Blogging for Insomnia

Just recently I have been composing blog posts in my head, at night, when I can't sleep. There are several problems with this; the main one being that it serves absolutely no purpose except to ensure that I get even less sleep than otherwise.

I know, I know, you're going to tell me about the "notepad and pencil" by the side of the bed trick, aren't you? But to be honest, I just can't be bothered. I do just actually want to sleep. To switch off my brain. And it bothers me that it is potential unwritten blog posts that swim around in my head at this annoying hour. It is not as though there aren't 117 million other more important things that I have neglected to do and could be thinking about.

So, in an effort to add a touch of spring cleaning to what is unfortunately becoming a bit of a boring bedtime routine, I thought I would actually try to write some of these posts down, during daylight hours - oh, the cleverness of me, as Peter Pan would say. And then I can go back to thinking about winter tyres, and hair appointments, and how the children need new shoes.

So, new (possibly sleep inducing) posts coming soon.

Sountrack in my head

Apparently, when you are running and your mind starts wandering off onto other things rather than just concentrating on the next step and the next breath, you have reached a certain level of running fitness. Or so my good friend Emma tells me. And I believe her because she is a very experienced and super fit runner.

My other source of running advice, Tina, told me that she runs with a friend and they chat the whole time. Apart from being completely in awe of being able to talk while running - a skill that despite my ability to multi-task in almost all other areas of my life is definitely beyond my fitness level - I don't think this is for me because I quite like the way that running alone allows you to completely escape from everyone else.

Except, of course, yourself.

My brain has definitely started to wander off as I run. And the 50 songs I have on shuffle on my playlist in my ears helps to trick my body into running a little faster and to not think so much about how much further there is to go. It offers a soundtrack to 30 minutes of my life.

Things I think about while running:

-Imaginary conversations I would have with Tina if I was running with her (and by some miracle I could actually talk and run). We chat about old boyfriends and that time that we almost but not quite met up with Nicki on a beach in Italy. And then we move on to my lovely Godson and his fondness for books and what wonderful letters he writes to me. I ask her advice about my lollipop lady running outfit and she assures me I look great.

- When Let's Hear it For the Boy comes on I'm 15 years old again and Rachel and I have free tickets to the cinema to see Footloose (thanks to my mum who won them in a radio competition).

-And when Des attractions désastre by Ettienne Daho plays I am in a café in Paris imagining what this French guy is saying to me. I have no idea what the lyrics of this song are about but in my head he is talking directly to me and telling me how wonderfully I am running.

-The Obvious Child by Paul Simon makes me think of Samuel dancing around the kitchen playing his drums... Of course, my version is "we had a little son and we thought we'd call him Sammy…."

- Ramblin'man by Lemon Jelly and I am trying to count how many places he mentions in the song that I have been to. I love the way he says "Kentish Town" and makes it sound like somewhere exotic.

By now I’m hopefully more than half way. Sometimes I imagine that tough American woman from the TV programme The Biggest Loser is shouting at me to keep going and pick up the speed. I just need a few more good running songs to transport me away. Something like Ready to Run by the Dixie Chicks and Glor på Vinduer by Szhirley.

To finish off, it has to be noisy and if I'm lucky I'll get a bit of Desolation Row by My Chemical Romance and Rock Star by Nickelback to get me up the final hill.

And then I'm home.

Recently?

Oh alright then already! Anything is better than all that talk about wee at the top, I suppose.

-Not much running going on at the moment. The dismal weather (ice, ice, snow, ice) and a stinking cold coupled with a trip to Blighty have knocked my running mojo.

In fact, the only Winter Olympics going on around here is in the telly - unless I can count the frantic exercise each morning to dress two children in suitable survival suits and boots so that they can navigate the garden path that has turned into an icy slalom run. After three months of nothing but snow, I'm getting quite good at it. I'd definitely give myself a bronze medal.

And I'm sure Anna would be ready to try that skeleton bob run thing at a moment’s notice. (Yeah, like we'd let in her try that! Diving head first down an ice chute at 100 mph plus speeds with little more than a swimming costume and a baking tray? Er, I think not.)

- Samuel does this thing where he deliberately gets you to say something and then promptly laughs at how wrong you are and then corrects you. For example:
Sam - I've got sticky hands! Honey! (holding up his hands)
Me - Oh, do you have honey on your hands?
Sam - No! (laughing at how unbelievably silly mummy is) Not honey! JAM!!
And numerous other similar examples.

- Anna is happy that they've started doing plays at school with the grade 3 children. She is currently playing Phyllis in The Railway Children and for the first time in ages came home very excited about it all.

