There's No Place Like It

I want to go home.

This is quite difficult because I am home.

I love this place that I live. I love the slow pace of life, the simplicity of things, the lack of focus on things. I love the forest and its trees. I love having my in-laws near enough and far enough away. I love learning to make good food from simple ingredients because I don't have any other option. I love seeing my children embrace their nationality and watching them grow up in a different culture than I did, speaking fluently in a language that I still cannot express myself well in, connecting with their father because he understands It All.

Even the things that I don't like about this place I almost love. The fact that most restaurants are called "Restaurant" and most furniture stores are called "Furniture". The way teachers talk to their students. The fact that almost all lighting is either too bright or too dim and always overhead. All of the cakes that need about twice as much sugar as they contain.

I will miss it all one day if/when we move back. But still. . .

I want to go home.

I want my people.

I want my kids to attend a school system that I understand. I want to ride roller coasters. I want to have the option to buy American candy every time I go to the store (and then have the willpower not to). I want to have play dates with stay at home mothers and their children. I want to sit down on someones couch for book club and learn and laugh. I want to sing the hymns I love in English with a congregation. I want chain restaurants and end tables with lamps.

I want my people.

Is it possible to be happy in one place but want, really want to be somewhere else?

Home is where the heart is? Well, then I guess I have two hearts.

You Know You Have a Three Year Old

. . . when, in his presence, you are telling your spouse about a blog post you read and the author's great response and somebody else in the story's not so great (though typical Polish*) response to a scary situation. The child does not understand much of what you have been saying. You finish the conversation with, "It's kinda too bad."

Said child pipes in, "It's kinda too bad? Why?"

That's a three year old.

But you can be grateful if this same child usually follows up his "Why?"s with "Because?" and is satisfied when you respond, "Yes. Because."
*Though it happened in the U.S.

Flattery and a Lack Thereof

"You weigh less than you did when you were dating your husband," my scale tells me.

"You look good for a mother of four," some say.

My clothes, though? And photos? They do not flatter.

All they tell me is, "You're Too Large." (jerks)

I love this photo despite my allergy eyes, partly because it reminds me that I should really get around to eating less some time soon (and mostly because I love being Evie's mom).

(Still waiting for that moment when I suddenly become excited about snacking on dried fruit and nuts and eating small portions and feeling hungry all the time and looking more like how I think of myself. And worrying it won't come until Spencer is weaned. And resigning myself to being large even though I hate it. I just don't hate it enough, I guess. And sorry for another vanity post. Ugh.)

Positive

"I very like it when you happy," Aaron says, after we play goofy for a few minutes.

Hello, Guilt! What are you doing here? Please go away.

It's not like he said, "Wow, mom, you sure aren't happy very often. What a treat!"
Even if that's what you heard.

After some reflection I remember what an excellent big brother Aaron is becoming. After a family prayer through which Spencer squealed and gurgled Aaron went straight to him, took him by the hand and said, "No-no, Spencer. You have to be quiet in prayer because Jesus say you have to be quiet." Then a few nights later after a quieter prayer Aaron came to Spencer again, took him by the hand again and said, "Thank you Spencer being quiet! Jesus is happy because you quiet in the prayer!"

And tonight he congratulated me for doing such a good job eating my salad. Go me!

I have successfully convinced myself that it's his positive reinforcement thing. He just notices good behavior and rewards it with praise. He's not being sarcastic and pointing out what a break these things are from the norm. He's not me.

Still, I'm going to work harder at being happy more often. And at being quiet during prayers. And eating all my salad. And at being more positive, like Aaron.

How to Keep from Melting

Pardon my language, but it is freaking hot. Instead of complaining (Too late. Make that after complaining. Or while complaining.) I'm looking to my boys for tips on how to beat the heat.

Hmmmm. . .

ice cream,

water,
naps

and sitting mostly naked looking out the front door with the cool(er) early morning air coming in while eating toast.

They all work well.

And yes, that is a three year old sitting next to a not yet seven month old (who sits, making my life many times easier). Big boy.

Randomness and My Weed Addiction

• I'm considering taking Spencer off solids. Just until he's potty trained.
• It seems the kids' excuses for not doing what I ask are getting better all the time. Yesterday I asked Ev to come sit by Spencer on the couch so I could go do something else and she said (from her place at the computer), "Um, my patient is kinda gonna die. . . " Well, by all means! Who am I. .?
• The ringtone on my phone is still set at the soothing harp tone I changed it to when I was in the hospital when Spencer was born. That's going on seven months. I don't really need a soothing ringtone anymore.
• Two words that I find to be more welcome than most others when having my teeth filled are, "almost done" (I don't usually prefer to be numbed). Oh man, I love when my dentist says those words.
• When you keep your house at 63 degrees throughout the winter and learn to really like it, it is that much harder to live in the 77 degrees it stays at most of the summer.
• I am developing a bad habit. Nothing I need to repent of yet, but it's becoming an addiction. This morning I woke up and nursed the baby, did my exercise and went to take the trash out to the curb. I was very glad the other kids were asleep so I could take the baby outside with me and indulge myself. It involves weed. I have a hard time knowing it is there and not going to it.
  

