Scenes with a three year old

I may have to rethink movies with Caroline. This just in after a particularly painful thirty minute reenactment of cousin Colin in The Secret Garden. In case you don't remember the 1993 movie adaptation, bed-ridden Colin has a powerful set of lungs and the ability to throw himself heedlessly to the floor in a fit worthy of a three year old's awe. Tonight after watching the movie with me, Caroline rehearsed Colin’s tantrum in lieu of going to bed. She particularly worked on the high pitched screams interspersed with sobbing bit. When I started to sing along to match her highest shriek, she giggled but kept up the show until I turned off the lights and left her to her own devices. She is now humming to herself somewhere around middle C. Peace in our time.

C’s adoption of Colin at his worst isn’t too surprising. She has a habit of admiring the bad guy in a movie. During The Incredibles phase our household went through a year ago, Caroline liked to pretend she was the Bad Boy (aka Syndrome) and imagined every shoe into a rocket boot. When we pull out Wallace and Gromit: The Wrong Trousers, she hales Feathers the penguin as an old friend. I’ve caught C practicing speedy rail laying with her train set in case she needs to help Feathers out in his next venture. At least Feathers keeps his voice down.

And really, Caroline’s not so chatty either - talking about her day ranks way below flossing teeth on her list of fun things to do. She does like to act though. Today while we waited to sign her up for kindergarten, she tagged behind one prospective school mate, following him everywhere until he climbed up a slide backwards. Marie and I had just told her in both Czech and English not to climb up that very slide, and she obediently watched without following him, but then she turned to us and, flat of hand gesturing towards boy, twisted her mouth and narrowed her eyes so that we all could know she was thinking, "And yet, HE can climb the slide?" "Our little actress," Marie said, "our herečka." (Sadly, despite her example of instantaneous cross cultural communication, C did not get into that kindergarten - we're holding our thumbs for the next).

Ultimately, while Will and I might shake our heads and imagine that Caroline suffers a severe case of Paradise Lost syndrome (that classic condition most readers of Milton fall prey to, characterized by guilty admiration for the evilest character in Christiandom), I suspect that C just realizes most bad guys get juicy parts and short lines - just right for a less than chatty actress, with a world of faces at her command.

Hello Garfield

Caroline is an affectionate person, to a certain point. At night when I put her to bed she’ll hook her arms around my neck and not let go, coercing me to lie next to her for just a little bit. It is hard to resist that hook, since so often these days she spends her time practicing to be twelve, scowling at me and telling us vigorously to shhh when we say something distasteful to her (as in, just about anything she didn’t think of herself). So the hook works, and she can keep me for that little bit, until her delight turns to wiggles and she starts poking and prodding, or (if she’s feeling particularly silly) licking my glasses. But while she’s physically demonstrative, she’s not much for saying I love you, and has come up with her own version of the last bit of my good night ritual, when I say I love you, and she says hello garfield.

Helloo Garfield.

It took me a week or two to figure out this Garfield business, and it wasn't until tonight, lying beside her while we sang our good night songs and enjoyed the end of a fine weekend, that I realized what had happened. When I said I love you, she used to mumble I luv you or even I guv you. Then one night she switched to I Garfield, then to Hi Garfield. Tonight, perhaps inevitably, she decided on Hello Garfield. As a teenage three year old I guess she thought that even the cool kids couldn’t figure that one out, should she slip up and say it on the playground one day.

Card games

I read an article last weekend that claimed an "alarming number" of parents in the United States report that they talk to their children for only a few minutes each day. I started to think about my conversations with Caroline. Would reading books count as a chat? Probably not, Caroline’s favorite books right now are poetry that we sing in our own form of recitative. Sometimes I can get her to talk about her books with me, but mostly she will interrupt anything she thinks sounds educational, turn my head back to the page, and demand that I "stop and read!"

Then I thought about dinner time. We always do ask her how her day has been, and talk about whether she went to the park, but the majority of our discussions seem to dwell on whether she will or will not chew her food all the way through. I decided we needed to expand our conversational mediums.

This morning, full of resolution, I sat down with Caroline and tried to teach her to play a matching card game called Snap. In our family, playing cards has always been one of the best times to have a conversation. Someone will put out the cards, softened to a velvety patina with age, set up a bowl of M&Ms and tall, ice filled glasses of water, and we’ll draw to deal, then start a round of Hearts, Spades, or Canasta, depending upon who calls the game. We’re pretty competitive, so we’ll pay attention to the game, but mostly it is a good way to be together and to catch up.