She is also on to a more interesting Unit of Inquiry about animals and spent ages today telling me all sorts of facts about frogs and spiders and turtles. Or rather, she'd ask me some tricky question and then I'd admit that I didn't know and that I'd love to hear the answer. But then she'd make me guess the answer. Which was pretty impossible because it wasn't "guess-able" sort of stuff. So she made me make all sorts of weird (stupid) suggestions before she enlightened me with the correct answer.

Actually - there is a theme to this post after all: Both my children obviously delight at seeing me get the answer wrong and then being able to correct me.

Well, I'm not quite as stupid as they think. I tricked both of them into washing their hair tonight during a particularly splashy bath and they thought it was all their own idea. Ha!

Bathroom, briefly

I often tell Sam that his food is too hot - wait a minute, blow on it! - so he doesn't dive in and burn his mouth.

Tonight as he was having his pre-bath wee, he managed to wee a bit on his hand.

Warm mummy! he remarked as he felt the temperature of the yellow liquid.

Then he said, Sam blow on it as he attempted to blow on his own wee - while still weeing.

About that running...

I just need to put in writing that I am now running 5 km every second day in about 30 minutes.

Never mind the fact that I look like a homeless person crossed with a lollipop lady in my cobbled together outfit, which is the result of the need for lots of layers (minus 5 degrees here still) and visibility and my lack of money to buy fancy running trousers. (If I am honest, I also don't want to go into a proper shop and buy appropriate attire for fear of being pointed at by the fit, young sales assistant as an imposter -"Call yourself a runner? Ha ha ha ha ha ha!").

No, this doesn’t matter because in the unlikely event that I saw anyone I knew while doing this running I would a) pretend to not recognise them and b) they would not recognise me anyway.

The first kilometre is still really, really tough. Someone said that I should "listen to my body" when it comes to exercise. But if I did this, I would not run at all because when I start running my body is screaming very loudly STOP! NOW! REST! What is this NONSENSE?!

But if I ignore the screaming and keep putting one foot in front of the other something fantastic happens. I start getting into some kind of rhythm, and suddenly my gasping for breath becomes more regular and I start to concentrate on the world around me. And for those 30 minutes, I am able to shut out everything else and just see the snow and the sky and the tarmac.

And with the brilliant addition of a running playlist beating in my ears, I find that I am able to conquer that last "killer hill" (thanks Tina) at a reasonable pace and make it home - sweaty, out of breath and tired, but exhilarated, extremely pleased with myself, and happy too.

If I keep it up for a few more weeks, I might just brave that sports shop and treat myself to something with “go faster” stripes on it.

New baby

You know you should be worried when people start calling your husband to offer him congratulations.

After literally months of hearing non-stop about the pros and cons of this camera vs. that camera, ISO whatchamacall-its, full frame vs. cropped sensor and other blah de blah, Aksel finally went and bought a new one - a 5D Mark ll..... with lenses.

The man in the shop subtly won him over by mentioning that this was the one that "professionals" buy.

And now I am a camera widow. Left alone while he learns all the new possibilities that his new baby offers him.

The up side is that Aksel takes really good pictures. And now (so I am told) with this new desirable they are going to be even better. I am particularly interested in the new portrait lens that promises to smooth out the wrinkles and take off 5 lbs and 10 years ( I'm sure that's what he said, I mean at those prices it must perform some magic, mustn't it?).

I also inherit his "old" camera, which I need to learn how to use, but this is much more likely now that I am allowed to get my hands on it.

Things I learnt over Christmas

Today was the first day since December 16th that I have been alone in the house. We've had a really great Christmas and New Year - in stark contrast to several previous years that have been full of illness and loss and terrible news. Aksel and I had almost become accustomed to plans being dramatically and disastrously cancelled around December and January due to emergency hospital visits and other such fun stuff. But even as I kept half expecting for the fever to hit or the -itus to develop, it just didn't.

I almost don't want to mention how calm and beautifully bright it all was for fear of jinxing myself for the rest of January. But, it really was.

A couple of near-disasters that turned out ok in the end:

• The Tree - we totally overestimated the size of the living room, the strength of two adults (one of which was encumbered with a very cold two-year-old), and the size of the sledge, and we underestimated the effort required to chop down our own 60 kg, 6.5 ft evergreen in the forest and drag it back to our house. What started as a romantic idea of getting our own tree in the snow nearly turned into a scene from the National Lampoon Christmas Vacation. At one point, Aksel and I were both ready to give up and let the "grown-ups" sort it out. After much crying and mopping up of snow and reluctantly admitting that we were the grown-ups, we did manage to get a really beautiful (big) Christmas tree this year that everyone enjoyed dancing around in true Danish style.
  
• The Snow - my parents' flight on the 23rd December was cancelled. We panicked. I cried. I thought of all the food that no-one was going to eat. And then I managed to book them on a much later flight from a different airport. So they got here after all. And everyone sighed in relief (not least my sister and brother-in-law who thought they might have two extra unexpected guests for Christmas!)

