole job is to keep Puff Pea warm and full and feel her soft, squishy little cheeks and make her stop crying hysterically between the hours of 8pm and midnight. But as I go about it, I freely watch Nigella Lawson on the TV while answering emails on my phone, reading about the American elections on the tablet and loudly commenting about what a f***ing f***wit Ben Carson is and how the world is going to hell in a hand basket. 

Don't misunderstand me. I'm not ignoring her. I love her, I love her, I love her. it's just that she won't remember any of this! Which is why she should know that I am alarmed by the bags of the g***d**** clown shoes hoping to my home country. President "Bleeding Out of Her Whatever" is going to sit next to the big red button? Gof preserve us all.

My first born, of course, is two years and three months old and is thus much more advanced. Parenting her is more like doing one of those 3D logic puzzles that you get in science museum gift shops or, in the case of Vienna, at Christmas markets. 

You know the ones: they are usually wood or metal, have an appealing weight in the hand, and are often said to come from Ancient China or some other neverland where children, all of whom grew up to be philosopher generals, spent their days honing their strategic minds not by playing Minecraft, but rather by contemplating knots and pebbles in the leafy shade of the emperor's palace. Smells like jasmine and myrrh. There's elephants. You know the ones. These puzzles require you to take apart three rings that are seemingly impossibly interlocked, or move a big shape through a smaller one, or make seven triangles fit into a space that seems too small.

Getting the Noodle to do what we want (e.g. at least taste the damn broccoli; stop screeching when very happy; put on her shoes no not those shoes the proper shoes, etc.) similarly requires cunning and strategy. It requires forethought. If you act too quickly, you might tie yourself in further knots, move yourself even further from the goal. The thing to do is sit and observe the puzzle, understand its nature, and then imagine what simple, counterintuitive gesture or word might cause it to unlock, to untangle, to cheerfully bend to your will. 

Failing that, just go "aaargh" and flail about doing things at random until the puzzle solves itself.  It always does in the end. 

Baby Life Begins

Nearly three weeks have gone by in a sweet, molasses-like moment. Already my dear mother has left us again 8come baaaack!!) and we have settled into something resembling a routine. Or rather, we are better able to predict which bits of the day are going to be total chaos, and brace ourselves. 

I feel great though I look like I've been beaten over the head with a jumbo pack of diapers and probably will for the rest of my life. 

Alex is a rock star. I love him.

Most importantly, our beloved second born is thriving--by which I mean she is steadily gaining weight and has so far been (knock on wood) just a laid back, groovy baby. 


When she's awake her dark eyes are bright and alert. She keeps very still and looks steadily at one thing after another. This is the case for about 20 minutes a day. The rest of our sweet caterpillar's day is evenly divided between sleep and breastfeeding, with breaks for elaborate newborn poops, the noisy exuberance of which I had forgotten. 

Being a round-the-clock milk cow is a minor drag, but I must say that the entire newborn-having experience is much more pleasant the second time around. 

Turns out that when you are not sidetracked by existential angst or the terror of accidentally breaking your offspring, hanging out with a cream-and-crystal infant all day is pretty enjoyable. You just have to resign yourself to not accomplishing anything on a schedule. 

The best part, of course, is watching Noodle love her little sister. Even at moments that are obviously hard, like when I can't put the baby down for three hours straight in the evening because it's the witching hour and I am in full dairy mode, Noodle takes deep breaths and pats her sister's hand and tells her not to worry and gives her little kisses. 

Okay, sometimes she also goes into gremlin mode and screams until I think her head might actually explode into angry toddler confetti, but hey. We're working on it.  And I just spent several months in gremlin mode myself, so I can relate. 

And in any case, our family of four is still brand new. Things are falling into a new groove. Everyone is figuring out how they can spend enough time with everyone else, and by themselves. That last one is pretty important. Finally, as of a couple days ago there's enough time between feedings for me to put on clothes -- and update this blog. Hallelujah. 

