Betrayal

OK, I just finished Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince and...wow. It was incredible. I wasn't all that fond of the previous one, The Order of the Phoenix. It was all right, but kind of muddled.

The ending of Prince was shocking, but not because of the much-ballyhooed death. I saw that one coming--sometime in the series, anyway. No, like a particular episode of Babylon 5 that no one but Jon and my brother would remember, the identity of the killer was the surprise. To me, anyway.

Throughout the whole series, I have been sure that this character was unpleasant, but on the side of good. So his betrayal shocked me, even though it was foreshadowed from the very first chapter.

So for the next book, I'm not nearly as interested in what happens to Harry as I am in how this new/old nemesis turns out. Hopefully, Rowling will devote as much space to this person's background and motivations in the next book as she did to Voldemort's history in this one.

Peer Pressure

One of the little girls at Katrina's preschool broke her arm over the weekend. She fell off a piece of playground equipment with her mom right there. Something-or-other was dislocated, it looked pretty bad, and an ambulance was called. I think that is the key, there.

This morning on the way to school, Katrina said, "Lauren breaked her arm. She went on an amboolance. It hurt a lot and a lot and a lot." I said something like, "Yes, it did, but it's healing now."

"I'm going to break my arm," she said.

Something's Missing

We've been listening to a lot of "top 40" radio since we got here. I tend to listen to AFN (Armed Forces Network) because it's in English. Jon listens to German stations, the main one being "Big FM" (sound familiar? I didn't know the hokey radio names were worldwide). You hear the same songs...over and over...on both stations. The German stations play all the bad words, though. The Gwen Stefani song, Hollaback Girl? Has more words and fewer grunts on German radio. The disturbing thing is that Katrina loves that song and is singing along. It is catchy, and it's on practically every time we turn on the radio. But a 3-year-old singing "where's my sh**" is enough to switch the channel to the more sanitized AFN.

It's been a long time since I listened to top-40 music with any frequency. I listened mostly to talk radio and Christian music radio in the States. I've found no Christian radio channels in this area.

You know what? Today's top 40 music makes me sad...even the songs I actually like. It's all about love lost ("Incomplete"--a beautiful song, by the way). Or sex ("The Candy Shop"--rap is all over top 40 in Germany...and there are German rappers, too. I have a bit of cognitive dissonance hearing rap in German.). Or grrrrl power ("Hollaback Girl"). Much of it is without hope.

So I went looking for my CDs this morning. They were in a box marked "Books" so it took a while. Now I'm listening to Rich Mullins' last album, "The Jesus Record." Some songs on there make me sad, too, because I listened to this over and over after I had my first miscarriage. Rich Mullins wrote songs that did not deny that life is hard, but offered hope as well. One of the best songs I've ever heard about what happens to faith in hard times is "Hard to Get." Here are the lyrics. Yet the same CD also contains "Nothing is Beyond You" which uses many of the words from Psalm 139 about the love and mystery of God.

Maybe that's what I miss when I listen to popular music...the idea that there is something--Someone--beyond ourselves and our own concerns. Now, I do hear plenty of Christian contemporary music that consists of pious platitudes. And there is wonderful, thought-provoking popular music. (I just haven't heard much of it on the radio recently.) But really good Christian music reminds me of what I tend to forget in the busyness of life and in my natural self-centeredness: that this life is not all there is. That there is Someone who sacrificed his life out of love for me (and for the person who's tailgating me, too). That there is hope, and joy, and peace, no matter where I am or how hard life gets.

I ain't no hollaback girl. I'm a child of God. You are, too.

Random Thoughts

It's disconcerting to be talking to someone and all of a sudden have trouble seeing them. This happened this morning when I took Katrina to preschool. I don't get migraines often, but when I do they begin with spots in my vision. I drove home (spots and all...not recommended) and took two Tylenol in the hope of staving off the worst of it. The vision problem is gone, and I'm trying to ignore the headache pain. The fact that I can look at the computer at all means (I hope) that the headache will be a minor one. I'll still be wiped out the rest of the day, though; for some reason, even a migraine that I medicate in time leaves me very fatigued. Compared to the suffering that some people go through with migraines, I get off easy. Yeah, if I just keep thinking that, it won't seem too bad, right?

