Woohoo! Little man has learnt how to ride his bicycle without training wheels. Taking off the pedals together with the training wheels for a short while did the trick. Without the pedals it was much easier for him to learn how to balance. Opa also promised him an ice cream if he tried…
We are off for a bike ride. I hope I can keep up…lol
In hindsight the title for the last post was very well chosen. Please excuse my long absence from blogging.
The older I get, I need more time to recuperate from long distance flights. I don’t know how pilots and flight attendants do it. As we touched down in Berlin, I was thinking that this nineteen-hour trip had shaved off at least six months off my life expectancy.
Nothing special happened, the two flights we were on were just extremely full, and it felt like being in tightly packed sardine cans. I didn’t manage to sleep during the flight. I can sleep in almost every place, busy train stations, hard floors, next to blaring music, but I need to be horizontal, not sitting bold upright in a plane seat with little man across my lap.
On the bright side, not sleeping gave me time to watch three movies. I saw The Lives of Others, which deserves every Oscar it got and even more, Desaccord parfait, a French/ English comedy with Charlotte Rampling which let me laugh out loud so many times, and Because I Said So with Diane Keaton, which was bad, I mean really, really bad.
On the ground in Berlin at Oma and Opa’s place, we immediately started preparations for little man’s fifth birthday. One day before we left Hong Kong, the big birthday bash with 25 of his kindergarten- and playmates took place, but of course we also celebrated on the real date.
Most of the preparations took place in Oma and Opa’s recently upgraded kitchen. The renovation was overdue, because the old one from the sixties could have played the leading role in a Doris Day movie. So now they have the newest in over-engineered German kitchen design, which requires a quick read through the instructions manual for even the most basic tasks. We haven’t yet explored all the possibilities of the new stove and oven, but supposedly it can cook a five-course dinner all by itself!?! You just need to know how to program it. But the drawers are very neat. You only need to give them the slightest nudge with your hand, hip, or butt and they silently roll towards closure, the last quarter inch aided by a magnetic suction mechanism.
I baked a chocolate cake in the new oven, and it developed a hump, which in my oven in Hong Kong it does not. Still tasted good, just decorating it was a challenge. Smarties have the tendency to slide off, when placed on a 45 degree slope covered with couverture.
Little man’s birthday party was a very happy one. I don’t know who had more fun, little man or my parents. We ate good food, tried out all the new toys, and when little man’s uncle joined us the day was declared an overwhelming success. For me it is such a joy to see my parents and my son together. They light up in each others presence.
My birthday was few days after my son’s, so it was a week full of celebration. Little man’s birth five years ago was the most precious gift I have ever received. It’s so nice that our two birthdays are close together.
Little man and I have read Mondays at Monster School about 101 times, The Tickle Book close to 99 times, and the classic The Very Hungry Caterpillar exactly 100 times. All of them are fantastic. How can you not love a book in which little monster Fred is so nervous about his first day in school that he doesn’t want to eat his bug crispies, but overcomes his fear and has his first lesson in howling and growling, and listens to a story about a yucky prince and a nice monster? But I thought it’s time to introduce little man to something new…
It’s a poem every child in Germany knows and loves. There are several versions told, some longer, some shorter, but my dad told me this one.
It was dark, the moon shone brightly,
snow lay on green ground,
when a car, fast as lightning,
rounded slowly ‘round a bend.
Within standing people sat,
silently lost in discussion,
when a hare, shot to death,
skated on a sandbank.
And on a green bench,
which was painted red,
sat a blond-curled youth
with hair black as sooth.
In his arms an old woman,
not yet sixteen years of age,
in her hand a butter sandwich,
which was spread with lard.
All around deep silence reigned,
and with terrible noise,
play in grass’s branches
two camels silently chess.
And two fishes walked merrily
through the blue cornfield.
Finally, the sun went down
and the grey day appeared.
This poem by Goethe
wrote Schiller at night during dawn,
when he sat on his chamber pot,
reading the newspaper.
(author unknown)
German versions at wikisource
Last week, as I was surfing around to find a slideshow extension for Joomla that looks good and doesn’t require a masters degree in programming to install it, I stumbled upon www.monokai.nl. Click on the the funny-looking monokai man to enter the site, and then on the “the lab”-tab on the left side of your screen. When you have finished chasing the spider thingy around your screen, check out all the other flash games by clicking on the round navigation button in the lower left corner. The photos are very nice as well.
