Bad Behavior (Seth variety)

Seth has been a little devil over the last 24 hours. Here’s a sampling (and this is just what Mommie can remember).

*******

We’re in the kitchen trying to plan the weekend and getting over a bout of Seth bad behavior. All of the sudden we hear:

Nora: SETH DON’T TOUCH MY MATH BOOK.

[Mommie and Daddy arrive to see Seth sprawled across the dining table and grabbing at Nora’s math book with grubby hands]

Daddy: Seth, you can’t be grabbing other people’s things. Go to your room for a time out and think about what you did.

Seth: I think fast. OK?

*********

Mommie: [in the kitchen, turning around to find the sponge suspiciously close to Seth’s nose] Seth, are you licking the sponge?

Seth: [Angelic smile] Yes!

***********

Mommie: Seth, don't push Nathan

Seth: But I kicking him and he not get out of the way.

***********

Today during the day, we couldn’t find the soap in the kids’ bathroom. After getting out a brand new soap, the old one reappeared at bedtime. Here’s Seth’s take on the situation:

Seth: This [points to new soap] my soap. Old dirty soap, Nora and Nathan’s.

Cultural pay dirt

Hit cultural pay dirt last night. Before dinner, headed to the city center of Alcobendas (our neighborhood of Madrid) with Seth to hunt backhoes. After watching the backhoes “go night night" (as Seth calls it) at 6, we went to do some errands (specifically, procuring patches for Nathan's pants) near the bread store -- and came upon a huge parade. Leading the parade were two men with a portable fireworks discharger (one thing we’ve learned while here: the Spanish love their fireworks). Marching were two bands (the regular city band and bagpipes) and lots of women and children dressed up in either black satin brocade or flamenco dresses. The black satin version came with accessories: a large medal draped around the neck, flowers, and gorgeous white lace draped over a tall hairpiece, with the lace rising up and then falling to their ankles. All the women and children had huge bouquets of flowers, and groups of men carried funeral-sized flower arrangements bearing ribbons that read “Alcobendas.” When the parade stalled, and it stalled frequently, a group of men started singing and two flamenco dancers appeared to entertain the crowd. The parade ended at the local church, which had been decked out with lighting and drapes along with a closed-circuit TV screen so that those of us stuck in the street could see the service.

Also in the parade were the three Montes brothers, the same ones I bargain with for bread on a daily basis. One appeared to be some sort of parade official, which required him to dress in a suit. This is not the brother I’d guess would’ve owned a suit, and in fact he spent a lot of the parade tugging at his tie as if it were strangling him. The other brothers walked in the Montes family section of the parade with spouses and their toddlers. I think I am now officially a bread store stalker.

I asked someone what was going on — turns out it's the city's Patron Saint's day, and everyone was going to deliver flowers to the statue of said saint at the local church. Fireworks tonight marked the end of this evening’s festivities. Today, the city is closed (except for the bread store, thank heavens).

An adventure

So recall in an earlier post I described the problems involved in getting from hither to tither using Madrid’s bus system. These problems are several: a) there are at least three separate bus systems with disparate websites servicing our area; b) said websites are terrible; and c) the average bus map looks like this:

And the average street map looks like this:

I challenge any of you to determine more than one correspondence between a stop on the bus map and a real location on the city map (hint: I’m giving you the Hospital Infantil Sofia for free; use it if you can).

Today, our knowledge of the system was put to the test: Nathan had a soccer “match” (not game, he vigorously reminds me) up in a sports club northeast of the city. Through a painstaking internet search, I identified two or three buses that possibly went by both our bus stop and the sports club, and estimated times of arrival at the local stop. I wasn’t exactly sure which of these buses really went by the sports center, but assumed I could ask the driver.

Here is a schematic detailing the problem with my assumption.

The situation was further complicated by the fact that there’s a city with the same name as the sports club, but the sports club is not in the city. While I thought I told the driver “I’m going to the polideportivo named Jarama” the bus driver heard “I’m going to the polideportivo in Jarama.”