Jon's parents left yesterday morning after visiting for about 5 days. It was great having them here, especially to celebrate Katrina's birthday. This morning Katrina, as she often does, asked
what we were going to do today. I told her the plans for the day. Then she said that she wanted to go to Grandma's and Grandpa's house. I told her that we couldn't today, that it was too far away. She sighed deeply and said, "Oookaaay." It made me sad.

We have screens! Jon and his dad went to Praktiker, a German equivalent of Home Depot, and got screen kits. Instead of screens in metal frames like you see in the States (and can buy here, too, for a higher price), the kits had big rolls of screen material. You cut the screen to size and fit it into the window by pushing strands of plastic cable into channels at the side of the window. It's a lot of work, but Jon and his dad got most of them into place over the weekend. Still some more work to do, but we can now open the main windows in each room without inviting all the bugs into the house. Yay!

Plans are now in place to for us to come back to the States for three weeks, from Sept. 17 to Oct. 8. That last week coincides with the Sandy Cove Christian Writer's Conference, which I had attended for a number of years before Katrina was born. It's just too long to attend the whole thing when we have so little time at home, but they've started a 24-hour writer's retreat after the conference that I think might be good. I can get away for a little while and really think and pray about what I might do with my writing. With Katrina getting more independent by the day, I'm starting to think about what comes next. It won't be that long before she's in school all day (sob).

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is calling to me. I bought it a few days ago, just after I borrowed several books from the library. I'm in the middle of Gilead by Marilynne Robinson, and I want to write like her when I grow up...smooth and evocative and so clear you can hear the narrator (a dying preacher writing to his young son) talking in your head. Of course, when I read Harry Potter I'll want to write like J.K. Rowling...crisp and funny and full of adventure. I guess I'll have to settle for writing like myself and reading the others.

I think I'll just close my eyes and rest a bit before picking up Katrina. I was going to take her to the playground this afternoon, but I don't know if I'll be up to it. I hate headache days.

Birthday Girl

Dear Katrina,

You're three years old now, and how those years have flown. Looking at you now, so capable and confident, it's hard to believe it's been such a short time since you were a tiny infant. At your birthday party yesterday, you wore a pink dress with embroidered butterflies and flowers. You put on the pink princess tiara from Grammy and Pap and wore it for hours. You were thrilled with the pink Barbie nightgown that your little friend Ryan gave you and, for once, couldn't wait for bedtime so that you could wear it.

The playhouse that Papa and Grandpa put together in the back yard was a big hit. You went in and out, carefully closing the doors behind you each time. We had to forbid you from climbing on the roof of the house. It was refreshing that you asked permission and then actually refrained from trying. I guess even your adventuresome heart recognized the danger of climbing too high.

I'm mystified with your affection for all things pink and with your abiding interest in princesses. But I hope that you will always retain the sense that you are a princess: beautiful inside and out, knowing in your heart that you are treasured. So many girls (and women) lose or forget those things along the way. And I pray that you will always see the world as a place of adventure, and other people as potential friends.

I love you, my "big-girl princess." I hope that as you take on the world, you'll know that you are surrounded by your family's love.

Happy birthday!

Love, Mama

Identity

The first day of German 101, and we were learning how to introduce ourselves and say what our jobs were. In English, I would say I'm a stay-at-home mom. In German, the word is Hausfrau. The only time I have heard that word used in English is derisively. To me, the word is laden with condescension, and an image comes to mind of a woman in a frumpy housedress and apron, her identity consumed in cleaning and making '50s-style gelatin molds. In other words, the very worst stereotypes of a housewife. So I said I was a Hausfrau and a Redakteur (editor) because I didn't know the German for writer.

I think that I have such a negative reaction to hausfrau because it, and its English equivalent housewife, say nothing about my interests or my personality. I'm not really domestic. I don't sew or do crafts or even decorate at all well. I'm an okay cook, but not a creative one. I'm simply someone who believes that my child is best served by my being her primary caregiver.

So the stay-at-home mom moniker best fits this part of my life. But I see the primacy of child care as only one season of my life. As Katrina gets older and goes to school, I plan to go back to editing and writing on more of a full-time basis. Therefore, I continue to see myself as a writer...in fact, it feels closer to who I am than SAHM does, because it indicates at least some of my talent and personality.