Baby life, here we go! 

Last But Not Least

She's here, she's here! Tali Amelia is here at last! Our daughter. The Noodle's little sister. Everyone's sister, if you take the broad view. 

Tali arrived in a hurry just before noon on Sunday, the 18th of October. We're not sure what her nickname will be yet, because we still need to get to know her. What we do know is that she is still and alert. She has ten fingers and ten toes. Her belly is pink and smooth. Her belly button remains unknown. She has dark, almond-shaped eyes and black hair. She seems wise and centered (it's all downhill from here, my love). Her skin is warm and smells of cookies and jasmine. 

We love her, we love her, we love her. 

Welcome to the party, tiny one. 

Good grief, we get to have some gorgeous (and definitely related) little girls. 

Nava at 1 day, July 2013

Tali at 1 day, October 2015

Dirty Old Man

"Hey, do you have a sense of humor? You like jokes?" 

We knew immediately that we were about to stop having fun. I mean, a little white-haired man at the hotel bar had just sidled up, threatened to tell jokes and simultaneously implied that our failure to laugh would mean that our sense of humor was impaired. What could go wrong? 

"Sure, jokes," said my polite friend Mimi. 

"Of course," said I. "Jokes are great." 

Man, we're nice people. 

"Wonderful. I like jokes. Just like my grandson," he said. "My grandson. Last week he was telling me about his plans for my birthday..."

A sewing machine.

It is known that invasive old men come in two flavors. The good kind is The Grandpa, who can't stop showing pictures of his grandkids and carrying on about their accomplishments.  Their vastly less cute counterparts, of course, are the dirty old men. As we were about to discover, what we had here was a Dirty Old Man in Grandpa's clothing. 

"My grandson, ten years old, he comes to me," says the man. "My grandson says, 'Grandpa! I have good news and bad news about your birthday present.' Guess what he said." 

Absurdly, we were unable to guess. 

Old man says, "The boy tells me, 'Grandpa, the good news is that we got you a stripper.'"

Oh. 

"A stripper, eh? You understand?" says the old man, who apparently thought my friend and I might have such hopeless German that we couldn't follow this very sophisticated story. "The good news is there's a stripper. So I say to my grandson, 'What's the bad news?' And he says, 'The bad news is that she's the same age as you, Grandpa!'" 



The old man laughed uproariously. He didn't slap his own knee, because I'm pretty sure no one actually does that, but he may as well have. "The same age as me, eh?," he said. 

Oh dear. Fishing for compliments, too. 

My friends Mimi, Jenny, Florence and I were at the hotel, a lovely spa near Vienna, for a one-night getaway from our little kids and/or jobs timed to occur before I give birth. (Newborns have many marvellous qualities, but they do poorly in saunas).  

This is not the type of thing we usually do. Until recently we could be found trying to talk over too-loud music in sweaty clubs, dancing barefoot in the forest rain, or quatsching for hours in smoky bars.  

Nowadays between work and toddler I usually don't have evenings. Instead I have a brief window between lunacy and collapse that I reserve for gobbling trash food, picking up toys and folding laundry. For this reason, socializing in noisy locales does not add excitement. My heart rate is up all day anyway. 

And this, I have discovered, is why the older you get, the likelier you are to enjoy spas. You no longer need to party to have a hangover. You are just constantly a semi-wreck, so run down that you'll willingly pay strangers to smear lotion on your face for you. No weekly big night out for me, thanks; I'll just skip ahead to the therapeutic application of green tea, bacon and nature documentaries.

A rocket.

God that's sad to see in print. 

Anyway. The four of us had been at the spa hotel all afternoon and were thoroughly enjoying the fact that we could sit in silence or converse at leisure for hours on end without a single frantic email or sweetly bleating child to distract us. It was heaven. 

That evening, before dinner, Jenny popped out to take Florence to the train station. Mimi and I stayed behind at the bar and continued to glory in our uninterrupted adults-only conversation. Until, as discussed, we were interrupted by unwanted conversation of the adults-only variety.  

