A dragon lives next door

The Duke's old residence

 A dragon lives next door to us. He lives in the basement of the long-dead Duke's old city residence. Apparently the dragon didn't get the memo that his type died out years ago because he continues to live there, in the dungeon. He is a nice dragon, but about the time that school gets out and we have to walk past his bedroom window he is taking his nap. So we have to be quiet. Queenie reminds us of this almost everyday as I am usually asking a million and one questions all about her day at school. All questions must stop walking past Dragon's window. It seems obvious to Queenie that he can still hear us even when we cross the street so we, out of respect for Dragon's beauty sleep, speak in whispers until we are inside our building.
   I asked Queenie what he would do if we woke him and she said he would be crabby. I asked if he would bite us and she looked at me with scrunched eyes and a playful smile. "No!" she laughed. "He doesn't bite!"
   Of course now that I have put that idea in her head I have heard her threaten her little sister with the Dragon biting her if she doesn't do what Queenie wants.

Dragon's bedroom window. No, there is no glass there,
Just a metal screen that keeps out small children and Dragons
in.

Sometimes the Dragon comes to visit us. And to be honest, I thought he would be bigger. I imagined a HUGE thing with sharp teeth and fiery eyes, but actually he fits right in Queenie's hand and always demands lots of kisses. So now, I really do believe that he is a good dragon and will not harm us and now I ask Queenie if she wants to invite him over sometime. Especially when cocodrilo (crocodile) comes out of his hiding place in the wall. He also fits inside Queenie's hand and is constantly looking for his mommy and daddy. I am not sure where or when he will find them, but in order to keep him from being sad about it we have to involve him in our play. Sometimes I forget and Queenie, always looking out for him, politely reminds me by sticking him in my face and demanding kisses. If you had told me four years ago I would be kissing reptiles throughout my day I probably wouldn't have believe you! 

 Ah, the imagination of four year olds! I am seriously thinking about writing a story about it!

This is a view of Dragon's living room window from
across the street. We walk right past on our way
home from school.

My safe place

As a very small child I lived on a farm with a huge yard that sloped in the front down to the street and was straight in the back lined by a tobacco field (this was late eighties, too. Not the sixties!) The property had an old outhouse that was closed off, a shed where my stepfather stored his old cars, a well (also closed off) and a huge barn. We only kept horses as that was the reason we moved there in the first place. My mother and stepfather had been married only for about four or five years at that point and the horse and farm was his way of thanking her for moving up north from the south.
    While it was great to have horses around and lots of space to run, the best spot on the whole big property was a cluster of three HUGE pine trees. Their trunks were separated just enough to make room for a fort. Their huge, green branches fell heavily towards the ground covering little bodies perfectly. the "ground floor" could fit three to four children at a time and the "top floor" (only used for my tree climbing brother) could have fit many more, but the rest of us preferred the ground.
   I could spend hours there pretending I was living on the prairie by sweeping with a fallen branch and cooking with sticks and plastic cups. When my brother came out to play he would go up to the top and I would set us up to blast off to the moon. He drove, of course. And once we were on the moon we would sneak out onto the strange land outside and discover it had a sandbox and swing set and even a couple of very small people similar to our little brother and sister. Other times it would be our hideout from the Nazis as we were Jewish children trying to stay alive (how in the world did I know about that at age 7?). At one point I think my brother's favorite gun got buried there for the next time we played "Jewish children."
   But then, a few months after moving to the farm house my stepfather decided we were going to ruin the trees if we kept playing underneath them and forbid us to continue going there. We did anyway, as he was gone quite often. And we got in trouble a few times for disobeying before we gave it up completely. But there were a few more time that I sneaked out there just to sit under those huge, ancient green beasts and feel enveloped, alone and safe.


This post was inspired by Mama Kat's pretty much world famous writing workshop....but I obviously don't know how to read closely to instructions because this prompt called for a poem. And now I am out of time. Oh, well. Hope you enjoy the prose!

Our LIttle Park

When you live in a Medieval city things look a bit differently than back home. The streets are narrower. Your house is about 1000 years old. Dragons live in the neighbors basement (oh, wait, that is tomorrow's story....) and you have castles all around you. One of greatest things is looking around you as you take a walk (or heave your double stroller home) and imagine what it was like during the Dark Age. And it is easy to do, even for those less visual in their imaginations. Take our "little park" for example. The girls love to come here because the slide has bumps in it which makes them slide "wearwy fast!" so we come here quite often. Here is the view from where I usually stations my feet:

It is the view of an church built in the 1200s. 

