I have been waging a slow and entirely ineffective war against Chuck E Cheese’s over the past year. The map on the website shows that we would have to move to either Vermont or Wyoming to live in a Chuck E-less state, and as neither of those two eventualities are likely just at the moment, I have had to bring the battle into my own home. Every time a commercial comes on the television and I hear the jingle "where a kid can be a kid", I say to my kids “but actually, Chuck E Cheese’s isn’t nearly as fun as it looks on the tv is it?”. They either chorus “yes it is” in unison, or don’t answer at all. This is how I know my attempts are ineffective (perceptive, me).
In spite of this, I did manage to avoid going there for 4-yo’s fourth birthday party. By a sneaky undercover operation, I made sure that a rival venue, Pump It Up, was higher up her list of desirable venues by the time her birthday came round. Pump It Up seems to me to be an altogether more healthy set-up (although still fairly rancid and not very parent-friendly). It’s a large barn of a place filled with bouncy castles and a huge inflatable slide. Apart from this being a broken limb waiting to happen, and a session there resulting in wild, hyped up children, I’m quite in favour of Pump It Up (“Pump Them Up” as a friend calls it). So thus it was that 4-yo had her party there, or half of it at any rate.
Technically speaking, she didn’t have her party there. That would have involved paying Pump It Up a serious amount of money for them to order pizza, and give me the use of the party room. So we just went along to the Preschool Play Session with half a dozen small friends and their mummies, had a good bounce around, and then came back to our house for nibbly snacks, birthday cake and a big slice of delicious plum pie. We didn’t do games and there were no pink frocks, but I satisfied my party-organising yearnings with decorating a room and a table, and filling some party bags. We had an ice cream cake from Dairy Queen, which was very exciting for me, since I’ve been wondering what Dairy Queen was like ever since I first heard the song Ariel by Dean Friedman, which must have been around 30 years ago (and if you’re struggling to remember that one, here's a youtube link. The clip is is 4 mins 21 secs long, but you’ll recognize it within the first 4 secs, I promise, and you can thank your lucky stars that, in this age of clickable choices, you have the option as to whether to listen to the whole thing or not).
The cake had some fancy candles on it, which burnt with different coloured flames, and which I’d bought in the MoMA Design Store during my trip to New York. Oh how smug I felt, until I saw them for half the price a couple of weeks later in my local Wal-Mart, and until I lit them, and found out that the flames, though quite possibly of interestingly varying hues, were almost invisible.
A year on, the whole birthday event had a much happier feel to it. My daughter had friends to invite, I knew how to get to the venue without puzzling over a map, we had a proper home to make festive, and I incidentally satisfied a 30 year long thirst for knowledge.
And the plum pie? Ah yes. I should explain about that. Many years ago, when I was in a dismal job which I truly hated, a friend of mine who was commiserating with me told me to look for the plums. There must be some projects, he said, which you like dealing with, which you seek out of your in-tray and put to the top. They’re your plums. Look for them. Actually, there weren’t any, not any at all; it was a dreadful job. The advice, however, has lived with me, and has helped me through many a dull situation. Not that becoming a Midwesterner is dull. I didn’t say that. But there is a certain dreariness in the slow process of growing roots in a new land: feeling a stranger the whole time, being an outsider, searching unsuccessfully for kindred spirits. That does get dull after a while. So I have had to employ my strategy of looking for plums. And I have found them. They were there at 4-yo’s party. Not a ready circle of mums from the same preschool or neighborhood, but a selection whom 4-yo and I have discovered in different places. None of the 5 of them had met each other before – I seem to have plucked my plums from different trees. They all helped make 4-yo’s day special. They know her well enough to know what present she would really like. They enjoyed her pleasure as she opened them. They are the people I can go to both for practical advice, and for a chewing over of the more puzzling questions of motherhood and life. They have, without exception, helped me out with a bit of childcare when I needed it. They make an effort to understand my extraordinary English take on life. I’ve even tried out the Chucky Jesus thing on one of them, and she laughed. I believe they would feel a gap if I was here no longer.
Birthday cake and plum pie. A rich and satisfying party mix.
Showing posts with label 3-yo. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 3-yo. Show all posts
Saturday, April 19, 2008
Friday, April 4, 2008
Happy Birthday
So, 3-yo turns 4. She was the first of us to have a birthday here in the US. Now her second birthday-in-America has come round, it feels like we are here well and truly here, not just here finding out what it’s like here.
Her third birthday was, for me, one of the saddest days of this whole moving-to-America lark. I didn’t dwell on it, not wanting to cast a gloom over her special day, but the day brought for me both a focus on what we had left behind in Scotland, and a meeting head-on with the very worst of the culture we were seeking to embrace.
Before you have children, you imagine that the world of mums and babies is a shiny smiling place, in which groups of women happily congregate to share experiences, and where deep friendships are formed. Then you have a baby, go to a few babies and toddlers groups and activities, and find that it can be quite different. Why would there be so many Mommy blogs if the myth were reality? I had done my fair share of all this with the two boys, and had found a bit of reality and quite a lot of myth. With my third, I struck lucky. Two women who were already friends happened to have daughters at the same time as I had mine. We lived within walking distance of each other. They each had 3 older children, and sons in the same classes as mine. I was even in the maternity hospital at the same time as one of them. Our due dates were a month apart, and throughout the pregnancies, we’d joked that she’d have to give birth two weeks early and I’d have to be two weeks late. And it happened. I woke up the morning after laboring and delivering, to a cheery familiar face and a “fancy a cup of tea then?”