"Here's another one," the Dirty Old Man said. "A man and a woman are having trouble making a baby, so they go to a fertility clinic to see what the trouble is."

"Mm," we said. 

"Fertility clinic. For making a baby, you see? They take home the little container for the man to put his sample in. The next day they go back and tell the doctor that they couldn't get it to work. The man says, 'I tried it with my left hand, but it wouldn't work. So I tried it with my right hand, she tried it with her right hand, with her left hand, she put it in her mouth...but we just can't get the lid off the container!' HAHAHAHA!"

A few moments of deliberative silence.

"Wow," I said. "I may never forget that."

"It's a joke," he explained. He squinted, considering whether we had failed to laugh because we're a couple of foreigners whose German sucks. "A joke. You see, they're talking about the container, but it sounds like..."

Our bartender, a fit and pretty lady who looked like she was in her late thirties, suddenly appeared. "This is Mr. X. He is always here. He sure likes to entertain people," she said,  brightly. "Yep! He's a regular! Does anyone need a drink?" 

"Ah...my favorite waitress!" said the man, gesturing in her general direction. "How old do you think she is? Doesn't she look great?"

We all agreed that indeed, she looked great. 

"She's forty!" he said. "Imagine! But she's already a grandmother, can you believe it."

A train in a tunnel.

The conversation was so vacuous that it was starting to make a sucking sound. "My eldest is 19," said the waitress. 

"You look great," I said. "Children are great."

"Yes! And you're expecting, I see," she said.  

"I am," I admitted with a chuckle. 

"Ah! That's wonderful. Congratulations," she said. "So. When are you due?" 

At this moment Jenny arrived. Beautiful, lovely Jenny. She sat down beside us at the bar, and was assaulted from all sides. 

"Welcome back!" I said. 

"Hi Jenny!" said Mimi. 

"Good evening to the lady!" said the Dirty Old Man, sticking out a hand. 

"Oh, hello," said lovely Jenny.  

"You're Austrian, right? You speak German, right?" asked the old man. "Do you like jokes?"

"Uh..."

The man sidled up real close beside her. "My grandson," he said, conspiratorially. "He got me a present for my birthday...Guess what it was?"

"I don't know," said Jenny. 

The old man beamed. "A stripper!" 

Never change, dirty old man. Because really, what would girls' night be without you? 

This Is Not Delicious

** IMPORTANT NOTE FROM THE BLOGGER: This post is actually about how a certain class of cookie embodies the futile, broken dreams of Western civilization, but I take a really long time to get to the point. Sorry about that. In my defense, brevity might be the soul of wit but a didactic ramble is often its elaborate coffin, so, you know, have some respect. Also, writing about my doubleplus cute daughter is the only way I can smuggle in pictures that people actually want to look at and when you write blog posts this long it really is important to have pictures.** 

We've crossed a sad milestone here on Gumpen Village Street. It used to be that the child distinguished between things that were delicious and things that were disgusting. Now she recognizes that a lot of stuff is just...kind of okay. And I'm sad about it, because it is the beginning of the end of innocence.  

Waffles are delicious...for now.

There was a time when all food was good. Then she started rejecting stuff on the grounds that it was "yucky", "disgusting," or "spicy" -- more recently, "sour" or "nasty". These judgments are delivered with a look of horror, a grasping of the tongue and sometimes tears and even spitting. 

But at least it was cute. Like the rosemary incident. One dinner a couple months ago Noodle was tucking into a fresh bowl of pasta with tomato sauce, which she loves, when she froze. Mid-bite. 

Dammit, I thought. I knew it. 

"This is a stick," the Noodle said to me with distate, holding up a single, tiny rosemary leaf. 

"It's rosemary," I said. "It's an herb." 

Noodles with sticks. This photo is a poor recreation of the offending dish.