As a result, Nathan and I found ourselves, about 20 minutes later, walking down a seldom-trodden, litter-strewn path along a major Madrid highway. The good news is that I discovered during this adventure that my 6-year-old is extremely risk averse, hugging the fence alongside the Heineken factory we skirted and asking questions like “Is this illegal?” “How do you know this isn’t illegal?” “Just because there’s no signs saying it’s illegal doesn’t mean it’s not illegal, right?” So the chances of him enjoying wild-party teenage years are pretty slim, I’d say.

The other good news is that we eventually arrived at our destination in plenty of time, and even managed to spot the preferred bus stop along the way. The preferred stop had all the relevant buses posted (well, mostly; a few buses that went by were not posted), and so I was able scribble down our options for the next trip out to this polideportivo.

But this story is not over. I deposit Nathan and his snack bag at his soccer game match, divine the ending time of the match (1:30), and make mental note to return by 1, as there’s not a lot of attention paid to official ending times – games here seem to end when the coaches decide they’re done playing, which is often quite a bit earlier than they anticipate. Then I set off on a long walk. My first attempt led me down an abandoned/creepy dirt road to the edge of one of the largest rivers I’ve seen here in Spain – very picturesque, but no way to cross short of getting on the highway and walking over its bridge. So I turned around and walked down the other option, a dirt road headed south toward the airport. Like many places in our section of Madrid, there’s not much distance between civilization and farmland; I passed ramshackle farmhouse #1 and #2 before pulling up short in front of a little patch of trees.

There, lounging in the shade, was a pig. A very large, wrinkly, dark gray, free-range pig. With no fence, no barn, and no leash in sight. Being a city girl, I had all sorts of questions. Was the pig wild? Was it hunting truffles? If so, where was its handler? Can one get gored by a pig? Luckily, I had pulled up behind three bikers (the non-motorized kind) who explained the situation to me: the pig was owned by ramshackle farmhouse #3, which also sold Dalmatian puppies for 500 Euros apiece.

For this enterprise, by the way, the inhabitants of ramshackle farmhouse #3 had one thing going for them: location, location, location. For down this dirt road whizzed past me sports cars, BMWs, and Mercedes. Their goal? Apparently several of the prime horse-riding schools in Madrid are on this particular lane. The lane was also populated by several free-range small yippee (as in “arf arf arf”) dogs – distant cousins of the free-range rottweilers whom I’d encounter while running in the countryside in Georgia in the 1990s. The Madrid kind is immensely less threatening.

I returned to soccer in plenty of time to see the end of the play (1:15) and to go hang out with Nathan and wait for the bus back to Madrid. He’d spent the entire time playing soccer as hard as he possibly could, so in fact stayed mellow for the entire 30 minutes we waited for the (correct!) bus to take us back home.

[H]OOOOLLLLL!

So in one of my last posts, I noted how Spain has turned Nathan into a slide-tackling, “GOOOOLLLL!!!!!” – yelling futbol player. This has been hard on his pants. Futbol is generally played on cement courts here in Madrid (my guess: it’s a desert, and thus it’s hard to keep grass alive, especially when little boys are trampling on it every day). So the sliding around on knees, which seems warranted whenever there’s a goal scored, whenever one needs to reverse the ball’s direction, and/or basically whenever one wants, has done a number on his pants. In fact, between starting this blog post and finishing it, another pair has bitten the dust. Here’s a graph explaining the situation:

Exhibit A: Pants in Nathan's closet

I guess at this point, I should just be glad that they haven’t progressed to stripping their shirts off when they score goals – then I’d be out there hunting for lost shirts.

Visitors!

So deep on Jon’s resume, you’ll find a stint at Choate, a boarding school in Connecticut. That’s where he developed his skills as a math teacher and a friendship with Kristin and Adam Harder. Fast forward twenty years, and we find ourselves somewhat improbably living in Arlington MA, with our kids attending the same elementary school. Then last year, we heard through the Brackett grapevine that there’s another family heading to Spain for the year – and it was the Harders.