The little girls, even at the ages of 1 and 2, liked each other’s company, and, perhaps for having 8 older siblings between them, seemed able to play together beyond their years. They sat up in high chairs in the local coffee shop, at that lovely stage where a teaspoon to bang on the table is all that’s needed to occupy a baby for half an hour. Luxury. Then they staggered round the coffee shop, giggling at each other, plopping down on their padded bottoms, while we tried (and by now, failed) to have a conversation. They reached the stage where crayons and paper might work for 5 minutes, but a decent conversation is beyond possiblity. We met at the local toddler group, where it just so happened there was a whole bunch of other fun mothers. Women who week by week would ask how my plans for America were coming along, who would listen to the tedious details, whom I bullied into buying the furniture and gadgets we didn’t want to ship (“who’d like a paper shredder? or a desk that’s a bit broken?”), who I knew would feel a space on a Thursday morning where 2-yo and I had been.
By the time of her third birthday, we’d been in America for just over 3 months. We were beginning to find our feet. There was no-one, though, to invite to a party. I couldn’t help thinking what pleasure a party would have given her, her small friends, and me, if we were still in Scotland. We’d have had it at home. Little girls in pink frocks. Old-fashioned games: the farmer’s in his den, pass the parcel, musical bumps and musical statues (all with a bit of parental help and varying degrees of chaos). Older siblings hovering around the edges. Little nibbly snacks and a cake. Singing happy birthday. Balloons and decorations. I know that children's parties strike fear into the hearts of many a braver mother than I, but I've loved the parties I've hosted. It's not hard to give half a dozen preschoolers a good time.
Worse still, 2-yo had tagged along when I had taken her brother to a party, and already had a firm idea of what constituted an all-American birthday experience. She was fixed on having her birthday celebration at Chuck E Cheese’s. Oh dear. Chuck E Cheese’s. Even the locals say things like “the kids love it”, as if to absolve themselves of any guilt attached to the decision to take their children there. With my freshly-arrived British sensibilities, I can only say that the words “culture shock” came nowhere near describing the experience. Chuck E Cheese’s is a games arcade designed for the 3 – 8 age range. You buy coin-like tokens, which your beloved darling then feeds into various game machines. If they win, the machine spews out tickets, and when your child has finished for the day, you take your tickets to a counter where they can exchange them for a prize. The prizes on display on the wall behind the counter are Nintendo DSs, or huge Hot Wheels playsets, or diamond-studded Barbies. These have price tags on them of thousands of tickets. Your child has probably collected 50 tickets. They will be directed to the glass display cabinet where they can choose between an array of small plastic items. They could get two yo-yos and a plastic ring, or three 4” fake snakes. Those too young to understand that a number with 0s after it is a big number are sorely disappointed. Those old enough to grasp the concept can take their tickets home to save up, and try their luck at persuading their parents to bring them again. I speak from experience. 7-yo has a bag of about 80 tickets in his bedroom, against the day when he might get another 8,000 or so for the electric guitar. This makes for happy parent-child conversations, as I’m sure you can imagine.
If kids are not going to a party, but have come along simply to enjoy a pleasurable Saturday morning, they will have queued for a long while to share the privilege. If they have come to a party, they will by-pass the queue, feed tokens into machines for a period of time, and then sit at long tables, eating oily pizza, until a large mouse with an over-sized plastic head emerges with a cake. This is Chuck E Cheese himself.
I think it is at Chuck E Cheese’s that the consistent Iota “not wrong, just different” philosophy of life in a different culture is stretched to the ultimate limit of its elasticity. Surely, surely, this is not a good way of entertaining young children. The place is small, crowded, smelly, greasy, loud, and thoroughly unpleasant. The food (pizza or burgers) makes a McDonalds happy meal look nutritious; the music is brainless. The adults sit in booths looking bored or anxious or both, and avoiding each other’s eyes. If this was a police state, I would say that everyone was trying not to see who else was there. It’s the kind of place you could report your neighbours for visiting. The annoying thing is that, as the locals say, the kids do love it. I can’t help feeling, though, that they have all been so thoroughly brainwashed by so many TV advertisements telling them that they are going to have a gratingly fantastic time, and then subjected to the peer pressure that the adverts engender, that they arrive without much choice.
I hate Chuck E Cheese’s so much, I’m not even going to provide a weblink. If you want to visit him, you can google him yourselves. I don’t want to be responsible for a single extra visitor to his site. The only redeeming feature about Chuck E Cheese’s, is that, along with the shiver of hatred that makes me clench my molars together and suck in my breath every time I hear his name, there is a little glimmer of amusement provided by my English ears. You see, the way they pronounce it here, it sounds for all the world like Chuck E Jesus. If I was feeling very irreverent, I might even say it sounds like Chucky Jesus. I’ve even tried saying “Chucky Jesus” to people in the right context, and they don’t notice anything wrong: “you went to Chucky Jesus on Saturday? How fun!”
So my daughter had her third birthday at Chuck E Cheese’s. She had no friends to invite, and I had no friends to share it with. She enjoyed every moment with her two big brothers, though, which was all that mattered. And if I could have seen ahead to her fourth birthday, I would have felt a lot happier about being here. More about that next time.