And things I learnt:

• Samuel's optimal number of adults in the house at any one time is about 5. This pretty much satisfies his need for attention and activity. Throw in a few older children as a bonus and he is very happy. Little social satellite he is.


• Anna can devour books, especially if she is allowed to sit around in her pyjamas all day. Next year: buy her more books.




• Samuel can sleep in his cot in the day - who knew!?


• My cleaning mojo is dramatically increased by the amount of guest activity over the Christmas period. In fact, inviting people round generally is a very good incentive for the Little and Often method.


• Ditto having a large Christmas tree in the living room resulting in pine needles in places where pine needles should never go.


• I can make meringues.


• I can almost make sushi.




• I can make a very good chocolate fondant thingy.


• And mince pies!


• And I can run - Aksel and I have been encouraging each other to go for a run. And it is working. Despite freezing temperatures, snow, and darkness and the requirement for wearing a luminous (very fetching) yellow vest and numerous diode lights.
  

Little drummer boy

Giffer is coming

I have to admit that I actually don't like other people's kids (OPKs) very much. With a few exceptions, of course. This was not the case before I had my own children. Before I became a mother, I was happy to babysit and play with little kids and generally thought they were ok most of the time....

But then I had my own, and other children just seemed to pale into insignificance compared to the shining light and radiance and pure special snowflake-ness of my own offspring. To be brutally honest, OPKs annoy me, sometimes disturb me and usually tire me out (still with those exceptions - if you are reading this and I know your children, I obviously am talking about other-other people's kids, ok?). I think it is because you can't quite treat them in the same way as your own children - you have to be nice.

Um, that didn't come out right!

Anyway, I think before I am lynched for being mean about children 10 days before Christmas, I'll just say that the reason for this long pre-amble is to warn that the rest of this post is about my super special snowflake and his words. And although to me this is the most interesting and cute thing in the universe, I can totally get that it is just not so much to most other people.

(I amuse myself here because I am writing as though I have a readership of more than 2. And one of those is Grandma and I know she'll be interested. But, anyway!)

Here are some of the delicious things that Samuel is saying these days. He talks All.The.Time. A very loud running commentary about everything in his world as he sees it.

He says Giffer instead of Christmas - so he talks about the Giffer Man coming and Giffer Trees and Giffer lights.

He says Uncle Mushroom instead of Uncle Matthew.

He says Side Up Down instead of upside down.

He calls his sister Nanna Nessa instead of Anna Vanessa.

Grapes are Googlie goos

Olives are Ollies

Yoghurt is Ogg-Oh

And on and on. He is putting words together (Sam sit down there; Look mummy - man! Big Man! Funny!) and will confidently switch from English to Danish to talk to people he knows speak Danish. He will say "Se Farmor, hund!" and then turn to me and say "Look Mummy, dog!" He can name blue and green.
And he is just funny. He'll do a fake fall and then lie on the floor and say "Oh No! Fall Down! Sammy sad!" In the morning he'll say "Good......Morning Mummy" And he will often un-prompted thank you if you give him something, although he always says the Danish tak rather than thank you.

Anna showed him that when she pushed her tummy button she turned into a train with Whoo! whoo! sounds and train movements. He fully expects everybody's navel to have this same special skill.

It's all so innocent and brilliant to witness.

Wrapping up

Apparently "writing is the new praying". If this is true then "Bless me Father, for I have sinned - it's been a very long time since I wrote anything."

The "little and often" approach is obviously not my strength and certainly cannot be applied to my blogging skills. The "a lot and often" method, however, can definitely be applied to my shopping behaviour in December.

We have been busy:

• All 4 of us have celebrated a birthday in the last 7 days (we needed 90 candles on cakes). This is not the best planning - Aksel and I have a birthday on the same day and we have children with exactly 6 years and 4 hours between them - at least they get their own day, but one after the other....


• Anna had a party with all her class here - a cinema party no less. We had 18 eight year olds in the living room - 16 of them boys. Yes, it took me a while to recover and No, we are not doing it again next year.


• I baked bread rolls for Sam's birthday treat at nursery - they are not allowed cakes there. This did not faze Samuel at all - he was getting lots of cake at home. This is what he has said pretty much every day in December: Birthday mummy? Cake mummy? Candles? Hurrah! Sam too!


• We've been to England - the birthday party with my 11 year old niece was excellent. The surprise 40th birthday party for an old university friend of Aksel's? Not so much. (I really don't get surprise birthday parties - don't do one for me, ok? I'd rather be prepared. Plus, I don't like socially awkward situations and combining my in-laws and my crazy aunt with the friends I haven't seen for 5 years is not the best evening that I have in mind.)

I found my Christmas spirit too, along with the box of decorations. These two also helped:

Cleaning up

I've been back from London for ages but had lots of catching up to do - sleep, work, costumes for Christmas performances, more work, laundry, cleaning.