Caroline, like most toddlers, resists rules. Each time we try to play a game, I bring out my unoriginal explanation that a game, with two people, needs some sort of rule to make it fun for each person. But really, I haven’t quite come up with the best way to explain this annoying phenomena to her - some clever explanation that will fit into her toddler perception of world revolving around self. As usual, the game this morning didn’t go over very well, because she wanted to hold all the cards, and each time I placed a card down, she’d snatch it up and say, "mine, Caroline’s card!"

Finally I asked her if she wanted me to play with her and explained (again) that if you want to play with other people you have to share. I thought that we’d have to pack it up and go back to reading books. I waited. Caroline waited. We sat there for a good two minutes, Caroline holding onto all of the cards while I contemplated the unmade bed, the dishes in the sink. Then she handed me half of the deck so that we could try again. We played four rounds of Snap. We talked about matching colors together, and how green meant go and red meant stop. Then the babysitter came and I went to work.

Krtek, the Little Mole

Krtek does not live in America. He is originally Czech, and like many Czechs, he likes to travel, but he’s never found a niche in the U.S., never had the chance to settle down and stay awhile.

Krtek grew up in Kladno, a mining town a few kilometers from Prague, drawn into life by Zdenek Miler in the 1950s. You can find him in 62 short films, now collected into DVDs in the Czech Republic and Germany, where his films were produced. Our European friends watched him as children and when they come to Prague and walk past a store where he stands patiently waiting to be noticed, they do. "Der Kleine Maulwurf!" our German friends say, while Caroline argues with them - "ne, Krtek! Krteček!" His films are short, about five minutes each, filled with music, but few words. The shorts are so expressive Caroline laughs with joy when she sees them, and it is a thing to hear, that bubbling up of delight caused by such a fellow - a small miner all in black, his hands and whiskers his most expressive features.

Krtek isn’t a complicated character. He doesn’t outwit anyone, engage in long chase scenes, or become the fall guy for physical comedy. He is simply a kind soul, good to his friends, something of an environmentalist and an excellent gardener, when he isn’t expanding his mole hill. His curiousity and willingness to try give him great charm. My favorite shorts take place right in his front yard, beneath the cherry tree that stands as a calendar for his seasons.

Caroline’s pick would be "Little Mole and the Snowman" (Krtek a snehulák), produced in 1998, towards the end of Miler’s career. The movie opens in winter, as Krtek builds a snowman that then comes alive. They play, eat icicles, and become good pals. When it turns warm, predictably, the snowman begins to melt. But Krtek refuses to let his creation down and saves him by taking a trip to the top of the coldest mountain around and leaving his friend there, safe and sound while Krtek heads back to his cherry tree alone, to wait for the seasons to change. When winter arrives again, the snowman skis down the mountain to the film’s happy conclusion.

I like this short too, because to me it is a story about a story. Both Krtek and Miler have made friends with their creations - love them in fact. In the film, Krtek doesn’t want his snowman to change and melt; it would clearly be the end for his friend. I imagine Miler working out the plot while thinking about his own future. Growing older, and ill with Lyme disease, Miler declared a few years ago that he would not sell off his rights to Krtek, because he believed changes made by Krtek's new creators would be the death of the little mole. Perhaps Miler felt that, like the snowman, Krtek would have to go away to be preserved, safe and sound.

Let's just hope that with the increase in digital distribution those films that now exist will eventually find their way to mainstream audiences in America. In the meantime, you can order Krtek dvds from amazon.de, or buy them in stores in the Czech Republic.

Filed under: Czech Krtek toddler tales

Silver is also beautiful

Yesterday morning we watched Kateřina Neumannová battle through the Olympics cross country pursuit 7.5 +7.5 kilometer, known in Czech as the skiatlonu. It was a super race to watch, particularly as we saw all 15 kilometers, uncut by shots back and forth to other events or long ad breaks (so usual in U.S. Olympics coverage). When you watch all forty minutes of a cross country race, you can better fathom how grueling that sort of match must be, and we cheered for each woman when she crossed the finish line and threw herself onto the snow. Like the rest of the Czech Republic, we were a little sad because Neumannova, despite pulling ahead in the last two kilometers, didn’t get her gold, but as she said in an interview yesterday: "I stříbro je krásné." Silver is also beautiful.

