The lyf so short

After the usual three days of celebrations, I'm getting a breather, which I'll use to finally update again.

The lead-up to the holidays was intense. It always is, but this year it felt worse. At home, I managed to make an Advent wreath and bake one batch of gingerbread as December began, but that was about it. Trying to start every week in a quiet, festive way with my students failed spectacularly, because they took my invitation to listen to Christmas music, munch some cookies and generally wake up until 8 am (classes at my school start at 7:35! I ask you!) as an invitation to play tag, use the cookie plates as frisbees, or throw their water-bottles at their co-students' heads. So that was scrapped, and we ended up doing business as usual, which was not much better but at least I didn't provide them with ammunition. :P

With school finally over, we tried to cram some more Advent stuff into the last weekend. We drove to Cologne for some shopping. I got a new winter jacket out of it, since the zipper on my old jacket had broken the other week. (I currently seem to have Bad Zipper Energies because three zippers in three different garments broke in the past month.) The kids enjoyed the big shops with their escalators, but went completely bonkers as soon as there was no escalator or elevator to ride. The busy streets of pre-Christmas Cologne are not a good place to play hide-and-seek! Eventually we went home without visiting even a single Weihnachtsmarkt. It just would have been endless griping and fighting. We wanted to subject neither us nor other people to that.

We made some more gingerbread at home, though.



We also went to our uphill neighbour to select our tree. As usual, he berated me for coming so late, because he thinks you only get a beautiful tree if you call dibs as early as October. As usual, we found a perfectly lovely tree. As our living-room isn't particularly large and not particularly high-ceilinged either, we don't need a big tree, and there's generally always some nice small trees left. We were accompanied by Felix' new friend Nico, whose mother has moved into the empty flat down in the old mill, so there's finally a kid his age living in the immediate neighbourhood. And he shares Felix' passion for toy trains, too! The boys played hide-and-seek in the uphill neighbour's fir plantation, which is the perfect place for hide-and-seeking. Unfortunately Nico couldn't help decorate the tree because I wasn't done cleaning the living room yet.

Which was probably for the better because I found the head of Sir Bercilak in the attic (which I made for the scenic reading of SGGK at Ring*Con 2007) while looking for our tree ornaments, and couldn't resist goofing around with it a bit. I know the Green Knight only actually arrives at New Year's but I couldn't wait.



I'm a fully responsible adult human being, I swear. LET'S PLAY A LITTLE CHRISTMAS GAME!

Ahem.

We did end up with a properly decorated tree though.



Christmas Eve itself was nice. I was still busy cleaning things so I sent Jörg to church with the children, where they apparently misbehaved as much as ever, but that gave me one and a half hours of interruption-free tidying-and-cleaning time. Jörg whined a bit but why do I always have to drag the kids to church? And they're just as restless when I'm with them. He just doesn't notice it because he doesn't feel like he's responsible. Besides, most of his tidying-and-cleaning time went into putting up his old Carrera slot car race track in the attic. While the race track admittedly entertained him, his brother and the kids very much, it was otherwise not particularly helpful in terms of Christmas preparations. (He did clean the bathroom though, and offered to clean the second bathroom as well, though he hasn't come around to that yet.) By the time my parents arrived, our living and dining room combo was mostly presentable. We lit my lovingly assembled Advent wreath for the first time this Advent season. Oh well. XD



We dined on Raclette, as usual, and then Felix played us two carols on the piano! He had practiced them in secret at my parents' place so that was a very cute surprise. He also did a great job in distributing all the presents underneath the tree. It turned out that my parents had packed the wrong box of presents (which contained the gifts for the extended family visit on Dec 26, rather than the gifts for our kids) so there were not nearly as (overwhelmingly) many presents as there usually are. My parents were angry with themselves, but Jörg and I agreed that it was actually much better that way, since the individual presents that they did get were appreciated much more. I'd already agreed with my aunt that we'd hand them their presents from her family after Christmas, so they don't get lost under heaps of other things. They got further presents on Christmas Day at my mother-in-law's, and their presents from my parents yesterday. Spaced out like that, it worked a lot better.
They're also going to get a bunk bed from Jörg and me... once the transport company delivers it. (Tomorrow, I hope?)

