things kids should do as kids

i keep seeing this piece about things that kids should do by themselves before they turn 13 circulating on facebook. and while it's all well and good that kids do their own homework and can make their own lunch (i really should have enforced that one) and set their own alarms, i feel like it's kind of a careful and tentative list and a little self-serving for the parents. and who the hell doesn't talk to the teacher when it's necessary or help with homework? that's just lazy, it seems to me.

my child is 16 now, but when i think back to the things she did before she was 13, i could add a number of things to the list:

~ fly somewhere alone. when she was 7, we sent the child to the states for the summer. of course, we paid the unaccompanied minor fee to sas, and i delivered her to the gate in copenhagen and my sister was waiting for her outside customs in chicago, but she did an 8 hour flight by herself. she had to entertain herself, excuse herself to go to the bathroom, tell the stewardesses what she wanted to drink and mess with that infernal onboard entertainment system on her own. it wasn't her first time on a plane, so she was already a routine traveler and knew how it worked, but it was still a big step. and she did it with flying colors, also flying home again on her own at the end of the summer.

~ have secrets. we all need something that's our own, that we maybe share with a friend, but not necessarily our parents. a couple of summers ago, we were walking down a creek that flows behind our property and the child and her best friend were reminiscing about a time that they ran scared from some aggressive swans at a little lake that you come to, some ways down the creek. i knew they had played down there, but not that they'd had a bit of an exciting experience, nor that they had walked as far up the creek as they had. it made them strong and brave and gave them something they had together that wasn't anyone else's.

~ eat food you planted and picked yourself in a garden. our child has grown up picking strawberries, popping a warm, sweet cherry tomato, picked directly from the greenhouse into her mouth, sifting through soil after freshly-dug potatoes. she knows where food comes from and how it tastes different and much better than what you buy in the store. she has spent time helping me pick countless little tiny violets so we could make a vivid purple cordial that we mixed with fizzy water and enjoyed on a hot summer day.

~ make the child use public transport. to get to school, to get to a movie, to get to her friends, to get to a party. buy a travel card and know how to use it. to find her way to the brandy melville at sloane square in london, leading the way for a group of her friends. to get herself around london. and copenhagen. and st. petersburg. know how to read a metro map. and figure out how to get on the metro in the right direction. these are important steps to adulting.

~ eat sushi. the child should learn to eat sushi. early and often. mine started at age two and a half. and at about 4, she woke up briefly in a restaurant in manila, ate her weight in sashimi and then fell back asleep. i'm pretty proud of that.

and if i expand the age range to 15, there are a couple more...

~ be part of a major protest for a worthy cause. i will be eternally grateful to my strong female cousins for the idea that we would head for the women's march in washington, d.c. and i am so happy to have shared the experience with my 15-year-old child. now she knows the energy of half a million women and people and her father who support women on her own body and mind and psyche. it strikes me as one of my strongest parenting moments.

~ know the difference between good makeup and drugstore makeup. yes, this is a girl thing, but it's important in today's world. and some drugstore makeup is good, but you can't know which unless you've tried it and also tried the good stuff. (and yes, maybe i am justifying buying my child chanel foundation. but that doesn't make it any less important.)

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very cool, evocative photos of small town america.

and he even used flash! or maybe just lit them up at night.

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what a cool story. goes off to buy a metal detector.

a to å challenge : d is for drinking

i've had this post open for hours. i've had a hard time deciding what "d" is for. is it death? divided? downpour? depressed? diamonds? downward facing dog? i know it's not a regular dog, since i'm a cat person. and then it hit me...drinking. (i had to use this photo because it includes both a cocktail and a cat, which, i realize, both start with c, not d.) 

back when i got my first job in denmark, i remember being very surprised that there was beer at lunch in the canteen for those who wanted it. it was next to cokes and fizzy water and milk and people did occasionally take one. of course, i was surprised there was a canteen at all, since in the states, we'd go out and grab some lunch somewhere, but in denmark, it's very normal that there is a work canteen and that you pop down with your colleagues, eat lunch, talk and then go back to work, taking about 30 minutes together to eat. alas beers in the canteen are no longer the norm (not that i ever recall taking one). but, even still, in general, danes have a very relaxed attitude towards alcohol.

the same cannot be said of norwegians. i've been doing photoshoots of late and have had to work around a norwegian law that mandates that norwegians cannot even see alcohol in an advertisement. apparently it's too dangerous for them. so even photos of a wine or whisky tasting have to feature empty glasses, leaving the alcohol to the imagination.

and i would maintain that that just makes things worse. like with teenagers, the thing you forbid is the most attractive. so when norwegians get access to alcohol at reasonable prices, they go a little crazy. much like south dakota teenagers on a saturday night when someone of age has bought them some beer and they sit in their cars(!) drinking it.

here in denmark, we also have a relaxed attitude to young people and alcohol. the drinking age is 18 (to buy alcohol), but most young people drink at parties long before that and to be honest, it's their parents buying it for them. as i see it, this is a good thing, because then you know how much the kid has and where it's come from. there are these shots that are very popular "the small sour" they're called - they come in a variety of flavors and although they are ostensibly vodka-based, they are only 16% alcohol (rather than the usual 40% vodka boasts) and they, along with soda-sweet ciders, are what the young people want to drink at their parties. frankly, they are foul and i think they serve to put the young people off alcohol more than encouraging them to drink more.

interestingly, the relaxed attitude towards alcohol seems to make the young people more sensible about it. it's not forbidden and therefore much less attractive. we are always more compelled by the things we cannot have. 

