How Short Should I Go?

I haven't had a haircut since my last one in August, right before going to Germany (CLICK here to see a photo of me and Alice). And since I am giving a seminar next week, I decided I need to get a haircut so that I will look at least semi-professional. I mean, who wants to participate in a seminar with someone who looks like she can't even take care of herself! (At least no one can see the mess of a house we have - but, I digress...)

The question is how short should I ask them to cut it? I am extremely UN-photogenic and have this face that looks horrible in photos no matter what I do, so I can't really tell which length is best. When I got my hair cut really short right before C was born, I got quite a few compliments. But having it that short means I lose a lot of my natural curls. Yet, when my hair is long, it seems to bring out features that I'd rather forget I have... like that jowl that I inherited from my grandfather (sorry grandpa, but it is true) and which it looks like my kids inherited as well. Sigh.

Well, I go into the salon this afternoon so we'll see what I end up with. I'll probably decide while I'm sitting on the chair, after they give me that great scalp and hand massage with relaxing oils. A scalp and hand massage for a busy mom with three kids is enough to make me say, "Just chop it all off... be done with it. And can you give me just one more massage?"

How A Playmobil Catalog Taught My Child To Read (ok, not really, but it is helping)

Kate asked about my kids learning to read, which I will definitely blog about soon - thank you for the reminder!

In the meantime, I wanted to thank Playmobil (and other toy manufacturers) for their free color catalogs. My oldest son (5 years old) simply LOVES looking through toy catalogs. Right now, his favorite is the Playmobil catalog that he picked up from a toy store a few months back. He sits for hours and peruses each page in detail, announcing which things he will want to have in the *near* future. The hilarious part about these catalogs is that they have actually been helping my son learn to read... or better said, helping him WANT to read. He wants to know what each section says and the name for each item. Ok, I know, he does this because then he can say, "Mama, I want to have the 'Zoo Superset' for my birthday!" On some level I feel like I am completely encouraging consumerism. But hey, he's reading! And what better way to use phonics than on a word like Superset!

The additional benefit of the Playmobil catalog is that they list a specific toy number for each item! Yippee! This means, when my son wants something specific, I say, "Ah, interesting. So, what is the name of the item? And what is the item number?" Hee hee. No, I don't ever say he will get the toys. I always say that when his birthday gets closer we can talk about the items again. Plus, later he forgets these details of our discussion after he has moved onto other toys. In the meantime, however, he is very seriously reading words and numbers.

Just a few minutes ago he asked me, "Mama, what does this say?" I asked him to try and sound it out. So, word by word he sounded out "The... new... Tractor... on... the... Farm!" He looked to me for confirmation and then smiled. He repeated it again, "The new tractor on the farm!" and then went onto the next page, proud of having sounded it out all on his own. I mean, look at that page with the words all surrounded by sunflowers and a burst of yellow! Who wouldn't want to sound out those words. They look simply delicious!

So, I say, "thank you Playmobil" for helping the world of literacy. Now, can you make your toys just a little less expensive!? My son has requested the whole Zoo, Farm, Viking and Castle collections... for now. Next month he'll have a new list. Hmmm, actually, now that I think about it, maybe this whole reading thing wasn't such a good idea.

For the Love of MAOAM

I have a weakness for MAOAM. Those fruity flavors, that chewy texture. I generally like fruit-flavored candy but nothing matches MAOAM. I'm not surprised that my kids love these little guys as well. And I won't even go into the joy we have when we open one of those mega-mix packs! Mmmm! I haven't found them in the US yet, which is GOOD! If you know where to purchase them here, don't tell me! Spare me the extra pounds that I really don't need!

Meet Moritz

Here kitty, kitty, kitty...

We finally did it, we got a cat! We looked through pages and pages of adoptable cats at petfinder.com and decided on this wonderful guy. We picked him up on Wednesday evening in the middle of another Seattle snow storm. It took us HOURS to get up to the Lynnwood PAWS and back since everyone was trying to get home before the snow turned to ice. I think I chewed down three or four fingernails on the drive up since I was afriad we'd not make it. Good thing we stuck with getting him on Wednesday since the next day everything was snowed in.

The kids decided to name him Moritz... I am assuming they must have read some story with a character named Moritz - I can't think of any other source for the name since it isn't a common American one.

Moritz is a perfect cat! He tolerates the chaos of the kids (even joins in a lot), is very playful (loves to chase strings and a little feather toy we purchased) and purrs like crazy when he is in his mellow mood and is looking for attention. When we first took him out of the travel box, he was extremely curious but came and snuggled up to each of us as he checked out his surroundings. And what silken fur!