The weed in question is clover. Our poor grass is overrun by it in places. I have started weeding it out and I find it to be EXTREMELY enjoyable. Our grass is long right now so you have to grab a little stalk by the leaves, follow it down to the base and grab the branch its coming off of. Then you pull on that and follow it, tearing up the little places it has taken root, until you come to the actual root base to pull up. You have to comb through the grass to keep it from getting stuck as you go. Oh my gosh I love it.

Of course it is actually a good type of weed addiction except for when you go out to do it when you should be doing things like making breakfast and writing articles.

If you have clover in your grass I seriously recommend you try it. It's totally therapeutic and better than dish washing for think time. And probably this is all making me sound weirder than usual. Maybe I am weirder than usual. Yes, I think I am.

Found On My Phone

David likes to take pictures. Here are some of my favorites I've found on my phone.

Chess.
Merengues in the oven. Seeing this picture right after the last one makes me realize that next time I should really see if I can form them into pawns, knights, bishops and royalty so we can get a game out of them before we eat them.

His lid collection:

On this next one all I can say is, "Um, nice, David." (notice Ev reading in the background, as ever. I won't aplogize for exposing you to our couch again. It has served us well and will one day be replaced. I have hope.)
This next one he took from the window of the car on the drive to Katowice. It's my favorite. I could look at it all day. As a matter of fact, I think I will on those hot, sunny days when the rest of the world is out enjoying sweating while they go about their business (why do people like temperatures above 74 degrees!?! I need to move to Southern California, though there aren't enough storms. . .).


And finally one that I actually took, but when I took it it didn't look like this. However, I think Evie's the one who made the improvements to this one.

I love looking through my photos. I never know what I'll find.

No Wonder

I realized recently that over the past few months, every time Aaron says, "You're welcome!"
I have been responding with, "And I like YOU!"

Is it any wonder this kid has been very unfast (slow seems like the wrong (read: bad, label-y) term) in his language development? I'm totally confusing him.

It's his fault though. When you pronounce "you're welcome" like, "Ah lack'em" your mom has a right to think you said, "I like 'em."

Wearing Evie's hat in Old Town Krakow

Summer Do-Overs

School ended on Friday. I'm glad.

Last year at this time I was excited to have a great summer with the kids and their friends. Then reality (or pregnancy, rather) took over and I found myself feeling rotten physically and emotionally. It was all I could do to go through the motions of making sure everyone ate and didn't smell too terrible.

This summer here is how I plan to make up for last year.

Instead of trying not to scowl at the kids' friends when they come over I want to be the involved mother I have been in the past. (By which I mean, apart from planning a few activities for them, regular teasing of all children that happen to be in the same room as me.)

Instead of shutting myself up in the house for the entire summer I want to get out and walk and play ball and swim with my kids. (just to give you an idea, I have walked more in the last two weeks, even before school let out, than I did the entire two months of summer last year, or probably even my whole pregnancy)

Instead of watching my house fall down all around me we have a very solid cleaning schedule wherein we all do our chores for 1/2 hour together and I check the kids work and they check mine (with more tidying throughout the day).

Instead of burying my own nose in a book for most of the day and letting the kids' library books become many, many months overdue I will take them to the library once a week, I will read to the little ones daily and the older ones will each read at least one book per week.

I also meant to do weekly themes with art and science projects and fun lessons. Not sure that's going to happen as I'd hoped, but I'll try to do something. . .

As motivation to keep to this schedule, especially the keeping things very tidy part, Greg is offering Ev and Dave each 2 złoty (about 70 cents) every day that they do it. That sounded like a lot to me (we're cheap) but then he added on the end of the list that they may not whine. If they whine once, they get nothing that day. He is confident we won't be spending too much money with this plan during the two months of summer. I hope he's wrong!

Getting Shot In Poland

Okay, fine: Getting Shots In Poland.

We took Spencer to get poked in 3/4 of his appendages today (the head isn't considered an appendage, is it?). Poor little guy. It looked something like this, only this was a month ago when he was also getting poked in three of his four (five?) appendages.


His dear father decided to document it so that when he's older we can look back on the pleasant memories of his carefree childhood.

While we were there I thought, "Hey. I don't even know if they have a computer here." Peeking into the office we found that no, they don't. There is a phone though. That makes it nice as far as setting appointments goes. Just don't ask me how they keep track of who's coming in when.

Another thing they have is a shelf for files. This is a view into the office from the "healthy" waiting room (there's a separate one for sick, is it like that in the States? Weird that I don't know that)


You can see the painted metal furniture on the left, very clinical and just like the hospital beds. Floor, door, doorknob, stuff hanging on the wall, it's all very Polish Doctor's Office.

There are no cushioned chairs in the waiting room. No carpet, no soothing shades of paint on the walls or parenting magazines or neat toys for your kids to play with while they wait.