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i do not buy this argument that the way the rest of the friends treated ross signaled the beginning of the end of western civilization. ross was an annoying, mopey, whiny git from the first episode. he was the least appealing friend and quite frankly, he wasn't that intelligent. i never bought him as a paleontology professor.

* * *

and on that note, has the art world also gone to hell in a handbasket?

* * *

j.k. rowling's twitter is putting people off her work.

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on motherhood and the hard truths of messy, wonderful, full lives.
"When we lay our struggles and our worst selves bare, we help others feel less alone.
It takes a village to help us retain our sense of self."

i think i needed to read that sentence today in light of my revision to this post.

on parenting and advice columns and the natural progression of time

on the way home late last night, i listened to a couple episodes of the dear sugar podcast. it's the one with cheryl strayed of wild fame. i'm not sure what it is about advice programs on the radio - there's also one on saturday mornings on danish radio and it's somehow fascinating, even when people's problems seem far from my own. there's something comforting in listening to other people's problems and the opinions that the agony aunts (and uncles) have about them. cheryl and steve almond (who was sugar before her) are surprisingly compassionate and deep. i'll admit sometimes when i hear the letters people write in, i wonder how they're ever going to take it seriously and not just tell the person to suck it up or piss off, but they always do, in a compassionate and empathetic way, without being sappy. it's a delicate balance and they strike it. 

it seems like parenting and especially motherhood is often a topic and it got me thinking. i never wanted children. i was traumatized by my high school boyfriend's older sister getting pregnant in high school and going to her wedding instead of her senior prom, missing out on a basketball scholarship and not going to college. i also viewed my own mother as singularly unselfish and doing everything to give my sister and i all of the great experiences she could and i felt i could never be like that. so, i went around for 30 some years, not wanting children. but then i met husband and it started to seem like a good idea. and although along came sabin a bit before i was entirely ready, i have not once regretted becoming a parent. of course, parenting has its moments of frustration and no sleep, but overall, i have generally been in awe of this whole, amazing person that i made and feel like some kind of privileged bystander who gets to watch her grow up into the confident, funny, opinionated and smart young woman that was somehow there within her all along. 

she's away this year at a boarding school, coming home one or two weekends a month. next school year, she'll be in the states, getting a high school experience. people often ask me if i'm not horribly sad that she's not at home. and perhaps it will make me sound like one of those dear sugar parents who hates being a parent when i say that i'm not. i love watching her blossom into who she will be - confident, finding her way, learning who she is and what her style is. and being away at boarding school was the natural next step in that process, just as going to the states next year is the next step after that. it's how she will find her way to being who and what she wants to be. she needs us less. it's completely normal and natural and i don't feel sad about it. i feel happy and proud that she's come so far and is ready and embracing these experiences and finding her way. 

but, i can see on some of the faces of people who ask me, that they think i'm a bit heartless for not missing her more. of course, i do miss her, but i get texts from her pretty much daily, so it's not like we're not in contact. but there are parts of her life, her inner life especially, that are hers now and not mine to share. and that's just fine! it's how it should be, it's time for that. i hope that we've given her a solid foundation from which to unfold her wings and i am secure in the knowledge that she knows that we're here, should she need to rest them. 

* * *

amazing photos of a place both frozen and abandoned by russian photographer andrei shapran.

the next stage begins

slightly dark iPhone photo of her room.

we dropped the child off at her efterskole today. it's a boarding school about a half an hour away, where she, along with 199 other 9th and mostly 10th graders, will focus on academics and gymnastics for the next school year. she was packing for days and was very much looking forward to going. i think the only thing she's worried about is missing her friends, but she made sure she spent loads of time with them over the past few weeks and it's not like she isn't still in a group chat or two with them.

we helped her unpack her things into a single small cupboard and make up her single bed in her 3-person dorm room. the other girls and their parents were there doing the same and there wasn't much chat between us, but that's typical in denmark. i think they were probably freaked that we were speaking english, which sabin and i always do and that made them hold back even more than usual. her roommates seemed like sweet girls, so i'm sure she's going to be fine.

they gave the parents quite a stern lecture about allowing their young people the freedom to unfold and truly experience life at school and not text them all the time and expect them to come home every weekend. i didn't really feel that the lecture applied to us as sabin's parents, since we have been known to leave her unattended in the country (just for a few hours when our flight paths crossed) or to put her on an 8-hour plane ride by herself or let her take the train to copenhagen for the weekend to visit friends or go off to italy with a friend on summer holiday. we're not clingy parents and have spent her first 14 years preparing her for this day.

looking around the room, there were parents (mostly mothers) with tears in their eyes at the prospect of letting go of little anders and little camilla, but i didn't feel sad, what i mostly felt was excited for her. i think i've said it before, but it feels like the next step. it's what she should be doing. getting very into her interest (gymnastics) and working on it intensively with the support of talented teachers/coaches. learning how to buckle down and study. learning to rely on herself and find her own inner strength. figuring out who she is and who she wants to be. we've given her a strong foundation, she's a good kid and she's going to have a n awesome year.