I got a much too big present (again) - a food dehydrator that I've been secretly lusting after for several years! - but fortunately, this year I was forewarned. They had sneakily addressed it to the mother-in-law for transport, but as it happened, she wasn't at home when the postman delivered it. So I took the HUGE parcel in her stead, and because the packaging said EXCALIBUR in extremely unsubtle letters, I sort of figured out what was going on. Jörg was sad that his surprise had been spoiled, but I was rather grateful for it. Last year's massive gift of a greenhouse caught me completely on the wrong foot, and I'm glad that I had some time to mentally compose myself for another massive expensive gift in a year of money struggles and a mutual agreement to "not give each other anything much". Jörg says it's only fair because he invests a lot of money in his hobbies (brewery and shooting) all year round, which is true, but it still feels disproportional.

On Christmas Day, we had a reasonably calm day at home. Jörg and his brother drove to Dinslaken to pick up their aunt, and in the evening we feasted over at the mother-in-law's. Julian got some LEGO and Felix got an "easy electronics" starter kit that he enjoyed thoroughly. Yesterday was the least pleasant part of the celebrations. For one, it was with my father's side of the family, who are just... well, they're all lovely people, but we just don't have much in common, and it's always a bit tough to keep a conversation going without either a) loosing them intellectually or b) getting into an argument. Then, we were sitting and eating all damn day long. So Jörg and I decided to go for a little walk around the neighbourhood (even Felix wanted to come along! But none of the others), which was extremely necessary, but unfortunately I took a wrong step while being distracted by Things That Have Changed and sprained my ankle. Now it's swollen and stings like hell. Argh. It was nice to see one of my cousins again. I know I keep saying that, but it's so weird to meet these cousins every couple of years and see how they've grown! In my mind, he's still very much the five-year-old who accompanied my parents and grown-up me on holidays, and for whom I simultaneously read and translated Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix because the book hadn't yet appeared in German and he wanted to know how the story went on! Now he came driving in his own car, with a girlfriend on the passenger seat, and can read English books all by himself. He's preparing for his black belt testing (in Judo) and recently enrolled in university, studying biology and history to become -- a teacher. He's a grown-up! I'm getting old! XD

And now we're at home. Leftover Day! Yay! I should be tidying up upstairs, but I also need to prepare my classes for next year - I'm planning to try a different working mode with my fifth-graders, which requires a lot of advance preparations but will (hopefully?) put more focus on cooperative learning and group projects finished (to some extent) at their own paces, so perhaaaps it'll make everyday classroom life easier. (Once they learn using indoor voices and not throwing water bottles, at least.) The ninth-graders will be doing a three-week internship in January, so I won't be seeing much of them, but I'll probably have to do a lot of subbing during that time. Someone is always sick! I'll also have to restructure my geography curriculum. I've taken a lot of time for teaching orientation and map-reading because I feel these things are important, and because I only see that class once per week and a lot of Wednesdays happened to be off days this term, I haven't even started on the second main theme for this term. Term ends on January 25th, by which time they should be familiar with the rural/urban dichotomy and the corresponding economic, ecologic and logistic phenomena.

But I felt compelled to post on DW first. After all, I always complain that nobody updates their DW these days. *ahem*

I hope all of you who celebrated something had lovely and enjoyable holidays, and all those who didn't celebrate anything didn't get too much festive crap stuffed down their throats! Here, have some weird woodland alien fairy angels to finish this mess of a post!



Happy Rauhnächte!

Yet again, there would have been so much to talk about last month, but the posts didn't happen. But as picspams always seem a good way of remembering stuff and rambling about it, I'll do a holiday picspam! While the holiday season isn't entirely over yet, so this is still relevant! That way, we'll also catch up with the kids? I hope?

(Pics are f-locked, so if you can't see them, that may be why.)

( Image-heavy, bla bla, click on preview will lead to full-size view, you know how it works )

Oof! Quite a lot of text for a picspam. I clearly should have done that photo-a-day meme that was going around my f-list in December. At least in a modified photo-a-week kind of way. A resolution for this year, perhaps? I clearly find it easier to talk about RL stuff when I have a pic to show with it. Hm. Must ponder this. But for now, we're done!

So, something positive. (Mostly.)