She peered into her bowl. "No, this is a stick." She went in like a monkey looking for fleas. "Look! Other stick."

She held each leaf up demonstratively before smearing it onto the table. "Stick," she said. "Stick. Stick." You stupid, stick-hiding fiend, she thought to herself. It was a long dinner. 

But in the weeks since she turned two, there is a third, sadder category of food: Stuff she'll eat but without pleasure. 

Rice crackers, for example. Our go-to playground snack. One recent day she looked up at me, rice dust on her lips, and noted: "This...this is not really delicious, Mommy." And then with a hint of sorrow she polished off the rest. 

Or last week. She was eating my soup and seemed to be enjoying it, so I went fishing for compliments. "Mmm, is it yummy?" I asked. "No," she said with a shrug, "It's not really yummy." And kept eating. 

In fact, the only things that she finds delicious are, I'm afraid, things that everyone finds delicious, like ice cream and candy and cheese. (And plain black bread, for some reason, but I'm sure that'll end soon too.) 

And I guess this makes me sad because it means the way is prepared for her to experience disappointment. The let down. The long slow process of becoming jaded. Heck, one day soon she's going to realize that sorting rocks and riding the bus to the supermarket actually constitute a fairly shitty Saturday, and then what will I do?  

On the other hand, it's an achievement that she can distinguish between things that are delicious and things that we eat because they keep us regular. It means she has a sense of personal taste. Maybe she'll be less likely to buy in to stupid fads. 

Which brings me to the actual reason I started this blog post. Ready? 

MACAROONS ARE NOT DELICIOUS.* 

I mean, HELLLOOOOOOO. They are not delicious, and they do not even keep us regular. 

Destined to break your heart. Actually I never made this recipe, so I shouldn't judge, but I will.
No macaroons are actually delicious.

Ya. Macaroons. That is what this post is really about. Macaroons are the insipid, overplayed arm candy of the confection world. And if one more shitty schlock shop starts selling these by the checkout counter, I might scream. Is there no escape? Every airport. Every bourgie supermarket. Every bakery. 

Sure, they're pretty to look at. Their smooth, bland form allows for fun with color and indeed many are beautiful. It's obvious why the people have been Instagramming them ever since Instagram was invented. But #yum? Please. 

Et tu, McDonalds? REALLY? 

Macaroons are disappointment itself. To bite into a macaroon is to feel your hopes dashed and, worse, to feel like a sucker for having hoped your stupid hopes in the first place. How could you have believed that something so beautiful would actually taste good? 

A bit Orwellian, really.

Remember that scene in American Beauty (reach way back, guys) where Kevin Spacey's character finally gets the girl of his burning imagination and then it turns out she's just a clueless child onto whom the man has been projecting his remarkably lame fantasies? They didn't even need to make that whole movie. Alan Ball could have just passed around a box of macaroons and waited until everyone took a bite and been like, "That? That feeling you just had? That's what our movie is about". 

Macaroons are not disgusting (actually, I had a foie gras-stuffed one this summer that was SUPER disgusting, but that was an exception). They are just...nothing. They are okay. But you should only eat food that is just okay if it contains vitamins or supports your ability to poop. 

You should definitely not be paying (way) upwards of fifteen euros for six cookies that are just sort of okay. Bizarre liver-based varieties notwithstanding, your average macaroon is made out of egg whites and food coloring. Sure, the gorgeous cardboard boxes are fit to be used as the display sarcophagi of tiny dead pharaohs, but still. Have we lost our damn minds? The Emperor is naked, y'all, and has been for years. 

Laduree has boxes fit to bury tiny Care Bear kings. Still not that delicious though.

Enough already. Let's go back to eating rice crackers and cupcakes. I mean real cupcakes. The kind that don't have a three-inch butter-boner on their heads...and on that note, I'm going to stop because I feel another food rant coming on. 

Oh man. This blog post is such a macaroon. 

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

*Betcha didn't see that one coming, eh? Keeping it fresh.