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!