Caroline watched with us, pointing out Neumannova’s racing number 3 whenever she showed up in a shot. When the service people started passing out bottles of water, C tried to pass over her sippy cup to the skiers too. The race over, we finally were able to peel her away by promising we would find some snow to race through ourselves.

Dressed, finally (the epitaph to every morning with Caroline) we headed out the door and over to our local park, Riegrovy Sady. Will hitched our new sled over one shoulder, and Caroline happily swung along between us.

On the way, Will mentioned he’d never gone sledding on anything but a cookie tin in his university years, up north. He was nervous. “How exactly do you steer this thing, and what about stopping?“ Since anything is easier to sled on than a tin square, I thought he’d have no trouble, once he got started, but we both wondered if there would be any snow left, since the streets were running with water and slush from the warm weather (1C/33F).

The park snow stood, mostly unmelted and covered with runner tracks. We found a hill, and Will and the sled went on their first run. Will had a great time, the sled did well too. Then, Caroline’s turn. We tried each hill in the park, until we decided the long double drop facing west, towards the castle, was our favorite.

Caroline loved everything about sledding - she hallooed and whooped on each run down, sitting snug in our laps; on trips back up the hill, she held on firm and encouraged us with giddyups. She seemed older somehow, chatting easily about the crunch of the snow, gloves versus pockets, the best way to carry the sled over cement (with her still on it). Before she went to sleep last night, she imagined her reading chair into a sled and bade me take the chair out, through curves and steep slopes until we landed back in her room and it was time to climb into bed.

Filed under: winter toddler tales

Dinner with echo

Having a conversation with Caroline now is a bit like having a conversation in an echo chamber with an active imagination. I’d guess this is true of most two year olds, but C’s desire to mimic us and everything else around has engulfed even her desire to say no. Add characters from the books that she reads (and movies she watches), and you really never know what might come up in your next Caroline chat.

Will was not home for dinner tonight, so our dinnertime conversation was even more surreal than usual.

Caroline, here’s your soup.
...Soup. Polevku
Polevka?
...Polevka. Hm... Beans. And big carrots. Little carrots too for Rabbit.
You’re going to give Rabbit the carrots?
...Give Rabbit the carrots?
Are you going to give Rabbit the carrots that you’re talking about?
...Give Rabbit the carrots?
Right, okay. How about another bite, yum.
...Snowman, I need a hammer for the snowman.*
Okaaay. How’s the soup, do you like the soup?
...Yes.

* We have hung little paper snowmen on our windows, and Caroline thinks they need to be hammered in place if they, for example, blow in the breeze. The last time we had carrots for dinner the snowmen got twisted up from a draft and we had to straighten them out. Not that I remembered the carrot/hammer/snowman link until after dinner. When it's just you filling in those memory connections in long skip-about conversations, deja vu moments happen more often than epiphanies.

Filed under: toddler_tales

Snowy Saturday

Snow has fallen all day, and the sidewalks and streets are covered. Tomorrow, if we’re all recovered from a cold that snuck into our flat, we’re going to take Caroline out for a ride on her sled. It has been waiting for her since just after the last big snowfall, when I bought it as insurance against too many weeks of city slush (sleds, like umbrellas, seem to keep precipitation at bay).

In the meantime, we have stacked books up like LPs on an old turntable, waiting their turn to be read. Caroline likes to stick to one author at a time, so we read first through Seuss, then Boynton and the Corduroy books before we get to the singletons. When it all gets too sedentary, Caroline shows off her tumbling act on our big bed - one somersault after another and then takes a few loops around the flat until she is back in the kitchen and a song catches her in mid step and she has to stop to dance to its beat before she begins her loops again, or stops for another book.

Filed under: winter toddler_tales Seuss music

Keeping up with the two year olds - a Czech word list for toddlers (and their parents)

On a whim, today I asked Caroline how to say 'window' in Czech. She said "oko, ne, okno". And I thought, "At last, translation services!" The image of a dictionary emerging from the pools of primordial slime flickered through my head.

But she wouldn’t repeat the show for Will. Instead, she climbed onto my office chair and ordered me to turn her around and around - "točit" she said. Each time we passed the keyboard, I tried to add another word to the list of Czech words she does use regularly around the simpletons who are her parents. Most are standard Czech words, but a few are what I call children’s Czech, or simply colloquial Czech that C’s picked up from our babysitters.

