Benjamin has recently rekindled his interest in dinosaurs, sabre-toothed cats, mastodons and all things prehistoric.  For weeks, he’s been asking about what they ate, when they lived, and how they became extinct.  Between rounds of rushing to Wikipedia answer his questions, it occurred to me that maybe a return trip to the Natural History Museum was in order.

Today was a work holiday for Dan, but not one for Vienna, so it was a perfect choice.  We were a little slow to get going this morning (after our unexpectedly long Alpine adventure yesterday) but we got over to the museum mid-day and spent a few hours checking things out, and we were happy to find that it was a lot less crowded than our last visit.

When we arrived, B first asked to check out the . . . insects.  I couldn’t have predicted that in advance, but we had a great time checking out a variety of glittery beetles and such under a microscope.  We visited the sharks, the mammals, the saber-toothed cats and the dinosaurs!

The dinosaur exhibit was my favorite — with an animatronic dinosaur, several full skeletons and a bunch of very cool and informative videos, how could it not be?  It’s also one of their most recently updated sections, and a lot of the information is in English as well as German, so I was actually able to learn some of the answers to the questions that Benjamin keeps inundating me with.

Walking through the rest of the museum was pretty fascinating, too, though.  Many (if not most) of the mammal displays are made from real, once-living animals, stuffed and preserved.  And a lot of them are old . . . surprisingly old.  They have an elephant seal that was over 100 years old, and several specimens of animals that have been extinct for the better part of a century.  It was a pretty fascinating way to spend an afternoon, and although Liam slept through a lot of it (he caught the dinosaurs, the bugs and the sharks, but missed the mammals), I think the boys had a really good time, too.

In retrospect, we probably should have planned one fewer activity for this weekend (although we had no idea yesterday was going to be as long of a day as it was) because we are all completely exhausted right now.  But it was a good day, and a great weekend, and it was fun to hang out with the dinosaurs.

Liam and I get to spend time together, just the two of us, almost every day.  B goes to school, and after we’ve gotten him dropped off, we have a few hours until he comes home.  The problem is, because that time is so plentiful, I tend to take it for granted, and I’m way too likely to fill it up running errands, cleaning the house or getting assorted tasks accomplished.  We do spend time together — we play, we snuggle, we go out and see parts of the city, but those things usually happen in lots of short pieces of time, rather than in a large block.

After getting to spend an hour the other day with Benjamin at the park, just the two of us, I decided I would set aside a dedicated hour during one of our mornings this week to just hang out with Liam.

Today, we spent some time together, just having a nice time.  We went for a walk, and he got to decide if he walked or rode in the stroller (he did some of each).  We walked in a fairly leisurely way, and I made sure to tell him all about what he was seeing, and I took the time to parse all of his commentary (no small task right now — he has lots to say, but, as he’s adding new words all the time, I’m still struggling to keep up).  We stopped for a cup of coffee (for me) and a piece of cake (for him) and sat and hung out.  He chose the cake, our table and his seat.  He ate his cake (he shared a little with me) and then insisted on walking over to the Spanish Riding School where we happened upon the horses leaving their stable for their morning training.

We had a great time.  He’s still such a little guy, but he has a lot to say, and a lot of opinions.  He’s generally pretty accommodating of all of us — of my bustling around the house, of Benjamin’s whims with toys and games, and of Dan’s schedule.  He got to have things his way for a bit, and he seemed to really enjoy it.  He got to have his mommy all to himself and I got to be with just him.  It was lovely.  I must remember to do this more often.

I hate to be the one to ruin the image, but I feel like I can safely state that, contrary to my storybook notions, European men are no more gallant and chivalrous than Americans. (Well, maybe a little more.) Like Americans, you can’t count on them to hold doors open. And although they’re more likely to give up a seat for a woman or an elderly person, they’re also more likely to cut in line or to walk you right off the sidewalk — and into the street — rather than move over an inch. (The thing about the doors and the sidewalk aren’t true when I have the stroller, though — people will give me the smallest bit of sidewalk space to accommodate the stroller, and they will go out of their way to hold a door.)

The reality is a little disappointing.

Tonight, though, getting ready for bed, B asked me, “Mom, if a monster comes, will you fight it?”

I assured him that I would. He wanted me to know that he would fight it too. I said “No, it’s my job to protect you.” And he responded, “Aw, I’m not so little any more, I’m big now. I can help. I want a turn!”

My protector (or at least a comrade in arms). 4 years old and all grown up. All is not lost, then, in terms of gallantry.

I hope this doesn’t cause him horrific mortification one day, but Benjamin is 4 and still wears diapers.  We’ve had a little success using the potty, and many dry hours wearing underpants, but he’s still in diapers most of the time and still uses them most of the time when he has to “go”. It’s just currently his preference.

To me, this is totally a non-issue.  I think that at some point, he’ll stop wanting to use diapers, and we’ll make the switch.  No big deal.  He’s capable of using the potty, he just doesn’t want to.

It’s becoming an increasingly big deal to his school, though.  Back in April, we did a trial run without diapers.  1 week, no accidents, but he wouldn’t use the potty at school.  The teachers agreed that he wasn’t ready to make the switch, so we went back to diapers.

Now, they want to do it again, even though we’re making progress here at home and he says he wants to practice more at home before doing it at school (which is ok with me).  I think he still needs more time, but they’re pushing, even though the one English-speaking teacher is out on vacation.  Keep in mind, they haven’t changed a diaper of his in months (he’s only there for about 3 hours each day) and they’ve only EVER changed two of his poopy diapers (he likes to wait to be at home) so I don’t understand the urgency.

Why is it such a big deal?  We’re working on it and making progress.  He isn’t making any more work for them (less, certainly, than of he starts having accidents).  He’s like me — a perfectionist — and I know he doesn’t want to make the switch until he knows that he can do it “right”.

I’m ok with going on his schedule.  I think the objection from school is probably more cultural than practical, but maybe I’m wrong.  Am I the only mother of a four-year-old in diapers that isn’t worried about it?  An I missing something about why this matters to his teachers?

I don’t think he’s stressed or worried or embarrassed about being in diapers, but I worry that if the teachers make a big deal out of this that he will be.  I’d frankly rather he stop going to preschool than be anxiety-ridden about his potty habits, but that would be a shame, because he really has started to enjoy school.

I’m not sure what our next step is, but I’m not in a hurry to get on the potty train.  I know we’ll get there soon enough, and looking back, it won’t matter if it happens in August or in January, so I don’t see the point in spending a lot of energy on it.

We try to make a point of getting one-on-one time with each of the kids every so often.  I get one-on-one time with Liam every day that Benjamin goes to school — we have several hours to spend together each morning.  (I do have to make sure that I don’t spend all of that time cleaning or running errands or getting things done — I try to spend a block of time doing something that’s fun for him every day.  I’m successful more than I’m not.)

But I have to make more of an effort to spend time with just Benjamin.  Our trip to the States put us completely out of our usual routine in a lot of ways.  Until Saturday, I hadn’t gone out for my hour alone at Starbucks since we got back, and I hadn’t thought at all about setting some time aside for me and Benjamin to spend together.  (Although, it now occurs to me that it’s really been a long while since we got to spend that kind of time together — since before we left for the US at the beginning of July, for sure, and possibly since several weeks before that.)

On Saturday, when I left to go to Starbucks and look for my sanity and patience, Benjamin really wanted to go with me.  When I’m doing that kind of thing more routinely, and he asks if he can go, I’ll often say yes, thus giving us a good hour or so of Mommy and B time.  This time, though, I really needed to be “off” for a while, so I had to turn him down.

We made a rain check for today, though.  When we have some one-on-one time, I try to always let him choose what we’re doing.  He usually wants to go out and get ice cream, or cookies, or something like that, but today, he wanted to go to the playground and ride his bike.

So, that’s exactly what we did (except that his bike only really entertained him for about 15 minutes — after that, he wanted to play on the swings and the slide and in the sand).  It was great.  I had a wonderful time.  It was really nice to get to play with and talk to B without having to split my attention between he and Liam (just as it’s nice to give Liam my full attention while B is at school).  I swung him on the swing, I watched him climb and slide, and I pumped water to fuel is hydro-dynamic projects.  We just spent a little bit of very nice time together.

I really enjoyed it, and I don’t want to forget and let it slip by the wayside again.  It would have been really fun to have taken the opportunity to do some stuff with just him (and with just Liam) while we were in the US.  There were enough adults around that I could have done it, but it didn’t occur to me.  I’m so glad for B insisting on some time together and helping me remember how important it is.  And I’m really happy that it’s still important to him.  We had a great time.