Cleaning is a bit of an emotional topic.

Although Aksel would quite like to be transported back to the 1960s Mad Men style home, where I fixed him a drink the moment he came home from work and his most taxing domestic duty might be to change a fuse, he actually does not believe it is all my responsibility to clean and is fairly willing to do his share.

The problem is that we just don't agree on when things need cleaning and on the level of dirt that is acceptable before a mop needs to be picked up.

A quick quiz of my girlfriends and I understand that this is a normal phenomenon. Apparently, men are just able to live with a lot more dirt and mess than women. Except for one of my friends who is married to an anal type, bordering on OCD. She moans about her husband's need to clean each individual tile to perfection in the bathroom, while I am actually wondering if I could borrow him for a while.

And while my girlfriends are sympathising with me and agreeing, they don't seem to have messy homes. How do they do it? If I am at someone's house and it is really clean and tidy, I admire their home and organizational skills. I wonder if they were rushing around to clean before I arrived or whether it always looks like this. And if I am in a slightly less clean, bit untidy house I will secretly feel a bit relieved and pleased. The thing is, although I like to think that I am not judging people by the tidiness of their house, I think that people are definitely judging me by the tidiness of mine.

A former colleague once admitted to me she used the Black-Plastic-Bin-Bag-Method to clean up. This is a mad dash round the house with a sack 15 minutes before guests are about to arrive.
I don't do this, but I am a big fan of the closely related Boot-of-the-Car-Method. This is used when you are trying to sell your house and have people coming round to see it Any. Minute. Now. You need to disappear the laundry basket, the mountain of toys in the living room, the pile of coats and boots in the porch and any other evidence that your home might lack storage space or the extra bedroom your potential buyers are looking for.

I know other people who have perfected the Little-and-Often-Method. This is probably my parents and other sensible people. Their homes always look ok and they are never worried to welcome unexpected guests. The mess never gets the better of them and they are basically on top of it. I wish I was in this category. Why I didn't inherit some proper cleaning gene I don't know.

But I think I am, unfortunately, in the All-or-Nothing-Method, which is just such a shame. I don't do anything unless I can do it properly, so I don't even start the cleaning unless I can complete the entire blitz of the vacuuming, mopping, dusting, re-arranging, re-cycling, polishing, and sanitizing in one go. And as I rarely (never) have 10 hours of uninterrupted time that I need to devote to cleaning, you can imagine how often this happens. My home looks extremely brilliant and clean and wonderful for about 1 hour every two months and then slowly declines into disarray until I am stepping over piles of stuff and eventually, after much huffing and puffing, the whole process starts again.

I would like to be the sort of domestic whirlwind that can transform the post-weekend debris and chaos into a hygienic and tidy place to be with just a few swiffs of the swiffer in the available 20 minutes. Because I do like Tidy. In fact, I thrive in Tidy and am a nicer person to be around. The mess is just stressful and annoying and makes me grumpy.

So this week I am changing my category. From now on I will be a Little-and-Often Goddess.

Failing that, I have a big pile of black bin bags.

It's all London baby!

I'm off to London tomorrow for Girls on tour 2. For details of GOT1, you can look here.

For some idea of what I'll be doing in London, you can look here (Gasp! I know! A guest blog post! Me! Feeling very honoured by the whole thing.)

In the meantime, I am busy packing and writing Aksel operating instructions for everything.

It is not easy but it is simple

Aksel and I used to comment on how easy Anna was as a baby and toddler. At the time, with nothing much to compare it to, we didn't fully appreciate the lack of tantrums. But we were rather smug and self-congratulatory about our great parenting skills.

This was until our son turned up and reminded us that nature might just play a bigger part than nurture and it's all just half-chance anyway.

Samuel really is a buddle of intense loving fury. He is at that stage where he literally thinks the world revolves around him. Right now everything in the universe is Mine! But I know that this is just "that phase" and it will pass. And besides being loving and consistent and trying to pre-empt obvious battles, there is really not much you can do to help your toddler acquire the life skills to function in the world. Or rather, you know the things you want them to learn (take turns, share, don't hit, say please, say thank you, say sorry, play nicely, don't throw that etc etc) and you can teach these things at appropriate intervals and hope for the best. It is not easy – but it is fairly uncomplicated.

The world of the nearly 8-year-old, on the other hand, I am finding much more complex. Right now with Anna we are navigating through topics such as racism, bullying, sex, war, poverty, death, disease and religion. And we are also trying to teach her about the ebb and flow of friendships, about taking responsibility, and about tidying up.

And as we find our way through these things, her shift in mood from elated to hysterical in 0.2 seconds has me floored.