She hasn’t surpassed us yet (only a matter of time), but she has added to our Czech vocabulary. Who knew heiss (hejs?)had wiggled its way into Czech?!

Our toddler primer, or words C employs

točit - turn houpi - swing dolu - down nahoru - up ovečka - little sheep prasátko - pig pes - dog kočička - kitty cat slon - elephant panenka - doll balónek - little balloon boty - shoes nohy - leg čepice - hat t'api t'api - walk

pojd‘sem - come here nejde - not working není - isn‘t hači - sit down haji - lie down čurat - pee bobek - little pellet, poop tak - so to - it tam - there tady - here ne - no prosim - please děkuju - thank you ahoj - hello/goodbye

heiss - hot ham - food papat - to eat vejce - egg kaše - gruel ;-) mlíko - milk sušenka - cookie bonbon - sweet spinkat - to sleep plakat - to cry holčička - little girl pán - man mimi - little baby písek - sand pá pá - bye bye

Warning: some of these spellings are probably off, as no dictionary I've found includes haji, let alone tapi tapi. If anyone has better spelling suggestions, please send them in, I'll mail you a postcard as thanks!

Update: haji is from hajat, and t'api t'api from t'apat (also perhaps tlapat?). They can both be found in Lingea Lexicon - if you know what you're looking for.

Filed under: Czech words toddler_tales

A steel guitar sketch

Today Caroline decided that she wanted to draw Will’s steel guitar. "I draw tar" she said, grabbed pen and paper and sat down beside the guitar, drawing lines from one page to the next until I offered to help her (it was my work notebook after all). Caroline handed over the pen and pad quite officially and then stood by the guitar, posing solemnly, hand on its neck for an entire ten seconds until she considered the job done and came over to see the results.

I drew for her the guitar's shoulders, its tuning pegs and the sharp curl of string ends. I named the frets and the resonator box and after every line drawn and identified she repeated the names back to me. Then she took the scarf that I had given her at breakfast for her baby doll (a chilly morning), and wound it around the guitar’s neck. "There" she said, "now we go out." Instead, we sketched the scarf into the drawing.

It is a mighty fine looking guitar and I don’t wonder that she has taken to it more than to Will’s other instruments. It sits out for one thing, free of its case, reflecting the light from our balcony window off its steel brightness, ice cold from its spot by the door. And it is loud - even the carpet beneath it can't dull its sound.

Sometimes Caroline will slip away from a babysitter and run in here as I work, to stand by the guitar and pluck a note, then use it as her cue to sing for me until I swoop her up and carry her back out to the kitchen or to her room, kissing her for all she’s worth until it is time to go back to my work, back to solitude and concentration.

And if you ask me, would I trade the work or the time together, I'd answer - both are made sweeter by the other, like a note from a steel guitar, resonant from its metal casing, but clear, too.

Filed under: toddler_tales music

2.5 and singing

Caroline turned two and a half just before New Years. In all the holiday craziness, we didn’t even note it and it wasn’t until someone asked me if she was nearly three that I realized she still had six months to go. Something about the end of December makes me think that she will not be celebrating her half birthdays the way my sister and I did when we were little - with homemade brownies and much excitement that we could now say we were officially something and a half.

Now that she is a grand 2.5, I thought it a good time to write up what she is up to for all of those long distance relatives and friends out there who might be saying - okay, enough about Prague, what is Caroline doing these days?

So let me tell you a story: Sunday, walking home from a long trek back from the suburbs (and the biggest shopping mall in Central Europe - a story all to itself), she gamely trotted along, strung between my hand and Will’s, still moving forward though she had almost fallen asleep in the metro coming home. "Duvet please," she asked when we first got on the train and she stretched out on my lap.

Off the train, she was still awake enough so that, coming around the corner from our metro stop, on the last few blocks of our trip, she could look up at the sky and find a friend.

"Moon!" she said, and there was the nearly half moon shining down on us during the day. Almost everything that Caroline likes has a song attached to it, so she sang "Mr. Moon Moon, shine upon me moon" over and over again at a whisper and then at a shout, singing down the street until we reached home, her bed and Caroline-sized duvet, which she pulled up to her chin and promptly fell asleep beneath.

