"Peethz"

About a week ago we taught John how to say "please" when he wants something. He'll request something and then one of us will prompt in a smiley, sing-song voice, "What do you say???" and he'll respond with, "peethz!"

The please concept is still a little lost on him. A few days after our "please" breakthrough I was fussing at him for not doing what I told him to do.

"You may not do that, John! What did Mama say?"

"Peethz"

Passports and Things Like Them

What is it about driver’s license, school ID and passport photos? Regardless of how hard you try to do your hair just right, wear just the right short of shirt and focus on keeping a pleasant expression, you always end up looking like the walking dead. This is also true for the most youthful and darling among us as you can see from poor James’ passport photo. Next week we have an appointment at the American embassy to register James as an American citizen and apply for his passport and social security number.

One interesting thing I learned from going through the process of getting James’ Danish birth certificate is Danes aren’t required to give their children an official name until six months after they’re born. That must be nice for those people who take longer than nine months to agree on a name. Traditionally Danish children don’t have a name until it is announced at the child’s baptism; for example the now 1-year-old Danish Princess Isabella’s name wasn’t revealed to the public until her baptism. This is also why birth certificates are handled through your local church parish and not a regular state agency like it’s done back in the States.

Lucky for James his passport is only good for five year. On the other hand I have to show customs officials a picture of my bloated, eight-months-pregnant face for another eight years.

Our Linguist

Language acquisition is such a great thing for a child. Finally being able to articulate what one is thinking. Communicating clearly with the people you love most. Today John spoke his first three word sentence as Michael was putting a fresh diaper on James:

"Bye-bye baby wee-wee."

He Gets It

Michael spent about ten months as a stay-at-home dad/dissertating graduate student and I've come to really appreciate that circumstances worked out to make that our best option at the time. It's made us both very understanding of where the other is coming from; both from the stay-at-home side of things and the working parent side. He understands how you can spend a whole day with a child and seemingly get nothing accomplished besides brushing your teeth (if you’re lucky), and I get that he is pulled strongly in two very different directions – work and home. He goes out of his way to give me time away from the boys and I do my best to not add any unnecessary pressure to stay home when he needs to be at work.

It’s also nice to be able to express the frustrations that come from spending one’s day with two small children and have your spouse tell you they know exactly where you’re coming from, and how they often felt equal if not greater frustration caring for only one child.

It helps to know you’re in this together, and the one closest to you shares all the frustrations, joys, trials and moments of pure hilarity that come with parenthood.

The Easter Egg Hunt

The toddler Easter egg hunt is such a funny ritual. Teams of small children wandering around a yard picking up brightly colored plastic eggs trailed closely by their parents who are documenting the experience moment-by-moment with cameras. When they're not taking pictures or videos, the parental units are pointing to and encouraging the collection of these eggs. And if you're in Copenhagen, add to that scenario falling snow and all the children dressed in unisuits.

At some point this afternoon I pulled the camera away from my face, after spending a couple of minutes trying to convince John that plastic eggs were so much more interesting than soccer balls, and had to laugh.

A Room of One's Own

We bought a baby book for James shortly before he was born and I was flipping through it over the weekend, filling out bits and pieces of it here and there. I came up a little short when I got to the page that asked for a picture of the baby's room.

When we were expecting John, one of my favorite parts of preparing for his birth was creating his nursery. Now we're living in a one bedroom, 538 square foot apartment with four people rather than a two bedroom, 750 square foot apartment with three. So no official nursery for James. It's the downside to being born in Europe to parents living on an educational grant.

But this afternoon as I was rigging up my version of a baby mobile above James' bassinet I realized that he sort of does have a nursery. It's located in the casement of our living room window and comes complete with storage space for clothes, blankets and slings, his carrycot bed, and is "artfully" decorated with colorful foam bath toys.

"Bebe! Bebe!"

For the past many months I've been asking around to various "mom-friends" about how best to help my toddler transition to having a new baby sibling in the house. I've gotten not so much advice as much as horror stories about the insanity the introduction of new siblings sometimes unleashes. My favorite one involved a toddler who acted out by taking off his diaper and rubbing poo on every imaginable surface including in between his board books. So it's not without some measure of trepidation that I await John's reaction to his new baby brother.

One hopeful sign though - yesterday we made a stop at a children's second-hand store in our neighborhood. Michael took John down to the basement to play with the toys and when I followed I found John parked in front of a child-sized stroller pointing excitedly at a baby doll.

"Mama! Bebe! Bebe!"

He pointed our the "bebe's" eyes and, at our suggestion that he give the baby doll a hug and kiss, he carefully picked the baby doll up by the neck and planted a big wet one on the doll's head. From there he continued to carry the baby doll around by the neck looking for the noisy toy telephone he remembered playing with the previous week.

So the upside is he apparently likes toys that look like babies though we will have to work on his handling technique.