Her third birthday was, for me, one of the saddest days of this whole moving-to-America lark. I didn’t dwell on it, not wanting to cast a gloom over her special day, but the day brought for me both a focus on what we had left behind in Scotland, and a meeting head-on with the very worst of the culture we were seeking to embrace.
Before you have children, you imagine that the world of mums and babies is a shiny smiling place, in which groups of women happily congregate to share experiences, and where deep friendships are formed. Then you have a baby, go to a few babies and toddlers groups and activities, and find that it can be quite different. Why would there be so many Mommy blogs if the myth were reality? I had done my fair share of all this with the two boys, and had found a bit of reality and quite a lot of myth. With my third, I struck lucky. Two women who were already friends happened to have daughters at the same time as I had mine. We lived within walking distance of each other. They each had 3 older children, and sons in the same classes as mine. I was even in the maternity hospital at the same time as one of them. Our due dates were a month apart, and throughout the pregnancies, we’d joked that she’d have to give birth two weeks early and I’d have to be two weeks late. And it happened. I woke up the morning after laboring and delivering, to a cheery familiar face and a “fancy a cup of tea then?”
The little girls, even at the ages of 1 and 2, liked each other’s company, and, perhaps for having 8 older siblings between them, seemed able to play together beyond their years. They sat up in high chairs in the local coffee shop, at that lovely stage where a teaspoon to bang on the table is all that’s needed to occupy a baby for half an hour. Luxury. Then they staggered round the coffee shop, giggling at each other, plopping down on their padded bottoms, while we tried (and by now, failed) to have a conversation. They reached the stage where crayons and paper might work for 5 minutes, but a decent conversation is beyond possiblity. We met at the local toddler group, where it just so happened there was a whole bunch of other fun mothers. Women who week by week would ask how my plans for America were coming along, who would listen to the tedious details, whom I bullied into buying the furniture and gadgets we didn’t want to ship (“who’d like a paper shredder? or a desk that’s a bit broken?”), who I knew would feel a space on a Thursday morning where 2-yo and I had been.
By the time of her third birthday, we’d been in America for just over 3 months. We were beginning to find our feet. There was no-one, though, to invite to a party. I couldn’t help thinking what pleasure a party would have given her, her small friends, and me, if we were still in Scotland. We’d have had it at home. Little girls in pink frocks. Old-fashioned games: the farmer’s in his den, pass the parcel, musical bumps and musical statues (all with a bit of parental help and varying degrees of chaos). Older siblings hovering around the edges. Little nibbly snacks and a cake. Singing happy birthday. Balloons and decorations. I know that children's parties strike fear into the hearts of many a braver mother than I, but I've loved the parties I've hosted. It's not hard to give half a dozen preschoolers a good time.
Worse still, 2-yo had tagged along when I had taken her brother to a party, and already had a firm idea of what constituted an all-American birthday experience. She was fixed on having her birthday celebration at Chuck E Cheese’s. Oh dear. Chuck E Cheese’s. Even the locals say things like “the kids love it”, as if to absolve themselves of any guilt attached to the decision to take their children there. With my freshly-arrived British sensibilities, I can only say that the words “culture shock” came nowhere near describing the experience. Chuck E Cheese’s is a games arcade designed for the 3 – 8 age range. You buy coin-like tokens, which your beloved darling then feeds into various game machines. If they win, the machine spews out tickets, and when your child has finished for the day, you take your tickets to a counter where they can exchange them for a prize. The prizes on display on the wall behind the counter are Nintendo DSs, or huge Hot Wheels playsets, or diamond-studded Barbies. These have price tags on them of thousands of tickets. Your child has probably collected 50 tickets. They will be directed to the glass display cabinet where they can choose between an array of small plastic items. They could get two yo-yos and a plastic ring, or three 4” fake snakes. Those too young to understand that a number with 0s after it is a big number are sorely disappointed. Those old enough to grasp the concept can take their tickets home to save up, and try their luck at persuading their parents to bring them again. I speak from experience. 7-yo has a bag of about 80 tickets in his bedroom, against the day when he might get another 8,000 or so for the electric guitar. This makes for happy parent-child conversations, as I’m sure you can imagine.
If kids are not going to a party, but have come along simply to enjoy a pleasurable Saturday morning, they will have queued for a long while to share the privilege. If they have come to a party, they will by-pass the queue, feed tokens into machines for a period of time, and then sit at long tables, eating oily pizza, until a large mouse with an over-sized plastic head emerges with a cake. This is Chuck E Cheese himself.
I think it is at Chuck E Cheese’s that the consistent Iota “not wrong, just different” philosophy of life in a different culture is stretched to the ultimate limit of its elasticity. Surely, surely, this is not a good way of entertaining young children. The place is small, crowded, smelly, greasy, loud, and thoroughly unpleasant. The food (pizza or burgers) makes a McDonalds happy meal look nutritious; the music is brainless. The adults sit in booths looking bored or anxious or both, and avoiding each other’s eyes. If this was a police state, I would say that everyone was trying not to see who else was there. It’s the kind of place you could report your neighbours for visiting. The annoying thing is that, as the locals say, the kids do love it. I can’t help feeling, though, that they have all been so thoroughly brainwashed by so many TV advertisements telling them that they are going to have a gratingly fantastic time, and then subjected to the peer pressure that the adverts engender, that they arrive without much choice.