I am finding this all so much more complicated than teaching an ego-centric toddler to share. The parenting “stuff” that worked wonderfully a couple of years ago just doesn’t seem to fit. So my once “easy” daughter is not so much these days and my “difficult” son is somehow much more straightforward. The things Samuel needs are easy and obvious to provide: Nappies, food, love.

Of course, food and love are just as important to Anna. And she’s really easy to love. But meeting her other needs – her need for independence and to make her own mistakes and for privacy or attention – these are harder to work out. Finding the right moment to offer a hug or a compliment and working out when to be stricter and which rules I’m going to insist on and where I’m going to draw the line can leave me spinning. And if I’m confused – imagine how she must be feeling.

We’d better hurry up and get it sorted out. It’s lucky we have a good few years before she is a teenager, because then, so I am told, you’d better know exactly what your boundaries and perspectives are.

Remember, remember

I have been told that it is November 5th and this means bonfire night, guy fawkes, gun powder, treason and plot. And most importantly fireworks. Sadly, we are not having any of these over here.

Fireworks are impossible to buy at this time of year - some sort of regulation thing. Which is kind of ironic when you see what the Danes are allowed to do with fireworks in their own back-garden on New Year's Eve. As far as I can tell, no regulations whatsoever. Until you have seen your neighbour cheerfully lug a great big Rocket and launcher past your garden fence and witnessed the bombardment of fire that is truly spectacular at midnight on 31st December, you won't really understand what I mean. Every year I think it is amazing that more homes aren't totally burnt down by slightly mis-directed rockets.

Anyway. I used to love November 5th as a child. I remember cold nights up the rec watching the village display and the guy burning on the fire. And baked potatoes eaten in the back garden with sparklers for company.

And I remember writing a song with a few other children and the music teacher at my junior school. It was part of a school competition to do with fire safety.

At this time of year (and around New Year's Eve, funnily enough) I can sometimes be heard singing it to my children:

Remember, remember the fifth of November,
The firework code:

Stand well back when you light your jumping jack!
Remember the firework code.

And if you have a dog or cat
Well just remember that
They should stay indoors!

And if you have a rocket
Don't put it in your pocket
Remember the firework code!

And on and on and on for several more verses I think. Luckily, I don't remember it all.

All the homes... No. 3

In my second and third year at university I rented a really dirty house in SE London with 4 others. The house had the type of grime that only years of non-cleaning and student neglect and apathy can inflict. I am sure I would be shocked to see the squalid conditions now, but I didn't mind so much then.

The "garden" was so overgrown that we literally could not open the backdoor. Until one day the landlord came round with a scythe and hacked away for a couple of hours - then we could sort of sit out there on nasty plastic chairs. But it also meant that the families of mice that had been previously making their nests in all that long grass were suddenly homeless. And they didn't waste any time calling squatter's rights in our kitchen. Maybe that's where my love of mice comes from. I remember having to stomp around loudly in the living room before entering the kitchen so that I would scare the little creatures away from the bread.

The house was very close to the train station and after a night out it took about 40 seconds to make it home in a quick sprint, dodging the drug pushers on the corner.

To start with, I shared with girlfriends who were all doing language degrees. This was a mistake as in my third year they all buggered off to Paris and Cologne and left me there all billy-no-mates to do my finals. My fellow psychology friend Rob moved in. He was really cool but brought along his neurotic, annoying Norwegian girlfriend and her (also Norwegian) friend (who turned out to be really nice and I still see in Copenhagen occasionally). We rented the final room to random-bloke-Paul, who liked to borrow my Calvin & Hobbes books, was an anarchist and sometimes received dodgy substances in the post (cleverly addressed to Mr M. Mouse, presumably to confuse the narcotics authorities).

I had one of the better rooms, downstairs with french doors (again). I remember sitting for many hours there, tapping away on my little Apple Macintosh that I got for my 21st birthday. It was an awful student house and a great couple of years.

In Bed and Happily Zombie Free

So, Halloween is coming...

The rather fantastic Nicola at micro-chasms wrote a post a while back about a game she played with her husband: Happy (and) in Bed?

The version that Aksel and I play is a bit more weird and has more elements of zombies, but essentially it is a similar idea. It started 12 years ago when we lived in Jutland. In the middle of nowhere. A little way down the road was a deserted (haunted), derelict (possessed) house.

On cold, stormy, very dark nights, while we lay all cosy in bed, we would ask each other: How much money would you need to.... and then the question would end with variations on the theme of getting up, (possibly) getting dressed, going to the creepy house and spending the night there (often in the basement), usually without a torch.

Although the question was obviously hypothetical, the rule is that you have to answer as though the money is on the table - yours for the taking.

Aksel is quite a lot cheaper than me and I definitely value my nightmare-free sleep more than him. He'd normally do it for 50,000 DKK whereas I would sometimes need that much just to get out of bed.

