My recently Austrian-conditioned mind keeps wondering where winter is.
That we are outside past 5pm wearing only sweaters and with some daylight left in January is terribly confusing.
The potted tulips I bought last week are lovely, but less awe-inspiring than live blooms this time of year in Vienna.
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The moving-in process is still grinding away like the world's dullest dental drill, but somehow we did get Mr. Pants's* room pretty much done over the weekend.
Mr. Right bravely replaced the ceiling fan light fixture (the blades significantly encroached on the upper bunk area, a bad idea for many reasons) with a flush mount one I'd picked up from the hardware store a few weeks ago. I'm sure he'd agree that it's terribly lucky I browbeat him into replacing the old ceiling fan in our kitchen years ago (I helped) because that meant we had some useful experience for this little project. In fact, it went so smoothly that we didn't even notice there were directions included until after it was all done and we'd flipped the circuit breaker back on. Our properly-installed-without-the-instructions light provided a nice clear light for perusing said instructions:
I slightly improved a bulletin board Mr. Pants has had in his room for a few years. It's just three pieces of cork I found at the hardware store in Vienna (1 x 1.5 meters each) covered (not very methodically) with a quirky print from IKEA (it's like someone who'd never left Japan was assigned to do a design about Austria, or maybe Switzerland; it tickles my funny bone).
In Austria, I had tied some lengths of white elastic around each piece to give us a way of posting things up there without actually putting tacks in the boy's room, but that was pretty ugly and didn't work well, either. This time, I used clear elastic to make one of those diamond grid weaves over the center panel instead. I'm very happy with how little it interferes with the print and how well it holds stuff up. I was less happy with how long it took to do (thus, only the center panel will be getting this treatment). To mount the panels, we just drilled right through them with some bright shiny new screws.
Mr. Pants is pretty happy to have gotten back his favorite stuff and a new bunkbed with firetruck and train sheets. He's a little sad about losing his "mosquito net" (also from IKEA, with a little princely pennant fringe around the top), but it really wasn't working with the top bunk and he really loves the top bunk, so...
And here is where I was going to put I nice big picture of the whole room so you could see how lovely and calm it is (as opposed to the rest of the house, especially our room; I come in here sometimes to sit in the rocker for a few minutes and soak up the order), but it turns out it's ridiculously hard to take a picture of a room this size. I guess I'd need a fisheye lens or something? Ah, well, one more partial, instead. :)
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As things keeping emerging from their boxes and wrappings, my inspiration reflex is on overdrive.
Paint this!
Slipcover that!
Make curtains for here!
Make a bean bag for there!
And I keep thinking, "Why have I never done this after any of our other moves??"
After puzzling over it for a while and having a few more fits of inspiration, it slowly dawns on me...
After our first move, I had no idea what I was doing.
After our second move, I had my first baby (a week after our stuff arrived, if I remember correctly).
After our third move, we renovated our house (the roof got cut off the very day all our worldly possessions were carried under it).
And after our last move (leaving final touches still fresh on the renovation), I had another baby (more than a week after our stuff showed up, but not by lots).
So, yeah. There's a reason for that.
And this should be fun!
***
Thanks for all your lovely comments lately, guys. It is a joy to hear from you. And thanks for bearing with me through the chaos. We should have actual real Internet of our very own tomorrow!!!! Cross your fingers!!!!!
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In the middle of a move, the part where we don't actually have a permanent residence, I tend to feel like time isn't passing, like the time that's passing somehow doesn't "count".
But this one keeps growing (another shoe size!) and collecting new words (eetsa! = pizza) and generally manifesting herself as a person.
Just this morning, playing around after I'd gotten her out of the Pack 'N Play, she sat on my stomach and grabbed my hand.
She studied it intently, turning it front to back, babbling at me and pointing at my fingers. Then she slid herself to the floor and marched off to the living room (also serving as the master bedroom) and marched right back with a handful of treasures.
"Her," she said ("here") and held out my wedding ring.
I put it on.
"Her," she said and held out my engagement ring.
I put it on.