Perhaps because it took so much time and pain before we had Katrina, or merely because I was older, I don't often think of being a mom as part of my core identity. I still look at her little face sometimes and just marvel that she's here (and at how beautiful she is, and how smart, and how friendly and fun, how she's just the best little kid anywhere. But I'm not biased or anything.). On the other hand, I don't know what I would be doing now or who I would be if she had not been born. Motherhood--and particularly mothering a little girl whose personality is so different from my own--has stretched me and shaped me in ways I could not have imagined.

Identity is a slippery thing. Here I am, having trouble labeling myself as "just" a mom--a hausfrau--and yet being a mother has had a profound effect on my personality, my way of thinking, and, yes, my identity.

Mein Name ist Jennifer. Ich bin eine Mutter.

First Day of School

Katrina went to preschool for the first time today. The teacher said she did really well. I guess she had fun because...

The first thing my adoring child said to me when she saw me: "I don't want to leave!"

Aw, isn't that cute. She enjoyed her first day of school.

She ran away from me back into the classroom. C'mon, sweetie, time to go. We'll come back tomorrow.

"I don't want to go home!"

I managed to get her out to the car relatively quietly, and then, well, there was crying, screaming, jumping up and down. "I don't want to gooo home!"

We had to go back in to "go potty." And then we got into the car with crying but no piercing screams (I take what I can get).

It's about a 10 minute drive back to the house. She cried all the way there. And from the driveway into the house.

She stopped crying abruptly at the sight of a new box of Elmo fruit snacks among the groceries I brought in from the car. Thank goodness she's still a little bit distractable.

Didn't I hear somewhere about children having trouble separating from their moms on the first day of school?

Not our little adventurer!

Minor correction

Jon says that I was mistaken (ahem, but I got my info from him) about there being no window screens available in Germany. You can buy them in a German hardware store; they are about 45 Euros (about $56 at today's exchange rate) per window. A bit of an investment...

Growing Up

We signed Katrina up for a small Montessori preschool today. She starts next week. We've gone to 3 schools this week, and this one was the most impressive. Katrina was immediately fascinated with the "materials" as they are called in Montessori. The director/teacher was enthusiastic and good with Katrina. Katrina did not want to leave...she wanted to look at one more thing, ask one more question, etc. And this was without other kids in the classroom. Truthfully, I don't really care philosophically about Montessori vs. traditional preschool, but this school was one where I could picture Katrina doing well and not getting lost in the crowd.

It's 5 days a week, which was a little more that I really wanted. But the other schools we talked to were filled up on the M-W-F classes anyway (with the exception of a church preschool that doesn't start till the fall). So she'll go to the summer program for the month of July. The school closes for August and then starts for the school year.

I'm hoping that this will help both Katrina and me make new friends. The director spoke of building a community, which appealed to me. I'm an introvert by nature, so taking the initiative on meeting/getting to know people is difficult for me. But Katrina needs social interaction like she needs air to breathe. So becoming part of an established "community" should help both of us.

My mama heart hurts more than I expected with this first big sign of separation. I suspect that Katrina will love being around other kids and doing cool stuff. But I keep having thoughts like, "what if the teacher doesn't understand or appreciate her?"; "will she be safe?"; "is this too much change for her on top of a move?"

Of course I wonder if she'll miss me, but the answer is "probably not." She's an independent little girl, never clingy unless she's sick or something. She steps boldly out into the world, running toward adventure, asking a million questions along the way. Today she saw some kids on the playground and started yelling "Hi!" from a block away.

I have a lot to learn from her.

Home Making

I've been homesick on and off since we moved....for the people we left behind; for our house, which I loved; and for the feelings of control and comfort that come from established routines and familiar places.

So I was upset the other night, after a long day, and told Jon I was homesick. And that, surely, he must miss home, too. Do you know what he said? That he was not homesick because he had me here with him.

At the time, I thought he was being very sweet, but that it was annoying that he seemed to have nary a twinge of homesickness.

But now, I'm thinking about the notion that I represent home to him (and to Katrina, too). I've heard the idea that the wife/mom is the heart of the home (or, in a more humorous way, "If Mama ain't happy, ain't nobody happy!"). As we start to make a home and build a life in a new place, I'm seeing how true that can be. When I am short-tempered, impatient, or sad, I sometimes see a mirroring-type reaction from Katrina. It is frightening, sometimes, just how much influence a parent is in a small child's life.

