Ex Patria

The purge

Do your kids have too many toys?  Because mine do.  Oh boy, do we ever have too many toys.  Partly because when we lived in transition countries where all you can get is cheap Chinese crap that breaks when you look at it sharply, we'd go slightly nuts whenever we were in Germany or the US.  So would relatives and friends, when they get their fingers on the boys (back then) once a year.  And partly this happened because Doug and I really dig cool toys - I mean, really: How can you resist Exobonz?

But the truth of the matter is, the kids really only have a very few toys they would always turn to.

These are:

• Legos (Alan)
  
• Magnets (David)
  
• Zoobs (Alan and David)
  
• Train tracks (Jacob)
• Toy cars (also Jacob)
• Any of the above (Leah)

That's it.  So today, Doug and I cleaned out the boys' rooms and left exactly only the above mentioned items, plus a few age-appropriate toys for Leah - mostly blocks, soft balls, things to chew on. (The Legos got restricted to a few thousand pieces, instead of the million that we actually own.  I'm exaggerating only a tiny little bit.)  Leah's toys (which are almost entirely hand-me-downs) fit into one toy basket.  We have one toy storage unit left in the big boys' room, and one in Leah and Jacob's room.

I feel like a burden is taken off my shoulders.  The rooms are -- rooms!  You can see floor space!* I'm delighted and the kids are very stoic about it.  As I said, they really only played with those few toys anyway, so they didn't really mind.  Maybe it helped to know that everything wandered up into the attic, not the dumpster.

But now we're left with the wish to keep that status quo and not add more toys to the pile.  But how?  We've got lots of relatives and friends who love giving presents to the boys - some are fabulous about it and give stuff the kids really enjoy (for a while), others give cheap Chinese things that break fast (and subsequently are easy to dispose of although I hate adding to the landfills this way).  Yet others give toys that are really well-meant but totally age-inappropriate.  Leah got a Barbie and a mini-Belle set (a la Polly Pocket) for her first birthday.  The boys loved it (for the novelty) and Leah promptly ate a teensy tiny shoe. I just don't think she's ready for this.  (To make this clear: these presents were given by someone who has never forgotten a single birthday and who's been often more than not totally on target with her gifts.  David loved, loved, loved his Batman-themed presents.  It was a slip, but slips happen and other friends/relatives have really bad track records.  This just illustrates my point.) I'm a bit at a loss at how to point out in a friendly and non-offensive way that thank you, we don't really want any more toys.  My track record of getting what I want from my (US) relatives is pretty poor.  I guess we'll just ignore the problem and maybe it goes away?

Anyway.  The purge has happened, and I'm curious to see how the coming weeks play out.  Summer break begins tomorrow.

*I'm exaggerating for dramatic results.  In fact, we've been very good about having them clean up their rooms prior to bedtime.  But lately, the sheer mass of toys has made this task nigh impossible.  Much easier now!

Mommy on a happy Earth

I tend to get overly excited when one of my kids draws a picture for me - none of them are artistically inclined and although Alan had a brief period when he liked coloring, that passed quickly and none of the others ever got there.  So I was really touched when Jacob presented this picture to me yesterday:

That's what Jacob told me this is:  Mommy standing on a happy Earth. The little manikin next to me is Jacob, of course.  The scribble underneath, I don't know.  The letters, he said, spell my name. If you are wondering if the scan is reversed - nope.  Jacob is left-handed and tends to "write" backwards.  He's only 3-almost-4, so we have time to work on that.  I love that he is writing letters at all!  I also love that everybody is happy.  I guess we're doing something right.

PS: I know, I've been remiss.  I have tons of emails to answer and never get around to them.  I will, as soon as the craziness that is the end-of-school-year combined with my brother's visit and sick husband and nephew's baptism and cousin's wedding preps are dealt with.  And all the cherries and the currants and the other fruit that want to be turned into jam/compote/jelly.  I promise.