My family isn’t real big on “doing things” at the beach.  Our family beach philosophy is pretty much, “We’re at the beach.  There’s sand, and an ocean.  What else do we need?”  It’s what I grew up with, and it’s what we do.  We go to the beach and we GO to the beach.  First thing in the morning, we get up, get swimsuited and sunscreened and go down to the water’s edge where we stay until we’re sunburned, exhausted, or chased off the sand by lightning or by darkness.  We don’t go out a whole lot, we don’t shop at the outlets, we don’t go to the arcade, we don’t go to the boardwalk.  We spend our time on the sand and in the surf.

We did something different last month when we did our whole-family trip to the beach.  My brothers, who are avid golfers, took the opportunity to introduce the kids to their sport, via mini-golf.  I was definitely excited.  Although I’m not good at it, I’ve always enjoyed mini-golf, and I was really looking forward to my kids getting some good instruction in how to handle a putter.  (I was thinking, if we start them correctly when they’re little, they won’t have to later unlearn bad habits.  Imagine how great they could be!)  Benjamin (and even Liam, young as he is) is very physically adept — he has great balance and coordination, and he picks up new physical skills really quickly.  I imagined that by the end of the course, they’d probably be putting everyone but my brothers to shame.

Seriously.  That was my mental image.

Instead, all 13 of us walked over to the golf course, and chaos immediately set in.  We had to split up in to two teams, we all had to choose different colored balls (to prevent confusion), select putters, and then we had to GET GOING!  There was a lot of urgency because we were a massive group and there were people queueing up behind us.  I was stressed about getting everyone into the “right” group and dividing us all up so that we’d all have the best time.  All of a sudden, I turned around, and Benjamin was already trying to hack away at his ball, all by himself (and failing), while Liam sent his repeatedly into the parking lot amongst the cars.  Things were deteriorating quickly.

And then, it hit me — what was I thinking?!?  It’s mini-golf.  It’s supposed to be FUN.  It’s not supposed to be serious training for future life skills.  It’s a GAME.  Who cares what team each person was on?  Who cares which ball we were hitting?  Why on earth were we trying to keep score?  I went over to help B get started and actually connect with his ball, and I reminded myself that this (like so many other things) was not about me, or about keeping score or about winning.  This was about us all being together and having a good time.  And, if my children are to one day grow up to be golf prodigies, they’ll have more enthusiasm for it if they think it’s fun than if they have a perfect grip on the club.  (There were a few cranky moments, though — from kids and adults alike — as we all figured that out.  Dan, who was holding Liam, tried to “do well” and keep his own score for about the first 4 holes.  It was a lost cause, and one he eventually abandoned.)

Once we all got over it, stopped keeping score and just started enjoying it, it was FANTASTIC.  Benjamin and Margaret routinely picked up and or kicked balls belonging to them and everyone else (sometimes by accident, sometimes on purpose).  Liam had a great time picking up the balls and depositing them into the cup — an accomplishment we dubbed a getting a “Liam-assisted hole in one”.  The kids had a great time, everyone giggled, and every single “score” was both helped and hindered by someone under the age of 7.  Repeatedly.  And, as it turns out, Benjamin did get some good instruction on how to hit a golf ball.  He ignored all of it, but maybe it’s rolling around in his brain, waiting to be used in the future.  (Maybe.)

It was just another one of those things — another experience I had completely wrong expectations of in my mind.  I (foolishly, in hindsight) expected mini-golfing with kids to be much like mini-golfing without kids.  (Ha ha ha!)  It wasn’t like that at all.

It was way better.

Most of the time, the weather here is pretty much like what we were used to back in Virginia (although there’s a lot less humidity and precipitation here).  Some days, though, are so different that I have to constantly remind myself what time of year it really is.  Today, it was cool, cloudy, and a little rainy in Vienna.  The high temperatures struggled to get to 60.  When I went out for coffee this morning, not only did I get a hot drink, but I sat inside, wearing fuzzy boots, jeans, long sleeves and a scarf.

I love this kind of weather – it’s the kind of weather I associate with fall.  It’s really nice to get a little treat of autumn in the early part of August.