They are living in Zaragosa, but came down to visit Madrid yesterday. The major outing was to Bernabeu stadium, where Real Madrid plays. Here’s pictures of the kids in the stadium:

Although the Starhill kids have watched maybe an hour total of Real Madrid soccer in their lives, they apparently already have favorite players. Nora’s is the fairly tame-sounding Cristiano Ronaldo; Nathan’s is the dismally named “Kaka.” Seth gleefully translated this one for me: “That means POOP!”

After the soccer tour, the Harders came back to our casa in order to hang out and let the kids play Pollies/soccer/rollerblade/skateboard. It was a treat to have them in town, especially because we got to talk expatriate lifestyle – the things that amaze us about Spain. In addition to all the pleasures (see other posts) we were able to compare notes on a few of the minuses:

-- Very few organized girls’ soccer teams. Nora’s school doesn’t have one, nor does the Harder’s daughter’s school in Zaragosa. We occasionally see girls playing on the city-owned fields here, but they are vastly outnumbered by boys’ teams.

-- Spanish bureaucracy. Our friends’ experience with the immigration office has been much worse than ours. The upshot: as Jon has commented before, there’s a sense here that procedures are highly variable according to which street-level bureaucrat (as political scientists call them) happens to get your number and call you to her window. The problem is, when you make a return trip (these things can never be done in one trip) and get a different street-level bureaucrat, or when your street-level bureaucrat passes your application up to the second-floor bureaucrat, there’s not a lot of tolerance for the original decision. This variability in interpretations may explain why the immigration website has so few actual instructions – they would undoubtedly conflict with some bureaucrat’s understanding of the procedure.

-- Processes generally. One of the interesting things about living in Spain (and perhaps this would be true anywhere) is that there’s unwritten rules about how you do business in various settings. In the grocery store, for instance, one must get one’s vegetables weighed BEFORE showing up at the check-out stand. Spanish credit cards have different PIN numbers for ATM withdrawals vs. online purchases. And so on. Both families are of the feeling that now that we’ve learned how to live here, we need to figure out a way to get back and put this knowledge to use.

-- Dinnertime. The Harders put our 9:30 dinner seating (which we thought was shockingly late) to shame with not one but two stories of dinners served at 11 PM. Wild and crazy.

More tiny money

Usually, when we’re tucking Seth in, he expresses his toddler OCD with the same repetitive night-time chant: “When I wake up I want tiny money, and more tiny money, and more tiny money, and more tiny money, and more tiny money, and more tiny money, and more tiny money, and more tiny money, and more tiny money, and breakfast.” Occasionally, he’ll also add on something else special to him, like "and my new toy from Thiego's party" or “canpakes.”

Last night, we had solid proof that he’s actively racing the 9-year-old to teen-dom. Here’s what came out:

“When I wake up I want tiny money, and more tiny money, and more tiny money, and more tiny money, and more tiny money, and more tiny money, and more tiny money, and more tiny money, and more tiny money. And a credit card.”

Cultural exchanges

So there’s no big news to report this week – kids in school, nobody sick, Mom (and even Dad) working, holiday letter completed for another year. Instead, we can report on a smaller series of exchanges we’ve had in Spain.

1) Jon needed shirts and ties for his upcoming trips, so we headed (sans children) to the mall last Friday. Our first impression is how little of the mall is actually geared toward anyone in our age group – or perhaps, how we’ve squarely grown out of the twenty-to-thirty-five age category (you’ll see this theme reappear below). After puttering around for awhile, we located the Spanish equivalent of Brooks Brothers and there, tending to the ship of enterprise, was the Spanish equivalent of the devastatingly handsome, 40-something, extremely knowledgeable male clothier. I guess this kind of salesperson transcends culture; I can only hope that the position pays well. Thirty minutes advice on texture/color matches later, we were on the road with three shirts and ties (for those of you into discrete mathematics, nine combinations!). We also managed to understand a little Spanish humor – explaining Jon’s loss of a shirt size, the salesman joked “In Spain the weather is better, the food is not.”