"Her," she said and held out my watch.
I put it on.
And then we could finally get on with the day in proper style, I suppose.
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When we took the Metro across the Potomac a few weeks ago, we excitedly pointed it out to Mr. Pants, "Look! We're crossing the river!" and he said, "Oh! The Donau!"
"No, not the Donau, sweetie, this is the Potomac."
Ten or eleven hours of driving yesterday and quite a few bridges. We'd say, "Look! We're going over a bridge! Can you see the water down there?"
For the first few, he asked, "Is it the Donau?"
"No, sweetie. It's the harbor."
"No, sweetie, it's the Susquehanna."
Finally, he started asking just, "what river is this?"
"It's the Hudson! We're in New York!"
"It's the Merrimack! We're in New England!"
(Here he asked, "What does 'new' mean?" but just as I was trying to figure out how to answer that one, he launched into a tearful exhausted fit about wanting DiDi and PaPa on the trip with us and how he "didn't want to miss them!"
So we called them.
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Entering week 4 of disrupted routine. As monotonous as the routine can get, it is just so much HARDER not to have it. I get cranky. The kids get cranky. Mr. Right gets cranky because he doesn't understand why everyone is being so cranky.
Mr. Pants seems intent on a daily wailing meltdown and generally misbehaving much of the rest of the time. This morning I felt smart for a little while when, instead of blowing up at him over whatever provoking thing he'd just done, I asked, "Do you want to have a fight or do you want to have a hug?" He chose hug and behaved himself for a few more minutes.
Shmoogie spends random mornings crying almost constantly with no explanation (we've checked for evidence of teething) and spends most of meal times throwing her food or yelling at us because we've taken her tray away because she was throwing her food.
But... we're still walking! Just imagine what it would be like if we weren't! And we went to a beautiful wedding this weekend. We've seen lots of friends and have plans to see more. We've eaten the best chocolate ice cream (still eating it, actually; Thomas Sweet's Bittersweet Chocolate — try it sometime, especially in milkshake form) and we've broken out the ice cream machine and farmer's market berries to make the best strawberry ice cream ever (recipe from The Art of Simple Food). And then the best sour cherry ice cream (same recipe, with cherries instead of strawberries). (And, seriously, spell checker, why is "ice cream" not a single word?)
So... all who wander are not lost. Or something like that.
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The second night is always the worst (and I always forget that). Not so surprising, really, that after we woke them up at 3 AM, then flew them across six time zones, the kids were begging to go to bed at 5 PM (new time; 11PM old time). They (and we!) slept straight through, past 5AM. Second night: later bedtime, awake at 3:30. Mr. Pants cuddled on my "laps" (he continues to insist this is plural; I have two of them, duh) and watched A Wrinkle in Time until it got scary and Mr. Right woke up and took him for a walk, thinking he would sleep (he didn't). I finished the (not so great, made for TV) movie, joined by Shmoogie for the tail end.
There is food in America. In the whole run up to this move, Mr. Pants's main concern (followed closely by missing his friends) has been food. At first, he was sad because he assumed there would be no food in America. Corrected on that count, he entered a phase of worrying about specific food items. I'm sad because there won't be Goldfish in America, he would pout. Or, Is there juice in America? Or, We have to put strawberries in our suitcase! The only one I couldn't promise him were his favorite school discovery, Knabber Nossi. Deeply grateful that we would soon be out of reach of these pink sticks of nitrate-filled shelf-stable pork, beef, and pork fat, I bought him two big packs and we've been saving them "for the airplane" and "to share with DiDi and PaPa". He befriended a little girl waiting at the gate and tried to give her one. I heard him telling her it was a "special hotdog" (he has a little trouble saying Knabber Nossi, it tends to come out like a Brit saying "Clobber Nossi").