Years later, we moved to suburbia north of Copenhagen, in a cul-de-sac of tightly packed neighbours where everyone knew everyone else's business but pretended not to. The game changed a little.

There were no haunted houses in the vicinity. But if the Scandinavians actually used net curtains, they definitely would have been twitching. So the question was along the lines of How much money do you need to get out of bed right now, hop around naked to the neighbours and ask to borrow sugar? Extra money was awarded if you called upon the slightly freaky Ned Flanders-type family. Again, I valued my dignity and continued ability to live amongst these people slightly more than Aksel, who argued that they didn't speak to us anyway, so it wouldn't make much difference.

Since moving again this year, we are in the position to add the Zombie element to the question. There is a small building a little way down our street, full of nothing else but freezers, buzzing away. We think it is a left over from the days before folk had their own freezers, but a more plausible explanation is that it houses a dozen frozen zombies. All waiting to come and frighten us the day the power fails, eat our food (or us), and watch our telly.

Now Aksel, who has been known to read How to Survive a Zombie Attack guides, has got quite good at freaking himself out with this little story. And when the question comes up How much money do you need to go and spend the night in the zombie house... I am normally pretty willing to go for not so much, considering the inconvenience. Whereas on particularly dark nights Aksel can refuse all monetary compensation whatsoever.

Have you seen how fast those things can move? he asks.

The Nativity

There is a funfair squished into the centre of Copenhagen called the Tivoli. A mixture of fancy fountains and gardens and lights and roller coasters and restaurants and stalls. It is, with the exception of Bakken just up the road, the oldest amusement park in the world.

I'm hoping to go with the children soon as they do a really good Halloween.

We obviously went there, back in the 1970's, when I was on holiday with my parents.
After the summer holidays, back at school in England , my class was asked to respond to the inevitable "What did you do in your summer holidays?" question that the teacher always asks.
All the usual answers came up including beaches, icecream, watching TV, riding ponies and visiting grandparents. Until it got to my turn and I proudly told the teacher that my parents had taken me to The Nativity.

I remember her giving me a funny look and asking if I was sure.

(In hindsight the sub-text is clear -Sure that my parents had taken me to an account of the birth of Jesus? In July? In Denmark?)

Yes, I was sure!

And, I said (as if that wasn't enough weird already) we had also been to a beach where people were naked.

This was all probably quite shocking for a British infant school teacher to hear at that time. I'm sure she thought I had been to some naked religious festival, which was definitely not the done thing in my small village.

Anyway, the thing that I'm actually admitting here is that it was a very long time before I realised that I had got the name wrong and that the amusement park was not actually called The Nativity. I'm talking years and years. Long after I should have known better.

Good job he was easily impressed with my geography skills and could overlook the odd desire to visit a funfair where kids dressed up as shepherds by putting tea-towels on their heads.

(oh, and I might have got the name wrong for Tivoli, but I was right about the naked people.)

Kobberbryllup

Aksel and I celebrated our Kobberbryllup yesterday -which in Denmark is a sneaky way of getting in another wedding anniversary.

It is a celebration of the fact that you have been married for 12 and a half years. And that you are half way to the big 25 years - Silver Wedding Anniversary.

(The cynic in me suspects that perhaps this tradition exists because people don't necessarily expect to be with each other the full 25 years?)

Anyway... 12 and a half years ago, Aksel and I said that "we would" in the church in the village where I grew up (by the way, only the Americans say "I do" - Brits agree to our nuptials with a more willing "I will").

To celebrate this funny half-year anniversary, we had had rather ambitious dreams of weekends in Rome or Paris. In the end, partly due to our lack of organizational skill but mainly due to the lack of gazillions of kroner in the bank, we managed a full 24 hours without children, playing tourist in the lovely chic (and nearby) Copenhagen.

We ate cake at La Glace (where our Danish wedding cake originated from and just about made it to England in time for the wedding) and then we wandered and shopped around the city with no particular agenda or timeline. It was perfect. We ate dinner at the restaurant d'jour, MASH, and it was very good. Particularly the novel part where we got to complete whole sentences without being interrupted.

The night was spent in 5***** Hotel D'Angleterre, where just about any celebrity who has ever visited DK has also chosen to stay (as evidenced by the rather naff little name plaques "discreetly" placed by the lift). It was also pretty perfect. And the breakfast buffet this morning, eaten at a very civilized 10 o'clock, kept us going until 6 this evening.

All the homes I have lived in - No. 2

This was an all-girls halls of residence at university in London. I lived there in my first year. I was 18 and it was 1989.

I had a great room, with French doors opening out to the garden courtyard. My parents dropped me off, making sure I knew how to write a cheque so that I could pay the rent, before leaving me to it.

