White Christmas!

I didn't take the time to edit this photo, which is why you can see Scary Kidnapper Van in the background. Think of it as ambiance.

We Love Walter

Update

We found an apartment! If they accept our application, we will be moving in three weeks, to a remote southern corner of the city. Further bulletins as events warrant. (Also, many thanks to Taekwando Uncle and his family for loaning us the car that took us to the apartment, which is 90 painful minutes away by bus and a breezy 30 by car.) It has all happened very quickly - we gave notice yesterday, our current landlord showed our apartment 3 hours later, and we saw three places today, including the One We Want. But this is just the beginning - if all goes well, we'll be in our new home 3 weeks from today, and lots of things have to happen very quickly in the interim. Dutch has no idea of what the next month holds in store for her. I'd better go buy some packing tape.

Cardboard Boxes!

It's official; we're moving. The letter goes to the landlord today. I feel kind of crushed under the burden of packing, finding an (affordable and not-awful) apartment, arranging moving, etc... also, school starts in a week and a half. And we have all kinds of appointments in the next month, as I've been catching up on all the stuff I neglected all fall quarter, like having the dentist make sure Dutch's teeth aren't screwing themselves up by filling in the gap (where she had a tooth before she knocked it out last spring). Busy!
But I do like moving. I actually like packing, and I like unpacking. I like exploring a new place. I just wish the logistics - finding a place to move, renting a truck, actually carrying all our junk into and out of the truck - were magically taken care of by a genie. I will proceed to squeeze my eyes shut and wish really really hard.

Words of 2008

Check it out - there's a definition for "walkshed"! I love it!

Allowances

We just started giving Dutch an allowance. Well, I did. Cook isn't fully on board. I just think that given how much of modern life is based on the earning and spending of money, you can't start too early. She already asks for things, she vaguely understands the concept of money, she's subjected to targeted advertising, and I think that means she needs to begin learning how to make financial decisions. It's important to know about money. I didn't know until I was 8 or so that when you wrote a check, you had to eventually pony up real money to back it up. (A side note: I also didn't know until just this minute, when I thought I'd be clever and make a cultural reference, that the Dire Straits song goes "money for nothing and your chicks for free" - I always thought it was "checks for free". I'm apparently a cultural moron, as well as a poor financial decisionmaker.) And I'd like Dutch to know that by the time she's oh...six? Of course, checks won't exist when she's six - you'll just give a DNA sample and they'll withdraw money from your universal account.

One big question is whether to pay the kid for doing chores. (An interesting note on the allowance gender gap - parents pay their sons more to do household chores than they do their daughters.) I'm taking the route that she just gets the allowance, and chores will be part of her work as a member of the family. (That's all hot air, as she has no chores. Getting her to brush her teeth and get to bed at a reasonable hour takes all my energy. Maybe next year...) Anyway, she has to save 20%, share 10%, and use the rest on anything she want outside of the basics (clothes, shelter, food, love, etc.). We opened a bank account for her, and I finagled a freebie piggybank with three sections. So far she's just interested in the putting-money-in-the-slots part, which is fine with me. I'm sure we'll get to the how-to-save-for-the-things-you-want part eventually.

Maybe I'll learn about making good financial choices. I'm pretty sure that grad school wouldn't count.

Hi!

All a Blur

About a week ago, one of my contact lenses disintegrated, and I can't get an eye exam appointment until early January. So I've been wearing my glasses all the time, which always has the effect of making me feel kind of sleepy and detached from reality (probably because the prescription is totally inadequate for my near-blindness). Putting my contacts in has always been part of waking up and getting ready for the day, so when I haven't got the option, I feel like I'm always wearing my pyjamas and haven't brushed my teeth. Also, I'm sick, so I've been generally pretty out of it. This is probably affecting my experience of the holiday. But it has been a good one.

First we cooked.

Then we cleaned.

Then we put on our Fancy Clothes and went to the Nutcracker, where Dutch asked many very loud questions about the plot and the characters' motivations, which I could not answer.


Then we had Christmas Eve dinner guests.

Then we opened presents.
Then we practiced Taekwando.

Merry Christmas!