it will be a bit quieter around here, but we'll be ok. and so will she.

pondering the ways of teenagers

teenagers seem a bit like raptors at times

the child came home from italy more of a moody teenager than when she left. i guess two weeks of sunshine and eating real pizza and lying on a beach and staying up too late will do that. she was, in any case, tired and not really that happy to be landed back in this little town in the middle of nowhere. apparently, she's convinced that within her beats the heart of a city girl, or at the very least, the heart of a copenhagen girl (little does she know that copenhagen, with a population of only a little over half a million, isn't really a city in the strictest sense).

over dinner, she expressed dissatisfaction with plans to spend a year in the states (school year 16-17) in the little town where i grew up. apparently going from one middle of nowhere town to another isn't appealing when you're tired and have just been hanging out in italy. but i imagine she'll go willingly when it comes down to it. we may have scared her last week with talk of extreme religious nutcases and long distances to amenities like movies and proper shoe shops and apple stores. but then, i got out of there non-religious and there's always the internet for shopping, so she'll be fine.

initially, her negative reaction to studying for a year in my little hometown hurt. it felt like a rejection of me. i think it's important for her to know her roots - to get to know the extended family still living there and to have a taste of what it means to be a member of our family and to have a sense of groundedness in that place. but then i realized that rejection is a natural part of the rebellion of growing up. and i had to admit that i too cannot imagine ever living there again, so how can i expect her to imagine it, if only for a year?

but i'm also confident that she'll get over it and will undoubtedly want to go and look forward to going. she'll be able to get a driver's license (something she can't do until 18 in denmark, to my great dismay), make new friends, spend time with family, participate in competitive cheerleading (after a year at a gymnastics-focused boarding school, she'll be awesome) and try a whole host of other things that you can only do in a small high school, where the very life of the place is dependent on everyone participating in everything. and she will get in touch with a part of where she comes from. it will undoubtedly be uniquely her own perspective and grounding and that's ok too.

in a few weeks, she's off to boarding school. it's only 30 minutes away and she will come home some weekends. people keep asking us if we're freaking out and sad about it and i keep looking within for those feelings. and they aren't there. i love seeing her taking flight, setting goals, working towards them. it's the natural progression in her growing up into the person she will become. i think i've felt all along that as a parent i'm witness to something magical, but which i have only had the smallest modicum of control over. and i feel privileged to be there for each stage of a natural progression of this amazing child coming into her own. going to the gymnastics boarding school for her final year of primary school is exactly what should happen next. she's ready and so are we.

on having a relaxed attitude to alcohol

it's approaching midnight again and again, i'm sitting here at the computer. we're having a big party this weekend to celebrate husband's 50th (it was back in february, but we waited (perhaps in vain) for better weather) and all of the plans and preparations are whirling in my head. thank odin for pinterest. and for being a list-maker. i'm off to germany tomorrow to lay in supplies (read: alcohol). because what party is complete without cocktails and wine and beer and cider? and a bunch of good food. although our weather is iffy and potentially not cooperating, it's going to be an awesome party.

and the child will have a party the weekend after, to celebrate officially leaving folkeskole for good, so i'll also lay in supplies for that as well. and some of her friends are having a party this friday and they've gathered up their pennies (almost literally) and given me a list of what to buy for them. yes, i have become that person we used to seek out when we were underage back in the day - that person who was old enough to buy alcohol and willing to do so.

buying alcohol for teenagers, you say, frowning. and yes, i say, smiling. because here in denmark, we have a relaxed attitude about such things. better to provide the kids with low-alcohol cider and "shots" in a bottle that have about the same alcohol content as wine and to know what they're doing and let them do it in a safe, gently observed environment, than to make it something that's taboo and have them sneak around. and what we find is that they don't drink all those ciders, they drink plenty of sodas (because we buy those too) and they laugh and listen to music. in actual fact, they're pretty darn sensible about it all. and that's because it's considered normal and not something forbidden and exotic and therefore appealing.

and we're not the only parents that are relaxed like this. pretty much everyone i know is. and it makes me grateful to be raising my child in a place where common sense still prevails. and cheap cases of cider are available just across the border. kind of like back when i was in college in south dakota and the low-point alcohol drinking age was still 18 in minnesota...

100 happy days :: day 40

homemade oven-dried tomatoes. because yum!

and because the child wanted them in her lunch "packse*."

plus, they are dead easy...cut them up, drizzle them with olive oil, sprinkle with seasoning, put in the oven on 50°C, pour a glass of wine, watch a few episodes of buffy on netflix, go to bed, sleep in, wake up and voila! oven-dried tomatoes.