Three languages

   I reconnected with an old friend through facebook the other day. She is married to a Spanish speaker and also has bilingual kids. She posts some of the things her kids say on facebook sometimes, which remind me so much of my two.
   The mind is a funny thing. While it is really "hard" to learn a language, as your brain is made for it, and it is even easier for your little ones to learn them, sometimes it seems to have some blips. Like the neuron doesn't fire from one language to the other. It happens to me sometimes when people ask me, "how do you say this in English?" I open my mouth and then nothing comes out! The most frustrating thing is that it is usually the easy words that just don't get that electrical brain shove.
   For kids they go from thinking everything heard around them is just one big happy language to actually sorting it all out and realizing that some people only speak "some" of the words that their little brain knows. Queenie is in the stage right now. Firecracker is in the first stage.
   Firecracker says things like: "Quiero get down." "Quiero eat." (Quiero=I want)
   She also speaks whatever word she knows to whoever will listen. She doesn't yet "get" that some people don't speak all of her languages. Her grandmothers are only monolingual in their own language but Firecracker just says whatever she wants and looks at them with wide, expectant eyes. This might have something to do with the fact that she sees both her mom and dad speak both Spanish and English, because when she goes to school I think she focuses more on French. Not that I am there with her to study this observation, but after school she pulls out her new French vocabulary for another hour: "Les livres, mama?" (The books, mama?=meaning she wants to read books) "On y va?" (let's go) "Au revoir!"  (Good-bye).
    But then Queenie is really figuring out that not everyone speaks all her languages. The more confident she gets in speaking (speech therapy is going so well!) the more she speaks to everyone in their language. The other day was the first time I heard her speak French at the park to other kids. She saw her little sister being shuffled among the older kids and screamed out (literally screamed. At the park she only has one volume!) "C'est une petite fille!" (She is a little girl!). Her pronunciation made it sound like she was saying her sister was a little boy, but who cares! She was confident enough to speak French at the park! Yea!
   But as said before sometimes her brain has blips or wrong translations. Like the other day she translated, "beaucoup de monde" and "Lots of 'bodies'" (instead of saying, "everyone is here" or "So many people" etc). Or sometimes when a friend of ours (Spanish speaking) asked her what color something was, she looked at him and quickly opened her mouth only to have it come out in English. The good thing is that she usually laughs about these things, but it is at those moments that I reflect on how "hard" this is at times. She doesn't see it as work, I don't think, she just sees it as normal, but goodness, imagine discovering that your name is spelled "differently" between mama and papa's language? (Different because the letters are said differently.)
   Goodness.
    Today the receptionist at the doctor's office heard Firecracker speak something in English and asked if she spoke two languages. I shook my head and said, "No, three." She had that wide-eyed, I-don't-think-I-heard-you-right look when I quickly explained that she spoke English with me, Spanish with her papa and French at school. She laughed and said, "That's enough, no?"
   Yes, for now, that it definitely enough!
I am participating in Yeah, Write Me this week!  

WTHWIT?

   When we Queenie was about seven months old we moved out of our one bedroom apartment in Madrid into a small two-bedroom apartment with a real kitchen. (YEA!) We were excited to have finally found one we could afford in a semi-nice area with a pool! No air conditioning, but, well, we haven't had air conditioning since moving to Europe.....

   Digressing, moving from our furnished one-bedroom into an unfurnished two-bedroom required some shopping, in the cheapest way possible.  That is when we found out that chairs are worth their weight in gold! HOLY COW they are expensive! We answered an ad from craigslist for chairs and ended up with 6 and a small dining room table for 90 Euro. Unbelievably cheap! And 6 chairs! We could have people over without someone pulling up the rocking chair to eat dinner! 