I hate Chuck E Cheese’s so much, I’m not even going to provide a weblink. If you want to visit him, you can google him yourselves. I don’t want to be responsible for a single extra visitor to his site. The only redeeming feature about Chuck E Cheese’s, is that, along with the shiver of hatred that makes me clench my molars together and suck in my breath every time I hear his name, there is a little glimmer of amusement provided by my English ears. You see, the way they pronounce it here, it sounds for all the world like Chuck E Jesus. If I was feeling very irreverent, I might even say it sounds like Chucky Jesus. I’ve even tried saying “Chucky Jesus” to people in the right context, and they don’t notice anything wrong: “you went to Chucky Jesus on Saturday? How fun!”
So my daughter had her third birthday at Chuck E Cheese’s. She had no friends to invite, and I had no friends to share it with. She enjoyed every moment with her two big brothers, though, which was all that mattered. And if I could have seen ahead to her fourth birthday, I would have felt a lot happier about being here. More about that next time.
Friday, October 19, 2007
Reasons to be cheerful: Part I
Now, in the interests of redressing the balance following my miserable gloom of last week-end, I’m going to tell you about something that I really like about here. Thunderstorms. We’ve had a couple of humdingers this week. The good thing is, it won’t be long before the next one. Not that they’re really frequent, but frequent is a relative thing. Think about it if you’re reading this in Britain. When was the last time you had a good thunderstorm? And the time before that? See. Hardly ever. And how long did they last? A measly 20 minutes? Here they rumble around for hours.
Thunderstorms here are magnificent. The thunder rolls and booms and cracks. The lightning flashes just like in movies, or when children fiddle with the light switch. Light, dark, light, dark, light, dark. We get that proper forked lightning too. Lots of it. Like the finger of a divine being: “You, yes, you, Iota Manhattan, this one is for YOU”. And zap! You can see it crackling its way down to the intended spot. Actually, I shouldn’t joke, as lightning strikes do account for deaths and injuries here, and it is treated with respect. I’m told you shouldn’t be on the phone or use the computer during a lightning storm, (although there are those of us who will risk personal safety for the sake of our blog readers). People feel uneasy about being outside. Outdoor pools are closed if there is a threat of lightning, and this morning’s preschool trip to the pumpkin patch was cancelled. The words ‘rain’ and ‘mud’ were mentioned, but lightning was given as the reason.
Thunderstorms can hog the stage and perform on their own, without it raining, which I find very exciting. Of course they do bring rain too. Proper rain. Torrents of the stuff, lasting for ages. You get veritable rivers running down the sides of the roads, and the drainpipes flow like taps. Proper rain. Not that drizzle that passes for precipitation in the UK. Over there on the eastern side of the Atlantic, you’re really quite pansy-ass when it comes to a good storm. Bigger and wetter, that’s the style here. Something else I like about rain here is that it doesn’t have to be cold. We’re not talking tropical conditions like the monsoons or anything, but certainly, you can have a warm day that doesn’t turn cold just because the rain has come. I like that. Why should rain always equal cold? Huh? Here, you can be out in the rain in your flip-flops (remember this detail, it becomes significant later on).
So thunderstorms are good. And today it turned out that lollies in banks are good too. Lollies in banks. Usually I hate lollies in banks. Does my child really need a sugar fix just because I’ve paid in a cheque? “Don’t waste your money” I always want to say. “Lollies are not necessary. What else are you frittering away my cash on? Stop the lollies and lower your overdraft charges.” But today, nothing to do with the very satisfying thunderstorm, at least I don’t think so, although you never know how these things tie up in some cosmic realm, I even found a purpose for lollies in banks.
I was going to the bank after school pick-up (why?), so I had three children with me. One, the smallest, was running about in a wild fashion that in Britain would have made me feel rather self-conscious, but here, doesn’t make me feel quite so bad, as they seem a bit more relaxed about noisy children (oh look, did you spot that? Another nice thing about America has sneaked in. I could run a Spot the Nice American Thing competition at this rate. By the way, did you notice the word ‘pansy-ass’ a few paragraphs ago. That’s another. I didn’t know that word a year ago.) Anyway, she was running up and down, with the Burt’s Bees lip salve (oh, there’s another one) she’d stolen out of my handbag, saying “guess where I’ve put lipstick, I’ve put it all over everywhere” and giggling hysterically. This might have embarrassed me, but I knew that (a) she was talking about her own body, as evidenced by the hoiking up of her t-shirt to display her belly button which I could imagine is a pretty tempting target for a lip salve when you are 3 years old, (b) she was laughing so raucously that I knew no-one else would be able to understand a word she was saying and (c) lip salve is clear so that if there had been some collateral damage on the furniture and fittings that I hadn’t witnessed, we’d be long gone by the time it was discovered.
It happened. She tripped over her flip-flops (hah! remember?), her pink bejeweled flip-flops, measured her length and landed on her front, the fall accompanied by a dull 'bop' sound as her little forehead hit the bank floor, since her hands were too busy clutching the lip salve and its lid to be any use in saving her. There was much yelling and sobbing, which continued for a while. Then a while longer. Then, after a pause which only the most heartless of mothers would interpret as resulting from a quick assessment of the size and interest-level of the audience (both satisfactory), a while longer. At this point, the helpful bank lady started talking about ice packs and cold water (more yelling, louder yelling), and I could feel the situation was getting out of hand. So I put aside my pride, and there on my knees in that Bank of America, I uttered some words which I never thought I would utter in a bank. I asked “Do you have any lollies here?”