I can't believe I'm doing this

I'm fat.  OK, not fat.  But I don't feel okay with the weight I have.  I still have six kilos to lose to even out the pregnancy weight gain with Leah.  I've never had the preg weight cling to my hips for that long.  And that's still three kilos over my "feel good" weight I had before I had kids.  I'm not striving for that, I just want to get rid of the six kilos.  I've lost 14 kilos since 11 months ago - yes, I gained 20 kilos.  I do every time.  Or rather, I did.  Not doing that pregnancy thing anymore.

I've never had much trouble losing weight.  Before kids, it was a matter of a week to lose 2 or 3 kilos, if I really wanted to.  I weighed 56 kilos and wore a size 4 or 6.  Um, not telling you what I weigh or wear today as you can easily calculate that yourself, but I am not liking it, and it's so incredibly hard to lose weight. It was much easier with the others (because they were boys?  I can't imagine that's a factor!).  It usually took me nine months and I snapped back to normal. 

But this time -  I can't fit into any of my summer clothes, I feel unfit and I tire easily but just eating less doesn't seem to do much.  So, I decided I have to add a workout.  As an added bonus to being slimmer again, it will make me fit to keep up with those boys and the little girl!  She's awfully fast.

I'm not an athletic person.  I've never done much in the way of sports.  The only thing I really enjoy is walking but that doesn't do all that much for fitness.  I also like swimming but it's not much fun when you can't swim a lap without aching all over. Oh, and I used to do lots of Yoga but after Leah's birth my back was in a bad state and I haven't been doing that either. 

I'm not a fitness studio type.  I really don't like them.  I also don't like the stupid way of working out in a stationary form.

Today, I read the NYT and found Run Well. It's basically your do-it-yourself plan to run the NYC marathon - which is on November 1, 2009.  No, I'm don't even think about running that one, or any marathon for that matter.  Doug did one in 2001, when we got married, and he was great.  He whipped himself into shape within three months and ran a fabulous race at the DC Marine Corps marathon.  But that was before kids, and when we were lots younger.  Plus, Doug's generally in much better shape than I am to begin with.

But the NYT offers a personalized training program that is tailored to your abilities and possibilities (as much as that is possible by offering five or six different training methods).   And I signed up.  As an absolute beginner, I'll start tomorrow with a 4 mile "run/walk" -- 2 miles of walking and 2 miles of run/walk at an 10/50 pace (which means, I found out, that I get to run for 10 seconds and to walk for 50 seconds in intervals).  Right now, sitting at my comfy desk in my nice study, it seems completely doable.  We'll see about that tomorrow.  I will also try to add in some yoga moves.

I'm not sure about the logistics tomorrow, though -- it's Saturday and I need to park the kids somewhere.  But I didn't want to wait another two days - it felt like making more excuses.  I'll probably wait for Leah's nap time (around 9) and then prop the kids in front of the TV.  I could probably take them too but you know, that would be embarrassing.  For me.

So, I signed up and will get pestering emails.  And now I committed in front of all of you and hope you guys will be mercilessly asking me if I logged my daily walks/runs.  And Doug will be a good motivator too, I hope.

Let's see if we can't get those pounds rolling.

Builders

Today, David was unhappy.  He said that Alan was a much better Lego builder than he, and a much better Zoob builder than he, and probably he won't ever get to be an archeologist either.  If he was 46, not 6, I'd say he was having a bit of a midlife crisis.

So I tried to pick him up by telling him I noticed his latest magnet creation on his bed upstairs and had wanted to take a picture of it.  Would he mind telling me what it was?  I guessed a snowflake:

"No, Mommy", he said, "it's Yggdrasil!"

Yggdrasil, the world tree, picture from Thinkquest.org

Yup, I can see it.  And you?  And do you think our kids get an eclectic education?

Going through the pile

... of old photos is fun.  I am sorting and deleting those I should not keep, and improving some and leaving others.  I'm pleased that quite a few of my photos are actually best left unprocessed.  Others definitely improve by tinkering with the lighting or the saturation levels. 

Although all those presets I mentioned earlier are loads of fun, I'm quickly paring the ones I use down to half a dozen or so.  Mostly, it suffices if I adjust the exposure a bit, or crop the picture and blur the background. 