Some Explanations

Dutch came into the livingroom and sat down with a crossword puzzle and a crayon, and started coloring in the boxes.

Cook: What are you doing, Dutch?
Dutch: I'm just sciencing.
Cook: Really?
Dutch: Yeah. I'm just coloring and thinking. That's sciencing.

Later she lay down on the couch next to Cook and he put his arm around her, whereupon she said "Don't cuddle me. I'm a scientist."

The Night Before the Night Before...

We have had a wonderful holiday. Today we cooked a lot, and Dutch helped with the sweeping, the bathroom-cleaning, the cookie-making, the bread pudding-making, the enchilada-making... really, she was amazingly nice all day. All the Christmas shopping is done (finished yesterday), and now all there is to do (besides more cooking) is fend Dutch from her pile of loot. Today she walked over to the pile of gifts, patted one confidently, and said "I decided I can open just ONE present today."

Tomorrow Dutch and I are going to the Nutcracker (the matinee with recorded music, but it's STILL ridiculously expensive) while Cook cooks, and then we'll come home in time to prepare for our Christmas Eve dinner with some Jewish-Swedish friends. Tomorrow we will eat Swedish holiday buns, some sort of tiny pickled fishies, red cabbage, dill potatoes, turnip-pear soup, beet-and-horseradish salad, rye bread, and blue cheese balls. And pecan pie. And ginger cookies, if we can manage it. (This holiday, we decided to make cleaning secondary to Preparation of Vast Quantities of Food. )

Anyway, it's been a lovely holiday. Lots of sleeping, lots of eating and cooking, and lots of pleasure in Dutch's excitement. She put together her Fancy Clothes outfit for our outing tomorrow - suffice it to say that there will be much sparkling.

Childcare, Work, School, Housekeeping, Miscellaneous

I just bought my planner for 2008. I'm pretty excited. I love making lists. I'm not great at actually executing the items on my lists, but I sure do love to organize them. Last year my brother, in a fit of inspiration, gave me a planner that changed my life - it had the week on the left side, and blank lined paper on the right side. Revolutionary! Schedule on the left, to-do list on the right! It was fantastic! It made me a better person! (No, it really did. Incrementally, but still. And then I discovered the magic of Google Calendar, so I think I've really made progress this year.) This year I couldn't find it at the place he bought it last year, and I panicked. I couldn't find it at another bookstore, and then another! I was overwhelmed by Christmas shoppers! Dutch started whining about how she NEEDS a Thomas the Tank Engine book that talks! I almost whacked her over the head with the damn "book"! We retreated home and I started shopping online, and I discovered that what I REALLY needed (oh, thank you, internets!) was an even more elaborate planner. So I ordered it. 2008 is mine, divided neatly into FIVE categories of to-do lists.

Whee! The Box!

Problem Kids

Cook and I discussed our conversation with Dutch's teacher recently, and we realized that it made us both feel much better not only about Dutch's daycare situation, but also about Dutch herself. We had, to some degree, internalized the idea that Dutch was a Problem for her teachers - an unusually inflexible and whiny kid who required extra work. Now we can let go of that and see her as a regular kid, no more or less demanding than any other.

One of my friends expressed relief that Dutch has a much better "fit" with this daycare or this classroom. While this is true, I think the key element of her success at the new place is that it is a better "fit" for EVERY kid. The teachers are trained, they're paid fairly well, and there are plenty of them, so they have time in and out of the classroom to take an extra minute to resolve a problem or preempt a future problem. At the other place, the teachers were pretty much triaging all the time, and they were not able to be flexible and deal with the kids individually. A good daycare makes sure that everyone fits, and that everyone has a positive experience. We are very lucky to have landed in swanky-daycare-land after a brief stint in okay-daycare-land, and it is awful that most people don't.

The fact that we had internalized the previous teachers' perspective on Dutch is alarming, too. Dutch isn't even particularly challenging in a classroom environment. She's a whiny, draggy pain in the ass, yes, but she's not biting anybody or throwing stuff, and she's able to explain herself relatively clearly. There must be lots and lots more families with fewer resources and/or bigger behavior problems who are seeing their children as Problems when all they really need is a better childcare situation. If you start seeing your small child as a Problem, that is inevitably going to color the way you treat her and the expectations you set for her. We came into this new daycare braced for more issues to arise, and when the new teacher looked at me in puzzlement after I mentioned that Dutch had struggled at the previous place, it lifted a weight from my heart. Dutch can now be just the kid who drives ME crazy, instead of the kid who drives EVERYBODY crazy.