I suppose I should be honest, and tell you that actually I was rather inarticulate at this point. Kneeling on the floor, arms round yelling child, hands fumbling with lip salve and lid, I was struggling for the right word. I was hesitating to say “Do you have any suckers here?” which is what kids call lollies. It didn’t seem a very appropriate turn of phrase for use in a high street bank. So I started with ‘popsicles’, which I knew was wrong as soon as I’d said it (they’re the frozen ones), and quickly diverted to ‘lollies’ (not right either), which I tried to segue into ‘lollipops’, but I fear I produced some burbling sound somewhere between the three attempts. The nice bank lady understood me though, and of course the end of the story is that they did indeed have lollies there. They had a particularly nice pink and purple stripy one (you see why I wonder about cosmic realms), and all was well. The boys managed to sneak one each too.
Thunderstorms. Lollies in banks. Reasons to be cheerful: Part I.
Thunderstorms here are magnificent. The thunder rolls and booms and cracks. The lightning flashes just like in movies, or when children fiddle with the light switch. Light, dark, light, dark, light, dark. We get that proper forked lightning too. Lots of it. Like the finger of a divine being: “You, yes, you, Iota Manhattan, this one is for YOU”. And zap! You can see it crackling its way down to the intended spot. Actually, I shouldn’t joke, as lightning strikes do account for deaths and injuries here, and it is treated with respect. I’m told you shouldn’t be on the phone or use the computer during a lightning storm, (although there are those of us who will risk personal safety for the sake of our blog readers). People feel uneasy about being outside. Outdoor pools are closed if there is a threat of lightning, and this morning’s preschool trip to the pumpkin patch was cancelled. The words ‘rain’ and ‘mud’ were mentioned, but lightning was given as the reason.
Thunderstorms can hog the stage and perform on their own, without it raining, which I find very exciting. Of course they do bring rain too. Proper rain. Torrents of the stuff, lasting for ages. You get veritable rivers running down the sides of the roads, and the drainpipes flow like taps. Proper rain. Not that drizzle that passes for precipitation in the UK. Over there on the eastern side of the Atlantic, you’re really quite pansy-ass when it comes to a good storm. Bigger and wetter, that’s the style here. Something else I like about rain here is that it doesn’t have to be cold. We’re not talking tropical conditions like the monsoons or anything, but certainly, you can have a warm day that doesn’t turn cold just because the rain has come. I like that. Why should rain always equal cold? Huh? Here, you can be out in the rain in your flip-flops (remember this detail, it becomes significant later on).
So thunderstorms are good. And today it turned out that lollies in banks are good too. Lollies in banks. Usually I hate lollies in banks. Does my child really need a sugar fix just because I’ve paid in a cheque? “Don’t waste your money” I always want to say. “Lollies are not necessary. What else are you frittering away my cash on? Stop the lollies and lower your overdraft charges.” But today, nothing to do with the very satisfying thunderstorm, at least I don’t think so, although you never know how these things tie up in some cosmic realm, I even found a purpose for lollies in banks.
I was going to the bank after school pick-up (why?), so I had three children with me. One, the smallest, was running about in a wild fashion that in Britain would have made me feel rather self-conscious, but here, doesn’t make me feel quite so bad, as they seem a bit more relaxed about noisy children (oh look, did you spot that? Another nice thing about America has sneaked in. I could run a Spot the Nice American Thing competition at this rate. By the way, did you notice the word ‘pansy-ass’ a few paragraphs ago. That’s another. I didn’t know that word a year ago.) Anyway, she was running up and down, with the Burt’s Bees lip salve (oh, there’s another one) she’d stolen out of my handbag, saying “guess where I’ve put lipstick, I’ve put it all over everywhere” and giggling hysterically. This might have embarrassed me, but I knew that (a) she was talking about her own body, as evidenced by the hoiking up of her t-shirt to display her belly button which I could imagine is a pretty tempting target for a lip salve when you are 3 years old, (b) she was laughing so raucously that I knew no-one else would be able to understand a word she was saying and (c) lip salve is clear so that if there had been some collateral damage on the furniture and fittings that I hadn’t witnessed, we’d be long gone by the time it was discovered.
It happened. She tripped over her flip-flops (hah! remember?), her pink bejeweled flip-flops, measured her length and landed on her front, the fall accompanied by a dull 'bop' sound as her little forehead hit the bank floor, since her hands were too busy clutching the lip salve and its lid to be any use in saving her. There was much yelling and sobbing, which continued for a while. Then a while longer. Then, after a pause which only the most heartless of mothers would interpret as resulting from a quick assessment of the size and interest-level of the audience (both satisfactory), a while longer. At this point, the helpful bank lady started talking about ice packs and cold water (more yelling, louder yelling), and I could feel the situation was getting out of hand. So I put aside my pride, and there on my knees in that Bank of America, I uttered some words which I never thought I would utter in a bank. I asked “Do you have any lollies here?”
I suppose I should be honest, and tell you that actually I was rather inarticulate at this point. Kneeling on the floor, arms round yelling child, hands fumbling with lip salve and lid, I was struggling for the right word. I was hesitating to say “Do you have any suckers here?” which is what kids call lollies. It didn’t seem a very appropriate turn of phrase for use in a high street bank. So I started with ‘popsicles’, which I knew was wrong as soon as I’d said it (they’re the frozen ones), and quickly diverted to ‘lollies’ (not right either), which I tried to segue into ‘lollipops’, but I fear I produced some burbling sound somewhere between the three attempts. The nice bank lady understood me though, and of course the end of the story is that they did indeed have lollies there. They had a particularly nice pink and purple stripy one (you see why I wonder about cosmic realms), and all was well. The boys managed to sneak one each too.