*"packse" is sabin's baby word for "package" and we love it so much, we've taken it into regular usage.

don't make me get out the kragle

it's not only here on the blog that i've got lego on the brain. of course, much of my brain is taken up by learning about my new job. but it's also entered my sleeping hours in the form of dreams. or rather nightmares. nightmares of failed meeting room bookings and running around in panic, trying to find a space to meet. nightmares of running into old frenemies in the personnel shop (a place i haven't even been yet and where they wouldn't be allowed to be since they don't work there). why is it that you can't delete people from your unconscious mind the way you can from your facebook or linked-in?

i mentioned the other day that i had a tale to tell about minifigures. there is a bowl of minifigure parts near my desk and in looking through it, i realized that it really, really bothers me when they are put together differently than they are meant to be. there is, in that bowl, a head that isn't chicken man's real head with the chicken man costume head on it paired with a baseball torso and legs that don't belong. and in all honesty, it makes my hands sweat just thinking about it. i have a few minifigs from the lego movie on my desk as well and to demonstrate to my colleagues how it makes me hyperventilate, i switched the hair on wildstyle and president business. but i had to quickly put it back (tho' strangely president business' squarey hair made western wildstyle look a bit like queen elizabeth I) because it was making me a little bit ill.

but then i stumbled across this article via twitter and i realized that i'm not alone in my ocd (if you've seen the lego movie, you know it's a theme there too). the whole movie centers on the kragle, which is a tube of crazy glue. and while i don't really want to go that far, i have realized that i am a lego builder who wants to build and display, not build and play. i think you should build it and leave it as it is, not making any adjustments or messing with it and definitely not taking it apart again.

but today, i had a homework assignment for a morning meeting tomorrow. we were all given a small set and asked to build it. we will have breakfast together and go around the table and tell about our building experience. my set is a creator 3-in-1. which means that it comes with the parts to build three different things. but in order to do that, you have to take apart the thing you built and rebuild it into another of the things - in my case, a helicopter, plane or boat. i like the plane best and built it first. but then i realized that i was supposed to take it apart and try one of the others. so i made sabin do it while i left the room. and then i came back and built the boat.

i was going to leave it intact for a proper photo tomorrow morning (you can see i took this one after the light went), but i just had to take it apart and rebuild the plane, it's my favorite of the three in this set. and it was a big step that i was able to disassemble the boat myself. these are small builds and good practice for me, who didn't grow up with lego (i had a pony). i also realized that i never really helped sabin build that much of it either, so i've not had much practice. i don't think i'll ever really become a person who makes amazing things up out of my head, but i will overcome my inability to take it apart and mix and match (and if i can't, there must be meds for that). and i am in awe of those who can build their own creations.

it was a big step that i took the girl scientist's head (series 11) and used it for my mini me for my photo series. and i haven't even put her back yet. i put the girl scientist back on my minifigure shelf with the wrong head on. and my hands are hardly sweating at all when i think about it. (note to self: repeat 100x in hopes that it will become true.)

being a consumer is exhausting

sabin decided she wanted to use her savings on a PS3 yesterday, so we ran around in search of one. after fortifying ourselves with starbucks (as one does, if one can), we went from electronics store to electronics store, looking for PS3 consoles. we hadn't done proper research and ended up getting one with only 12GB. we also bought that little big planet game and GTA (woo hoo, i'm a resourcestærke forældre, you know). we got it home and sabin hooked it up and found that it was too little memory for GTA to even load! waah! why do they even sell such a small playstation and who can use it? (tho' it explains why it was so cheap.)

so today, after a bit of research into external hard drives, i ran around seeing if i could find one. i was talked out of trying by a pimply earnest kid in an electronics store (why are they always like that). and felt harried and run ragged by all of the dashing around.

it didn't help that i've been back and forth to the vet 4 times in two day with five different cats. two were neutered, one spayed and all of them vaccinated. two are on the pill now. dang, cat birth control is exhausting.

and on one of the trips past a bicycle shop towards the vet, we stopped and bought sabin a pretty new yellow bike. once i start my job in february, i won't be home to play chauffeur to sabin at her whim, so she needed a new bike that fits her (she's grown a lot). they were on sale (or at least they pretended to be by listing a high price and a less high price on the sign). it's a super cool neon yellow city bike. i'll take photos soon. it was pissing down rain and blowing today and not a fit day outside for man nor beast nor trying out a bike nor photographing it.

it's 16 days from the child's birthday and so far this month, she's gotten an iPhone 5S (you have to grab them while they're in stock), a PS3, two games for it, and a new bicycle. at this rate she'll have nothing to open on her actual birthday.

and tomorrow, i've got to run and take the damn PS3 back and trade it for one with 500GB so we can actually play our games. grr. i've gotten completely out of the habit of being a consumer and i'm beginning to think that's a good thing.

the joy of jumping

all dressed up for their first gala party at school. last week, all of the classes made films and last night, they had an "oscar" party to award the best ones. through our connections in the states, we ordered up dresses that no one else would have and spent some nerve wracking hours in various malls last week, looking for the perfect shoes. it was so much fun helping them with hair and a touch of makeup (mostly mascara). they looked so pretty and joyful and excited.

but i don't wish myself back there, not even for a second. nor do i fear the years ahead and what they will bring. it was just lovely to see them all dressed up, happy and excited for their party in the here and now. they were bubbling with energy and happiness and it was wonderful. we have to enjoy these moments as they come and leave all of the worries and regrets for some other day. and yesterday, in the presence of the bloom of youth, it was easy to do just that.

taking lessons in creativity from my child

the child is in her second round of painting lessons. she's learning so much. she really knows how to mix colors. they have been working on repetition of shapes and on seeing the shapes of things in nature. she's not pleased with this painting, but i love it and have hung it in the hallway near my desk. i took it outside to photograph it because the light sucked where it's hanging. it's bright and alive and represents a step on her painting journey and i love having it hang nearby where i'm working.