There is a doctor who smiles and talks to your baby and performs a perfect check up.(although she closes the door "so there won't be a draft"). There is an accurate scale for weighing the baby and experienced nurses to administer immunizations.

As long as they have those things, who cares that you sit on a wooden bench which has back support at a right angle to the seat while you read posters on the wall about which kind of tea your infant should be drinking? The things we need, we have.

And on a completely unrelated note, someone needs to hire Aaron for product naming. While the kids were roasting marshmallows over candles Aaron kept coming in and asking me if he could have one more marshpillow. I think he got it right. What's a mallow? They obviously hired the wrong person for naming those things.

Maybe She's Born With It

So, I know in that slogan they are referring to the woman's beauty, but as this post is about me I certainly am not referring to being born with that (see above. that's me with allergy eyes.). I'm talking about being born with makeup.

Long ago I posted about my love of make up and mentioned my "natural eye make up". Today, I blog about it. Lucky you.

With my glasses on I sort of might as well not have any eyes at all for all you can actually see them. But if you could, you might notice (but most likely wouldn't) that I wear way too much make up on my eyes. Especially the corners of my eyes. Except that I don't.

I won't go into the story, but once my sister refused to believe that I hadn't put my make up on yet in the morning, even when I told her that I only wear mascara and it was obvious I didn't have any of that on. (which reminded me of the time as a kid that I didn't believe her when she told me she wasn't wearing fake eyelashes)

Here is a picture that shows rather well, without me having an actual picture taken of my eyes for this post. I'm sort of against taking pictures of myself (or most other things) strictly to be posted here. I don't know why, but that's how it is. So anyway, when I saw this picture I thought, "Oh! There you can see it!" and decided to post it.



So now I'll be a little ridiculous and suggest that you look at my eyelids in the picture above. That will be difficult a) because there is a RATHER cute baby to look at and b) because the picture was taken in the shade and it's not that easy to see the details.

You may be able to see that it looks like I have brown eye shadow on my lids and a darker shade in the corners. Those blasted corners.

I'm not saying this is a great thing, it's just a thing. A thing that means that my self has decided what color of make up I get to wear, whether I like it or not. I do use cover up on the edges sometimes and apply a different color of shadow but usually I go brown.

Anyway. When it comes to eye make up, for some people it may be Maybelline, but I, for one, was born with it.

Hands

Spencer is learning to do a lot of things with his hands.

There's the all-time favorite: tasting them

And newer discoveries: feeling nature

grabbing tags, like this little one on his collar

and making sure his toes don't go anywhere while he naps.

But there are some things we discourage.
Another favorite from day one (or so) has been face scratching;
way too much face scratching.
So we're big on gloves.

He's also not allowed to attack our dinner.
Look at him eying that farmer's breakfast, which is why he had to be restrained

at night we don't want him doing any of the above so he gets bundled
and sleeps eight or nine hours straight.

But the best thing to do with hands, and something we never discourage, is holding sibling's.

What My Kids Learn in Primary

Today we attended the Kielce Branch. It meets in the missionaries' apartment. Sacrament meeting and Sunday school meet in one room and we usually have Primary in the living room. Today, though, they were watching a conference talk in the living room so I taught Primary in the other room. Here's how it went down.

Of course it was just me and my own kids. It was time to feed Spencer so I was nursing him while we had a lesson about prayer. Aaron was sitting there very nice and attentive during the opening song and prayer. Before I got into the lesson I decided to help him feel included by having us sing Jesus Wants Me for a Sunbeam. At that point he became very offended and got out of his seat and was generally an enormous pain (because how dare I suggest we sing a song he knows and likes!?!).

Spencer wasn't eating peacefully. Off, on, off, on. Smile at mom, sit up. On, off. Ugh. Ugh. Meanwhile I was having a discussion with Ev and David that I felt was very important. And Aaron was telling us how he hates apple juice (meaning we didn't have any and he wanted some) and whining. And I was trying to not lose my temper with him while also trying to keep our discussion going and getting Spencer to take more than one gulp at a time before coming off.

While this was going on Evie and David had answered my question as to why we pray. I repeated their answers. "To give thanks for our blessings, ask for other blessings and to talk to our Father. Good. Okay, what are some other reasons we pray?"

After a very short pause I backed up and said, "Well, that's good enough. Those are the most important reasons we pray."

Before I could move on to the next question Evie said, "Okaaaaaay. What are the less important reasons?"

And then we laughed. And I was glad. I was in desperate need of some comic relief.

If

If I had a feesh I would keep it in a bowl in my leeving room and it would make keesy faces to everyone all day long.

I just decided to make up a short story (yes, that was a short story, with a fascinating plot) using just three of the words I found today in a chidren's Polish/English story book that had a pronunciation guide for some of the words. I changed the spelling so you would know how to pronounce things PROPERLY.

(Five) Thousand Word Thursday: Brothers (phone shots)

Whenever Spencer is doing this:

Aaron is doing this: