THIS is a Spielplatz!

Posted on March 7, 2014 by admin

I’ve talked a lot about how much I appreciate the playgrounds here. They’re less safe, undoubtedly, than those back home, but the ones here provide much more opportunity for my kids to challenge themselves physically and mentally, to accomplish things they didn’t think that they could, and to sometimes make the choice to back down from a challenge that is too great for them. Sometimes the ladders are too high, the ropes too wobbly, the slides too steep. I like seeing them make their own choices about what is a reasonable amount of risk to take on. (After all, aren’t we faced with choices like that our whole lives?)

I forget sometimes that however challenging and extreme our neighborhood playgrounds seem by my American standards, they are nothing in the overall scheme of Austrian playgrounds. Two weekends ago, Liam wanted to visit a playground that we’ve been to before, out in the western outskirts of Vienna (at Am Himmel). Since we’d last been in the fall, they’ve updated a lot of the equipment, making this one of the most challenging playgrounds the kids have ever been to. Liam remembered it for the “giant slide” — a 10-12′ tall slide (with no railings) that gives me butterflies every time either of my kids climbs it. After the update, that is now seriously one of the tamer elements.

My kids had a blast, and I survived (just barely … just kidding). I think these places to play are fantastic. Yes, I bet kids get hurt here all the time. I imagine that teeth get chipped, arms get broken. And I know if something like that happened to one of my kids, I’d be likely to beat myself up over having allowed them to take those risks. But it is truly amazing to watch them in this environment, pushing their limits, accomplishing difficult things, working out solutions, and sometimes deciding that a challenge is too ambitious. In this moment, I do believe it’s wort the risk … and it’s also an absolute ton of fun, for all of us.

5 things I love about my expat life

Posted on March 5, 2014 by admin

I’ve never done a “blog link up” before, but I’m feeling inspired by Amanda van Mulligan over at Life with a Double Buggy and I thought I’d participate.

There’s a lot to love about expat life (there’s also plenty to dislike, which at least keeps life interesting). Here are some of the things I love most about my life as an expat.

1. I have a new perspective on my homeland. Back before my expat life, when I was living in the US, there were things I liked and things I didn’t, and I believe I always had enough sense to see through the “everything’s better here” mentality I often saw around me. But it took stepping outside of my own culture to truly appreciate the things we actually do better than anyone else (hamburgers, milkshakes, the sheer variety of international food readily available, cheap yet quality clothing, delivery of everything, and a genuine willingness to attempt just about anything) and to understand the ways in which we generally don’t measure up to other places in the world (public transportation, ridiculous and unattainable standards of beauty, access to health care, and early childhood education). I miss and appreciate the wonderful parts of America and can frankly question our failings. And I also have the perspective to choose to opt out of many ways of thinking that I always took for granted, especially if I can now see that it does me a disservice.

2. Learning that “doing” has a time and place (and it’s not evenings or Sundays). America is a 24/7 country. It feels like everything is open and available all the time, and this creates a pressure to constantly being “doing” more, checking more things off of the to-do list. Living in Austria, where everything is closed evenings and Sundays, has changed my perspective completely. It used to frustrate me to have to accomplish my errands during business hours, but now I truly appreciate the peace and sanity that comes from setting aside evenings and Sundays as time for friends, family and rest.

3. I know that a true challenge can be good for my kids. The mentality of over-protectiveness and “helicopter” parenting that pervaded my early years as a parent does not exist here. At school and in the playgrounds, children here are given more opportunities to fail and they are less protected from the consequences of those failures. Playgrounds are made of wood and metal with plenty of dirt and rocks. Slides are tall and without safety rails. At school, preschoolers handle knives and lit candles. 3 year olds go on field trips with their classes, and 9 year olds ride public transportation on their own. These challenges and responsibilities allow the kids to stretch themselves physically and mentally. They accomplish hard things, they learn to brush themselves off and try again when they fail, they learn to be cautious in order to stay safe, they learn to be responsible for their own actions. Left within my own American culture, I doubt very seriously if I would ever have allowed my kids to take on some of the challenges they’ve tackled here. And what a shame that would have been.

4. Living a life less ordinary. I don’t think of myself as a risk-taker. This isn’t a path I ever thought I would choose. I think of myself as much more typical, do-what-everyone-else does kind of person. (Although I mentioned this to my husband the other day and he did remind me that not all that many people leave their lucrative careers as software engineers to become basically impoverished dance instructors, which we did several years before moving to Austria, so my mental image of myself may need some adjusting.) But I am so profoundly grateful that this is what I’ve done. Choosing to do things differently, choosing to take on the massive challenge of relocating our family overseas, choosing to let go of my own expectations for myself (and my perception of the expectations of other) has given me so many amazing benefits. I’ve learned more about myself. I’ve learned more about the world. I’ve become a happier person. I worry less. I enjoy more. I’m a better parent. I’m more emotionally flexible and so much less judgemental. Stepping outside of the “normal” path, and beyond my own perspective, is an amazing gift. And, I love that my kids are growing up to truly be citizens of the world. They will have a perspective about the world, and an ability to move through it, that will shape their entire world view for their entire lives.

5. The confidence I’ve gained that I can handle anything. Being an expat (especially, I think, an expat parent), I’ve experienced so many challenges. From emergency hospital visits (in 3 different countries now, I think?), to enrolling our kids in a completely different kind of school than we had ever anticipated, to the daily slog of using a language at which I’m basically inept, life abroad with kids has forced me to push beyond my own limits. I have dealt with difficult situations and people, I have taken care of myself and my family and, even in the face of some of our hardest moments, we have been able to find joy and peace. I no longer fear being faced with a situation that is too hard for me. Whatever it is, I know I will be able to meet the challenge. I have a faith in myself that I”m not sure I would ever have gained any other way.

Baking “together”

Posted on March 4, 2014 by admin

From time to time, the kids and I bake together. I try to do it each weekend (and we actually manage to do it about half that often). In theory, it’s a great idea — they like it, I like it, and I believe it’s good life skill training. They get to practice measuring and following directions, and they will (hopefully) get to adulthood with the idea that they can produce something in the kitchen.

But in reality, it never goes how I imagine it. No matter how prepared I am, our baking always devolves into disaster — kids throwing ingredients, eating massive amounts of the ingredients or blowing ingredients into each other’s faces, me snarling or grouching the kids into semi-submission while it all starts to feel like torture instead of fun. About half the time, one or both of the kids either quits early or ends up getting removed to go play something with Daddy while I finish up in the kitchen. I’m completely willing to let go of the quality of the finished product, and I’m 100% ok with the ensuing mess, but I’d like to actually get SOMETHING into the oven at the end of the process . . . and more than anything, I’d like for all of us to enjoy the experience (at least most of the time).

Grandmas, and organized Pinterest-ready moms, I need your help — how do you do it? How can I make it work? Any secrets to being somewhat successful at baking AND at allowing all of us to stay in good spirits at the same time? (I am actually asking.) We have great intentions, but we just don’t have that much success. I’d like the reality to more closely resemble the sweet pictures I take during the precious few minutes of calm amidst the calamity.

Bad words

Posted on March 3, 2014 by admin

Benjamin’s German is better than mine at this point. He certainly understands more, and though our vocabulary is focused in quite different areas, I would guess that he speaks more German than I do (and his pronunciation is certainly better).

This leads to some very particular challenges that I imagine are faced by parents of bi-lingual (or nearly bi-lingual) children everywhere. I don’t always know what the boys are saying when they speak German, and more specifically, I think B is saying things that he shouldn’t be, but I can’t be sure. Add to this the fact that B’s best friend at school is a native Spanish speaker, and everything gets more complicated.

I know the “big” swears in German (the same ones everyone knows if they’ve watched enough WWI movies) but I don’t know anything about the ones a kindergartener might use. He and his friends had a fondness for one that was an amalgamation of Spanish and German and roughly translated into “poop death” (it took me FOREVER to parse what he was saying) and he’s recently added one that I don’t recognize at all, but the mischievous giggle that comes with it makes me pretty suspicious.

I think my best strategy at this point may be to make a video of him saying it and then to distribute it to my Austrian (and maybe Spanish speaking) friends for analysis. In the meantime, it may just be that getting away with a little naughtiness is one of the perks of living abroad when you’re 5.

Public transpor-tantrum

Posted on February 28, 2014 by admin

We love the public transportation system in Vienna. Truly. It’s clean, it’s reliable, it’s inexpensive, and it’s nearly as fast as getting around by car (not that we have one). And, since we don’t have a car, it’s our primary mode of transportation.

But HAVING to commute by public transportation, every weekday, with both kids, can also be a challenge. I take the boys to school most mornings — a 40 minute trip during morning rush hour on an U-Bahn (subway) train and a city bus. And the major trick is that my boys are 3 and 5, AND there are other people who want to use the train to get where they’re going, too. (Imagine that!)

It’s really hard to have an audience for all of the difficult times that can happen in the morning. For those of you who take your kids to school or daycare by car, just think back to every morning car ride that’s hard — rides that feature screaming, throwing things, poking each other, looking at each other the wrong way or 1,000,000 times of asking the same question (at increasingly louder volumes). We have those, too, and we have a train car full of strangers as an audience. And, because our “audience” is primarily Austrian, so they are, by nature, some of the most shockingly quiet people on the planet. What an American considers normal conversational volume on a train is effectively shouting on an Austrian train, so the normal volume at which my children speak is almost always the loudest sound on the train. And that’s on a good day.

Most days are fine. On days when the train isn’t too crowded and we get our own space, things generally go well. If the boys each get a window seat, and I can sit next to whoever is the most fragile on that particular day, I can typically manage a head off any problems. But there’s no way to guarantee that. Even when things go “badly”, it’s usually ok. The boys like to sit by themselves in their seats, so usually a warning that bad behavior will result in having to sit in my lap is enough to save a potentially bad trip . . . but not always.

This morning was a tough one. In fact, it undoubtedly goes on the list of top 5 worst trips to school ever. We ended up in a crowded train car. B sat by the window, but Liam didn’t get to. I sat next to B, and across from Liam. Liam kept leaning on the woman sitting next to him. He wouldn’t stop, so I picked him up and held him, which resulted in him screaming, trying to wiggle out of my arms, and kicking me … a pretty normal 3 year old tantrum. It’s part of life as a parent. But to go through that while literally surrounded by other people is rough. In the course of his tantrum, he managed to kick 3 other passengers, hit me twice and have literally every eye in the train on us. I just held onto him and tried to restrain him and calm him down as best I could. He cried and screamed and flailed, but we really had no options. The train was quite full and we were lucky to have seats at all. We just had to get through it. As a last resort, Liam even asked if the guy sitting across from him (a complete stranger) could hold him instead. (Nice.)

By the time we got on the bus, all was well. The rest of our trip to school was fun and peaceful. But these are the mornings when I really wish we had a car, so I could strap them safely into their car seats and handle any screaming meltdowns in private.

A trip to the Spital

Posted on February 26, 2014 by admin

This was not what I had planned for my Monday. I’d had a nagging pain in my back for a few days — nothing unusual for an over-tired, semi-out of shape mom with two very active little guys. As Monday went on, the pain got worse. I finally decided to take a moment to grab two Aleve, and just when it I was about to take them, I got a crushing pain across my chest and back. It took my breath away. I felt like I was being squeezed with a giant rubber band across the left side of my chest and back. I’ve never felt anything like it.

Of course, it freaked me out. It could not have seemed more like a heart attack. But, I’m 37, and other than being overweight, I have no other risk factors related to my heart. I exercise regularly, eat reasonably well, have good blood pressure and no family history of heart problems. So, seriously? But, I also worry about EVERYTHING, and though the pain subsided a little, as the afternoon went on I found myself having a hard time taking a full breath from time to time.

I finally texted Dan and asked him to come home early — less because I was actually worried and more because I could not shake the horrible image of me passing out while home with both kids.

Since I have a lot of anxiety, and I suspected I was getting myself worked up over nothing, I honestly expected my symptoms to disappear as soon as Dan came home. They didn’t. And as I played Wii with Benjamin, I struggled to focus through intermittent waves of pain and short breath. I finally decided I needed to get checked out.

So, off we all trekked to the Emergency Room. We pretty much all HAD to go because Dan didn’t want to risk me passing out on the strassenbahn or anything, and we didn’t have a sitter.