Another thing he was afraid of losing forever: pancakes. He requested them for dinner the second night, but we were already grilling burgers and boiling corn on the cob - oh, how American! - a process he watched with interest from my laps in a semi-groggy state. PaPa and Uncle 2 manned the grill, which started off hot and then somehow wasn't. There was concern. There was discussion. There was concerned discussion. And then there was blowing and fanning and stirring and adding of charcoal, resulting in roaring flames when the burger fat dripped, resulting in squirt bottle attempts to knock down the fire, a mid-cooking removal of the burgers from the grill, and general related drama... and then there was a small blond boy asking me almost tearfully, "Is there a problem with my dinner?" Reassured and explained to, he responded quietly, "You should've just maken pancakes."
The siblings are getting mischievous. Mr. Pants routinely lures Shmoogie to the stairs and in response to the inevitable scolding says, "She's ok on the stairs; I think she can do it. She wants to go down the stairs!" Shmoogie just grins in excitement, then flaps her arms and squeals.
The second day back, Mr. Pants fell asleep in the car and Shmoogie soon got bored. She played with her feet for a while, sang to herself (or yelled at us, it's hard to tell the difference sometimes), and then looked over at him in annoyance and started yelling his name (missing the final consonant; that's her trademark).
Last night, PaPa was in charge of the kids while dinner got thrown together. He realized he'd lost sight of them. Giggles from the dining room soon betrayed the two - hiding under the table with a box of pilfered Cheez-Its.
Shmoogie is nearly really talking. Saw-bee are a big favorite. Blabla is usually the first thing in the morning. She's cranky as all get out, which might be partly because she's hungry since she finds feeding the goggies so entertaining that she forgets to feed herself. As I said, the final consonant is usually missing, so when she wants something to eat, she plaintively begs for foo? foo? She's obsessed with the things that go on her feet - shoo and sah, neither of which is ever marked plural. Yesterday, though, on the ride home from the car dealership, she amused (and frustrated) herself trying to take off and put on her socks. After ten or fifteen minutes, I finally heard her say, "saah...CK!"
(Translations: strawberries, banana, doggies, food, shoes and socks)
Random dribblets even randomer than the rest of this random post. Jetlag has made Shmoogie angry. It has made Mr. Pants fragile. Shmoogie loved their new bubble guns for 30 seconds, then licked the soap-covered wand and was removed from the scene. Mr. Pants loved the new bubble guns until the solution was all used up, then wailed and cried and bemoaned this tragic injustice for nearly 15 minutes.
Mr. Pants recognizes American flags and happily points them out (unless they are wrapped around the pole or hung up in a tree or otherwise not RIGHT, in which case he is upset). This has caused his parents to notice that there are many more American flags flying in America than there are Austrian flags flying in Austria.
We need to find some four year olds to play with. Mr. Pants was overheard on the toy cellphone yesterday sadly turning down the toy's recorded invitation, "No, I can't come out and play right now."
We have a new car. The most painful part of the process was when we forgot about rush hour and turned onto the main road to loop back to the dealership with the test-drive model... and spent the next hour and a half going two miles. Mr. Pants went from loving "this one" (because it has a moon roof) to desperately wanting "the other one" (because it didn't "get stuck"). No matter how hard I tried to explain, he simply would not accept that our miserable traffic experience had nothing to do with the specific car we were driving at the time. Luckily, despite tears on the way to the dealership for the purchase, now that we own "this one" he likes it.
Have a happy weekend! I hope to be figuring out how to get back on a somewhat normal schedule by Monday. :)
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For such a long time now, Mr. Pants has been the one we worry about. How is he going to react to the movers? How is he going to react to all the stuff leaving the house? How is he going to react to leaving? Shmoogie, we figure, will be fine.
And she was fine. She watched all the packing with interest, played happily in the box fort Daddy built, survived not taking a nap (because her crib got packed before the temporary one arrived).
But then at bedtime, she freaked the heck out.
We thought it was her molars (they've been giving her a little trouble lately), but ibuprofen drops did nothing. We thought she was just overtired, but being left alone for a few minutes did nothing (nothing good, anyway).
