The Best Gifts

As hard as I tried to teach my boys the true meaning of Christmas this year I know the thing they enjoyed most was the gifts under the tree. Sara is still young enough to be enthralled by a midnight cuddle fest under the twinkle lights but what really matters to the boys is the loot. I know that I was the same way as a child. I would lay awake on Christmas Ever with great anticipation of the coming morning. Eventually I would fall asleep and wake up to Christmas morning. My sister and I would wake up my parents and we would dash to the tree looking for our loot. I was never disappointed. Santa and my parents always came through for us.

I reflected back on my childhood days while I searched for the perfect present for my boys. I wanted to create the perfect Christmas morning for them. I think I may have fallen short. I know they loved their presents but they are just things. Things that will eventually end up broken or tossed aside when the next wave of present giving comes around. There are a handful of gifts that they will play with for a long time but there is not anything long lasting in the pile of presents this year.

My favorite present I recieved as a child came the Christmas I was ten. I don't think anything can touch a little girls heart like a brand new pair of ice skates. The shiny silver blades glistened in the lights of the Christmas tree. They were perfectly white, still untouched by the scuffs that would come later. My mother had made a pair of pom poms to decorate the toes, as was the style back then. I imagined myself in a Dorothy Hamillesque position twirling across the ice.

The initial thrill of unwrapping my treasure was not the real gift I would recieve that year. The real gifts was the countless Saturdays my parents would spend taking us skating at the local Pee Wee hockey rink. I believe at the time the price to skate for an entire Saturday was 50 cents. We would get to the rink as soon as it opened and leave hours later, rosy cheeked and worn out. Sometimes we would go to the local pond and skate through a perfect winter wonderland but mostly we skated at the tiny rink in Troy.

I can't remember a Saturday that we did not skate that winter. Long after the tree was tossed in the recycling bin I enjoyed those skates. The first pair were replaced when I grew out of them over and over again. I am not sure how many pairs of skates I owned since that first pair. I know we still went skating as a family even when I was in college.I never competed in the Olympic Games. I never even had a lesson. I did gain something more valuable then a gold medal and a twirly costume. I enjoyed time with my family. I am not saying that I enjoyed every minute I spent with my family but the skating Saturdays were enjoyable momements. I can imagine that any parent of a teenager really treasures those few enjoyable moments. I can guarantee that the teenagers do. I still think about it on the rare occasions that I lace up a pair of skates. I can't say that about any other present I have opened on any other Christmas.

The gift of family time is what I really want to give my boys this holiday season and throughout the year. I don't think Skating Saturdays are going to be our thing. There is something out there for us to share. I just need to figure out what it is going to be.

My Favorite Martian

Many of you will recall a book written in the early nineties called Men are from Mars/Women are from Venus. Well... my husband and I are truly from different planets. We are universal opposites. I like it cold, he likes it warm. I am a spender. He is a saver. I like to go out. He likes to stay home. He is a minimalist. I like to guild the lily. He rarely gets upset. I tend to overreact to everything. When we have a dinner party I like to use my stemware. He would rather use the plastic Wolfpack cups that we found under the bleachers after a football game. These differences often cause friction in our marriage. Who really has the perfect marriage anyway? The longer we are married the more I realize that these are small things and not worth the worry.

Paul's redeeming qualities far outweigh his lack of taste in dinnerware. He always gives me the nicer car to drive and makes sure it is full of gas for me. He works hard at his job and his church commitments. He gives everything 100%. He never goes out with the guys in lieu of family time. He rarely takes time for himself. When he is not with his family he is usually out selflessly serving someone else. Everyone knows they can count on him to help out when there is a need. We have never gone into debt to buy him the latest man toy. These are the important things about him.

Before I met Paul I was an avid rock climber. The first thing I learned about rock climbing in the outdoors is that when you set up a climb you need to ensure that there are three anchors at the top of the mountain to support your climb. Trusting life and limb to less than three supports is foolhardy. Likewise you need to ensure that the anchors are attached to a sturdy surface. I think this is true of marriage as well.

We are well anchored. We love each other. We love our kids. We are dedicated to our religion. We put these three things first in our lives. There is never a question of priorities in our house. These are the strong boulders to which we anchor our marriage. They can not fail unless we untie ourselves from the harnesses. In today's world too many people anchor their marriage to insignificant things. Then when the anchors fail so do they.