It was not my first choice of university or accommodation. But I grew to love being a student in London and found it easy to live there and make the city my home for the next three years. In terms of the halls, I was disappointed that I was going to be in an all-girls environment.... and although I made some good friends, I didn't really fit in with the girly cliques that quickly formed. I would have hated to go to an all-girls school!

But it proved not to be a problem in the end. We held great parties. The invitations went something like:

Party at halls of residence (the one where 117 women live). Plenty of alcohol. And vodka jelly.

Sounds classy eh?
At one of these parties, I met my future husband.

Cross

Sometimes I feel like I am being stretched so thin that I become see-through. And there is just not enough time in the day or enough of me to go around.

With my children it can feel like I am trying to pat my head and rub my tummy at the same time to meet their very different needs while trying to memorise the entire works of Shakespeare.

And this particular circus act has to sometimes cut corners. Doesn't everyone elses too? Apparently not.

Apparently homemade (organic, plucked from your own garden) food is better than stuff from a jar or a tin.

Yes, I know that. We all know that. Do you have to be so arrogant and superior about the fact that you never open a tin of soup for your children? Or make a quick spaghetti bolognese with sauce from a - shock, horror - jar?

Intentionally making other people feel like lesser parents or indeed people just because you have lots of time to stand in your kitchen stirring and chopping does not make me want to keep talking to you.

Copenhagen cool

Isn't it nice when parents cut out articles from newspapers for you? Even underlining the important bits. Because they know you don't have time to read the newspaper. I appreciate it, anyway.

My parents recently sent me a nice article about cycling (from the Guardian, I think?). The British journalist in this article has fun cycling round Copenhagen and is a bit in awe of the super gorgeous Danes on their bikes, enjoying their bike lanes. What he doesn't seem to realise is that this is not a new phenomenon and it is not in response to green politics in the last few years (although, of course, that has helped). Bicycling has always been a good way to transport yourself around Copenhagen.

And the Danes manage to do it in a totally un-nerdy way. If you are in doubt what the beautiful Danes on bikes look like you should take a look at this great blog: http://www.copenhagencyclechic.com/

It helps, of course, that the bicycle lanes are wide, clearly marked with a big picture of a bike and separated from the cars with a proper curb. And drivers are usually well trained in looking out for the bikes. You don't feel like you are taking your life in your hands in quite the same way as cycling in London used to make me* feel.

In other Copenhagen-in-the-spotlight news - The United Nations Climate Change conference is being hosted here in December. And about half of Copenhagen is getting shut down tomorrow when Barack Obama comes to visit for about 10 hours when he tries to get the 2016 Olympics hosted in Chicago. Even Oprah Winfrey is coming.

Exciting stuff.

If I could just figure out how to do the cycle chic, I might even start to feel a little bit at home.

*ok, if I am really honest I have to admit that it was Aksel that did the cycling in London. But he used to come back and give me dramatic accounts of near-misses and crazy British drivers and Why aren't we moving to Denmark already? tirades, that I feel justified in writing "me". And it sounds better doesn't it.

I blame my parents

When I first told my parents I had a Danish boyfriend, I think my mum was just relieved he wasn't Australian. Not that she has anything against Australian blokes. It is just that she didn't want me doing what she had done: moving half way around the world for love.

Denmark seemed pretty close in comparison to Australia. Unlike her own Australian family who very rarely could manage the long and expensive trip to England from Sydney, she knew she could hop on a plane and visit Copenhagen in a couple of hours.

And it wasn't as if my parents weren't familiar with the country. We went to Denmark a total of 3 (or maybe 4) times before I was 9 years old. It was the first experience for me of "going abroad". It was a bit of an unusual holiday destination for Brits in those days (maybe it still is?).

Here I am picking flowers with my sister at Kronborg (Hamlet's) castle in 1974.

And admiring the Little Mermaid. Look at those little legs!

Imagine what all those Scandinavian adventures did to my young impressionable self. I'm sure it had a big effect and is probably part of the reason I've ended up living here.

At least it is the reason that when I very first met Aksel in London, in my first year at university, and he said that he came from Copenhagen, I was able to reply,"Oooh, Denmark, I've been there!"

He was easily impressed. The girl he'd been chatting to before me had thought it was part of Stockholm.

Sleepovers part 2

We've been talking about it for a long time and Anna's first sleepover at our place this weekend was a big success. It contained all the essential ingredients: best little girl friend, lots of chocolate and sweets, dressing up, make-up "borrowed" from my make-up bag, films, Wii games, a very bubble-ly bath together that turned the bathroom into a water park, dancing around to the Hairspray soundtrack and staying up very late giggling.

I pretended not to notice the chocolates sneaked away to be eaten at "midnight". I was pretty easy going about the spilt chocolate milk. I kept my cool with the make-up incident. I happily mopped up the flood in the bathroom. And at 10 pm I said that they really should be going to sleep now. I left them whispering away, but when I checked 10 minutes later they were both asleep.