When I went back in and picked her up, she clung to my shirt with her little fists and heaved the laborious breaths of one who has recently been hysterical. All usual options exhausted, out came the simplest trick in the book: I talked to her. With no expectation she would actually understand any of it, I told her I knew it was strange to have everything in her room suddenly out of place and turned into big piles of boxes and bubble wrap, that I knew it was weird and not fun to suddenly have a strange new crib, that I was sorry we'd misplaced Dolly but that I was sure we'd find her tomorrow (we did, photographic evidence above)...
And Mr. Right came in and put his t-shirt from the day in her crib...
And I sang a little bit...
And then she was fine.
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Self Quiz
1. When left with packed and weighed boxes partially filling your "challenging" four-year-old's bedroom, you would:
a. Expend whatever sweat and tears are required to move every box out of the four-year-old's bedroom before bedtime.
b. Say to yourself, It'll be OK; what could he possibly do with a few big sealed boxes?
c. Not even stop to consider whether a room full of sealed boxes could be an imprudent place to put the four-year-old to bed.
2. When the four-year-old wants to sleep on the floor next to the wall of enticing boxes instead of in his bed and asks innocent-sounding questions like, "Are those my boxes?" you would:
a. Suddenly realize your mistake and expend whatever sweat and tears are required to move every box out of the four-year-old's bedroom even though it is already quite past bedtime.
b. Ignore the sinking feeling in your stomach and say to yourself, It's just one night; what could possibly go wrong?
c. Remain blissfully unaware of impending doom.
3. When hearing a few strange noises coming from your four-year-old's room shortly after closing the door, you would:
a. Suddenly realize your mistake and rush back in to move all the boxes, even though it is now well past bedtime.
b. Think to yourself, What the heck is he doing? But leave the door shut, hoping that what you don't know can't hurt you and he'll just go to sleep eventually.
c. Think to yourself, smiling indulgently, What a rambunctious child that one is! He'll go to sleep eventually.
4. When continuing to hear increasingly loud strange noises coming from the four-year-old's room shortly after closing the door, you would:
a. Finally realize your mistake and rush in to figure out what exactly was going on.
b. Start to discuss with your spouse whether perhaps one of you should check on the situation.
c. Go to sleep, believing all is well.
5. Upon discovering that your four-year-old had, in fact, opened every single sealed box, partially emptied the contents, and pealed a few of the all-important number and weight labels off of them, you would:
a. Do nothing, because this would never happen to you because you've been answering (a) all along, or at least since question 3.
b. Remove all the mangled boxes from the room, along with anything else that moves, and say good night.
c. Die of embarrassment because you are making this discovery only as the movers are entering the child's room to take the boxes to the moving van.
Figure your score:
Every answer (a) = 1 point;
Every answer (b) = 2 points;
Every answer (c) = 3 points;
Score 5-7: Congratulations! Your "challenging" child has met his match. Life isn't easy, but you've got things under control.
Score 8-10: You're on the right track. Your child can still sometimes lull you into unwarranted calm, but you bounce back quickly enough.
Score 11-14: Watch out! Step up your vigilance now or fear the consequences.
Score 15: Situation hopeless. Seek professional help.
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I thought that if I had a chance to blog at all today, I was going to tell you about how yesterday was going just fine until somehow I found myself trying to boil water for spaghetti, first in the old enamelware pot I've been saving for the move, but that had rust inside and multiple internet sources tell me DON'T USE THAT, then in the big braiser pan, but I quickly realized that trying to carry a huge shallow pan full of boiling water to the sink would be STUPIDLY DANGEROUS, and finally in the old small pressure cooker, which is pretty light and seemed the best bet for shipping later.
The thing is that on about the time I'd locked the lid in place to bring the water to a boil super fast (and was feeling clever for having thought of that), Mr. Right started a phone call with the cell phone company to cancel our contracts. And right after that, Shmoogie somehow fell off her trike and smashed her lip real good on the terrace pavers, blood everywhere, crying, blood...
Mr. Right reappeared after she'd mostly calmed down and handed me a bunch of paperwork and told me I had to call myself to cancel my phone (because the company wouldn't let him cancel it for me) and then he took Mr. Pants for one last delivery-of-stuff-we're-not-taking-with-us, leaving me with the nearly-forgotten pressure cooker, my phone and paperwork, and the weepy bleeding toddler.