Felix is, well, mostly thriving at the new kindergarten (the Montessori place in the next town over), which he has been attending since July. Astonishingly enough, now that he's with teachers who a) bother listening to him, b) bother explaining the rules and the reasons behind them, c) bother actually doing things with the kids (rather than leaving that to the intern and the part-time aide and limiting themselves to surveillance and documentation), his meltdowns have become a lot rarer. That doesn't mean they don't happen anymore, but when they happen, that is no desaster, either, because these kindergarten people actually realise that young children sometimes react badly to overstimulation, understimulation, frustration and whatever else life with other people throws at them. And don't treat it like an illness. Will wonders never cease. They basically do the same thing I do at home when it happens: remove him from the upsetting situation, judge whether he needs distraction or time to vent his anger in a non-harmful manner, offer whichever they think is needed, and only try to discuss the situation once it is no longer acutely frustrating him.
It doesn't hurt, of course, that they don't force kids who can already read, do basic maths, play chess or build complex LEGO robots to engage in "Name things that are blue/yellow/red/green" projects for four weeks straight. It doesn't hurt that they don't try to discourage kids from whatever they're currently interested in. If someone wants to learn letters, they provide materials. If someone is curious about numbers, they have different games that involve numbers (up to 100, but hey, we only learned up to 20 in first class, so that's progress already). If someone wants to build robots, they provide LEGO. If someone is madly interested in something, they help them to find books on the subject or colouring pages or whatever applies.
And lo, the anti-social boy who supposedly couldn't make friends (although he actually had two friends, or two kids whom he considered his friends, anyway) has a BFF (and two almost-BFFs) and likes to play with some select others, too. He seems to be generally accepted by the group (although to be honest, I never had the impression that the other kids at the old kindergarten didn't accept him; the problem was wholly with his two main teachers) and actually *gasp* liked by the teachers.
He does attend ergotherapy because he grips pencils in his whole fist rather than "properly", which puzzles everyone, because apparently the cliché is that kids who do that do not like to draw (or write) and don't do it often. This is very much not true in this case - he loves drawing (he tends to go totally wild about a particular subject for months on end, producing nothing else: it started with letters and numbers, moved on to streetlamps, then to houses, and currently it's road constructions. With, incidentally, first attempts at perspective - I am ever so proud!), he can colour pictures reasonably neatly, and he can write legibly (and, I should mention, mostly orthographically correct. In two languages). He just holds the pen "the wrong way" - a result of having taught himself to write at such a young age without the corresponding fine-motor skills, I suppose. This wouldn't particularly bother me, but his teachers (and the teachers at the school he's going to attend in summer) worry that it may later slow him down, which will lead to frustration, which will lead to the Dark Side of the Force. Or something. So he goes to ergotherapy. Whatever. (He initially called it "Ärgertherapie", which is sort of hilarious because Ärger is German for annoyance/irritation/anger/frustration, and one thing it does is test his frustration tolerance.)

Now, last Friday was St. Martin's Day. This is perhaps most easily described as Rhenanian Hallowe'en (with a different backstory, that of St. Martin of Tours, with paper lanterns instead of pumpkins, and with caroling instead of trick-or-treating - but I suspect that at the heart of it, it's the exact same tradition, only with its date set by the lunar calendar and its customs painted Catholic at a different time. Also, no dressing up. To make matters more confusing, however, St. Martin's is on the same day as the beginning of the Rhenanian carnival season, which you do dress up for.) - anyway, all you need to know that the tradition is to make paper lanterns, walk around singing St. Martin's songs in exchange for sweets, and have a bonfire.
In the olden days (TM) when I was a kid, St. Martin approaching meant eating a particularly disgusting kind of soft cheese, because it came in round cardboard packaging that could later form the frame of your lantern. These were then lit with tea lights or Christmas tree candles, and every year, someone's lantern would catch fire. It never happened to me, but it did happen to my brother, who was smart enough to throw it into the next puddle. These days, of course, lanterns are lit with LEDs, which allows for a lot more variation in shape and size without anything catching fire!
(Another St. Martin's tradition of my youth, which feels absurdly distant when thinking about it in those terms, was caroling at the owner's of the local beverage store, who in exchange for our lantern song would give each of us a can of Coca-Cola. This was a really special thing back then, not because Coke was rare in general but because parents just wouldn't buy it. We always kept our St. Martin's can of Coke in the fridge until New Year's Eve, when we absolutely needed it to stay awake until the fireworks! It worked because we believed it, I guess.)
Anyway, we fortunately didn't have to eat that disgusting soft cheese in order to provide the framework for Felix' lantern. These days, crafts stores provide ready-made frames in all shapes and sizes. The kindergarten had picked four basic models and the children all got to choose which one they wanted to make: A princess, a horse, a fox or a firefighter. Felix decided for... the pink, sparkly princess.
Now, one of the perks of having only boys, I thought, was not having to deal with pink, sparkly, frilly stuff. But I was wrong. And because I knew that if Felix had been a girl, I would have been delighted if he had chosen something that wasn't stereotypical for his gender, I felt I had to put my money where my mouth is and let him have his princess lantern.
(As it happens, the lanterns were put together by the kids' fathers. And the daddies who assembled their daughters' princess lanterns? Went TOTALLY mad on the glitter. Seriously, those lanterns were smothered in glitter. It was as if all the fathers were completely excited about being allowed to play with glitter at last!)
During the little kindergarten bonfire, when everyone was marching their lanterns around, I overheard two boys talking about Felix' lantern. They were right behind him, although Felix didn't seem to hear them.
So they went "Haha, did you see, Felix has a princess lantern." - "Yeah, Felix has a princess lantern! That's for girls!" - "Yes, it's a girl lantern! L.'s got one, too!" and I was pondering at which point I should break the Prime Directive when another little boy, H., spoke up. "Nonsense, boys can have princess lanterns, too." He turned to Felix: "Isn't that right, Felix?" And Felix, oblivious of why a boy wasn't expected to have a princess lantern, emphatically replied "Yes, naturally!"
And that was that. No further questions, no further snark. H. settled the matter just like that. He just pointed out the obvious - clearly, if a boy has a princess lanterns, boys can have princess lanterns - and that was enough. And H. isn't even in Felix circle of friends (who might maybe have felt obliged out of a sense of loyalty).