C recognizes the differences between Czech and English pretty well now, and sings English songs with us and Czech songs with her babysitters. I heard today that she sang "Kocka leze dirou" throughout lunch at the local hospoda, or at least until the waiter could (in double quick time) bring Caroline and our babysitter their soup and dumplings. Luckily for us, her voice has gotten a lot better than it used to be, and she sings in tune to herself. Singing with someone else, she still raises her voice a second above us (to hear herself better?), but if I turn it into a game, I can get her to sing along with me, and we’ll play with pitch - moving notes in and out of tune like a pair of bag pipes getting warmed up.

Filed under: toddler_tales music

Mikulaš eve, Celebrating St. Nicholas in Prague

December 5th, 7 pm - angels and devils and St. Nicks roam the streets, or actually, make a beeline to the biggest Christmas street fair in our neighborhood. The devils out number the angels and the Nicks by much, maybe because it is more fun to be the guy carrying a bag full of coal than the angel with her basket of candy or St. Nicolas (Mikulaš here) with his hockey stick. We head for the park with Caroline but when we get there, we stop, realizing that we are Mikulaš greenhorns when it comes to kids. All we've ever done before is check out the costumes and eat the tinfoil-wrapped Santas that appear in every store. Now that Caroline is old enough to join in, what exactly is it that she is supposed to do?

We squeeze through the crowds, trying to decipher the process: little kids meet big kids dressed in costume and say a poem or sing a song, then the big kid gives the little kid a piece of candy. Simple, but how to meet the costumes? We blame our coats and foreign looks and sheepishly trail along the outskirts of the park until we find a bench to perch on and reconnoiter.

Caroline is excited, despite her parents‘ shyness. "Mikulaš!" she yells, throwing her arms wide, as she watches kids earn candy by the score. She has already gone out once earlier, with Lucie and Marie, and she apparently knows the routine, but clearly we don’t. So I call our babysitter and ask what we’re doing wrong. "Do we say something special to get them started? Like 'dobry vecer andel?' And do we tip?" Thankfully Lucie is so amused by the idea of me saying 'good evening angel' that she misses my last comment (I’m still blushing).

"Sure," she says, "just say 'hi angel, hi čert' and they will talk to Caroline." Just knowing it is as simple as that, I stop feeling like I’m on an alien planet and start relaxing and within five minutes of us rejoining the crowds, the trios are swooping down on Caroline to rattle their bags, stick out their tongues and ask if she has been a good girl this year.

Filed under: Prague holidays expats toddler tales

Play dough breaks concentration barrier

Saturday: Imagine a house full of furniture covered in sheets, windows open to the world (and to the weather), painters swarming about in overalls and Will at work. Caroline seems unperturbed by the chaos and is discussing her favorite baby doll with the painters, trying to eat a baguette and carry three dolls at the same time. She is not letting them paint. So I pull out my secret weapon, something I’ve tucked away for just such a moment, or Christmas - the Kids Dough Factory ™.

Not exactly Play-Doh, but I have high hopes that the recipe for moulding dough is not an intricate one, and I make Caroline swear that this time she won’t eat it. Or rather, I repeat myself three times until she finally looks me straight in the eye and says “Yes Mommie, okay” which is what she says when she decides that I am not going to stop talking until she agrees to whatever it is I am saying to her.

Miraculously, she doesn’t eat the dough. Instead she sits in a chair, pulled up to the table, and plays. And plays, and two hours later is still playing. We test all the moulds that come with the kit, and make a great deal of blue pasta (spaghetti shaped and something we name star-allini). She loves having her own plastic knife to carve with, and quickly figures out how to open the dough containers with her teeth (I stop her when I can), but mostly she just wants to play pretend with the little animals we sculpt. The whale gets a blanket and takes a nap and the cat family each get their own bowl, which she fills up with some of the blue spaghetti while I make her lunch. Sandwich in hand, she keeps playing.

Finally, I crack. This much concentration has worn me out and I call for a nap. It’s a chancy affair, what with the wind blowing through the house and the painters listening to Elvis on the radio, but I pop Caroline onto the sofa in my office, the one room free of painters and still heated, and start singing. Lullaby after lullaby, and my eyes are closing but Caroline is still wide-eyed. Even “Stay Awake, Don’t Close your Eyes” from Mary Poppins doesn’t work for more than the time it takes me to sing it.

The painters leave and we are back with the dough factory, fashioning winter coats for the cats who C says are chilly, and who are noticeably drying out to become a flakier version of the silky smooth green and yellow cats we’d fashioned, a few hours before.