The really fun thing is to find buried treasures.  Pictures that don't look like much turn out to be gems when treated right.  Below is one that I didn't even know I had -- Doug took it when we made a huge batch of "welcome home" pix with Leah and I couldn't bear to look at those photos because I found myself so ugly and fat.  Yeah, well.  Hormones are funny things.

I cropped this picture a bit, and played around with some settings.  I think the B&W version is really nice.  My sweet David, trying to find his place in the world.

Travel and food linkage

Via one blog and another (it's really hard to recapture that aimless wandering that took me from HDTD to a frequent flyer forum to airplane food to bento boxes to food sites) I found this nifty handy-dandy tool:  A portion calculator.  I will have to see whether it fits my family or whether I need calculate for three kids or five, but I'm liking the concept.  I also like the concept of the entire site, as throwing food away hurts me and occurs too often in this house. I will spend some time poking around there.  Later.  Tonight. 

I'm in love

No, I don't have a new desktop.  Mine arrived months ago and I do love it very much - it's speedy, reliable, speedy - and did I mention it's fast?

I'm in love with a photo editing software.  How strange is that?  Very strange.  But there we go.

I downloaded a 30-day trial of Adobe Lightroom yesterday.  I lost my Photoshop when we transitioned from the laptop to the desktop and have been making due with Picasa ever since.  Picasa is nice and cute but I can't like it much.  I find the editing options too rough-and-ready, I can't downsize the pictures the way I want it and I don't like that Picase overrides my filing system with their own (inferior) version.

I've been looking around and professional grade photo software is just very expensive.   Or rather, it's very expensive for the amateur photographer.  I've been vaguely toying with the idea of whipping myself into shape and pursuing some semi-professional photograph career but so far, I found my photos mediocre. Family and friends raved but I looked at professional photos and there was just something special that my pictures didn't have. "Post processing", that's what.

Even though I liked Photoshop, I found it too clumsy to work with.  I used it mainly for cropping and reducing the size of the photos.  I hardly ever used it for anything else.  That layer thing Photoshop uses?  It scares me. Also, once I found out that the current edition costs $799, that was it for this one. Complicated to learn and expensive won't do for the constantly distracted amateur.

I ran across the 30-day Lightroom trial and thought, oh, why not?  What I expected was that the software was difficult to use, that you had to learn some new way of controling the program like Photoshop or like Expressions, that I would tire of it quickly and then nothing would be lost.

Ah, but non, monsieur!  Lightroom is the awesome.  It's actually not hard to get started without reading a manual or a book although I suspect you'll get a lot more wear out of it once you actually descend into the depths of it.  But even for a bloody beginner, it's loads of fun.  With a few clicks, you can adjust exposure and lighting.  Playing around with the presets is even more fun - you get instant effects, some of which are dramatic and artsy, and some others which are downright awful. 

Presets are pre-defined setting adjustments - they have fancy names like "Alice's less bright dress" or "Elise" and will change your photo instantly - lighting, exposure, vibrancy, saturation, vignettes... and what have you.  Lightroom comes with a few pre-installed presets but there are hundreds, thousands of free presets available on the web for download.  Some are really, really good.  I especially dig the one that lets you even out skin tone and enhance eyes.  Now I finally know how professional photographers find all these kids with flawless skin!

I basically spent the last two days playing around.  I love the ease of use, and the results.  I tend to go a bit overboard with the saturation at the moment but those vibrant colors are so much fun!

Here are a very few examples of some recent transformations.  More pictures are on my flickr site, although mostly without the before/after shots. (Click on the pictures to get a bigger view.)

Alas, this nifty program also costs $299 which is in excess of what one should pay for play.  So I'll be rather busy for the next 30 days, I suspect. Eh, 28.  And running.  Back to work!

From this:

To this:
 

From this:

To this:

From this:

To this:

From this:

To this:

Or this:

Raise your hand if you have a picky eater at home

When David was very little, he ate pretty much everything.  Once upon a time, that is.  Then he started being picky - he ditched milk, cheese, lunch meats, bacon, ham, he dropped certain fruits and vegetables.  When we moved to Germany, he started refusing foods he always liked - rice, potatoes, meat sauce, meat balls... Staples, in other words.  First, I was sympathetic to the big change in his life and his wish to control at least his food intake.  I thought it would normalize after a while.