Updates, which you have been awaiting with bated breath

1) Dutch's collarbone is healing nicely. She seems to be bothered by it only if she bangs it or tries to lift her arm much above the shoulder.
2) The camera is fixed.
3) The new booster seat has arrived. Dutch thinks the box is The Funnest Thing Ever.
4) I finally wrote some holiday cards. I may get them done by Valentine's Day.
5) Today Cook and I met with the head teacher in Dutch's new daycare class, at our request. We wanted to make sure they weren't having the same problems with her that the last daycare had. The teacher wrote us a little report, from which I quote: "Dutch has such a warm and inviting personality that we love to see in the classroom. She seems to enjoy being at school and being with her friends and teachers. Dutch is always excited to try new things and to visit new places in the school and community." Cook and I were kind of shocked. We got so used to hearing negative things about Dutch. I actually was at first worried that she was confusing Dutch with some other kid, but then she said some things that revealed that she actually does know our kid ("Dutch sometimes has trouble asking other kids to play with her, and asks the teachers to ask for her") , and then I was just deeply relieved. My daughter is not a problem for the teachers! They like her! They really like her!
6) Dutch has been practicing Broken-Collarbone-Tae-Kwon-Do, complete with shouting.
7) Four more workdays until my vacation.

FYI

I got a 3.67 GPA for the quarter! I'm very pleased that I managed to avoid getting expelled from the program (a B- average gets you booted). However, Cook maintained his perfect 4.0, so I'm going to have to work harder next quarter to sabotage his studying efforts. Damn the man!

Giving

I'm having my usual holiday kerfuffle, in which I get all tied up in my conflicting feelings and end up being paralyzed and not sending any cards or presents. Leaving aside my essential tendency toward inertia, my miserliness, and the totally-fried state of my mind, I think the problem is that I can't quite shake loose the notion that I should be truly generous every December in a way that I don't come close to reaching.

A couple of years ago I "adopted" a kid to whom to give gifts (through an organization supporting families in which grandparents are raising their grandchildren), at the prompting of a more generous friend, and that was both fun (I got to buy her NEW STUFF!!!) and totally depressing (the kids on the list asked for things like socks, sweatpants, rainboots...). This year I am pitching in in a VERY small way toward a group "adoption" of a family (through another organization), and it's also depressing. The single mother of three asked for pink towels, and a set of sheets for her bed, because she DOESN'T HAVE ANY SHEETS. And she asked for toys for the baby, because he DOESN'T HAVE ANY TOYS. This just kills me. I'm feeling all sorry for myself because I can't buy the expensive shoes I want, and I can't buy that fabulous German riding toy thingy for Dutch. Poor me. We're on a very tight budget... for excessively-educated-people-from-upper-middle-class-families. Because we are EEPFUMCF, we have sheets. Several sets, of the high-quality variety that will never ever ever wear out. Lots of towels (some monogrammed). No debt. A Christmas tree (sort of) already surrounded by lovely gifts from lovely friends and family. A child who will not have to suffer (too much) for our failure to make money. Nobody in our home is lacking for linens.

So... I'm:
-Buying some cranberry sauce and cereal for a family that has no sheets.
-Feeling fortunate to have that lovely pile of gifts.
-Wondering what I'm going to do about the fact that a family has no sheets, and why I let myself ignore things like that so much of the time.
-Speculating about how to joyfully celebrate the holiday season in a way that doesn't feel insanely consumer-y, selfish, or sanctimonious.
-Pondering the daunting task of writing holiday cards...
-Wishing we had our camera fixed so I could post some pictures of our fixer-upper gingerbread house - there's only so much navel-gazing I can do in one evening.