in general, i am in awe of her creativity. she looks at pinterest or more likely instagram or her facebook feed and finds a youtube tutorial and moves quickly from inspiration to action. she dressed up her keyboard (and her light switch) with washi tape the other evening. you can still see which key is which through the tape and since it's washi, it won't get all sticky and be ruined if she decides to take it off again.

she painted up these vans to resemble a starry night sky. she's so pleased with the result that she doesn't wear them that much, since she doesn't want to ruin them, but that's another story. she also dolled up an old pair of converse as an homage to her favorite boy band 1D. some of her classmates are amazed that she's allowed to alter her shoes and clothing the way she is (she put a whole bunch of colorful studs on some shorts one afternoon when she was inspired). their parents would be angry with them for "ruining" their things. i want to jump for joy at her creativity and her desire for individuality!

i hope she retains that ability to just dive in immediately when she's inspired. there was a time when i did that, but these days, i spend entirely too much time thinking about creating things and far too little time actually creating them. i'm going to have to take a lesson from the child and remedy that.

a flock of amateurs

we have signed the child up for a trip to st. petersburg with something called the ungdomsskole (youth school?), it's a public institution that's associated with the regular schools and they run a whole bunch of different after school activities and trips for kids from 7th to 9th grade. this is the first time they've planned a trip to st. petersburg and believe me, it shows. it seems that those organizing the trip haven't got the first clue about what it takes as far as visas and advising which clothes to take and how much money to take (they advised that the 12-13 year olds have a good selection of credit cards with them). and tho' i'm normally a very laid back traveler, this time it's driving me absolutely mad (both in the sense of crazy and of angry).

they even changed the dates of the trip slightly, but haven't published that anywhere - their website still has the old dates. they claimed to have sent the children who are signed up a text with the new dates, but both my child and her friend, who is also going, have received no such text. they guy in charge continues to insist they did. such a stupid lie is unnecessary. just admit you're a bit disorganized and didn't get it sent. don't keep lying about it when we can see the proof right there in two telephones. what's really stupid about it is that we need those correct dates for the visa application.

in order to get the visa, you have to have an invitation letter from someone in russia. in this case, the hotel where they will stay. only then can you fill out the application and apply for the visa. oh, and you must deliver the visa application to the embassy in person, you can't send it in. the embassy won't really say exactly how long the visa takes - if you pay extra, you can have it in 4 days, but it's likely to take anywhere from 7 - 14 days to get it if you don't pay extra. since they are set to leave october 15, time is ticking away. do you think we've seen the invitation letter from the hotel? no we have not.

do you think we've gotten a convoluted mail with some instructions about health insurance cut & pasted into it from the russian embassy website? yes, we have. is that the most important thing? no it is not. do you think this is causing me to pull out my hair? well, you would be right about that.

they held a meeting for the parents and the kids who are going on the trip on tuesday evening. i couldn't go, as i went to the salon allison park evening. but husband and sabin went. they met the three adults who are going on the trip - one is a bossy belorussian, one is a russian from st. petersburg who doesn't share a common language with the rest of the people going on the trip and one is a danish guy who was apparently heavily bullied by the belorussian throughout the course of the meeting. they showed some kind of only moderately informative power point with some pictures of what they would see and talked extensively about which credit cards the children should bring. they may have had some advice about what clothes to pack, but husband didn't write that down. he did, however, write down the following:

they will see:
* 4 shoe stores
* 6 candy stores
* 1 newspaper kiosk

they will spend 3 days in their hotel room.

nothing about culture was mentioned.

they are responsible for buying their own lunch, tho' breakfast and dinner are included.

this does not help me keep my hair. tho' i'm pretty sure most of it is a joke (except that thing about the lunch). he also drew a strange little picture of what appears to be a llama peeing. but i'm not sure what that has to do with the trip.

at this point, i actually have my doubts as to whether the trip is even going to happen. i want it to happen. i love the idea of my 12-year-old seeing the hermitage and the winter palace and the peter & paul fortress. i want her to walk the streets of st. petersburg and soak in the onion domes and see the canal where rasputin's body was found and feel the history that is lurking in every corner. all of this even tho' i am a moscow person. that flock of amateurs had just better get their act together and make this happen. a flock of amateurs, that's one of those danish phrases that maybe does translate.

the start of the school year is hard

we're two weeks into the new school year and that includes school for matilde as well. she had the summer off, out on grass, being a horse. she thinks it's pretty hard to get back to work and as you can see, was feeling pretty sorry for herself by the end of today's lesson.