The people at the shelter said that he is around 1.5 to 2 years old. They found him wandering the streets of Arlington. His vet check-up shows him as being in perfect health and he is current on all of his shots. He is also no longer able to help make kittens as of last Tuesday. Awww, poor guy.

The only dilemma we have is that one of our boys possibly has a mild cat allergy. We just got Mortitz on Thursday so we are going to give it some time to see how things go (as well as consult with the pediatrician and the vet). If worse comes to worse, we'll have to give Moritz back to the shelter where we found him so that another loving family can adopt him. I can't imagine that would take long since he is so wonderful!

In the meantime, until we know for sure about any allergies, we are going to start by following the advice from some pamphlets we got from the shelter:

• Wash Moritz once a week with a pitcher of warm water (this should remove a large amount of the dander which causes allergies)
  

• Keep Moritz out of the bedroom

• Possibly get a HEPA air filter (I will do some searching on the internet)

• Clean the floor with a damp mop and the furniture with a damp cloth.
  

There is more that we can do but we'll start with this and see how it goes. I don't think Moritz (or us) is going to like the washing-with-a-pitcher-of-water part at all but maybe it will go better than we think? Either way, if that helps it will be worth it!

Living Between Worlds

My husband and I live between many different worlds and belong fully and completely to very few. When I first used the title, "An American Between Worlds," it was from an essay I wrote for the first Bilingual/Bicultural Family Network newsletter.

But over time, I have come to realize that living between worlds is more than just language and culture for me. Living between worlds is the result of the accumulated choices my husband and I have made to live a fuller life. Perhaps it has to do with wanting to have our cake and eat it too? Why must we limit ourselves to one choice, one group, one reality? I'm not asking that the society in which I live change its most basic structures and nuances. I am simply wanting to live in it in a way that matches my image of who I am on all levels.

The choices of language and culture in my life are simply the result of having fallen in love with someone from another culture and wanting to understand him completely. How can I understand who my husband is if I can not speak his language, have never lived in his country, have never spent time with his parents, siblings and cousins? I need to walk on the soil of his family's small, now-retired dairy farm; I need to smell the halls of his university and meet his friends; I need to taste his favorite foods and to squint when the winter sun hovers just over the edge of the horizon at noon and to then run home and snuggle on the rug in front of the heater in our tiny two-room apartment which had no shower or hot water and our toilet half way down the building's staircase. I needed to live with my husband in his world to understand him, to be able to be a part of his life. But to do so has meant to compromise my comfort and security, to step over an invisible threshold and to stand between two worlds, never committing to either fully yet cherishing both completely.

The same is true for other aspects of my life. My husband and I are homeschooling our children which has meant we have become friends with a whole new group of families (and unfortunately has made others choose to not have anything to do with us). But even in this choice we do not belong 100%. We are homeschooling while also both working part time. This means, we have to be extremely creative with how we go about this, a level of creativity that many other homeschooling families do not have to deal with (and which coworkers can simply not quite understand how we cope). We are unable to participate fully with the plethora of activities, events, gatherings and more that our local homeschool group organizes each month. Thus, we live a little on the edge of this world, not fully able to participate yet commited fully.

And what about working part time? I work in an office where most employees work full time and more. Our country has not yet come to appreciate the benefits of letting skilled workers who want to work part time do so. Working part time offers my husband and me a balance in life between participating with other adults out there in the world while at the same time giving us the space to be parents of three children and to foster our private nest at home. Living between these two worlds is often the most difficult, in part because there are so many unspoken judgements that are placed on us from society as a whole. In addition, we live at the whim of others who can influence our standard of living so completely. If we were to lose our jobs, our incomes would disappear and from there many changes would take place. Not that these changes would be bad, they would simply be placed upon us without our wanting them to take place. So, we are forced to work hard on this balance - not letting our jobs take over too much of our lives and not letting ourselves forget how important our jobs are for our family's livelihood.

Then there is Multilingual Living Magazine. Ah yes, this magazine is in a world of its own. It itself straddles worlds, cultures, languages, families. Each issue makes me realize how little Alice and I actually shape it and form it. We simply start the ball rolling, lay out the foundation, set up the canvas and then stand back and watch as others complete their creations. We then we put these creations on display for others to enjoy as much as we do.

This is my life between worlds; an American between worlds. Somehow, when I am not looking, these worlds fit themselves together and create something colorful, rich, fascinating, boring, frustrating, stressful, joyful, amazing and exactly what my husband and I have always been looking for.

The Measure of Success

"Mama, mama, did you hear that? Marie said 'ball'! 'Ball' is Marie's new word!"