Filed under: toddler tales creative

"Raz, dva, tri - on your mark, get set...

Go!" Caroline cries, and then waits as Lucie and I launch ourselves across the kitchen floor in a hopping contest. She waits until we have landed, takes a demure hop herself and applauds our efforts. "Again" she cries, and again we hop, she waits and then claps. Clearly this style of director‘s chair organization gives her a thrill, especially when it involves the grownups who are most likely to tell her what to do all day. At those rare moments when her babysitters and I are all together with her - on birthdays, a Czech Christmas cookie session, lessons in mushroom cooking - she directs us into a circle, and all holding hands we dance around singing Kolo kolo mlýnský to the end. "Udělalo bác!" we say and all fall down. All of us, of course, except Caroline who watches us grownups acting silly and then helps us stand up to twirl around once more.

Lucie dances with Caroline in the afternoons when C won’t take a nap and she’s chock full of the energy that running laps around a small flat can’t burn off. They dance to anything with a beat - Pop goes the weasel, hip hop, Ravel's Bolero. When I stop work and join Caroline in the kitchen she’ll show off her moves - grooving with her shoulders and twirling herself around, then moments later, standing up straight, hands clasped behind her back, to sway from toe to toe like a little Czech girl in a folk dance. Sometimes Caroline likes to dress up for the music, and she’ll race to her room and open her closet door to examine her possibilities. We’ll top turtleneck and cords with her Danish sun dress, or add a fairy skirt with wings to match. Then she moves on to my closet and says "nice dress Mommie," and I’ll pull on the beautiful blue ball gown I’ve borrowed from my friend Marjorie and flip our iPod to Pink’s "Get the Party Started" and we’ll dance.

Top 10 toddler taming tips from Caroline, age 2.5

1. If a kid chews up crayons, switch to colored pencils - grownups aren't that good at resisting temptation either.
2. If you catch a temper tantrum early enough, simple distraction still works: ex. look at Dada, he’s eating a banana!
3. Time out is mightily effective, as long as you are consistent. Bonus: kids learn to count to forty pronto.
4. A bag full of balloons can fill up an entire afternoon and the living room too, needless to say, try this only if fully supervised.
5. Just keep reading to her. Don’t ask if she wants to, saying no is way too easy when you are 2.
6. On the other hand, a little TV can be relaxing for everyone, especially after a long day on the swings.
7. Want to get a toddler's attention? Get down on her level and look her in the eye.
8. Naps are boring, so parents need to be even more boring than a nap. If there is a crowd of people around, fuggedabout it.
9. Never try to force a kid to eat something she doesn’t think she wants. Coercision is an altogether different animal.
10. Even if a toddler looks like she isn’t paying attention to you, and you suspect she’s got other things on her mind, like where the head of her baby doll is and why pink, heart shaped pencil erasers don’t taste as good as they look, chances are she really is listening. Getting an answer out of her, that is another story.

Filed under: toddler tales Friday fun

Oof, Arf and Ruff: Bedtime tales

Every few nights, when Caroline has settled into bed on time, the lights are out, the songs are sung and I’m not in a rush, I’ll ask, “story?“ C always says yes (anything to keep from going to sleep), and so I tuck her in, stretch out on the floor beside the bed and tell a tale.

Every story starts the same way: “Once upon a time, maybe yesterday, Oof, Arf and Ruff decided to go find their friend Caroline.“

Because she’s still so little, we don’t go far in these stories. Usually the three dogs (Oof, Arf and Ruff are talking dogs, naturally) will meet up with C at the park, or if it's rainy they’ll visit somewhere close by that Caroline knows well. Today they went to the big church a few blocks away, to see if they could hear any bells playing. There they heard a baby crying, and Oof with his ears, Arf with his nose and Ruff standing up as tall as he could stand, found a little one-year-old lost and crying beside the organ. Caroline stepped in to cheer up the baby and hold his hand to guide him back to his mother, who was just around the corner.

Any lines that C has in her story, she likes to say back to me, and when we finish she’ll briefly review our tale. “Baby,“ she said tonight, “Come on, okay, here’s Mommie. Thank you, bye bye.“

Filed under: toddler tales words dogs

Hair cuttery - don't try this at home

Caroline’s hairdo is currently suffering from parental pride, or hubris, if you'd rather. Because, though not Olympian in extent, our overconfidence in our abilities to cut hair have resulted in a toddler with bangs that define uneven.