the child seems to be faring better. she's excited about school, having moved over to the "big" school, where they have grades 7-8-9. there are nearly 80 kids in the 7th grade and they're divided into 3 classes. they only officially found out today who will be in their class - they've had activities for the past two weeks that were designed to help the teachers determine the makeup of the classes. i think that's pretty cool and way less random than just shuffling them and throwing them together. our child is pleased with the result. she's with her two best friends and tho' that will surely change over the next couple of years (the friends, not the class, they claim the classes are now set through the 9th grade), it's a good thing right now. apparently, not everyone was pleased and there were tears, or so i could make out through the rather thinly veiled lecture given to parents by the school principal, who was clad in a dress that was an odd combination of strangely militant yet summery and inappropriately bare. and just to add confusion, it was also denim. she was clearly one of those specimens of angry danish woman of the kind who probably runs marathons and pumps iron (odd, i know, but she was weirdly muscley for a woman pushing 50 and yet had the stringy look of a runner about her). i imagine that the parents who had called the school that day after hearing from their bawling daughters during recess felt pretty guilty about having done that by the end of her talk. i was happy not to have been one of them. let's just say that i wouldn't want to meet her in a dark alley. tho' i'm pretty sure i could take her.

let's hope it doesn't come to that.

i have much more to say about the parents' meeting this evening (15 more things, to be exact, when i read the "to blog" notes i took), but i think i need to sleep on it a bit first.

wolves come in the form of pretentious parents

i'll bet little red riding hood never had to deal with mean girls. or their even meaner parents. tho' perhaps wolves come in all kinds of guises. i heard tales yesterday of the awfulness of girls in the seventh grade and the even awfulerness (that's a word i just made up) of their parents. happily, my child was not involved, but i was still shocked.

tales of snotty parents who wouldn't let their daughter play with another girl at her house because she and her family live in a small apartment that wasn't fancy enough for the snotty parents. (i might add that i dropped off said child at her completely ordinary and not at all fancy-looking house yesterday and i wasn't impressed, nor could i see how an apartment, which is all of a block away from their house, was really that inferior.) i hope the child didn't report on our ramshackle, falling down farmhouse to her parents, or she'll never be allowed to come over here again. actually, that's not true, i hope she did report to them, as i'd love a little confrontation on this issue. pretentious gits.

and then there was another tale of a set of snotty parents who bought their child an iPhone 5 in an overtly-stated attempt to make her more popular. happily, it didn't seem to make any difference.

these are nice girls of the pæne pige sort - well, groomed, dressed in a normal, but not over-the-top or designer way. they go to riding and they have long, blunt-cut blonde hair. they appear to be nice girls.

both of these girls ride at the stable where we keep matilde now and at the lesson wednesday, i thought they were riding their own horses. turns out they weren't. neither of them has a horse and they were riding the lesson horses. so much for the pretentions of parents.

what are such parents teaching their children? elitism? snobbishness? in a small, podunk town full of ordinary middle class people? laughable. but i guess you can never underestimate how much people need their albanian. but if their children can't rest in who they are and feel secure, all the iPhone 5s in the world aren't going to help.

stone age fare - or adventures in homeschooling during a lockout

is this what they mean by a stone age diet?

there's a little meme circulating on facebook (tho' i think it originated on reddit) - it asks: what was the coolest thing your parents did for you as a kid?

~ the first thing that leapt to mind was that they didn't baptise me as a baby, thinking that when (if?) i was baptized, it should be something that i chose for myself, because i wanted it and understood what it meant. i did eventually choose to be baptized and join st. andrew's presbyterian church in iowa city. it was at a time when i needed to believe there was something else after we die - i'd lost my favorite uncle and my favorite cat, bob, around the same time and since my uncle was a veterinarian and bobby had suffered horribly with kidney cancer, i needed to believe that they were together in heaven. so i got baptized. now i'm no longer sure about all that, but at the time i made the choice, it was the right one for me.

i've been pondering that question today, as the government and the teachers' union in this country cannot agree and today a lockout of the teachers around the country began. with some reluctance, i told my child that we were going to do a homeschool assignment (do you know how hard it is to find some ideas/curriculum that aren't religious if you google it? shocking, but the stuff of a different post.). she has two friends here and i told them they could pick the topic they wanted to work on and we'd find ways to do a whole range of things - reading, writing, science, cooking, art, history, maybe even math (not my strong suit). i was thinking vikings, but they chose food.

i've decided to have them look at different time periods and the food that was common then. with the prevalence of the paleo diet at the moment, i asked them to research (google) it a bit - what did they really eat in the stone age? what sweeteners did they use? was there loads of meat? were there any grains? what root veggies were available? was there really as much cabbage as in my new paleo cookbook by danish hottie chef thomas rode? i told them they could use google and the cookbook and that they should create a pinterest board with what they learned. i want them to create a presentation about it and then, tomorrow, i want them to cook a paleo meal. they're sixth graders and tho' only 12, are starting to be a bit teenager-agtig (that's that danish suffix that's just better than -ish), so they were a bit reluctant to start with. one of them developed a fever of 39 and i'm not sure how far they got. but they do realize that i'm serious and that this has to end in the kitchen.

next food time period i want them to investigate is the viking era (see, i will get vikings in there). after that, i'm going to have them read the chapter about maple syrup in the little house books and then make a meal ala little house. they say this lockout will last for at least two weeks, maybe longer. but there's no reason not to learn something in the meantime. and hopefully, sabin will eventually look back on it as one of the cool things her parents did for her as a kid.