   They weren't the prettiest chairs and they were pretty old, but hey, whatever. They were chairs. So life went on and Queenie kept growing and soon needed a booster seat. What we didn't think about was that the chairs don't actually have wood on the seat part, just foam and elastic bands to keep our bottoms up. So pretty soon the booster seat broke into the foam and the seat fell through. Hmmmmmm. Bummer. Then one day another seat gave out in the elastic when I at on it. (thankfully the fabric is stapled to the chair, otherwise I would have gone right through! And then, I don't remember how or when, but another seat gave out. Now we have three that look like this and are rather uncomfortable to sit on:

     We went to a man here to ask how much it would be to fix them. He said 35 Euro each. Not too much, really, but we would have to do all 6 to have them matching and they really aren't worth investing that much money into. On the other hand, with our other IKEA furniture and such we aren't ready to buy nice chair without a nice dining room table. And the IKEA one is fine for right now. (We have this idea that the day we BUY a house we will go out and buy NICE furniture!) The other option is to buy cheap chair. But I don't want to. So I decided I would fix them.....
   WTHWIT? In actual words: WHAT THE HECK WAS I THINKING? Would you have known that there are over 200 staples in just one chair? Would you have known it is super hard to find foam and elastic bands? Remember now, I live in an apartment. No garage or basement or backyard. I have to sand in my craft room while running the air purifier and vacuum. I can't spray paint, I have to hand paint and I can't figure out how to buy wood in the shape of the seat to make things easier for me! Now I have five chairs at the table and one sitting naked in the craft room and my mind is drawing a blank. In the States I would have a car and would know to go directly to my Stepdad or Dad to have them cut the wood and show me what to do. Or Home Depot if I lived far from either of them. Here, we went to one store the other day and they had nothing I was looking for. So, what do I do now?

100 Word Monday: That doesn't happen here.

     One small motorcycle. One man clad in black. Well, supposedly a man as he wears a helmet, too.
      First, 10 days ago he shot another motorcyclist while they were both riding. He was never caught. A few days later two parachutist were killed by someone with the same description. They thought it was an inside job.
     But again today, as school kids ran to class, another motorcyclist drove by a Jewish school. And shot into the crowd. One teacher, three students dead, more injured.
     Could they be linked? How would they be linked? And why haven't they caught him yet?

Expat buzz

There is a bit of buzz going around us expats here in France. Seems an American expat married to a French man decided to write a book. A book about raising kids in France. A book about how the French do it so much better than Americans. She claim that the French are superior parents. Yes, she used those words.
   Now, the French media is all over this book, Bringing Up Bebe. They are IN. LOVE. with Pamela Druckerman. Why wouldn't they be as her book tells them how great of parents they are and how terrible American's are.
   Before I go on, I have to say that I haven't read the entire book. Just excerpts and then all of her interviews I can find on the web. But I don't want to read her book. I don't have time to be angry.
   Why do I say it like that? Because as an expat raising (and birthing) my kids outside of my home country for the last five years I get tired of hearing people compare and contrast countries and cultures back and forth. I have had people compare my parenting with their own culture's way and I myself have wasted hours in my head comparing and contrasting and claiming to be better. The fact is: everyone is doing what they can and the rest of us should just keep our mouths shut.
   Here are some things she says that are just downright dumb and unfounded:
      "There are no terrible twos in France."  Maybe they don't have a word for it but kids are kids and just because she hasn't seen a kid throw a temper tantrum at the park doesn't mean they never do. I have seen it. I have also watched French parents beg and plead and say, "just one more time" more times than I can count. And hey, whatever. I am sure there are many parents all over the world who do that. I, on the other hand, have no problem dragging my kids out of the park screaming. My parenting style is this: I said this, so we are doing this. Period. But again, whatever. Who is to say who is better than the other? The French in general don't like making a scene while us Americans could really care less. But there isn't a way to find out who is better.

   "All French babies sleep through the night from 2-3 month on." Ummmmmmm, what? How can you generalize that? My kids didn't, but they either suffered from a very difficult birth or had digestive problems. BUT all of my Spanish and American nieces and nephews (including my friends's kids) all slept through the night from practically the beginning. And I have a hard a time believing that there is no French baby that doesn't have some sleeping problems.
 
    "The Pause."  This is a parenting way that is popular (I guess) in France in that they don't go right away to their baby when they cry. They don't like to say "crying it out" but they allow the baby to cry for a few minutes to see if they will go back to sleep. Again....ummm.....this is nothing new. Lots of Americans do this. And some don't. But this is a decision to be made between the parents.