And when Jon makes a comment like that, I realize that I underestimate my influence in his life. If I am home to him, what kind of home am I making? If I set the tone and rhythm in our home, what can I do to make our life as a family peaceful, loving, a haven for both my husband and daughter?

Just Go To Bed!

That's the title of a Little Critter book that I've read to Katrina so many times I practically have it memorized. Little Critter is playing: "I'm a cowboy! I can lasso anything!" when his father rudely interrupts to get him ready for bed. At every stage, Little Critter is in his "let's pretend" world and resents that his dad keeps moving him along. In the bath, he's a sea monster, but then he has to get out of the bath. He's a zookeeper while he has a snack, feeding his stuffed animals...until his dad has the gall to tell him to put on his pajamas. Little Critter increases tempo, flitting from one thing to another, until finally his dad loses patience and says "Just go to bed!"

We're living that exact scenario right now. Except in the book, Little Critter goes to sleep peacefully at the end. Not quite what's been happening here. After an exhausting hour and half to two hours of bathing, teeth brushing, book reading, singing, and back rubbing (often punctuated by a tantrum if things aren't exactly right or if we assert some authority to get her moving), we go through numerous "curtain calls."

"Mamaaaaa! Mamaaaa! I have to go pottyyyyyy!" Last night she went potty twice in 10 minutes. And if she can't "go" once she's there, she wants to sit there until she can force something out. That's fun, too.

"My foot's coming out!" That's a crisis, you know...she puts her foot over the side of the toddler bed and then gets upset because the sheet has fallen off it.

"I don't have enough roooooooom!" This is a nightly lament, usually while we're trying to settle her down before we leave the room. Now, I would take that as a sign that she needs to move from the small toddler bed to a normal single bed, except she said exactly the same thing when she slept in the large single bed that came with our temporary furniture. Of course, some nights she has 4 or 5 stuffed animals plus BeBe, her security blanket, in the bed with her. But if I suggest that some of the animals can sleep on the floor beside her bed, she exclaims "Noooooo!" with such horror in her voice that you would think I threatened to cut them up or something.

We realize that she's still settling in and that her room doesn't yet feel like home to her, but this nightly struggle to sleep is really wearing on both Jon and I. Especially since she has been a really good sleeper since she turned 1.

We also suspect that it stems from napping during the day. Again, she's been a great napper since she started the toddler stage, and I hate to give up that hour and a half to two hours of quiet time. But now, the longer she naps, the later she stays up at night. One night we said "good night" and left her room around nine, and she just played in her room until 10. She still gets sleepy at midday and will sleep, but unlike when she was younger, we pay for the nap later at bedtime.

Today she did not take a nap. She was nodding off in the car as we drove back from having lunch with Jon at the base, but she perked up as soon as she got out of the car. We went through the whole naptime ritual, but she just talked to herself in her room for 15 minutes and then came looking for me. So now we're having "quiet time" in the family room...a DVD for her, the computer for me. It's just too hot out to do the playground in midafternoon.

Quiet time for her means dancing and singing along to the songs on the DVD, though. Oh, well. Maybe she'll get to sleep before 9:30 tonight. Hope springs eternal.

Update: Well, she was totally out by 8:45 pm, the earliest in a long time. But it was at a cost of her crying for me (after I left her with Jon to go to German class)/having a tantrum for over an hour--and being awfully whiny the rest of the time. So she definitely still needs some sort of nap to be civilized; maybe we just need to move it to earlier in the day or wake her if it gets too late. Sometimes parenting is an awful lot like putting a puzzle together, except that you don't know for sure what the puzzle is supposed to look like.

Floh-Markt und Kleiderschraenke

I went to a flea market (floh-markt) in Ramstein-Miesenbach this morning. The wife of one of Jon's co-workers invited me, along with a friend of hers. It was nice to get out sans toddler, and I actually made it there without getting lost. There are floh-markt signs all over this area. It seems to be a big thing to do here. The best and biggest in the area is in Homburg, which is a bit farther away from us. Lori is a flea market queen...she knows exactly what she likes and is looking for, and is very focused as she's looking. Her friend and I just chatted and looked around more casually. I saw some things I kind of liked, but at the moment we have nowhere to put anything.