* * *

i love REI's april fool's joke - adventure kitten gear.

parenting fail

photo by sabin's friend - they dress up and do photoshoots of one another.
at least in that area i've succeeded.
creativity with the camera is never a bad thing.

i've had some frustrating parenting moments of late and it doesn't bode well for the coming teenage years. you see, i've been trying to do less waiting on my child hand and foot. i've done it far too much - i think it started because she was born ten weeks early and so we spoiled her. then it just became habit and it continued. at times, i'll admit, it's also easier and less messy to just do things myself, so there's that element in it as well.

but, i've grown weary of all the waiting on her all the time when she's a big girl and perfectly capable of making her own smoothie or popcorn. and it doesn't seem to be going that well.  very often, when i suggest that she do something herself, she elects not to do it at all. which leaves me feeling that all that i've done for her all the time isn't really that important to her. she'd rather not have a bun with nutella or a cup of tea if i don't get it for her. and i have to say that really pisses me off. and i'm not handling it very well.

instead of redirecting or trying to take a deep breath and be a bit rational about it, i end up being sarcastic to her about it - asking if the things i do for her are so unimportant that she'd rather not do them if i won't do them for her. rather like a martyr, which doesn't make me proud. but it provokes the hell out of me, it really does.

any thoughts on how to handle this differently?

the truth: there's too much pressure on mothers

baby sabin (and smoochie)

a friend of mine woke up very early one morning late last winter to find herself in labor. it was 4:30 or so and her second child, so she decided a leisurely shower was in order. after the shower, she pampered herself with nice-smelling lotion and dried her long, blonde hair. after it was dry, she commenced to flatten it with her flat iron. as one does, when one is about to depart for the hospital to have a baby. after carefully doing her makeup, her baby brain decided that a bit of fake tan was in order and she proceeded to apply the bronzing lotion. about halfway through, she realized that the contractions were coming with what began to smack of alarming regularity, so she called out to her husband that they needed to get going NOW. they deposited their 2 and a half year old daughter with the neighbors, who they had roused from sleep, and tore off to the hospital, where just a few hours later, they took delivery of their lovely, healthy baby boy. her husband, commemorating it on his iPhone (of course), showed her the first photo and to her horror, her mascara had run and her carefully flattened, silky hair was all a tangle. the various drips and tubes running into her arm had left spots of white in the midst of her lovely tan. and she realized that she was reeking of that smell that even the best fake tanning lotion cannot hide. in all, quite the memorable moment. when she tells it, it's so hilarious that you are falling out of your chair laughing, even tho' you might be in the midst of a rather posh bar at the time.

and while i laughed until i cried, i think it's a symptom of the pressure on mothers today. pressure i don't think was on me ten years ago when sabin was a baby. at that time, the only pressure i recall was heavy encouragement from the danish midwives to give birth without drugs. in the end, i was so ill, that i had an emergency c-section and it's still a bit of a fog to me. but i have never felt for one second badly that i "missed out" on natural childbirth and that's the only thing i recall being given some grief over. i can tell you that after having a temperature of 40°C for a week before delivering sabin, i most definitely did not put on makeup or fix my hair.

it's also true that i made all of sabin's baby food...cooking up organic veggies, whizzing them up in the blender and freezing them in ice cube trays to be doled out in baby-sized portions. but ten years ago, that was looked on as a heroic act, above and beyond the call of duty. today, it's expected and you'll be looked askance upon by your mothers' group and your neighbors if you're not doing it. you'll actually have to apologize for using jars of baby food today. bad mother.

i'm not sure if we placed this pressure on ourselves or if it's the culture at large, but i do think that all of this perfection in the blogosphere i'm swimming against the stream of this week contributes heavily to it. why on earth did it even occur to my friend to flat iron her hair, do full makeup and put on fake tan to go to the hospital to deliver her baby? is it one too many shots of perfect princesses emerging as svelte as before from the hospital just minutes after delivering twins? is it glowing reports of natural, organic home births featuring pictures of glowing, dewy, happy mothers and their swaddled babies? is it the stoicism of the 70s parents of today's young mothers - who were all natural and free of drugs (the legal ones at least) and clad in home-crocheted dresses, baby tied to them in a sling after they popped it out effortlessly (to hear them tell it)?

and not to mention the pressure to enjoy and love every minute with your child that today's mothers endure...if you don't spend every moment lovingly teaching your child to play with precisely the right toys to develop their brain, it's practically child abuse. i think there was a time when mothers' groups could be a support group of sorts, where you could discuss your breastfeeding issues and your sleepless nights, but today, there's so much pressure to report that it's all wonderful, your baby is in the 98th percentile in everything, you don't miss sleep, your nipples are fine and your partner is the perfect father. there's no safe space anymore to be real.

i don't know what it is, but i'm glad my child is ten and that i don't have to compete in today's baby race. i'm pretty sure it would been frowned upon to drag a 2 and a half year old across the atlantic and drop her off during a stopover in chicago with an uncle she hardly knew, to stay for two weeks while i went on to business meetings in seattle (because her father was away on a 3-week exercise in norway). it's quite amazing how things change in only ten years. (ok, i admit people probably frowned at that even then, but not to my face.)

all of this makes me glad that there are bloggers who happen to be mothers who are real. go read c is for capetown. it's the only way we're gonna change this and divert all of this pressure and get back to our normal lives.

parenting on thin ice

i am ever in awe of my husband's abilities as a parent. and he makes it look absolutely effortless. spontaneous, imaginative, creative, engaged.