      "French kids eat 5 times a day, sitting at the table and never interrupt their parents." Granted, French kids are famous for sitting for long hours at the table. But who cares if they eat Brie cheese? My very picky 4 year old eats it. It is soft and doesn't have much taste. She also eats pate. This is a cultural thing. While I agree that the French tend to eat better than us Americans and do NOT have the obesity problem that we do, I have to add that I live in the center and see at least 2-3 woman (not the same women) everyday that would be classified as anorexic. Still a problem in my book. As for not interrupting and sitting at the table for hours on end all I have to say is, why? I don't want my kids sitting there while we adults talk. I want them to play. That is their job. And when we do have dinner I want them to talk, not sit like it's 1901 when kids were seen and not heard. I want them engaged in the conversation, to tell us about their day and listen about ours.

    "The French don't change their lives because they have kids."  Well, why not? I think this is a terrible idea. While I am not one who allows her kids to control what we do and don't do, in a way kids will anyway. They need to sleep and while it is okay that they take a nap from time to time in the stroller, I would prefer that they sleep in their bed. Obviously. And I when we decided to have kids we knew that at some point things would change. Like many times we would end up eating pizza rather than sushi and that most Fridays and Saturdays we would stay home. But that is because we want to. We are a family and we want to spend the weekends together.

   "French parents don't play with their kids all the time." While I understand and agree that kids need to learn to play by themselves, I also don't understand the idea of never playing with your children. When they are little especially. You only have a few years with them when they actually want to play with you, so why not do it? Why not spend those precious moments at the park playing tag or kicking the ball around? Why not build a huge block castle for them to enjoy knocking down? That is the only way you will ever see that twinkle in their eye that comes when they play.


    But then, how in the world can she generalize that no French parent plays with their kid (although I am usually the only one running and laughing with my kids at the park, I must admit) or that all of them eat like adults? How can you generalize that no French woman feels guilty about going to work and leaving her kid at daycare? How can you generalize that all Americans are too fussy and too frantic about their kids? In the end all of our assumptions and ideas come from our own experiences in life and there is no way to know what everyone in the world is doing. For me the two best mom examples that I have in my life are two Americans. They both have four kids and to  me are "supermoms". They are patient, kind, gentle, yet firm and their kids behave great. They are not stressed out or fussy about anything. It all comes down to our little world and our own little experiences and in the end I just want to say, "Can we all just stop judging and thinking someone is better than the other?"


If you want to read some interviews and opinions here are some links:

Forbes
NPR

My favorite spot

This is my favorite part of my girls's room, this little doll hanging on their wall. I received it last Christmas from my grandmother, about 25 years later than she bought it. My mother and father went through a messy divorce when I was two. Messy might not be the right word, but things were bad. My mother refused contact. The doll was received and sent back, I never knew about it. But my grandmother kept it, hoping that one day she would be able to see me and give it to me. I almost cried when she presented the small package to me along with the story. It saddens me that my grandfather didn't get to be there when I got it. My grandmother told me that they thought about where it would hang above my crib when they bought it together, but my wall was never graced with it's presence or the love that came with it.
  Now it graces the wall in my girls's room above their books. It hangs tall and proud. Every time I see it I smile and believe in hope again. Hope and love. Because that is what brought me back to my father and grandmother after all those years past.

This post was inspired by Mama Kat's writing workshop.

100 Word Monday: Get Fit or Get Out

  I was going to go to the gym. But then Firecracker stopped going to preschool. I tried doing yoga. And pilates.  Apparently I look like a jungle gym. Then I noticed TurboFire. I ordered them. But I received Insanity instead. Seriously hard. But this shelf that Firecracker sits so nicely on when I hold her needs to go. And I need to fit back into my bikini again. So I am going with Insanity. Today was the first day. And I hurt. But in 60 days I will be different. Possibly hospitalized, but I will fit into those stupid jeans again! 

Insert foot

I am a bit of an idiot at times. Being a once ultra-shy person ha not stopped me from sticking my foot in my mouth SO. MANY. TIMES. I can't even count. Take this summer when all of us 'aunts' and 'uncle' were sitting around having coffee and I let my feelings slip about people dressing their kids the same. It is pretty common in Spain to dress kids of the same family the same for special occasions, Sunday or just about any day a mom feels like it. So it looks like they are twins, but one is a whole head taller. I find it distracting. And ridiculous. And an insult to the kid's intelligence. Come on! Let them have some independence! I cry, all the while laughing like I was hilarious....
   Until I catch a glimpse of my oldest SIL. You know how it happens when one side of your brain is talking and then suddenly the other side screams, "WHAT ARE YOU DOING?" while you are still talking? But now you can't stop talking because that would look obvious and weird so you....what do you do?
  As I was talking I looking at my SIL my other side of the brain screamed at me, "HELLO! You just saw your little neices and they were dressed the same and you were even polite enough to tell your SIL how cute they were!"
   So now my SIL knows that I lied. Great.
   I didn't feel like I could stop talking all the way so I just lowered my voice and sort of tapered off. And ended with a lame, "But what do I know, I let my kid wear a blue tutu with a red t-shirt."
   Cringe.
 