11 years ago today we made an eternal commitment to each other. Our friends and family were there to celebrate with us. It was the happiest day of my life. Since then we have called four cities and two continents home. We added three children to our family. We have lost family members. We have taken our kids on fun vacations. We have had disagreements. We like many other couples have our ups and downs but I am still enjoying the ride and I am looking forward to the rest of our journey together.

Why I love sports movies but not sports.

This week Paul is "attending" a night class via the miracle that is the Internet. While he is studying I am left as sole navigator of the remote control. To be honest, he usually let's me watch whatever I want most of the time. Due to the enormous change in time zone between the USA east coast and Continental Europe he has lost interest in watching all that is sports and usually just spends his time reading about them on the Internet.

He is however a bandwidth hog this week. Typically all the television I watch is on the sling box. The lack of Internet forces me to watch German TV, AFN, or DVDs. It must have been kismet or some lesser form of kismet that effects matters of no real significance. Due to my lack of bandwith I was able to add two new titles to my moving viewing repertoire. Both of these were in one my favorite genres, the Sports Movie.

I am not a sports nut. I am a somewhat faithful follower of the NCSU Wolfpack but those are pretty much the only games I watch. I could probably sit in a plane next to almost any NFL quarterback and not have a clue who he was. I don't play in fantasy leagues. I have not idea who is in contention for the Word Series. I don't know who played in or won the U.S. Open. I am however a huge sports movie junkie.There are so many fantastic sports movies. Hoosiers, Rudy, Miracle, and The Pride of The Yankees are just a few off the top of my head.

They all pretty much have the same theme; the players/team/coach have to cope with seemingly insurmountable obstacles to achieve their goal. There are always people who doubt them and try to deter them from their dreams. They always face a huge stumbling block just as they are about to achieve their goals. Of course they always achieve said goals or else they wouldn't make a movie about it. I love that these movies are true stories about real people. They are about people with self discipline and courage to go the extra mile. It may seem a little cheesy but these movies really do inspire me.

I don't have insurmountable obstacles standing in my way. My parents and now my husband stand behind me in whatever I do. I was raised in a nurturing environment and was given educational privileges that I probably took for granted. I have a husband who works hard for our family and loves me and our children. The only person holding me back is myself. I just need to decide what greatness I want to achieve and move forward with it.

By the way... the movies I watched this week were We Are Marshall and the Blind Side, both were great movies about two totally different obstacles. Definitely worth queuing up in Netflix. Be sure to find a box of tissues before you pop the popcorn.

You belong to us.

Last Tuesday Oscar had his second first day of school. In the American school system school starts with kindergarten. In the German school system school starts with the first grade. The first day of school is a very big deal in Germany. The morning started with a service at the nearby Evangelical church. After the program the children paraded from the church to their school carrying their Schultüteen. All the students from the older classes in the schools were lined up along the parade route applauding and shouting words of welcome to the new classes of first graders. The morning concluded with a champagne brunch for the parents while the students met with their new teachers. It was a really neat experience that I should have appreciated more but I was too stubborn to enjoy.

It is no secret I was against his attending German school. My argument was that since we will be in Germany such a short time that any German he learns here will be forgotten after a few years back in the states. In actuality I was concerned he would not fit in at the German school. I was very worried he would be like so many of the "foreigners" I grew up with.

I recall one girl in particular who moved to my school from China when we were in elementary school. Her clothes were different. Her spiral notebooks were different. She had really weird stuff in her lunch box. Her mother did not speak any English. She had to serve as a translator at parent teacher conferences. She did not "fit in" Most of my classmates sat together being smugly American while this child sat alone. After all, the American way is the the only way to be, right? Be like us or you can't be part of us. Shame on all of us. I can't imagine that many of my classmates from then will ever understand what it is like to be a foreigner. They will probably never have the experience of being uprooted from all familiarity. They will never be a stranger in a strange land.

Now I am the parent who does not speak the language of my child's classmates. My husband shopped for school supplies because I did not understand the list. I am already dreading the parent teacher conference. I am scared that he won't be invited on play dates. I am scared that he will be invited on play dates. This scholastic adventure has caused me to retreat even further into my self imposed seclusion. I am afraid to wander too far from home in case he needs me while he is at school. I am afraid he will hate it there. I think I am even more afraid that he will love it there and then love Germany more than America. These are issues that I know will resolve themselves as time goes by. Nothing earth shatteringly awful will occur because my son is in German school.

