.SOMETIMES RAW.

Hello and Happy Wednesday! 

I travel quite a lot with my family. For one because le husband is stationed in Congo; and soon Somalia. If he wants to see us we fly halfway, he flies all the way or we fly all the way to see him.  It is always something new but then again exciting. It is not easy to travel alone with a toddler. It was not easy to travel with Petit Joel when he was just five weeks old; then again my mom and I managed. We flew so many times by now that he and I have the main drills down if we fly alone. Whenever we are fortunate and le husband flies with us it is of course a lot easier. I wrote a post on flying with a baby a while ago if you would like to read it. 

What usually freaks me/us out when flying  are time changes. We tried many different options already. Flying really early but then we needed to get up at 3 am. Or flying late in the evening and at night and wake up in the new country. It has all its pros and cons. We just figured out what works best for us and I would like to share some tips and tricks today. Enjoy! 

Wear your child(ren) physically out if you fly in the evening. I don’t even remember how many times we went back and forth on this escalator. He loved it so much. We ran around with him at the airport. Even though it is stressful and you would love to just sit down and read a book (those times are pretty much over when flying with a toddler), but let him discover. You want your child completely exhausted so they can comfortably crash on the plane. 

NO SUGAR! I thought it won’t hurt to give Petit Joel a bit of milk chocolate or a chocolate croissant. Well, it did hurt. A lot. In my head. He had even more energy after eating this garbage than without. Obviously. With this being said, it is important to keep some sort of rhythm. We try to eat meals according to clock time. This way our bodies adjust quicker and a lot better to the new sleep schedule. Usually, whenever we arrive late somewhere, I give him a little snack and something to drink, if he wants to, before bedtime and he is fine and sleeps right trough. I have to mention here that my son is one of the best baby/toddler-sleepers I have ever met. [Sleeps through from 8. 30 pm until 10.30 am! almost every single night]

For him to sleep that well, he needs complete quiet- and darkness. The room literally has to be pitch black. When we rent houses they usually have blinds that work pretty well. But if not, we just attached a blanket to the window somehow. Le husband is pretty creative in that department. [Barcelona!] A well-rested toddler is a happy toddler so we try everything possible to make him (and us) as comfortable as possible. An extra hour of sleep, I mean c’moooon, right! We all usually adjust to the time change within a day. 

We always take my his iPad mini. I downloaded a bunch of great apps for toddlers and this keeps him entertained for a long time. Petit Joel will be three years-old in October and he is more familiar with the iPad than my parents. Some think this is bad but I do not. He has educational apps on it, he knows how to count to ten in English and German and learnt so much more with this amazing tool. We live with it, we learn from it; this is the future. At the same time he also plays in the dirt and runs around naked, duh! It is all balanced. 

The obvious you need to take is something to eat and drink. Always make sure you have enough (sugar-free) options available. I usually take pretzels, crackers, Knäckebrot and of course water to nibble on until airplane food arrives. He is a picky eater still, but anything pasta works!  My son LOVES apple juice so I keep a bottle of it close by and mix it with water. 

Airlines usually offer pillows and blankets and I don’t take anything like it with me. I just have my son’s favorite blanket that serves as a pillow and if he needs something to cover I take my jacket. I travel light and minimalistic, even with a toddler. And it works. 

Happy travels to you! Do you have other tips and tricks that work well? 

“We are disclosing animals, wired for unburdening. It’s what we do as a species. When I am being told, I listen, mindful of the honor, remembering all the while that the shore would be mistaken to believe that the waves lap up against him because he is so beautiful.” 

Hello and Happy Sunday! 

I re-read David Rakoff’s Half Empty a while ago and I am a huge fan. My glass is usually half full but it is interesting to read about people who prefer their glass half empty and like to be on the negative side of the pond most of the time. I am a huge David Sedaris fan and David Rakoff is right up his alley. Rakoff’s theory is that “…all research is Me-search” and I like to reflect on how annoying and at the same time right-on he can be. 

Great entertainment in ten essays make you find out about the power of negative thinking with a pretty sweet pace of challenging sentences or as Rakoff puts it “my ideas move like cold honey”. Throughout the book, Rakoff refers to being Jewish, Canadian, gay and “freakishly small” and I was pleasantly surprised by the content. With this series of autobiographical essays that are mostly based on disappointment, failure and pessimism, Rakoff’s holds up a mirror to society, all with this amazingly dry humor that I love. Sometimes his writing style is pretty dense and some people might be put off. There are just many tangents he goes off on and I also had to re-read certain passages but I love challenges. 