It brought back lots of memories of staying over at my friends' houses when I was Anna's age. I was always dreadful at going to sleep. And I really disliked being the only one left awake after everyone else succumbed to tiredness. I remember that hyped up and over-tired feeling and I still really dislike being the last one to bed.

Unfortunately, I was up in the night several times with Samuel, who has some virus that gave him 40 in fever. So I was less than pleased to be woken at 5.40 am on Sunday morning by loud giggling and banging coming from Anna's room. You'd think they would want to sleep late wouldn't you, like any other civilised person. We had to go in three times and threaten Anna with no sleepovers ever again (we are evil parents) unless they kept the noise down until 7 am.

Sadly, the best little girlfriend had some news. Her family is unexpectedly moving country in four weeks, so Anna was very sad about that. She has a couple of other friends who are also moving soon. The high turnover rate is the big disadvantage of an international school. We talk about it a lot. It is tough, especially now she is getting older and friendships are becoming much more important. We'll have to see how it goes, but none of us are convinced that a move to the Danish system is the easy answer.

Needless to say, everyone was very tired yesterday but we managed to grump and cranky ourselves through the afternoon without resorting to violence. We even got Anna's homework out the way with only a few tears (mine).

And it was not the best time to have to get through a trip to the out-of-hours doctor with Samuel, but the verdict was optimistic: non-specific-virus-not-serious-not-pig-flu.

Willy

With the number of words that Sam is saying gaining exponential speed, I have been taking another look at some of the resources out there for raising bilingual children. I recently found out that the way we communicate in our family has a name. It is called OPOL - or one parent, one language. Aksel and I both only speak our mother tongue to the children. And we expect them to use that language when they speak to us. This method works really well for us because we all speak and understand the "other" language. We don't need to use another method that involves a "round the dinner table language" that everyone understands. When we are all together, Anna simply switches from Danish to English, depending on who she is speaking to. It seems very natural for her to do this.

When she was little, I was quite concerned about her learning English properly. What if she doesn't talk to me in English? What if we never have that natural communication? What if my parents can't understand her? All my worries were totally unfounded and she was babbling away in both languages by 18 months. And by 2, she had pretty much sorted it out. Daddy spoke Danish, Mummy spoke English. That is just how her world is.

We are doing the same with Sam, this time without even really thinking about it. He already has lots of words in both languages and uses the Danish version (bil, tog, nøgle) with Daddy and the English version (car, train, keys) with me, already quite consistently.
It will be interesting to see what language Anna and Samuel use with each other as they get older. Right now, Anna mostly chats in English with him, but it is quite one-sided.
Sometimes Anna will say a few words in Danish to me to wind me up and to make fun. Lille mor she will say. Må jeg ikke nok, lille mor?* She knows this kind of expression makes my skin crawl ....and makes me laugh.

When Anna and I talk English to each other in Denmark, people sometimes assume that we can't understand Danish. We were in a lift together in a shopping centre the other day. Two boys got in with us. They were perhaps 11 or 12 years old. They noticed that we were speaking English and they giggled with each other about it. Then one of them suddenly said very loudly: Tissemand! It means a boy's willy. Not a really, really rude word. But probably also not something you would talk about in a lift with strangers. They obviously thought it was quite hilarious until they realised that we had understood exactly what it meant. He was quite embarrassed when I said in Danish something like: "Well, that's a rather strange thing to shout about in public!"

Afterwards, I was kicking myself for not coming up with a better line like: "Really? Where?" Or "What, is it not very big?" Although, the poor lad was probably traumatised enough by the situation, without any extra help from me.

*roughly translated it means in a very creepy and a little bit disturbing way "little mummy, please can I, little mummy?"

Clever title

Oh, it has been roughly 6 years since I last posted, but a lot has been going on, ok.

Three more members of this family (bringing the total to 100% in case you are not counting) have since had the sickness mentioned in the last post. Enough said about that.

We've also been able to:

• meet the teacher and get the new homework instructions, the swine flu instructions, the after-school activities sign up list, the school transportation permission slip, and a seemingly unending list of things we need to remember on any given school night
• ride ponies at the nursery party
• find the new gymnastics class (Anna took part in the class, my job was to get us all there, in one piece, without swearing too much). (I think I'd give myself a C minus, but A for effort.)
• fix the freezer (ongoing)
• do some work that actually pays (I had a meeting with a customer for a change; this required wardrobe overhaul and the work is also ongoing...)

And I've been rather stuck. Stuck with the same things on my To Do list. Stuck with the same concerns whirring round my head. Stuck with half-written blog posts. Stuck with all the repetitive things of everyday life that just have to be done.

None of it is very interesting. And it doesn't make for good writing.

I'm expecting that burst of energy and flash of inspiration any time now.