This morning I showed little man the site, and the evolution and spaceship games were his favorites. After playing for a bit, he told me that he wanted to make a “real spaceship”.
Mama: Uuh, that’s very, very hard to build.
Little man: Out of paper, like Opa did last Christmas.
Mama: Aah, a paper airplane!
Little man: Yes!
Opa is very good at making paper airplanes. They have a reinforced tip, slight curve on the underside of the wing, and winglets. Unfortunately, I have forgotten how he folds them. Morning in Hong Kong equals some ungodly hour in Berlin, so calling Opa was out of the question.
I did my best, but the resulting airplane flew about a meter, then stopped mid-air, before spiraling to the ground, and smashing its nose. Some research was in order. Googling “best paper airplane” brought this site up on top.
First, I adapted the old airplane by cutting out the middle section of the wings, which brought an immediate improvement. The soft nose was still a problem though, and we started to make a new one, according to the site’s instructions. As I was folding the front part of the airplane, I remembered some of the steps from my father’s planes. He does the nose exactly the same, but he never did the tail. Both constructions fly very well, but the tail definitely has an added coolness factor. After letting it fly around the living-room, I suggested letting it fly from our balcony.
Mama: But we probably won’t get it back (we live on a +10th floor of a high-rise building).
Little man: Nooooo!
Mama: We can always make a new one.
Little man: Nooooo!
So, after that was settled, we decided to go to the park and let it fly there.
Gotta love the Internet!
Something very amazing happened Sunday afternoon. Little man and I went to the swimming pool, and he learned how to dive.
To be able to fully appreciate the significance, I have to fill you in on a little background. Little man, unlike his mama, wasn’t much of a water rat up until Sunday. The first time he cried in his life was when the mid-wife gave him a bath shortly after he was born, and since then bath time always has been a struggle. When he was a little baby, most times I bathed him in a baby tub or the fashionable baby bucket, he screamed on the top of his lungs, especially if water came anywhere near his head. Most times, I ended up bathing with him together in the big tub, holding and comforting him.
Then one summer day, when he had just turned one, something astonishing happened. We went to the pool, and he saw big kids jumping into the water at the deep end. Suddenly, my little boy, who had just mastered the skill of walking, pulled his hand out of mine, gathered speed and was heading towards the edge of the pool to join in the fun. On this day, he didn’t cry because of water in his face, but because I wouldn’t allow him to jump into 9 feet deep water. However, I let him jump from the shallow end into my arms, and he had great fun. It didn’t bother him at all that his face became wet.
Back home, washing his hair was still a problem though. Some people tell you to just go ahead and douse your screaming child in water, others sell you special bathing visors to shield your kid’s face. I took the middle ground. When I washed his hair, I tried to let the water run off on the back of his head, but was not fussing too much. We also went to swimming lessons, and spent many summer days by the pool or at the beach.
During the last year, he grudgingly allowed me to run water over his head, and even to put him under the shower for five second intervals.
A while ago, I bought him goggles in the hope that it would take away his fear to put his head under water. The first time, they weren’t much of a success, but last Sunday he discovered them again in a drawer and asked me to pack them for the pool. He put them on, hesitantly put his face into the water, but smiled a big smile when he came up again. Goggles let you see clearly, and he enjoyed that immensely. Last Sunday, he learned how to hold his breath, to avoid getting water into his nose, to take short dives, and to kick his legs to get to the surface again. Although he can’t swim yet, he can crawl short distances under water.
I can’t even begin to tell you how proud I am of my little man.
PS: Yesterday, was the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre. Hong Kong Digital Vision has posted photos of the candlelight vigil that took place in Hongkong’s Victoria Park. The demonstration has been taking place for the last eighteen years to commemorate those killed during the 1989 crackdown in Tiananmen Square in Bejing.
It was also a demonstration for more democracy in Hong Kong and the Mainland. Currently, there is quite a lively discussion going on in Hong Kong about the introduction of universal suffrage as stipulated in the handover agreement… but I think that’s a separate post.
If you haven’t read it yet… last year’s post holds still true.