This post was inspired by a prompt from Mama Kat's pretty much world famous writing workshop.

Count it all joy

   Sometimes I frustrate myself  on how little it takes for the girls to either irritate or frustrate me. I don't like yelling. I don't like people yelling at me and I don't like to yell....but I seem to have days when it seems like all I do is yell. And when the sun sets that day and I look at my girls sleeping in their beds, all fuzzy in their pajamas and peaceful I feel guilty at having wasted so much time yelling. Or being frustrated or irritated.
   I decided I needed to change something. I needed to change something in me. Some how I had lost joy and I needed it back. And I think I found a way to get it.
   I found it partly from a pastor I listen to on my iPhone. He says he starts his days declaring who he loves. And while that may sound a bit corny, I think (as well as many people I am sure) the world and all of us in it need a bit more love. And what better way to start your day than declaring who you love? So now I try to remember to do just that. "I love Principe. I love Queenie. I love Firecracker. I love my family. I love my inlaws. I love my neighbor as myself....."
   Not only do I do it in the morning, I have taken to doing it when I feel my temper fuse becoming shorter.
   The other thing I do now is bit my tongue. Something I should have done earlier, I hear you say. Well, yes. It is. And guess what? I have found that at least half of those times that I thought Queenie was whining or yelling she was actually just playing. Yes, playing in a rather annoying tone of voice, but it was innocent play nonetheless. Geez! Doesn't do much for my mom guilt. But at least I am learning, right? Of course there are times when you really HAVE to get out your game face and talk in a tone they haven't even heard daddy speak in yet. Like today when Queenie "fell down" while we crossed the street at the same time that Firecracker was trying to squirm her way out of my grasp and run where ever she wanted to go. Okay, then at least I had reason to be strict and stern, right?

100 Word Mondays: Creative Nonfiction

Coming Home

As our car rolled smoothly through the curves of Tramway Lane I kept my eyes peeled on the numbers going by. And then…we passed it. I looked back. There in the driveway stood a tall, powerful looking man. His arm rested on the shoulders of a woman much shorter than him. We finally pulled in. I watched his legs move toward me with a slow, constant stride. But I couldn´t look at his face. He opened the door. I tumbled out and into his strong arms. 21 years ago I called him daddy. And today I was finally home again.

Marché des Foies (Liver Market)

We went to the Marché des Foies today in Gimont, France. Principe's boss invited u last year but we ended up being busy, so this year Principe made sure we were able to go. I gotta tell you, I wasn't that excited. I thought it was just a yearly thing and was going to be a much bigger deal with hundreds of dead duck and geese and their livers all about. Actually it runs for about 5 months every Sunday, so it isn't as big of a deal as I had imagined in my head. Still, it doesn't thrill me to see things like this. I am getting more and more used to it as this i just how animals are sold over here and many other places in the world. I am even getting to the point were I see the irony in us Americans and what we eat versus what we see. I am still not to the point were I will buy and cut up a duck like it is my Sunday business and I think Queenie agrees with me. (The dead duck head were right at her eye level and before she got over her shyness of being with new people she pulled me down and whispered "I don't want to be here" while eying the duck heads! Principe's boss say her looking and made the beak move while asking her if she wanted to touch "le canard mort" (dead duck)! The French are so authentic!)
  So,,,,,, if you are vegetarian, you might not want to look below. But if you want some culture, go right ahead and look!

The livers

Seen around town in Toulouse

"Opening hours approximate and variable..." No wonder it closed down.....

When I saw the "no gun" picture in a the window of a bar I just had to stop and read what was under it. I don't know why it is in English, but all the better as I can share it with you! "I think the world would be a much better place if there were not Guns. Then we could finally focus on the important things, like sword fighting and how to kill a man with one punch."