My line (and this time, I’m sticking to it) is that all would have gone straight, if not horizontal, had the father of the household persisted in his job of keeping the daughter’s chin up. But like anyone who has to watch someone else do a thing slowly (fish the last olive from a long glass jar, untangle a knot) Will as watcher decided that if he could just get his hands on those scissors, he’d be able to get the job done with efficiency and considerably less squirming and squeaking by C and myself. Five minutes later and much hair cut at vertical angles, he handed over the scissors again for a little clean up work.

The result of our three tries? Bangs with three distinct slices upwards and a fringe of unevenness that quite closely resembles the fuzzy mop on the clown we saw last week.

But as Will says, at least the hair isn’t in her eyes anymore!

Update: our babysitter decided to redeem C’s bangs before she took her to the theater today. It is now on a much more even keel.

Filed under: toddler_tales

Dr. Seuss as Mother Goose

"Oh deah, oh deah, I cannot heah, will you please come over neah, will you please look in my eah?" said the small one to Will the other day, in a croaky stilted voice. He dropped the magazine he was reading and got on the floor to look at her. “Julia! There’s something wrong with Caroline’s ear!! Get over here quick!“

But I just answered, "Say, look a bird is in your ear! But he is out. So have no fear!“* and Caroline laughed and practiced her line again.

*As says Seuss in One Fish Two Fish, if you’re a little rusty on your kid books these days.

Filed under: toddler_tales nursery_rhymes words

Cirkus Alex - the circus comes to town!

Ten minutes late to the show, I had to talk our way into the tent, arguing with the ticket lady that, indeed, we would not be coming back the next day, our friends were already waiting. In retaliation, she made us buy the more expensive box seats, so we sat right by the ring as their clown made his rounds and circus hands cleared the tall fences standing between the audience and the tiger act we had just missed.

The fences had a lean look about them, as if they were more for show than for actually stopping large carniverous cats from jumping into the stands and devouring squirming morsels of small children, prompting Will to quote our pal Jim (who has said this about many aspects of life in Prague, mostly pre EU) “Not exactly OSHA approved, eh?“ Since we missed the big cat show, and dancing dogs don't worry me much, I didn’t really mind the sketchy safety conditions until I looked down at the sawdust covering our feet and noticed cigarette stubs mixed with the sawdust. Prima.

But the show was strangely appealing, maybe because we had a two year old with us to enjoy it with, maybe because I haven’t been to a circus in so many years, and had no expectations other than a vague hope that cotton candy might be on offer (it was). Caroline has a higher intolerance level for sitting still, and the clown and his patter didn’t win her over, so, after looking for the flying trapeze and not finding one, she decided it was time to go - “jdeme out!“ she said, “we leave now!“

Then the next act began and a troop of miniature poodles pranced into the tent and Caroline clapped along with the crowd while the dogs jumped through hoops and paraded around the ring on their fore paws, back feet carefully balanced over their heads. The poodles‘ unscripted riot on the kiddie slide made C furious, “no doggies, mine, mine slide“ she called again and again over the audience roar as the dogs raced up and down the slide and nipped at each other before their trainer shooed them out of the ring. She loved the horses though, four large work horses that ran through their paces so close to us we could see their whiskers and the droop of the feathers in their head bands.

The guys in our group liked the scantily clad lady who hoola hooped and juggled her way through several acts, and in one rodeoesque scene wore an Apache indian headress and let two face-painted lasso-wielding circus guys throw real knives at her. It was all very 100 years ago with P.T. Barnum, but on a smaller scale.

It was the kid who won my heart. The ten-year-old son of the family that runs the circus (also named for him), Alex’s specialty is balancing high on a ladder and juggling, which he does well, and without a safety harness. But I liked best his last routine, where, with safety harness attached, he stood on the very top of his ladder, balanced a tall tripod on his forehead, and threw soccer balls into the hoops of the tripod. His father held the rope attached to his harness, and his mother called encouragement and warning from the sidelines, while the clown held the soccer balls high for him to grab without a glance. Three tries he took to fill the tripod, while he staggered the ladder across a small platform shimmied for balance. His family and Alex did not pay attention to what happened outside the ring, all their focus was on his balance and the act - a dress rehearsal with the audience right there. By the end he was sweating and I was holding my thumbs hoping that he’d catch all three this time. When he did the audience roared their approval and he ran back to his mother for a kiss before bowing once more and leaving the stage.