Did I mention that most houses in Germany are built with no closets whatsoever? None. It comes from the way they used to tax houses, by room. And a room was anything with a door, including a closet. No closets, lower tax. So if you live here, you have to get a "kleiderschrank" or wardrobe for your hanging clothes. A room that looks pretty big can get small quick once you put in a few schranks (to Americanize the word a bit). On the other hand...hey! an excuse to go to Ikea and buy stuff! That's where Jon is now. We would not have been able to fit big items in the car with Katrina in the backseat, so he took off when I got back from the flea market. I guess tomorrow's project will be putting together the schranks, the bookcases, the nighttable we're getting for Katrina's room, and anything else he picks up along the way. Katrina will have a ball trying to "help" us...she's fascinated with tools and putting things together (or taking them apart).

While I was at the flea market, Jon had planned to take Katrina to the playground. But she saw Jon's X-box box and said "I want to play games on TV." Mind you, we don't have any kiddie games for the X-box, so it's not like she's done much other than see Jon play. They played "Midtown Madness," a driving game. When I got home and asked Katrina what she did with Papa, she said, "We play game. Papa don't drive very well. He hits lights." I asked if she drove well. "No, I hit lights, too."

Things I Don't Miss

1. DC Traffic. Hate it, hate it, hate it. There are traffic jams here, of course, but because we can afford to live closer to Jon's place of work, his commute is much shorter. Which brings me to...

2. Ridiculous housing prices. We still own our house in Virginia and are trying to rent it out. Why? Because if we sold it, we would never, ever be able to afford another single-family house in that area. The housing prices are appreciating so rapidly that we'd be priced out by the time we moved back.

3. The weather. Yes, it's hot here, too, but for a shorter duration. And so far, we've not had the stifling humidity and bad air that are typical to the DC area. I'm hoping that continues.

4. The general standoffishness of people in a metro area. The DC area just isn't very friendly. I haven't met many Germans (and those I have I couldn't communicate with very well), but the Americans living here are very friendly. Perhaps because they were newcomers not that long ago, or because we're all in a foreign country

Hmm. Can't think of anything else at the moment. A bit unbalanced, but there you go. Maybe when we live here longer, I'll do this again. Pretty much everyone I've talked to who has lived here longer than a year likes or even loves living here. The few people I've talked to who have been here less than a year either hate it or still feel like they're getting settled.

We're still getting settled.

5 Things I Miss

1. A garbage disposal. Germans do not use garbage disposals. They have a separate trash can for organic waste. It's picked up monthly and sent to a central composting facility. In the meantime, we have a garbage can of rotting food sitting outside our door in the heat of summer. Yum.

2. Central air. It was in the 90s yesterday. We bought a portable air conditioner for $600 to cool the upstairs. The kitchen (downstairs) was pretty hot, especially after cooking.

3. American TV. Yeah, yeah, how gauche to be a TV addict. But I am. German TV is...well, in German, which I don't know yet. We have a few of the free BBC channels, but British TV is just not the same (except when it is: BBC Three is running the American re-make of the originally British sit-com "The Office"). Thank goodness our friends sent us a DVD of the "Lost" finale. We're supposed to get an AFN (Armed Forces Network) decoder soon, so all is not lost on the TV front.

4. Talk radio. When you're playing with a toddler all day, talk radio gives some semblance of adult conversation (depending on what show you're listening to, of course) and a way to keep up on what's going on in the world--without a little one pulling away the newspaper or closing the laptop ("don't read. Play with me!").

5. Window screens. There just aren't any. And so we have mosquitoes, flies, and assorted moths flying in at will.

Tune in next time for things I don't miss...

Beginnings

Monday was our 13th wedding anniversary. We didn't do much to celebrate--Jon got me a gift and card, and I ordered a gift from Amazon that will be here in mid-July. I forgot that shipping to Germany--even with an APO address--would take longer. Silly thing to forget, but I've been even more disorganized than usual since we got here.

We've been living here in southern Germany for a little over a month, so we don't exactly have babysitters at the ready to take care of our almost-3-year-old if we want to go out. So dinner at home, then spend 2 hours trying to get our daughter to go to sleep. Collapse into bed at 10:30 or so. Then start talking, trying not to stay up too late and yet still connect as husband and wife rather than as Mama and Papa.

Anyway, I decided to try out this blogging thing as a way to keep in better contact with those of you we left in the States. And to keep my writerly muscle exercised, because I have not written as regularly as I would like to since Katrina was born and I became primarily a stay-at-home mom.

So, welcome to a new beginning--of this blog and of our life in Germany. I hope you like it here.