2) After complaining that other kids wouldn’t let him play soccer “because I’m not good enough,” Nathan has started bringing a soccer ball to school. While this apparently does not afford him choice over the type of game they’re playing (the second graders decide that) because it’s his ball, he can decide whom to include and exclude. Nathan’s also become very interested in slide-tackling the ball, even in the face of evidence that doing so allows even someone as slow as Mommie to steal the ball while he’s down. I assume the latter is cultural (even our three-year old tries to do this while yelling “GOAL!”); the soccer ball politics, I’m betting, is universal.

3) Jon and I went out to dinner Saturday night with our friends from Aranjuez. They took us to Javier Bardem’s family restaurant, which turned out to be a little like the Border Café in Cambridge (only with tapas rather than fajitas). We selected the first seating (again, being on the wrong side of 40), which even for us aged early birds was still at 9:30. Other restaurants in the area were almost completely empty at 9. I’d really love to see the anthropological analysis of why Spain’s daily clock is spread out over 18 hours, while the U.S. clock is spread out over only 14. The Spanish don’t seem to get up any later, as far as we can tell, and actually napping during siesta doesn’t seem terribly popular either. Perhaps some secret energy source?

In any case, still being on the wrong side of 40 after dinner, we went and found the quietest, most unpopulated coffee shop we could. This was no mean feat in this neighborhood (Chueca): the place had more people wandering around than Fenway after a game. Also, many bars put out folks to entice you to come in for a drink; we dodged those offers by saying “we’re old, and going home.”

4) More on the bread store: because my Spanish is a bit better, I can now somewhat understand the arguments the customers have with the proprietors. The most recent seemed caused by the same problem I have: there’s a wide variety of baguette-like bread whose names I can never remember. This is how it went:

Patron: I’d like to order some bread for Monday pickup.

Owner: OK. [Taking out pad of paper]. What would you like?

Patron: I’d like a [name of bread] with [name of ingredient] inside.

Owner, looking puzzled: What?

Patron: I’d like a [name of bread] with [ingredient] inside. Like over there [points].

Owner: That bread over there doesn’t have any [ingredient]!

Patron, becoming heated: Then give me the one that does have the [ingredient].

Owner: Listen to me [Escuchame!]. We don’t have any bread with [ingredient]. It doesn’t exist.

Patron: Yes it does. It’s [describes bread].

Owner: Oh, you mean the [name of bread.] OK.

Next up: Parenting three kids without Jon (or Sara Warren). Trying to decide what the most difficult part of the days will be:

a) We walk in the door from school at 5:05. Three kids all desperately have to use the potty.

b) We walk in the door from school at 5:05. Three kids are all starving (despite eating a school-supplied snack at 4:30) and a meal must be prepared in 30 seconds.

c) We walk in the door from school at 5:05. Three kids have to all show Mommie what they made at school at exactly the same time.

d) We walk in the door from school at 5:05. Two kids must be cajoled into doing their homework, one must be prevented from toppling the bookcase.

e) All of the above.

Singing Seth

This is audio of Seth explaining what happens with bread at his school (they hold it up and sing...). Then he sings the Agua Dog song. For the record, the lyrics are (according to my cousin Mary): ¡a guardar, a guardar, cada cosa en su lugar!  In English, clean up, clean up, everything in its place....

Objects in the backpack

1. Seth brought home a loaner hat from school today that reads "THE AMAZING SPIDER MAN." Here's the conversation that transpired:

Seth: This my hat!! (Broad smile)
Mommie: I don't think that's your hat Seth. Your teachers lent you that hat because you were cold.
Seth: No, it my hat. See, S (touches the S from SPIDER), E (touches the E from THE), T (touches the T in THE) and H (touches the H in the). It my hat. (Beaming)
Mommie: Oh. I see. The S, E, T and H have to be in the right order. SETH. It's not yours.
Seth: (Perplexed expression). Why not?