Long story short, I’m fine. After getting checked in with lots of expected eye-rolling (this is Austria after all), I had an EKG, had some blood screenings done, and ultimately had a CT scan to rule out a pulmonary embolism (which apparently matched my symptoms better than a heart problem). I was completely fine. The doctor suspects I have a pulled muscle in my back that was basically seizing up every time I tried to take a breath. Frankly, that’s what I thought it probably was, too, but I just couldn’t shake the worry that it might be something worse. Ultimately, I was sent home with a prescription for some pain medicine in case the muscle pain comes back, and a suggestion that if it does, I should probably see an orthopedist.

Since Monday, I’ve been completely fine. The pain in my back was gone by mid-day on Tuesday, and I’m back to feeling good. I also feel a little silly for dragging us all to the hospital, but it is comforting to know that I’m ok. And we had a much more adventurous Monday than anyone had planned.

Cinderella

Posted on February 24, 2014 by admin

This past weekend was the IAEA Ball — the one we’ve gone to the last two years. We had tickets, and had planned to go, but we couldn’t. Our two regular babysitters were both busy, so we stayed home. The ball, being many hours long and lasting late into the night, isn’t the kind of thing we could try out a new babysitter for, nor could we just impose on a friend who hadn’t watched the kids before.

So we didn’t go. It’s a bit disappointing, but it’s part of life abroad as a parent. (It’s actually just part of life as a parent in general, but it happens a lot more to us now that we’re far from home.) At home, there’s almost no chance that we would have to skip an important event because we were without a sitter. We have a large family and lots of friends with kids of similar ages — we would have been able to work something out with someone, I’m sure.

Living abroad means getting by with a significantly reduced support structure. I’m incredibly grateful for the support that we DO have here, and appreciative of what we had at home even more than I was when I had it. Both at home and living here, we’ve been truly lucky to have the chance to do some fun, social things that wouldn’t have worked with the kids in tow. This year’s ball just didn’t happen to be one of them. That’s just how it goes.

I used to be afraid

Posted on February 21, 2014 by admin

My natural state is one of efficiency. I like to do things “on the way”, “kill two birds with one stone”, put in a little effort now to save myself a great effort later. When I had kids, I had to learn to put that tendency aside — kids don’t always work that way. Sometimes I have to make two trips to the same shop to prevent turning a single trip into a massive meltdown, or walk right past a shop where I have to run an errand in order to get everyone home in time for lunch. That’s just life as a parent. Sometimes we sacrifice efficiency for everyone’s greater good.

But there’s another way in which I’ve abandoned efficiency since I’ve moved abroad, and it’s less noble. It’s because I was afraid.

I used to go into a shop and always plan out exactly what I needed to say before it was my turn. If I found the person behind the counter was hard to communicate with, or impatient, I might leave without everything I needed. I might go to another shop around the corner, come back another time, or simply do without what I needed. If I had a coupon that I wanted to use, I would plan to ONLY but the thing the coupon was for so as not to complicate my transaction. I would add up the total and have exact change waiting so I didn’t have to understand what the cashier said. I was in a constant state of strategizing what I REALLY needed in order to make things overly simple. I was afraid of trying to do too much, and of getting things wrong. It made my life harder than it needed to be.

But at some point, I got over that. I don’t know when or how it changed. But I went into a shop today, and I didn’t plan out what I was going to say beforehand. When the cashier asked for my order, I unashamedly asked for a moment to decide. I added something to my order after she had rung it up, and then remembered a coupon I wanted to use for just part of my purchase. In short, I had a totally normal transaction which didn’t require stress, strategy or pre-planning.

This wasn’t the first time — I’m sure I’ve been in this mode for a while now. But it was the first time I was really aware of how nonchalant I’ve become. I can go into a bakery or a deli or a grocery store and act just exactly like the slightly distracted, moderately disorganized mom that I am. And, apparently, I can now do it in German.

Night terrors

Posted on February 20, 2014 by admin

Liam gets night terrors. From time to time, he starts screaming in the middle of the night. Sometimes he just screams, sometimes he cries, sometimes he calls out for us. We rush in and find him, still asleep, but appearing to be in awful pain and torment. He thrashes around, grabs at his legs, claws at his arms, wrings his hands. To witness it, you’d be certain that he is at least in the throes of a terrible nightmare, and at worst, suffering an onslaught of pain from a horrible illness.