Holidays

Items in our apartment:
1. Gingerbread house, ineptly assembled from a kit
2. Christmas lights, draped over the bay window
3. Dowel tree (handcrafted by Papa Big Cook), smothered in small ornaments
4. Very small live coniferous tree of some kind, in a pot, smothered in small ornaments
5. Miscellaneous large ornaments, hung on anything that will support them
6. Creche figures, probably coated in lead paint
7. Many small satsuma mandarins
8. Sugar cookies, left over from Decorating Night
9. Half a jug of cider, also left over from Decorating Night
10. Lots of little red candles in little red candle-holders
11. Small wreath
12. Blooming Christmas cactus
13. Three stockings, two handmade (one well, one not well)

It's Holiday Time! Dutch is deliriously excited.

Looming

Dutch is getting big. She wears clothes sized for 4-6-year-olds and has grown out of her enormous carseat. Today when I picked her up from daycare, she was wearing the extra clothes I had stashed in her cubby a month ago (due to an incident involving a baby doll getting a "bath"), and the shirt was riding up over her navel and the pants hovering well over her ankles.

Strangers see her as a dim, poorly-coordinated 5-year-old with some behavior problems, and I think even people who know her age expect more from her because of her enormity. When she's the biggest kid in kindergarten, they'll probably nickname her Moose.

Last Night

Premonitions

So I came home this evening and found the apartment empty. I figured Cook and Dutch had gone across the street to our friendly local co-op to buy an essential dinner ingredient. I poked around, tidying up, for bout 20 minutes. They didn't come home. I started to wonder where they might be. I remembered that both the front door and the apartment door had been unlocked when I came home, which is weird. I remembered that the bathroom cabinets had been opened and several items had been strewn on the floor (not that weird, given that we have a 3-year-old). I started to feel a little worried. I went out in the hall and looked around for clues. I saw that all of Dutch's shoes were still here. I started to freak out. I looked in the dining room and saw a note that I had written earlier was placed on top of a heap of other papers, and seemed to have been written over. I turned on the light. I read the note. This is what it said:
"Dutch broke ARM - gone to hospital."

I freaked out. I called the hospital. I finally located them and talked to Cook, who relieved me by explaining that Dutch had fallen off our bed while watching a movie (TV is DANGEROUS!!!!) and they were about to get x-rays. They had gotten a lucky ride from a friend who happened to be in the area and mobile when Cook called. I made my way to the hospital by agonizingly slow public transit, and found Dutch enjoying juice and crackers and a pile of stickers. She's pretty miserable, though. Turns out she broke her clavicle, not her arm, and doesn't even have a cast, but it HURTS. Also, it totally ruined Cook's plans and mine for studying for the next two days - we both have finals tomorrow and the day after - and completely traumatized us both. Dutch heaped extra suffering on Cook by informing him, moments after the fall, that it was HIS FAULT for not being in the room to help her. He was also anxious, particularly after the ER doctor inquired about Dutch's missing tooth, that the hospital might send a social worker to confiscate Dutch on grounds of neglect or abuse. (They didn't. Yet.)

Apparently, Dutch was pretty worried about what the doctor would do to her. She told Cook tearfully "I don't want to have a mechanical arm!" and he tried to reassure her that it was unlikely. That reminded me of the time my little brother broke his arm, and there was some concern that he might have damaged the "growth plates." Of course, we made lots of jokes about how he'd have one teeny little Tyrannosaurus-type arm. I don't think he thought that was anywhere near as funny as I did. So cruel...

Anyway, it was awful. Seeing her little white (red-eyed) face when I came into the hospital room almost knocked me to the floor. I so wish it could be my clavicle. (But hey! A new vocabulary word for Dutch!)

Planning for the Future

This weekend, we had a houseguest, my Taekwondo Uncle, who was in town to take (and pass!) the test to become a third-degree black belt. Dutch loved every second of his visit, followed him everywhere, and even waited patiently outside the bathroom for him to come out. When he left in the morning, she went into our bedroom, crawled into the bed and cried. When asked why she was so sad, she said "I really miss Taekwondo Uncle!" She also got to see some of his test and attend a banquet of taekwondo-ers, which included a demonstration by a bunch of kids. She announced her intention to do taekwondo when she grows up "but I also want to be a real doctor. I will just do taekwondo so I can travel around. I will hit people, but they won't be able to hit me."

Congratulations, Taekwondo Uncle!