Dan and Em's Blog

Liam is learning to talk.  Other than getting “mama” out a few times a couple of months ago, he hasn’t really said anything consistently.  In the past month, he’s learned “No!”, but that’s his answer to absolutely every question you ask him, so although he was “talking” it didn’t really count as communicating.

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Benjamin’s school hosted a “lantern evening” tonight.  Other than assuming that lanterns would somehow be involved, we really didn’t know what to expect.  I suspected there was going to be a performance of some kind, because Benjamin had been talking about “practicing his song” at school this week.  Excited about B’s first school “concert”, we went to the school this evening and assembled in the garden to see what would happen next.

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For the first 6 weeks or so, when I would arrive at school to pick B up, he’d look at me (rather forlornly) and say, “I want to go home”.  For the past few weeks, I’ve suspected that this has been more of a habit than an expression of actual sadness — if I sneak up to the window in the classroom, I can get a peek of him playing happily with the other kids, and the teachers have been reporting that he’s been joining in the group activities and playing enthusiastically with the other kids.  Lately, on the way home, when I ask him how his day was, he invariably says “It was great!”  He’s been adding to his list of friends almost daily — he recently told me that he has the same number of friends as he does fingers.

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This weekend was a long weekend for us – Dan had today off of work. So, naturally, by about 10:00 this morning, we still had a ton of thigns on our “to do” list, and I was already exhausted.  When we have long weekends, I have a bad habit of trying to cram too much stuff in — that extra day seems to stretch on eternally in my mind’s eye when I’m planning, but I find it usually just leaves me more exhausted than I am in a regular weekend, and frustrated, too, because I had this fanciful idea of what would be accomplished that didn’t come to pass.

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Actually, I have no desire to be a firefighter — I’m nearly pyrophobic.  As a child, I used to lie awake at night worrying about the possibility of my house burning down while I slept, was petrified of any open flame (including birthday candles) and actually had to be personally escorted out of the classroom, by the teacher, every time we had a fire drill.

I’ve gotten over it to some extent.  I can handle birthday candles and fires in fireplaces pretty well, at least.

But tonight, at dinner, Benjamin announced the inevitable:  that he wants to be a firefighter when he grows up.  And Liam can be his baby firefighter and help him and ride in the back of the truck.  And he might get a Dalmatian to ride on his red firetruck.  And his friends can be firefighters, too, but they’ll be firefighters at the airport and use the green fire truck.

I know we’ll most likely go through many life ambitions over the course of his lifetime (I’m still coming up with new ones for myself) but there’s something very sweet about this one.  As his protective mother, I hope he chooses something else.  But, when he told me, I responded (sincerely) that I will be happy with him being whatever he wants to be when he grows up.  Right now, I’m just happy with him being Benjamin, and I’m so glad he’s still little.

Yesterday evening, I took Benjamin out for some “B & Mommy” time.  I usually go out, twice a week, on my own, for an hour, to get a cup of coffee.  Lately, when I go, he’s been asking to go with me.  I’ve been planning to do more things, just he & I — now that he’s in school, it’s rare for us to spend some time together when I’m not also wrestling Liam.  So, yesterday, we went together.

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Halloween is barely celebrated here, and Thanksgiving doesn’t exist.  There have been beautiful advent calendars and Christmas sweaters in the shop windows for weeks, and preparations are well underway for the extensive Christmas markets that will soon be open.  Unlike at home, no one is embarrassed or exasperated about it — without Halloween and Thanksgiving, there’s really no reason NOT to start the celebration of Christmas.

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I love Halloween.  I have so many memories of it from my childhood — picking and carving pumpkins, dressing up and going trick-or-treating, going to creepy houses, on spooky hayrides, or through haunted forests, or just staying home and giving out candy.  I like it all.  Benjamin has experiencesd enough of Halloweens at this point to remember it, and to look forward to it this year.  So, although we really didn’t know how Austriants celebrated Hallloween, it was important to me that we do something to make the occassion.

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Today we took the train to a very small town called Retz, which is apparently world famous for its Pumpkin Festival.  It was a long train ride which took us well beyond Vienna — we were about 5 km from the Czech border when we arrived at the Retz train station.  We had a great time at the Am Himmel festival last weekend, so we thought we’d give this one (which was supposed to be bigger) a try as well.  From Retz, we took a shuttle bus (three fully loaded tour buses ran every hour) to Obermarkersdorf.

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There are a lot of things we’re hoping to take from this experience of living abroad – memories of travel throughout Europe, the calm confidence that comes from having conquered a massive challenge, the perspective that comes from living out of your comfort zone.  And, for the kids (if not also for us) hopefully a little bit of German speaking ability.

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