He is almost impossible to wake from this state. Trying to pick him up intensifies his anguish. Trying to hug or kiss him incites him to lash out violently. Saying his name, turning on the lights, even clapping our hands, all serve no purpose except to upset him even more. When we finally do wake him, he is still upset, but more at being rudely awoken in the middle of the night than anything else — he doesn’t remember being frightened or crying out. Night terrors are apparently completely normal in a child of his age, and he most likely has no idea why, to his mind, his parents randomly wake him some nights full of stress and concern. These night terrors can last 10-20 minutes (although it always feels like hours), but once it’s over, he is usually peacefully asleep again within minutes.

When this first started happening, we were terrified and overwhelmed. We had a screaming, tormented toddler in the middle of the night with nothing we could do to fix him. (We’ve since learned that it’s better NOT to wake him, so we don’t, but it goes against every instinct that I have.) Of course, we went through all the normal parenting worries: is there something wrong with him, is he sick or suffering in some way, how do we help him??? And, honestly, the stress was amplified by the fact that we live in an apartment and we worry about whether we’re waking all of our neighbors when this happens. Knowing that this is a developmentally normal thing (and that there’s nothing we can do about it) allays most of our fears. But I still feel bad about what we’re inflicting on our neighbors.

We don’t have any idea how this affects our neighbors, because no one has ever said anything. No one has ever asked us about it, or complained, but we can’t imagine that they haven’t noticed or that they don’t know which apartment it’s coming from (as an American family with small kids living in a country of exceptionally quiet people, we make more noise than the rest of our building’s residents combined). Since I don’t know what anyone thinks about it (are they quietly seething or patiently understanding?) I worry. I worry that they don’t understand, and one day the Austrian version of child services is going to show up and demand to know what torture we’re inflicting on our kid at 1 in the morning. (And all of this is made worse in the summer months because no one here has air conditioning and everyone sleeps with their windows open.)

It’s another area where cultural norms are different, and it makes them hard to navigate. I hope that my neighbors understand, or even better, that by some trick of architectural acoustics they aren’t particularly bothered by it. But I wonder how I would ever even know what they think about it (and I wonder how Austrian parents would handle the same situation).

Silver medal

Posted on February 19, 2014 by admin

Living outside of the US during the Olympics is a very different experience. This time, we aren’t able to watch most of the events at all (we no longer have cable, so we get all of out TV through iTunes, which is great for everything except live sporting events) so we’re getting most of our information about how things are going from the internet and from the newspapers.

Most of the internet news I read is from the UK, and for newspapers I tend to peruse the headlines and main pictures in the Austrian papers. In both cases, I’ve learned a lot, and I’m much more aware of how skewed of a perspective American Olympic coverage can give.

It was easy to get caught up in the idea of American Olympic dominance when I lived in the US and watched US news coverage of the games. But, that’s in large part because the sports that are focused on are those where Americans are expected to excel. And then, within those sports, the coverage emphasizes American athletes. Back when we had it, we learned that Austrian news coverage focuses on completely different sports. You almost wouldn’t know that figure skating and hockey exist, but the downhill skiing events might as well be the Super Bowl. And when the sports are broadcast on Austrian TV, they generally cover the ENTIRE event. I was surprised to learn how MANY athletes compete in some of the events. The way I’m used to seeing things, it felt like there were a dozen or two athletes competing … not 70-100 (or more). When we would watch the coverage of Men’s Downhill Alpine Skiing, for example, we would watch ALL of the competitors do their runs . . . and then come back for the second run. It would take hours to watch the entire thing — a very different experience from the pieced-together news coverage we were used to seeing at home.

But by far my favorite piece of living in Austria during the Olympics has to do with the way that all of the achievements of the athletes are celebrated. The other day, the top story in the newspaper was of a silver medal won at the Olympics. The very biggest newspaper headline of the day — a silver medal. I like it. I think it’s great that each accomplishment gets its own moment.

(But I really do miss the access to the variety of sports, and the numerous hours of coverage that we had access to in the States. I wish we were getting to watch it!)

A Mommy Abroad

Our big adventure, as a family of three.