2. In Nathan's backpack, for some reason, there was a blue alien-looking stuffed animal.

Mommie: Que es esto?
Nathan: It's pupi.
Mommie: Porque esta in nuestra casa?
Nathan: Because I have to do stuff with it.
[Nora and Seth, screaming in background]: Show me! Show me! Show me!
Mommie: Puedes mostrar a sus hijos?
Nathan: No.

2011 (and 2010!) Starhill holiday letters are here!

At long last, our holiday letter for 2011 is now ready for reading! And as a special bonus, the previously unreleased and long-feared-lost holiday letter for 2010 is also available.

Click here to go to download site for our holiday letters

Happy holidays and happy new year to all!

Lisbon

We just got back from three nights in Lisbon. Excellent apartment (water views), food (both restaurant Daddy and lunches out) and things for kids to do. Here's a conversation with Seth and Nathan about the highlights.

M: What’s new?

Seth: We love fish. We went to the quarium in Lisbon.

M: What kinds of fish were there?

Seth: Yellow fish, blue fish, and white fish

M: You know what my favorite fish was?

S: What?

M: The fish that looked like a manhole cover with and eye and fins. See http://www.earthwindow.com/images/F3601L.jpg. Or maybe it was the seaweed we stared at until Nora realized that it wasn’t seaweed, it was a leafy sea dragon (google if interested). Or maybe it was the sandfish with lots of spines, bones, and the ability to look like the bottom of a tidal pool. I think that’s what the Spanish feed you for lunch.

M: Nathan, what was your favorite part of the aquarium?

N: (Sings “Aquarium! Aquarium!” to the tune of Acquarius.) The ray. The ray with two eyes kind of like sticking out from the body. See http://elasmodiver.com/Atlantic_Devilray.htm

M: What else should I ask you about Lisbon?

N: I know! Did you write about the trams?

M: What about the trams? Tell me.

N: mmmmm….the 28 Tram. It goes to the castle … mmmm

M.: …. and downtown and to our house. What was your other favorite part?
N: The boat. Cuz it goes places!

New Year

Bless me Adonai, for I have sinned: it has been at least six weeks since my last blog entry. In lieu of saying sixteen hail marys, I will try to provide a detailed update with all of our goings-on in the past few weeks.

First, the obligatory big news:

- I (Heather) was promoted to full professor at Harvard’s GSE last month. The promotion to full is when Harvard decides they want to keep you around (tenure), so it’s gratifying to know that I have a job for life.

- Then grant proposal season took over. Thus the radio silence.

- Finally, at the end of December, we spent two solid weeks in the US, visiting work, friends, grandparents and restocking our supplies of toddler toothpaste (oddly unavailable in Europe). We also did an eating tour of our favorite Boston-area restaurants, including a date night at Oleana for which, mercifully, Jon’s parents babysat.

Then the more random impressions and events:

- Our biggest impression upon getting into the US was what a HUGE deal Christmas is there as compared to Madrid. In Madrid, they put up fairly secular-looking lights, modest store decorations, and lots of crèche scenes. In the U.S., we were literally not off the plane before we were advised several times to have a Merry Christmas. And this was December 19^th – I’m willing to cut slack for Christmas Eve, but December 19^th? After that, it was nearly impossible to escape the parade of Christmas songs, decorations, and whatnot. The Woburn green took the prize, with a giant plastic crèche scene, a dozen Christmas trees, Santa/sled/reindeer, and a sad little menorah off to the side.

- In a similar vein, there is nothing more demoralizing than hearing your carefully raised Jewish children picking out Christmas songs on the piano by ear. Nora didn’t even know that there was a Christmas until she hit age 4, thanks to a Jewish preschool, Jewish friends, and strategic mall avoidance. Plus we explained that the red-suited man ringing the bell in front of Sam’s Club was the “tzedakah man.” So to hear her picking out Rudolph (or some equivalent) was a little jarring.