Jörg wasn't too impressed by the kindergarten celebrations (one father in particular rubbed him the wrong way) but that little exchange alone completely made my day. (Also, the fact that none of the teachers tried to discourage Felix or L. from having princess lanterns.) It had its disorganised moments, it was friggin' cold, and Julian was tired and testy throughout it all (he hadn't napped). But Felix participated with good success, and for the moment, that's my priority. So there.

Julian, meanwhile, is very much in his Terrible Twos. And beginning to identify letters and numbers correctly. Sigh. He does a lot better in social situations, though, but that's mostly due to the fact that he's such a pretty boy that all he needs to do is smile and everyone's completely smitten. And he knows that. So he gets by mostly by charming people. It's unfair, but there you go. He's also very deft and nimble (Felix actually learned how to properly ride his Bobby Car from Julian, not the other way round). He has a great interest in cars and engines, and quite an astute understanding of physics: Recently, when he was trying to shut a drawer and something had gotten stuck in it, he didn't repeatedly try to push it shut as most kids (and many adults ;)) would have, but immediately realised that something must be obstructing the mechanism: He went around, identified the obstruction, removed it, and shut the drawer. He has already mastered the first person (something that took Felix until he was a full year older). His mental lexicon and his grammatical skills are impressive, while his pronunciation is still adorably baby-ish. (Also, he constructs complex sentences, but leaves out all conjunctions.)
I'm in two minds about his kindergarten education, which will begin next summer. On the one hand, we've managed to secure a place at a local kindergarten - not Felix' old one, obviously. That kindergarten is right around the corner from Felix' future elementary school. So that would be really convenient. On the other hand, I'm a bit doubtful about regular kindergartens after certain past experiences. Then again, the teachers at the other place may be completely different - and, as I said, Julian finds it a lot easier to charm people! I JUST DON'T KNOW HOW TO DECIDE. There probably is no right decision, so I'm sort of putting it in the hands of Providence (TM). We don't even know for certain that Julian will get a spot at the Montessori kindergarten yet!
I do hope that the local elementary school is the right choice. Felix' kindergarten manager suggested the Montessori school in their town (of course), which incidentally happens to be my old school - though it wasn't a Montessori school back then. But we had very slim chances of getting a place there, being from a different town - and indeed, we got none. And Alqualondë Academy* does have a very good reputation. They also acknowledge that quick students need support just as much as weaker students do. So that's something.


- - -
*The three historical villages that form the core of our hick town were literally called Swans, Oak, and Church Village. The school is in what used to be Swans, and is therefore called Swans School. I cannot pass that one up, can I?

Happy... *checks calendar* Easter. Totally Easter. In conclusion: Easter.



(I know, I know: The one thing everyone is even sicker of than this winterspring is people complaining about this winterspring. Sorry, sorry! I'll stop whining about the weather soon, I promise! I hope.)