Last week he came home with a little note. Loosely translated it means "You belong to us." Paul and I are not sure if all the first graders received one or just the foreigners. For some reason this little piece of paper with a little green guy wearing a back pack gave me reassurance and hope for the school year. Who is this green guy? Is he an alien or did the artist just like green? What is in his back pack? Probably the wrong school supplies and a weird lunch. Maybe he doesn't have the 150 euro back pack like all the other kids. Maybe his Mom bought the $30 backpack from Children's Place. None of that matters, because he belongs. Notice the note did not say "you are just like us." It doesn't day "you should be more like us and then we will like you." It simply stated that our son, a foreigner, was one of them. I think we could all learn something from this simple statement. People need to belong to one another no matter what. If someone belongs to you the differences don't matter. If more people belonged to each other there would be less problems in the word. There would be less war and more charity. I am often guilty of trying to disregard people that I think don't belong in my life. This note gave me a lot to think about. I should try to belong here in Germany and wherever else life's road may take me. Hopefully I can gather more people to belong to me along the way.

Home Sweet Hamlet

Last week I discovered that I am from a "Hamlet". All this time I thought it was a town. I was googling my hometown (homehamlet?) of Latham, NY when I discovered this news. How could I have missed this important information? I had to look up what a hamlet was on Wikipedia. I called my parents to ask them if they knew. Of course they did. Now they also know what a complete ignoramus their smartest daughter is.

Ever since I moved to Germany I find myself thinking obsessively of my childhood and how it was so easy to grow up in suburban America. I can say this only in retrospect because in reality high school sucks for most people who were not either on the football team or cheering for it. Now I can see how great it really was. There was very little crime and a lot of immaculate elementary school playgrounds that the public was free to use. There were nice hills for sledding in the winter. We went trick or treating to houses of people that we knew for years. There were not metal detectors in my high school. There was no need for them. I grew up in a utopia that can only be found in middle class America.

It was there that I started my first day of Kindergarten and graduated from high school with mostly the same people. It was unusual to have a "new kid" come into school. When someone moved in they were the new family on the block for about a year. Now I live in what is referred to as a "transient community". If you moved here more than two months ago you are not new anymore. If you are living in a house rather than a hotel you are "settled." Most people I meet here have lived in more than one foreign country.This concept is figuratively and literally foreign to me.

It makes me wonder where my children will say where they are "from." They will most likely not have a hometown that they can look back on with fondness. They will not bring their children to visit their grandparents in the house they grew up in. They won't go through twelve years of school with the same classmates. Their lives will be full of new people and new places.

This beautiful fall morning in Germany I sent my oldest son off to school. When he arrives in his classroom he will have no idea what his teacher or the other students are saying. The crazy thing about this is that he is okay with that. He wants to be part if the German community. He loves the experience. My three year old is sitting across the table from me eating a slice of ham and a roll for breakfast because that is what people eat for breakfast in Germany. He likes the experience. My baby has no idea about what life in America is. She will probably love it here too. Why don't I? Why am I so opposed to change? Is it because I grew up without any real life experience? Am I so set in my ways at the age of 36 that I can't open myself to life in a different place?

The more I think about it the more I know I need to come to terms with the concept that home is not a particular place. You don't need to "from" somewhere to have strong roots. My children will be from the world. They will have life experiences that will hopefully make them more tolerant to difference than I am. I need to stop worrying about whether or not they have "roots" and teach them or let them teach me to embrace life wherever they are. The strongest plants are uprooted time after time and still bloom wherever they are. Home will be wherever we are together.

Slugs and Snails and Puppy Dog Tails

What can I say about my boys? I actually hesitate to write my blog about them considering the day we had yesterday. Yesterday was one of those days that I was jealous of the Old Woman Who Lived In A Shoe. In today's world her parenting solution would result in a call from social services. At least her kids took their punishments and went to bed.