On the other hand, getting a day like this in the middle of the hot summer leaves us a little unprepared.  This evening, when we went out to join a friend for dinner, we remembered to wear long sleeves to combat the chill, but otherwise, we just weren’t dressed or equipped for a fall evening out.  Within 10 minutes of leaving the house, we were caught in an unexpected downpour and completely drenched.  In “normal” August temperatures, that would have been inconvenient and a little uncomfortable, but given that it was in the mid-50s outside, we were immediately chilled.  Dan, who had the least protection of all of us (we got the rain cover on the stroller for Liam pretty quickly, and Benjamin and I had an umbrella to share — we both ended up soaked from mid-calf down, but stayed mostly dry) was literally dripping by the time we got to the restaurant.  (On the plus side, the restaurant wasn’t air-conditioned, and did have hot chocolate, so we were able to warm up a bit during our meal.)

If it were actually fall, I would have been better prepared.  We would have been wearing more seasonally appropriate attire, and I would have been more diligent about having rain gear on hand.  I most likely would have had hats and scarves tucked into my bag, so we would have had an easier time getting warm.

The hot temperatures are supposed to be back by the middle of this coming week.  It was really nice to have a little preview of fall, but when it comes back for real, I’ll be more ready for anything that might happen — which is exactly how it has to be.  The weather here is lovely, but anything and everything can and does happen.

We’ve been back from our vacation for almost a week, and I’m still struggling to remember how we executed our daily routine.  I still find myself, standing in the middle of a room, finished with a task but stuck in neutral until I can recall what’s supposed to happen next.

It’s taking us a whole to get through our mornings.  It’s been our intention all week to get B back to school, but we just haven’t managed it.  The jet lag and the exhaustion have just been too much.

B started school last December, and it took him a while (as in, months) to really feel comfortable, and even longer before he showed any real enthusiasm about going.  I was worried that after over a month away, we’d be right back to square one in terms of school.  All week, he’s been saying, “Not today.  I’ll go tomorrow”, and each time, when it gets to be “tomorrow”, he still isn’t ready to go.  He mentioned missing some of his friends and teachers a few times while we were away, but I still didn’t know how rocky the transition back to daily preschool was going to be.

Turns out, it was not a problem.  This morning, we got up, got back to our morning routine (as much as we could remember how to do it — I forgot to eat breakfast) and went to school.  On the way there, B seemed relatively upbeat, but didn’t say a lot when I asked him if he was excited to go back.  When we arrived, his indoor shoes had been misplaced, and I was braced for a meltdown.  He was pretty put out that his shoes had been moved (egads!) and were dusty (the horror!) but once we got that ironed out, he strolled down the hall to his classroom, marched through the door, announced that everyone had missed his birthday, and after a quick hug from the teacher (only the German-speaking one — turns out the English-speaking one is on vacation) his best friend came up, took his hand, and they went off to play.  He didn’t hug me or say goodbye.  He didn’t even look over his shoulder.

Last fall, I never thought we’d get to this point.  I think today was harder for me than for him — I really missed him today.  I love having him home with me, but it turns out that school is just fine with B these days, and I’m so glad.

The first week of July, we flew home to the US, where we stayed for a month.  For most of that time, we stayed with my mom at her house in Maryland (not counting 4 days spent in Florida with Dan’s parents, nor the week we spent at the beach — but still with my family — in Delaware).  When we came back to Vienna last weekend, she flew back with us, mostly just so I wouldn’t have to wrangle both boys on my own on a trans-Atlantic red-eye flight.  (She is awesome.)

So, we’ve been together every day for almost 5 weeks.  And not just spending a bit of time together, but living together in one way shape or form.  And today, she flew back home.

I miss her so much.

I got to talk to her every day — not over Skype, but in REAL LIFE.  She got to really, intensely experience me being a mom — from seeing me administer time outs to seeing me get overwhelmed with bath time to helping me deal with an Emergency Room visit.  We ate our meals together, we got ready for the day together, we got to share a lot of experiences (especially while we were at the beach).  But my favorite part was watching her interact with my kids.  It is so much fun watching her be a grandmother, and so special watching my boys be with her.  Grandmas play games that no one else does, they are patient, they snuggle, they read stories, they give out extra cookies and this Grandma, in particular, is an excellent hider in hide-and-go-seek.  I’ve really gotten used to having her with us, and I keep looking around for her and wishing she was here.

I’m not the only one.  Benjamin told me tonight that he was thinking that maybe she should come for Christmas.  And maybe she could come for Halloween if she wants.  And Saturdays.  And maybe Thursdays, too.

I think so, too.  (Thanks, Mom.)