Thunderstorms. Lollies in banks. Reasons to be cheerful: Part I.
Wednesday, October 10, 2007
Siblings and soccer
If you have more than one child, occasionally you are privy to the conversations they have between themselves without your presence. Most of these you miss, of course, but occasionally you can eavesdrop. Eavesdropping is, as we all know, a bad thing, but maternal eavesdropping, as any mother will tell you, doesn’t count.
This particular conversation took place in the sitting room, which, conveniently, is within earshot of the desk where the computer is. I could therefore type the conversation as it happened, so I know I got it down verbatim. 10-yo was watching soccer on tv (hence the curtailed ability to utter a sentence longer than three words). The boy lives, breathes, thinks, eats soccer (just to set the scene for you). The conversation went like this:
3-yo: Why do soccer matches be silly? [blimey, 3-yo, talk about going for the jugular]
10-yo: They’re not silly.
3-yo: Why are they?
10-yo: They’re not.
3-yo: Oh. [long pause] Are they good or bad?
10-yo: They’re good.
3-yo: Oh. [long pause] Where did soccer matches came from?
10-yo: Different places.
3-yo: What do you do when you play a soccer match?
10-yo: You try to score a goal.
3-yo: Why do they have matching costumes all the same? [honing in now on the more important aspects of the sport]
10-yo: They have to.
I’m so glad that 3-yo has the opportunity for such a comprehensive education concerning the beautiful game. After all, there won’t be many boys in her life with whom she will be able to use the opening gambit “Why do soccer matches be silly?”. Not if she’s got any sense.
This particular conversation took place in the sitting room, which, conveniently, is within earshot of the desk where the computer is. I could therefore type the conversation as it happened, so I know I got it down verbatim. 10-yo was watching soccer on tv (hence the curtailed ability to utter a sentence longer than three words). The boy lives, breathes, thinks, eats soccer (just to set the scene for you). The conversation went like this:
3-yo: Why do soccer matches be silly? [blimey, 3-yo, talk about going for the jugular]
10-yo: They’re not silly.
3-yo: Why are they?
10-yo: They’re not.
3-yo: Oh. [long pause] Are they good or bad?
10-yo: They’re good.
3-yo: Oh. [long pause] Where did soccer matches came from?
10-yo: Different places.
3-yo: What do you do when you play a soccer match?
10-yo: You try to score a goal.
3-yo: Why do they have matching costumes all the same? [honing in now on the more important aspects of the sport]
10-yo: They have to.
I’m so glad that 3-yo has the opportunity for such a comprehensive education concerning the beautiful game. After all, there won’t be many boys in her life with whom she will be able to use the opening gambit “Why do soccer matches be silly?”. Not if she’s got any sense.
Monday, September 10, 2007
Auntie Clara
Now I don’t normally like being tagged or memed, but this one from Jo Beaufoix has tickled my fancy.
The rules:
1) players must list one fact that is relevant to their life for each letter in their middle name. If you don’t have a middle name then use a name that you like.
2) the other rules are to do with how to pass the tag on to other bloggers, but instead of doing that, I'm just going to say, if you want to have a go, please feel free, and go to Jo's blog to get the full rules. (Sorry, cheating, I know).
I don’t have a middle name, so I am going to use the name Iota.
I is for Iota. Iota is the letter i from the Greek alphabet. Iota is I. Iota is me. I is therefore also for identity. I have long been fascinated by the relationship between fiction and fact; The Purple Rose of Cairo is one of my favourite films. I’m sure any blogger will tell you, blogging means you are drawn into this puzzle in your own life. I am Iota, but it's not as simple as that. She has developed a life a little apart from mine. She has her own friends. (I think she might be rather nicer than me, actually. And I fear more interesting.) This is part of the fascination of blogging.
O is for Olbas oil. Obviously.
T, as in a nice cup of.
A might be for America, a big part of my life at the moment, but that would be too obvious. It might be for A nice cup of T, but that’s a bit repetitive, and anyway, I wouldn’t want to limit myself to just the one. So A can be for Auntie Clara, Husband’s sister, who is coming to visit us this week.
Auntie Clara plays a pretty good initial letter game herself. I played it with her not all that long ago. I got the atlas out, and we went through it, seeing how far we could get through the alphabet on countries she has visited. She is the most widely and most interestingly travelled person I know. I was trying to remember which letters she has left, and have just discovered that she has helpfully put a map on her Facebook page, with a little pin in every country she has been to. It's a pretty crowded map. According to that, she still has K, O, Q, X, Y and Z. I remember from our previous discussion that we decided she needed a trip to the Middle East, which could get her Oman, Qatar and Yemen. Then Africa for Kenya (unless she fitted in Kuwait when in the Middle East) and her pick of Zaire, Zambia and Zimbabwe (she’s been to Zanzibar, but we decided that didn’t count, although we thought it a pretty good try). X is always going to be a challenge, unless she can find Xanadu.