“There will be peaks of great joy from which to crow and vales of tears out of which to climb. When and why they will happen, no one can say, but they will happen. To all of us. We will all go back and forth from one to the other countless times during a lifetime. This is not some call to bipartisanship between inimical sides. The Happy and the Sad are the same population.”

While Rakoff wrote Half Empty, he was diagnosed with a malignant tumor and began chemotherapy. Unfortunately he passed away in August, 2012. In his essay “Another Shoe” is a little twist of his usual humorous take on negativity. He describes how he felt when his cancer came back and that he is struggling through it with hope and this strong belief that it does not really matter what goes on with your life, you must hang on and keep moving forward. The book is just an amazing mix of laugh-out-loud moments and funny images that he described in such a way that some would stay with me for days. 

“My room is cheerfully located between the sixth-floor elevators. The springs of my bed wheeze. The elevator dings. The ice machine right outside my door rumbles forth its icy bounty, a steady tattoo that beats “Stay up! Stay up!” I am in a canvas that Edward Hopper never felt bummed out enough to paint.”

Sarcastic, funny, thought-provoking, sometimes sad, sometimes very funny, delightful and brilliant. For David Rackoff or David Sedaris fans a must-read! Enjoy! 

Order the book here. Also, watch this interesting video below if you would like. Have a great week. 

Hello and Happy Thursday! 

This is my son’s Curious George face. He will turn three in October. Wow, time flies. Petit Joel asks so many questions, wants explanations and discovers every single day. It is fun to watch how his personality shapes, how he grows up. He is so gentle, loving, connected and usually peaceful. He always wakes up happy. I just cannot wait to get to know the man he will become – but I feel I already know him.  Oh yes – it is great to be Joel Henry for one day. Le husband and I agree on this every single day when I send him pictures of us and our day. How good he has it; eating cake in the park, spending time at the playground, enjoying life. Just living the good life! 

Today, we had a doctor’s appointment in the morning and sat in the waiting room for quite some time. Other people and kids came and went. Joel was fine however. He played on the slide and painted a bit. Then the door opened and a family of three walked in. The woman, completely in burqa, sat down. Her husband and little son next to her. Silence. Actually, the entire room fell silent. The kids stopped playing. My son has seen women in a hijab before, but I don’t think he has ever seen a woman in a burqa. I raise my son very tolerant and he is good-hearted. The old woman at the corner is not a witch, gay people kissing is not yuk or disgusting; disabled people are okay – and if someone is in a wheelchair he hurt his leg very badly and cannot walk anymore. Tattoos are fine as well as  purple hair. As far as the burqa goes: I was not prepared at all! 

So while we sat in the crowded waiting room my son got more and more interested in this “ghost” as he called her. “What is underneath, Mommy,” he asked. “Is it a ghost? Why is she wearing this”, he wondered. Of course, he did not whisper. He yelled, pointing at her. Everyone was staring anyway, since the family walked in. But now, even the last child was quiet. Honestly, I was put on the spot and could not come up with any plausible explanation that would made sense to him. And of course I did not want to offend the family in any way. Live and let live! To each his own! At this point, my son tried to see what is underneath the burqa and tried to lift it up at her legs. I smiled at both apologetically and pulled my son away. The entire time, I could not see her eyes. They were hidden behind a grill or mesh of the veil. It was strange in a way considering I don’t like when somebody talks to me with sunglasses on. You know what a burqa is? Here a little Headgear 101: 

What happens once you tell your kids NOT to do something? Yep, they go right for it. He was still pretty determined at this point to find out who this ghost is. Then he wanted to be a ghost himself and asked me for a sheet to cover him. My only way to stop this was to take him outside. The waiting room was pretty full anyway, so other mothers waited outside too. I told a woman who laughed at what just happened in the waiting room while I dragged my son out and tried to calm him down. He still wanted to see the ghost one last time. To my surprise the woman said that she thinks that “if these people need to dress like this, they should stay in their country. We are in Germany after all. They should ban these women from walking around like this. And honestly, who wants to walk around with a burqa when it’s 33 degrees Celsius outside?” 

I thought about this for quite a while. Again, to each his own. But how do I explain a burqa to my three year-old son? This was my try:

“Listen my love, people are different. Some like to dress in pink, some in black, some in blue. It is like flowers, they are all different too. Different colors, shapes, but they are all pretty and we are all human beings.”

It seemed like he understood. At least he stopped calling her a ghost and trying to get back into the room. Win-win for now, I would say. 

What do you think? What would you have said?  Should I have apologized more? Do you think she should have maybe lifted the vail for a second to show my son that she is not a ghost?