My 5-year old and 3 year-old sons run from the living room to the kitchen to tell me this great news. Their eyes are wide with awe: yesterday their little sister couldn’t say the word "ball" but today she can! Their joy is infectious and it reminds me that each step in this magical process is a wonder to behold. How could I ever take this for granted?

My daughter simply wants to make herself understood yet could it also be that she is relishing in the fact that she can finally imitate the sounds that she hears around her? And I often wonder these days whether she views words differently. For example, does "ball" have more or less importance, difficulty or sense of success than "grrrr-ruff, grrrr-ruff" (the sound she makes for a dog) to her? Does she realize at her one and a half years of age that "ball" is the item and that "grrrr-ruff, grrrr-ruff" is the sound a certain animal makes? When will that realization take place? Or does it happen gradually? Do we need to learn something like that or does it slowly just appear in our understanding of language and grammar? No matter what is happening in that little mind of hers, it is going a mile a minute and watching her little mouth learn to pronounce words is an absolute joy for the whole family.

With their English-speaking grandmother around for a few weeks, my sons have been asking for more translations than usual. Sometimes it is from English to German, other times from German to English. "Mama, was ist 'graben' auf Englisch?" my 3 year-old asks. "Dig," I tell him. "To dig in the dirt. Or, I am digging a hole in the sand." He thanks me and runs to my mother and says, "Grammy, I want to go outside and dig in the dirt."

It surprises me that a 5 year-old and a 3 year-old understand the concept of translation. They seem too young to understand this. But perhaps this is simply the result of growing up bilingually? Why wouldn’t they understand the concept of translation? It most likely comes naturally to them to realize that there are one-to-one translations for the specific words they don’t understand. How many times has their daycare provider or grandmother or other people asked, “What did you just say? Can you say it in English? I don’t understand German.” Course, for someone who never completely learned grammar rules until she studied Ancient Greek and Latin in college, a child comprehending language constructs of any sort is pretty amazing to me.

All three of our children have tended to first focus on speaking everyday words that are similar or have similar sounds in both languages: ball/Ball, milk/Milch, house/Haus, bread/Brot, more/mehr, go/gehen. I usually don’t give this much thought since I speak both German and English but it is when my mother, an English-only speaker, is around that I realize how this process impacts our everyday life so directly. It is amazing how these words do the job even if only the first sounds are spoken. When my daughter says, "mich" it could either be milk or Milch - either way, she gets what she needs. Or when she wants to go outside, she tries out different variations of "guh" and with a pointing finger toward the door (and the fact that she has a hat, a jacket and boots on) it is pretty obvious to everyone that she is trying to say "go" or "geh(en)". But what it all comes down to is that my mother understands her and assumes that what she is saying is "go" and a German-speaker understands her and assumes she is saying "geh(en)". Either way she has made herself understood - talk about a conservation of sounds!

In the end, when asked how "successful" we feel we have been so far in raising bilingual children, I look at the expanse between each little step and realize just how far we have come as well as how much more there is to explore. We are in a jungle of language and culture, winding our way through vines, delighting in new plants and species as we traverse. There is no ultimate destination; there is no final point of "success". Yet, if we look to the small goals which we subconsciously set for our families, then I'd say that my overarching hope for my children is for them to have the ability to make themselves understood across both of their families' cultures and languages. If both my husband's mother and my mother can understand what my children are saying, explaining, requesting, describing and discussing without feeling that they are different, that they belong to "the other" culture, then I will feel a sense of success.

The irony behind having such a goal is that I don’t think it will never completely be reached... I am still growing in my ability to communicate in English, let alone German, and although I am American through and through, the fact that I am married to a German and lived in Germany means that all of my words and choices are influenced, to some degree, by German concepts and ways of thinking. I am no longer "just" American anymore. I am the composite of many pieces, all of which are so ingrained I wouldn’t be able to separate them out.

So, I doubt whether we, as a family, will ever feel that sense of accomplishment and success that completing a task brings with it. In the end, we know that we are moving in some direction and it seems to be a good direction. It does often feel like the "road less traveled", especially living in the US, and at times, just that feeling keeps me motivated and excited about this journey.

In my next blog I want to share my utter joy in watching my 5-year old learning to read! I'm not sure when it finally all clicked for him but the other day he pulled down his little learning-to-read books (in English) and hasn't stopped. We probably would have started with German books but we couldn't find any as good as these English ones.

I am excited to say that there will be a lot of information in our January issue of Multilingual Living Magazine from experts and parents on how to help your bilingual child learn to read! I think many of us are interested in what they have to say!