I’m afraid the Midwest will be very tame by her standards. She ideally likes her destination to be remote, full of dangerous diseases, a recent war-zone, and closed to foreigners unless you know someone in the Embassy. We can’t offer much in the way of exotic excitement. We do have trump cards though, in the form of a fine pair of nephews and a splendid niece. They are all excited at the thought of Auntie Clara’s visit. 3-yo has been mysteriously busying herself getting plastic tubs out of the kitchen cupboard, filling them with water, and picking leaves and grass from the garden to float in them. When these had been sitting on the kitchen counter for a couple of days and were getting to that slimy stage, I asked her “could I tidy these away now?” and she was horrified. “But they’re for Auntie Clara”.
So Auntie Clara, if you’re reading this, I’m afraid we can’t offer the kind of curious and astonishing foreign adventures that you are used to, but you do have some strange and wondrous vegetation arrangements to look forward to. Strange, wondrous and beginning to decompose.
The rules:
1) players must list one fact that is relevant to their life for each letter in their middle name. If you don’t have a middle name then use a name that you like.
2) the other rules are to do with how to pass the tag on to other bloggers, but instead of doing that, I'm just going to say, if you want to have a go, please feel free, and go to Jo's blog to get the full rules. (Sorry, cheating, I know).
I don’t have a middle name, so I am going to use the name Iota.
I is for Iota. Iota is the letter i from the Greek alphabet. Iota is I. Iota is me. I is therefore also for identity. I have long been fascinated by the relationship between fiction and fact; The Purple Rose of Cairo is one of my favourite films. I’m sure any blogger will tell you, blogging means you are drawn into this puzzle in your own life. I am Iota, but it's not as simple as that. She has developed a life a little apart from mine. She has her own friends. (I think she might be rather nicer than me, actually. And I fear more interesting.) This is part of the fascination of blogging.
O is for Olbas oil. Obviously.
T, as in a nice cup of.
A might be for America, a big part of my life at the moment, but that would be too obvious. It might be for A nice cup of T, but that’s a bit repetitive, and anyway, I wouldn’t want to limit myself to just the one. So A can be for Auntie Clara, Husband’s sister, who is coming to visit us this week.
Auntie Clara plays a pretty good initial letter game herself. I played it with her not all that long ago. I got the atlas out, and we went through it, seeing how far we could get through the alphabet on countries she has visited. She is the most widely and most interestingly travelled person I know. I was trying to remember which letters she has left, and have just discovered that she has helpfully put a map on her Facebook page, with a little pin in every country she has been to. It's a pretty crowded map. According to that, she still has K, O, Q, X, Y and Z. I remember from our previous discussion that we decided she needed a trip to the Middle East, which could get her Oman, Qatar and Yemen. Then Africa for Kenya (unless she fitted in Kuwait when in the Middle East) and her pick of Zaire, Zambia and Zimbabwe (she’s been to Zanzibar, but we decided that didn’t count, although we thought it a pretty good try). X is always going to be a challenge, unless she can find Xanadu.
I’m afraid the Midwest will be very tame by her standards. She ideally likes her destination to be remote, full of dangerous diseases, a recent war-zone, and closed to foreigners unless you know someone in the Embassy. We can’t offer much in the way of exotic excitement. We do have trump cards though, in the form of a fine pair of nephews and a splendid niece. They are all excited at the thought of Auntie Clara’s visit. 3-yo has been mysteriously busying herself getting plastic tubs out of the kitchen cupboard, filling them with water, and picking leaves and grass from the garden to float in them. When these had been sitting on the kitchen counter for a couple of days and were getting to that slimy stage, I asked her “could I tidy these away now?” and she was horrified. “But they’re for Auntie Clara”.
So Auntie Clara, if you’re reading this, I’m afraid we can’t offer the kind of curious and astonishing foreign adventures that you are used to, but you do have some strange and wondrous vegetation arrangements to look forward to. Strange, wondrous and beginning to decompose.
Monday, August 13, 2007
The wanderers return
Well, we’re back. It was a very good holiday. When I said “a week or two”, I was understating a little. We were away, in fact, for 2 weeks and 2 days. Maybe the American week is bigger than the British week.
I made a marvellous discovery in Colorado. Now you know how much I like our neighborhood pool. I’m afraid to say that they do much better in the Rockies. Yup. They sure do. They have hot springs.
We tried out hot springs in three different towns. It made me want to move to Colorado. Imagine having neighborhood hot springs instead of a neighborhood pool. It’s like having a warm bath in the middle of the afternoon, under the guise of entertaining your children. The one I liked best was in Ouray, the Switzerland of America as it is known, where you are in a sort of basin surrounded by peaks, and can't raise your eyes without enjoying stunning mountain views [you have to click on "Today's Movie" to make this worth watching, by the way]. Whoever had designed the Ouray hot springs had put careful thought into the layout, and had got it 100% right. I hope he or she got an award. It was set out so that there was a bath-hot pool in which one could do some serious lounging, whilst watching one’s off-spring play in the adjoining ice-cold pool to which they were attracted by a couple of big slides. This seems to me to be the ideal arrangement: adults lounge in the warmth while children cavort in the cold. There was also an intermediate tepid pool to one side, where one could play with the off-spring when required, meaning that I never, not once, ever, had to venture into the cold pool at all. I should mention at this point that Husband earned himself huge totals of brownie points – that’s UK girl guide brownie points, not US chocolate brownie points, although he could have had those too if he had wanted, such was my gratitude – by accompanying the off-spring into the cold pool when necessary, which actually amounted to a very long time. So not all the adults got to do all the lounging. Those who have a long-standing love affair with the hot bath took priority.