Which it didn't.

Now we are over a year later, and he's basically eating bread, pasta with Parmesan (no sauce of any kind), lentil soup and fish.  Oh, and soft-boiled eggs.  And sweets, of course.

My Dad got him hooked on potatoes again by presenting him "potato chips" - harshly browned home fries.  From there we made our way to boiled potatoes, Pommes Duchesse, and croquettes.  But other than that, he refused.  He even tried to omit yogurt but in the meantime, I had wised up and put my foot down.

He still ate very unhealthily - and too little.  There is not an ounce of fat on his body.  Going out for dinner or lunch was a recipe for disaster.  Especially staying with relatives or friends was painful.  I gave him way too many sweets in order to up his calorie intake.  Not a good path to wander down.

So Doug and I devised a new strategy.  Our little sweet tooth was put on a diet - no more sweets, for any of the boys in fact.*  The exception: you get a treat if you try something new to eat.  You have to make a real effort, not just lick and refuse.  You have to eat a little portion of something before you can make a decision.  This can happen every day,  but at least once a week.

And now, the results of the German jury:

- Tomato soup.  "That's yucky!!!" He would not touch it.  Since it's Alan and Doug's favorite soup, or food, we have tomato soup regularly.  Last week, David finally tried it.  He valiantly and with great drama tried three spoons.  He thought very hard and long about whether he liked it, then he ate four bowls. FOUR!

- Meat balls.  That one was a no-go.  That's really funny because he used to love them.  I will try this again at some later time.

- Lasagna. Oh, pasta with sauce!  And, you know, Bechamel! That's milk!  And CHEESE!  It was unthinkable.  But today, I got him in a good mood and he tried.  He ate a sliver, and I made him finish it.  I did scrape the melted cheese off the top but left meat sauce and Bechamel and herbs in there.  He ate it (I fed him), although I had to remove one offensive oregano leaf that I had forgotten to chop into tiny bit.  Then he ate three big spoonfuls of grated Parmesan cheese (his favorite).  I thought he was done but then he asked for seconds!  And this time, he wanted a big piece!  And he ate it all up!

I'm loving it.  It's like winning the lottery - he likes the lasagna again!  Yeah!  One more family dinner recipe rescued.  About a thousand more to go but we're taking it one step at a time, and there is progress.  That's so much more than we had during the last 18 months.  I'm ridiculously happy.

*A freak coincedence put David into a harsh no-TV zone for a week for punishment at the same time and it worked so well, we're trying to keep it going for a while.  They are allowed to watch weekends mornings but during the week, the TV mostly stays off.  So far (it's summer), so good.

A pool party

It's been hot.  Muggy and hot.  And hot, hot, hot.

Since we arbitrarily decided to have David's birthday party on the 3rd of July (his birthday is on the 7th but his Dad flies off to Uganda tomorrow), and it was hot, hot, hot, we thought of making it a pool party.  We had a big kiddie pool, a small kiddie pool for the babies, we had a water slide and a flower sprinkler, and the newly installed zip line.  We wanted to grill some Bratwurst and eat lots of watermelon and ice cream.  And whack the Pinata.

And we did all that.  All the while the thunderstorms were growling ominously in the far-off, the clouds were closing in, and the adults were casting worried looks to the skies and uttering magic formulas, "Oh, it will pass as by, as the thunderstorms always do."

And it did.  Until the kids' party was over and the adult party for the 4th of July was supposed to begin.  We finished the hamburgers inside on the stove, and ate the hot Mexican dip on the couch.  It was still nice, and fun was had.  David had a grand time, and what is more important than that?  A little boy should really enjoy his own party.

Oh, and: Happy 4th of July!

(The bald eagle is protecting his fluffy chicks.  Or something like that.)

She did WHAT???

Sarah Palin resigned!

I'm ridiculously excited about this, and at the same time intensely  dread that she will in fact prepare to run in 1012.  I mean, really.  This woman is da bomb and I don't mean this in a flattering way.

UPDATE: Heh.  I beat Andrew Sullivan to this piece of news.  I guess that means I'm a news junkie.