And if you don't celebrate Easter:
Happy Passover! Or Happy belated equinox! (Whichever equinox applies to your location.) Or just: Happy (hopefully long?) weekend!

Either the magnesium or yesterday's soup (loads of green herbs = loads of iron, magnesium and other good things) seems to have worked; at any rate, Offspring has now returned to his usual activity cycle. Or perhaps he just had a bad lanugo day :P Either way, I am now feeling somewhat less anxious.

My mother gave me the diaries she kept when I was born and growing up, and my grandmother kept when my mother was born and growing up. Rather adorable. My grandmother actually started the diary in Sütterlin script (as late as 1955!), which was initially daunting - I learned Sütterlin in grade 3, and for a while I could write and read it fluently, but as I've never used it, I've mostly forgotten the letters and now take terribly long to decipher them. Fortunately she switched to a more modern cursive after the first entry, although Sütterlin letters (and sometimes entire words written in Sütterlin) kept sneaking into her writing. These days, that no longer happens.
My brother warned that it was dangerous to read these diaries, as surely I'd afterwards expect that my child would develop just as the children I and my mother were (for instance, I apparently skipped crawling, and instead started by walking - with support, of course, because I didn't have the balance yet; and both my mother and I used two-word phrases at 18 months already). That is, of course, nonsense (particularly as Offspring is a boy, and thus even less comparable ;)). Instead, I found them very touching. And reassuring, too. Now that the birth is only a couple of months away, I often find myself wondering how our life as a family will be and whether we'll be good parents etc. etc.. It's good to see that my grandparents and my own parents, who after all did a decent job at it, had the same doubts at that time. And managed to handle the changes and challenges well enough, too.

Also, apparently my father wanted to buy an old farmhouse back then to have room enough for "the child". My mother, somewhat prophetically, noted down "but that will have to wait until later". Indeed! (They actually kept the newspaper announcement for the farmhouse they looked at. Compared to that, our house is downright harmless, although the one my father was interested in was (supposedly) already fully renovated. (Whatever they considered 'fully renovated' in the 80s.) To think of the drama they made when Jörg did buy an old farmhouse! But then, if I had intended to go on the same sort of vacation they made back in the early 80s - driving (!) all the way to Morocco (!) in my mother's (!) jeep - there would also have been panic!drama. Tempora mutantur...)

Outside, everything is covered in a thick layer of bright yellow pollen. We could definitely use some rain by now because not only is all the pollen getting annoying (at least I am no longer allergic, now THAT would be fun >_>) but also because the gardens are getting way too dry. Initially, the hot weather caused all the plants to grow like mad (they're now several weeks ahead of schedule, and our willow trees have never bloomed as beautifully as they did this year), but by now they need water to go on, so there better be some.
The good thing, of course, is that my bees will have absolutely no trouble getting proteins. Good breeding conditions (on minus side, that also means good breeding conditions for the bloody mites). Yes, I have bees again - just in time for the second major nectar (and, obviously, pollen :P) harvest. We'll see whether they'll have produced enough honey for harvesting in June, or whether we'll have to wait for August. (I kind of hope that it'll be the latter - or else that I'll find someone to take care of the June harvest in my place.)

I've been taking flower photos for a couple of weeks, intending to make a spring picspam. By now, the folders span from late February to today, so it appears that (if ever I actually do manage to sort them) this will be the picspam to end all picspams... which no one will have the time to see.

I dyed eggs and made little almond chocolate eggs and strawberry muffins and pansy blossom cookies. Mostly so I have something to give my parents, grandmother and mom-in-law on Sunday but also because we all know that I love rituals and it's good to practice them a little before the baby comes along. I did not find the time to clean the house (the lower level, anyway), but I figure I can do that tomorrow. Or just plead my belly when someone complains. (Hopefully we'll be able to sit outside anyway - but knowing our luck, the long-needed rain will start exactly on Sunday afternoon. Just when we'll have started the barbecue. Because that's how rain magic works, right?) Somehow I was more clumsy than is normal even for me: At breakfast I upset Jörg's teacup (I swear it insidiously jumped into the path of my hand!), while making lunch I brushed the (HOT) handle of the pan with my wrist, and soon after I smashed my hand into a bench that, alas, had been standing there all innocently all day. It'd be all right if massive clumsiness attacks didn't remind me of Bella Swan, and who wants to be reminded of her? :P

I am also overusing the :P smiley today. Don't take it personally.