Share and Share Alike

Since we live in a one-bedroom apartment I may have mentioned that all three of us share a bedroom. Sometimes this can be rather challenging but it has its up moments. At various early morning hours both Michael and I have woken up to John talking in his sleep. He’ll start babbling incoherently (is there any other kind of babbling?) and then will usually pop out with: "Ahh-pull" or "Mama," before rolling over and going back to sleep.

Some nights he’ll wake up at an ungodly hour and start to fuss sleepily; and just about the time Michael and I have concluded the wordless parental battle of nudges, groans and pokes to determine who is going to get up and check on him, John will suddenly pass gas, sigh and go back to sleep.

une fois babe um yeah

I love clothes. One of the things I miss about working was the excuse to buy nice clothes. Especially now that Ann Taylor LOFT finally came out with a maternity line. And while this is the land of H&M and all great European fashion, I'm in the shape shifting phase of my reproductive existence which really makes it hard to justify spending an incredible amount of money for something I most likely won't be able to wear very long.

But somehow that logic doesn't apply to kids clothing. This weekend I had a few extra minutes following a midwife visit to stop by our local children's consignment store. I went in to price a used winter "snow bunny suit" and a carrycot for the Danish prince and walked out with this little ducky number. What is it about French words on kids clothes that makes it such that I just can't walk away? The previous weekend I bought a one-piece pajama suit for John that also had French wording elegantly gracing the front.

I wonder what this actually says... Who knew someone so sweet... could smell so bad.

Forecast: Darkness

John is napping and I think I just spent about an hour tooling mindlessly around the Internet. We're heading out to the American Embassy for Thanksgiving dinner in a little less than two hours, and I did everything within my power to make sure the munchkin would get the nap he needs so all three of us will have a good time tonight. The long walk where we saw many "tucks" [trucks] and "woof-woof"s [dogs], a hot starchy lunch, a warm bath that became necessary after John demonstrated his talent for balancing food on his head, lotion rub, clean clothes, brushed hair, milk and a mild sedative [kidding]. And we've almost reached the critical two hours mark.

Which gives me time to say a word about the weather. As long as it's not raining and the wind isn't blowing, it really isn't that cold. Copenhagen being coastal and all seems to keep the temperature hovering around the upper 30s and lower 40s both night and day. We do experience more winter as we're out in the elements getting from Point A to Point B on a bike or waiting at the bus stop. But it's hardly Antarctica.

The thing that I know will probably get to me come February is the darkness. Currently the sun rises around 8:00AM and sets around 3:50PM. When John bounces awake at 5:56AM or 6:21AM or [gift from heaven!] 6:48AM it always feels like 3:07AM, no matter what. This seems like the perfect place to hibernate for the winter. Wake up around 9:00AM, eat a danish, drink some coffee, watch a couple of old movies, eat some popcorn, drink a hot toddy and hit the sack at 4:00PM. Life is starting to feel very much like a Garrison Keillor "News from Lake Wobegon" radio episode. Slow and dry and sleepy and dark.

Ok, I think I just lost the will to type.

How Did I of all People Bring A Morning Person into this World?

One thing we were looking forward to when we moved to Copenhagen was the chance to "reset" John's internal clock to wake up sometime after 7:00AM. When I was working, I needed him to wake up around 6:00AM so I could nurse him before I left for the day but now that I'm home with him, that was no longer necessary.

We experimented with a number of different things: putting him to bed later, putting him to bed earlier. But this child apparently does not want to sleep past 6:00AM in any time zone.

It's Sunday morning and we don't have to be anywhere until 11:30AM:

5:45AM
John: Da? Da? Mama. Mama. Da? Da? Mama. Mama. Mama. Mama.
Michael: [groan]
Rebekah: [vainly wills herself to go back to sleep]
John: Da. Da. Da!
Michael: [stumbles out of bed in the early morning Copenhagen darkness to bring John a cup of milk]

5:47AM-6:32AM
John: Eegh. EEGH. Ba? Dab dab dab... mummummum... GAH. GAH. Da? DA. DA. DA. DA. DA. .... MAMA MAMA MAMA...
Rebekah: Sweet baby, it's still night time. If you aren't tired, why don't you look at this book while Mama and Daddy sleep a little more?
John: gah... bla bla bla... da da Da ... Mama... Mama... Da? DA. DA. DA. DA. DA. .... MAMA MAMA MAMA...

The three of us are sharing the bedroom in our apartment and John's crib is about two feet from the foot of our bed. At 6:04AM though it feels like he is three inches away from our heads.

I like how many things I can get done when I'm up early in the morning, but I'm still an unwilling participant in these crack of dawn risings 15.5 months after my little morning person entered the world. At 6:30AM I actually think it's reasonable and farsighted to teach John how to make my morning coffee.

"And you pour the water up to the 4-mark. This is a filter. Can you say "filter"? Now we smell the coffee. Ahh... doesn't that smell good?...."

Surely by Christmas he'll be making my coffee for me.

"Look what John wrote while you were in the shower!"

nz BCVX¸CVVCIT WAS THE BEST OF TIMES GEAHFAHIORE