We took the tram home the same way we had arrived, down the long road that shoots straight into Vinohrady from the perimeter highway, the road the Russian tanks rolled down in 1968, that runs past the biggest grouping of cemetaries in town, past where Kafka is buried, past the TV tower that stands over the remains of another Jewish cemetary. It was dark by then, and as we passed one cemetary‘s gates we saw the banks of candles lit to commemorate the upcoming day of the dead, or Památka zesnulých, on November 2. The candles flickered and wavered like a planted field of sparklers and Caroline pointed them out to me. “Lights!“ she said, “circus lights.“ “Not exactly,“ I said, “But I'll explain later.“

Check out the Cirkus Alex website for more information and performance times.

Filed under: circus Prague toddler_tales

Further Projectile Grodiness

Mornings can be dangerous. I’m not fully awake then, and tend to hover over a mug of tea, maybe reading the news online, maybe just letting our orange sofa reassure me that some comfort can be found in the blinding morning world. Caroline starts slow in the morning too, and will putter about, taking an hour to eat breakfast - cereal, oatmeal mush, or, like today, a croissant from the bakery. Eventually though, she’ll wake up, and if I don’t catch her at the right moment, chaos happens. Mush becomes face paint, cereal turns to mini hockey pucks to be flicked away.

But today. Oh my. Today.

Today was bakery day. Sometimes, on a Friday, or when we’re tired of cereal and there are no eggs in the house, we declare a bakery day. Will gets dressed fast and runs out the door, sweeping up change as he goes, to swing back through in five minutes. Dark suit, bright tie, polished shoes flashing, he leaves again in a rustle of bread bags, on his way to work.

Flash, rustle, door slam. Peace settled over the house as C ate her croissant flake by flake, I drank my tea, and the New York Times declared Chicago a second city no more - the White Sox had won the World Series. All seemed right with the world.

Then a curious snort began sounding from the living room. Sniff snort it went.

Sniff snort.

I grabbed some Kleenex and stood between Caroline and her morning cartoons. Her nose had a redness about it that clarified the sniff snort soundings, and I asked her if she had something stuck in it.

“No.“

“Are you sure? Let me see!“

A small tussle followed. She seemed to be sticking something back up her nose, or digging something from it. I couldn’t tell.

Sniff snort. And that funny finger/nose action again.

“Caroline, can you blow, blow very hard.“

Snort.

Something globulous went flying. Down my shirt, naturally.

It was a croissant glob. Caroline tried to grab it back. “Mine!“ she said.

“Were you sniffing this and then blowing it out again?“

“Mine! Mine croissant.“

Do I find any consolation that the only child bread sniffer in Prague or perhaps even the greater CEE region can pronounce croissant better than I can? No, I do not.

Filed under: toddler_tales grody language

Upgrade to finger paint

I’m shopping for house paint this week. A lemon yellow, or maybe a sky blue – any color that might match the wallpaper in Caroline’s room. It’s a cute little room, cut out of the bigger space that is our office/guest bedroom. Large enough for the essentials (bed, wardrobe, bookcase), it can hold a bit more, but not much. Our friends who own the flat originally designed it for their baby daughter and, with its yellow walls and blue and white striped wallpaper, it is ideally decorated for someone unwilling to commit to a pink princess theme.

Or at least it was until the day, lo these three weeks ago, when Caroline decided that she’d had enough of the enforced napping we put her through every afternoon, she wanted to do something more creative with her time. Having thrown all her toys out of the crib, stripped the bed and drunk all of her milk, her only resource was herself.

Dirty diaper in hand, she used it as a palette to paint the wall.

Then she called us in to see what she had done. “Bobek, painting!“ she said. She seemed please with the results. (Bobek = pellet = poop, also, a Czech cartoon character)

Five minutes later, sitting in a steaming bath tub as I clean her up, she is still talking about her art work. “Painting, niiice,“ she says, in a soothing tone. Will has just stuck his head through the doorway a third time to remind her not to do that again. He's got the headlamp on his head, a bandana around his nose and mouth, and long yellow gloves pulled over his hands, and he’s scrubbing her wall down. Caroline decides not to argue, but I can’t help but giggle a little bit.

Last Thursday, when Will was at work, she did it again.

I’ve bought Caroline a set of finger paints. And if you know of some wall paint that is water, finger paint and scrub brush resistant, do let me know.

Filed under: toddler_tales grody family