I developed a theory. When you visit the Rockies, you are very aware of their history, and how the great gold rushes of the late 19th century led to this harsh country being populated. There is evidence of mining all around, of fortunes being made and lost, of hopes and dreams, of new beginnings, of hardship and adventure. I’m not sure this was all to do with gold, though. I reckon word got out about the hot springs. I mean, if you were a pioneer, in a dusty covered wagon, your limbs aching from the bone-shaking motion, your feet sore from walking, your children dirty and tired, wouldn’t the promise of hot springs have done it for you? Just one “there’s hot springs in them thar hills” and I’d have been leaping on the front horse and whipping it to within an inch of its poor beleaguered life, stopping for the briefest of moments when the baby fell out of the back of the wagon, and turning back for it only because the cries of the older children were so piteous when I suggested that we would have more chance of being first at the springs if we let another wagon stop to pick it up.
This was my theory, at any rate, until we got home to the plains. Back home on the range, I looked up Weatherbug on the internet, and was a little dismayed to find that the weather forecast for the next 5 days didn’t show any temperatures below 100 degrees. It has definitely hotted up since we went away. We had been warned, but as with all these things, you don’t quite believe it till you experience it. So I am pleased to be back to the neighborhood pool, which is open for another 3 weeks until Labor day. Neighborhood hot springs have their time and place, but I guess here and now is not it.
I have also to report, with some degree of smugness, that we only had ONE fast food meal in all our time away. Travelling with 3 children in America, this represents something of an achievement. The one fast food meal we did have was very well worth it. The lady behind the counter, on hearing our accents, went a bit dreamy and asked if we had ever met Sir Paul McCartney. I was sorry to have to disappoint her, but it was nice to be asked. Our visit to the establishment also meant that I could listen all evening to 3-yo talking about Burger Ting (she can’t say the sound “k” at the beginning of a word, not even in Tolorado), which was unbelievably sweet. Tute, one might venture.
I made a marvellous discovery in Colorado. Now you know how much I like our neighborhood pool. I’m afraid to say that they do much better in the Rockies. Yup. They sure do. They have hot springs.
We tried out hot springs in three different towns. It made me want to move to Colorado. Imagine having neighborhood hot springs instead of a neighborhood pool. It’s like having a warm bath in the middle of the afternoon, under the guise of entertaining your children. The one I liked best was in Ouray, the Switzerland of America as it is known, where you are in a sort of basin surrounded by peaks, and can't raise your eyes without enjoying stunning mountain views [you have to click on "Today's Movie" to make this worth watching, by the way]. Whoever had designed the Ouray hot springs had put careful thought into the layout, and had got it 100% right. I hope he or she got an award. It was set out so that there was a bath-hot pool in which one could do some serious lounging, whilst watching one’s off-spring play in the adjoining ice-cold pool to which they were attracted by a couple of big slides. This seems to me to be the ideal arrangement: adults lounge in the warmth while children cavort in the cold. There was also an intermediate tepid pool to one side, where one could play with the off-spring when required, meaning that I never, not once, ever, had to venture into the cold pool at all. I should mention at this point that Husband earned himself huge totals of brownie points – that’s UK girl guide brownie points, not US chocolate brownie points, although he could have had those too if he had wanted, such was my gratitude – by accompanying the off-spring into the cold pool when necessary, which actually amounted to a very long time. So not all the adults got to do all the lounging. Those who have a long-standing love affair with the hot bath took priority.
I developed a theory. When you visit the Rockies, you are very aware of their history, and how the great gold rushes of the late 19th century led to this harsh country being populated. There is evidence of mining all around, of fortunes being made and lost, of hopes and dreams, of new beginnings, of hardship and adventure. I’m not sure this was all to do with gold, though. I reckon word got out about the hot springs. I mean, if you were a pioneer, in a dusty covered wagon, your limbs aching from the bone-shaking motion, your feet sore from walking, your children dirty and tired, wouldn’t the promise of hot springs have done it for you? Just one “there’s hot springs in them thar hills” and I’d have been leaping on the front horse and whipping it to within an inch of its poor beleaguered life, stopping for the briefest of moments when the baby fell out of the back of the wagon, and turning back for it only because the cries of the older children were so piteous when I suggested that we would have more chance of being first at the springs if we let another wagon stop to pick it up.
This was my theory, at any rate, until we got home to the plains. Back home on the range, I looked up Weatherbug on the internet, and was a little dismayed to find that the weather forecast for the next 5 days didn’t show any temperatures below 100 degrees. It has definitely hotted up since we went away. We had been warned, but as with all these things, you don’t quite believe it till you experience it. So I am pleased to be back to the neighborhood pool, which is open for another 3 weeks until Labor day. Neighborhood hot springs have their time and place, but I guess here and now is not it.
I have also to report, with some degree of smugness, that we only had ONE fast food meal in all our time away. Travelling with 3 children in America, this represents something of an achievement. The one fast food meal we did have was very well worth it. The lady behind the counter, on hearing our accents, went a bit dreamy and asked if we had ever met Sir Paul McCartney. I was sorry to have to disappoint her, but it was nice to be asked. Our visit to the establishment also meant that I could listen all evening to 3-yo talking about Burger Ting (she can’t say the sound “k” at the beginning of a word, not even in Tolorado), which was unbelievably sweet. Tute, one might venture.
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