- Another impression upon coming home to the US: the awful weather. Everyone kept telling us how wonderful the Boston weather is this year – it was in the 40s or even near 50 some of the days – but as compared to Madrid, it was pitiful. We spent the last hour of our trip playing outside in a 40-degree drizzle, which made me pretty happy to be making the return trip to Madrid, jetlag and all.

- Both Nathan and Nora got to visit their “regular” school, Brackett, on our first day home. Both also saw most of their very good friends on playdates; Seth only scored one playdate, with a friend the same age (but about 10x more socially skilled). But James has trucks, so Seth was happy.

- After arriving back in Madrid and partially overcoming jetlag, we decamped again for Lisbon while waiting for the kids to return to school (1/9). In fact, I’m currently on the roof deck of our rented apartment here, looking out over the port of Lisbon in the late afternoon sunshine. It’s almost 60 with a clear sky, kind of like visiting Florida in the winter (but much, much more architecturally beautiful and culturally interesting).

- We tend not to think about Portugal much, even living in Madrid. But being here, you realize the many influences of Portugal over our everyday lives. For instance, some of the best bread I had growing up was bread from a Portuguese bakery on Cape Cod. Port is from Portugal. Of the thousand ways to serve Cod, 999 were invented in Portugal (I believe fried codballs are native to New England).

- This leads me to Heather’s rule regarding Europe: the further south the better. My favorite places so far have been in the Mediterranean or similar (Cyprus, Valencia, Lisbon). From past trips, I can say that Rome is fine, but the farther north one gets the less I am enamored (sorry Ireland!). Lisbon is really our speed – old, a little funky, small-ish. The only downside is that we speak no Portuguese.

- Speaking of Ireland, Jon is about to embark on a multi-country tour, including Ireland, Moscow, northern Spain, the Netherlands, Virginia, the UK and probably Cyprus. Heather is looking forward to staying home for 8 consecutive weeks (even with Jon gone for chunks of them) and catching up on work and running.

Kid updates:

Seth’s one of those kids who, after they make the transition to the big boy bed, still don’t realize that they can get out of bed by themselves. Every morning, we were either awakened by Seth calling “Mommie” or Nathan arriving to let us know that Seth needed to go potty. This lasted for about four months, easing the transition to Spain and the new bed situation. Of course, we knew that this had to come to an end – and the end was Monday morning, when Seth appeared in our room, announcing “I get out of bed by myself!” We had to congratulate him because he was so obviously proud of his big accomplishment, but inside we groaned, knowing that this will inevitably lead to a screaming toddler and one of us holding his door closed until he gets back in bed.

For the record, despite Seth and Nora’s similarities, at the same age Nora lasted about 5 minutes in her new big girl bed before getting out, coming downstairs and announcing “I already have a long nap!” This is what led us to discover the holding-the-door-closed-until-toddler-complies technique mentioned above. Maybe Nora will do the honors this time.

Nora has, like her Aunt Alida, taken up beading. Not beading like buy a Melissa and Doug plastic beading kit, beading as in go to Michael’s, drop $40 on real stones, and then spend a couple hours wrestling with pliers. She seems to actually have some artistic talent (from where we don’t know) and so we’re happy to encourage this, her first real adult hobby.

Nathan seems to have crossed some threshold from adorable preschooler to middle childhood – he’s 6.5 years old, and has suddenly gotten taller and mature-looking. Mischief now isn’t like adorable little-kid mischief, it’s more like the usual tricks schoolboys play on their parents along with a lot of really bad jokes. And he’s started thinking about his future, recently announcing at dinner that he wants to be “a pizza man, a breakdancer, or an artist” when he grows up. On the latter front, he’s taken up abstract art (which requires no detailed representational skills, he’s learned) and enjoys creating puzzles within his pictures. Nathan’s artistic skills derive directly from Mommie, who can’t draw anything to save her life (not even, to Seth’s annoyance, a backhoe).

OK, now that I’ve done penance on the blog I’m off to the holiday letter, which is a year and 15 days overdue. For those of you who are looking forward to it, we’ll be including 2011 and, as a bonus, 2010 in the same letter.

Happy New Year to everyone!