tho' he did give her FOUR chocolate sandwiches in her lunch last friday. he says every child should experience that once in awhile. she thought it was brilliant.

in which we subject snails to possible torture in the name of science

we've been combing our yard for the big snails - the vinbjerg ones (no idea what they're called in english) for awhile now. and whenever we see them, we get out the waterproof acrylic paints and we paint on them. because we want to to learn the truth of how much the snails really get around in the yard. oddly, we've been a bit stymied in our mission by a lack of vinbjerg snails, but tonight we found two. sabin named hers rose. here you can see why....

will someone please cut her fingernails?

and guess who did this one? :-)

we'll be looking around for our friends, to see how far they travel. i think i'll call mine erik after that viking that lead the trip to north america years before columbus. they're the best-dressed snails in the neighborhood, i tell you, tho' we haven't really been able to find the first batch of ones we did a few weeks ago. i'm not sure we've really followed scientific method very well. but we will be reporting our progress should we ever come across these guys again.

growing up is a painful process

molly mentioned recently how painful it is to watch your children wrestle their demons and come to terms with the world. i've found myself thinking about that quite a lot over the past couple of days. as you know, i have just the one rather spoiled perfectly lovely child. there are, however, two other almost-not-children-anymore in my life because husband has two daughters from a previous marriage. they're 18 and 15 and they come to our house every other weekend. they are adored 100% by their little sister, who gets the benefit of being both an only child and a little sister, and they seem to adore her back in equal measure. we're very lucky.

i'm fortunate to have escaped the drama i hear that other step-parents experience. i think because i never tried to be their mother. as i see it, they have a perfectly good mother of their own, so my role is something else. authority figure in our home, certainly, but more of a cool (in both senses) aunt than a parent. and that has worked very well for us. mostly because husband is very good at handling it and takes my side in matters of discipline. but there haven't really been matters of discipline, so that's helped it be a good situation now for more than a decade.

but even tho' they're not my children, they are an enduring presence in my life, so it's a bit hard watching them in their struggles. the older one has had a hard time with school. she switched gymnasiums and has repeated the first year. she seems to be doing better this time around, but there are signs of an inner struggle for her - she's gained weight and she's visibly lost confidence in the past year. instead of growing into a more capable young adult, she in many ways seems to have regressed a bit and needs more support rather than less. we're pushing her out on interrail this summer so she can experience getting along on her own (well, sort of, since she's going with a friend) a bit. we think it will be good for her.

the younger gets top grades in school, but lives like a vampire. not in dress, but in her habit of not being seen during daylight hours. she'll sleep 'til 3 in the afternoon and she doesn't seem to want to do any form of physical activity or anything other than watch television. her sisters shamed her into going outside on one occasion this weekend. sadly there was a downpour while she was out and she came back soaking wet since she was inappropriately dressed for the weather, but still, she did finally go outside. and her iPod didn't zap the hell out of her when she got soaked, so that was a plus. luckily for her vampire ways, the sun was behind clouds the whole time, so she didn't turn to dust.

what's worrying about the younger is that she doesn't seem to have any interests in any extracurricular activities (unless you count shoplifting, which isn't the healthiest of those and which she won't be doing again after getting done for eight counts of it a couple of months ago - or at least that's what we all hope). she was sent to dance as a child, but never really liked it the way her older sister did. she's tall, thin, willowly and beautiful (aside from some typical teenage incidents involving cheap hair color), so it's not that we think she needs to watch her weight, but we just worry that she doesn't have something she is into, something she burns for and is focused on. sabin has her horse. big sister has sports and dance, but middle sister doesn't have any visible interests.

when they come, i encourage creativity by providing materials and tools to support it - we've got loads of how-to-draw books, good pencils, fabric, sewing machine, stitching - everything you could want. and sabin and her oldest sister are often found sewing up monster dolls or designing costumes in sabin's top model books or building a shelter out of old boards and branches down by the lake. but it's difficult for us to pry middle sister away from the television and her facebook on sabin's computer.

i can appreciate that it's hard when you're a teenager to spend every other weekend away from your friends and your own everyday stuff. they have their own rooms at our house, but with the move, everything is still chaos. we've living out in the country and it must generally be rather "ew" for a teenager in her prime, especially one from a copenhagen suburb. but that's what's painful about watching it. the lack of engagement. i wonder what she'll remember when she looks back? will it be how she slept through it or how miserable she was, or will it be that they ran around outside and got soaking wet and came laughing in the door? it's hard being a teenager, but it's also hard to watch the process as a parent (or even as a cool aunt). you want to ease the bumps and blows that inevitably come of it.

i have different expectations for husband's daughters than i have for sabin (princeton undergrad and the danish olympic riding team are not too much to ask for her are they?), but i would love to see them discovering and then unfolding their talents and coming into their own. i see lots of young people both in real life and around here in the blogosphere who seem so much more mature and worldly and seem to be pursuing their passions, be it photography or art or rocket science or politics or whatever. i wonder what we can do to encourage that when it's only every other weekend we can exercise our influence. don't get me wrong, i'd go crazy if it was more often than that. and frankly we couldn't afford the grocery bill long term. but watching this process of becoming is, as molly said, a painful thing indeed.