Yesterday afternoon when I was cleaning the kitchen one of the boys held the happy hopper toy down when the other one poked holes in it with a dandelion picker. The jury is still out on who played what role in this crime. Discovering a sad pile of rubber where a fun toy once lived really ticked me off. I yelled and threatened and lost it in general. All the parenting skills that I learned about in the past six years were forgotten. That was the high point of the afternoon. After that, the back talk and the time out tantrums were the icing on the cake. This is always the point in the day when I call Paul to see when he is coming home and pray that it is SOON. At least when he is here we can get a good man to man defense going on. I never really got the concept of how to play effective zone defense. I was never where the ball ended up and was always just standing there with a glazed look as the ball swished through the net. This is the same thing that happened this afternoon. I was defending the kitchen when I should have been in the backyard. Three against one is not very fair no matter how good your skills are. It took Paul and me hours to get them to bed. They ran around the house laughing and screaming. They unmade my bed and managed to pee all over the edge of the toilet seat. Of course they left the lid up. I discovered that little mess during my in the dark , can't hold it through the night anymore, because I had three kids,midnight pee.

After all the bedlam had ceased I went to check on them and discovered that someone had replaced the demon children with two little angels. Calvin was sucking on the same two fingers he has since birth. Oscar was all curled up in his Cars blanket. How could I possibly be angry with them? I regretted my behavior from earlier in the day and vowed to be a "better mother" in the morning. This is not the first time I made myself and my children this promise.

I had no idea what raising boys would be like. I grew up with one sister. I know raising girls has it own set of challenges but I was woefully unprepared for the pure mischief that comes with raising boys. Of course there are benefits too.

Boys are not tattletales. They stick together. As a mother I am torn by this issue. Would I prefer the constant tattle tale antics that come with having little girls or would I rather have the crimes against rubber balls ended? I think I would rather that we have a few toy casualties than hear the constant whining.

Boys are easier to dress. They don't care what they wear. Their hair is easy to do. I have not invested a months income on hair bows and ribbons for the boys. They don't need shoes to match all their outfits. They don't care if their shoes match their outfits.

We still have moments of sweetness too. Calvin is still at the age where he wants to marry me. Oscar still thinks I can fix everything. The ability to create a really cool pattern of wooden railway is still a highly admired skill in our house. I know I need to enjoy these moments now. I won't be shopping for prom or wedding dresses with these guys. I'll be lucky to be able to snap a few pictures of the events in their adulthood.

Best of all I have the privilege of creating men of the future. Someday these little demons are going to be Dads. They are going to be husbands. The lessons I teach my boys are going to affect another family someday, hopefully for the better. I hope I am able to raise kind and gentle men who have the skills to provide for a family. This is a tremendous responsibility. I hope I am up to the task.

Sugar and Spice and Everything Nice

As many of you know, in February I gave birth to our first girl. What a change this brought to our lives. I no longer have to pass by the piles of pink and purple I see in the stores. Her nursery is the sweetest little sanctuary of femininity that you ever saw. Her wardrobe is stuffed full of cute little things to wear. These are the things I was most looking forward too when I found out that we were going to have a girl. However, the greatest joys I have experienced since we were blessed with our little angel can't be found in a clothes closet or at a store.

My boys absolutely adore her. I wish they would treat each other with the kindness and gentleness with which they treat their little sister. As I sit here and write this post Oscar is patiently putting her back on her blanket that she rolls off every five minutes. They argue about who holds her first, who sits next to her at dinner and who brings me a diaper for her. The smile that sneaks across her face every time she sees one of her brothers is priceless. They refuse to go to bed without receiving a sloppy baby kiss.

I love drinking in the sweet baby head smells when I "walk" her to sleep at night. No common rocking for her royal highness. As exhausted as I am by this nighttime ritual I know the day will come when I will miss it so much that my heart will ache.

Recently Paul took the boys on a Fathers and Sons campout. Sara and I had a great time "just us girls". I look forward to this special time every year. What will we do next year? Ten years from now? How do I make her feel special on our weekend?

Will I cry her first day of kindergarten? What will it be like shopping for a prom dress? What will it be like the day she marries? How will I feel the first time I hold her sweet little babies for the first time? I both look forward and dread these events. That will be my tommorow.

Today I will wipe the spit up off my shirt because I was too lazy to get a burp cloth. I will throw another load of laundry in the washer. I will change at least six diapers and probably an entire outfiit. In other words I will just enjoy another day of babyhood.

That is all for today. I need to grab the camera because I think she just fell asleep on the carpet while being snuggled by her big brother. That is a "today momement" I will treasure tommorow.

Back To The Blog

I decided to continue with my own blog. I will try to keep up with it this time. Considering the fact that a year has past since my last blog entry it seems doubtful but I will do my best.

I will try hard to catch everyone up on the past year. It would probably be easier just to read Paul's blog.