By the time I was several iterations into the delightful experience of automatic speech recognition customer service in German (foreign accents confuse it, crying babies confuse it, and hissing pressure cookers confuse it) and talking to a real live human, mostly in English, who was telling me that I can't do anything without my password and the password that is right there in front of me on the paperwork is so NOT the right password... I've got Shmoogie on my hip and the phone pressed to my ear and I just want to start boiling the pasta so I almost just take the lid off the still-pressurized pressure cooker...
But — Thank God! — I remembered at the last second that you should NEVER do that...
And then the customer service guy is telling me how to reset my password and that is an ordeal and I have to hang up to do it and then call back and voice recognify myself all over again and re-explain to the new guy (who speaks less English) that yes, I do want to end my contract, really and yes, I do know I'll have to pay out the contract anyway and no, really, I CAN'T use it anymore because I'm moving to America...
And suddenly the guy acts like I've just told him I've won the lottery and starts speak-singing Start spreading the news...
And, um. I did cancel my contract. And it's a good thing, too, because it turns out cell phone companies here might be even more evil than they are at home (although at least they don't charge you for texts) because even though my contract is up in August and there's no way to not pay out the full amount of that contract no matter what, there's also no way to cancel the service at all without 90 DAYS notice. So, say I'm totally clueless and I have this contract and I leave the country and figure I'll just let the contract lapse, but then I notice a few months later that even though I thought the contract ended in August, I'm still being charged for it, so I go through the pain of calling customer service from overseas... only to find out that although I have now finally officially cancelled the service, I'll have to pay for the service that I am not using and can NOT use for another THREE MONTHS. Is it that bad at home? Have I forgotten?
Oh, and in order to actually use this phone in another country (i.e. where I will be *living* in two weeks), I'd have to get the phone "unlocked", which is a process in and of itself and would cost €150, which is about the cost of a brand new, newer model iPhone with two year contract at home, so... Looks like somebody's getting a new iPhone! Which maybe I can deduct as a business expense? I mean, as a developer of apps for the iPhone, I really do have to have the newer model to test on, right? Right. Totally. Lawyers?
And that, that whole story you just read right there, is what I thought I was going to blog about today. But then, when Mr. Right and I headed down to bed near 11 PM last night, we spotted Mr. Pants scurrying back into his room. Because we'd forgotten to lock the door when we put him to bed and, if I haven't mentioned it before, sound does NOT travel in this house, so we hadn't heard him wandering around doing who knows what for over an hour (we do hear him if he WANTS us to hear him, fyi).
Given that I'd just that afternoon emptied the medicine cabinet into the bathroom trash down there and that there was a strange dark substance in the sink (Mr. Right later remembered he'd dumped out some coffee), we then spent several minutes inspecting Mr. Pants, inspecting the trash, smelling the breath of Mr. Pants, attempting to smell the strange dark liquid in the sink, and interrogating Mr. Pants, who is, thankfully becoming marginally more trustworthy in these situations.
"What were you doing in the bathroom, Mr. Pants?" we ask sternly.
"I wasn't doing anything," he answers innocently.
"Was somebody doing something in the bathroom, Mr. Pants?"
He starts to smile and his eyes slide sideways, "Yes." He giggles.
"Did somebody put something in his mouth, Mr. Pants?"
"No," he says in a silly voice.
We eventually convinced ourselves he'd downed no medicines, though somebody might have treated himself to a previously hidden (by somebody) piece of chocolate.
Then, going to put him back in his room, Mr. Right realized the key to the door was gone. "Did you put the key somewhere, Mr. Pants?" he asked sternly.
"No," he giggled.
"Did somebody put the key somewhere, Mr. Pants?"
"Yes! Somebody hide it!" In the nightstand drawer. Where also were discovered two destroyed boxes of Toy Story band-aids. Way better than a trip to pump his stomach, though.
I've been low on the pictures, lately, so here's one of Mr. Pants feverishly preparing for the movers this morning.
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