Life + Times of Fenton et al.

Author: Fenton

  • One Year Here Again

    Well it’s that time again — that’s right, the one year anniversary[1] of shifting to another new country. The transition this time has been easier in many ways but it’s never as plain sailing as one would wish for. Of course there is the fact that you are in a new culture — and despite the US culture being generally well known abroad — one must learn a new education system, a new health care system (our experience so far in the US means gives us a liberal interpretation of that last word), make new friends and mostly figure out how things work and where things are. In short, to settle in.

    We used the anniversary for a couple of things. Firstly, we celebrated with lunch at BJ’s Restaurant followed by a swim in the afternoon at San Onofre beach. BJ’s is quickly becoming one of our favourite places. The food is really quite good, the pricing is pretty reasonable and the home-brewed root beer is sublime.

    Secondly, we asked the children some of the things they currently like and dislike about where we’ve been for the past year. We gave each of the children a chance to voice their opinions — except for Micah, who remained generally self-obsessed.

    • Joshua: Dislikes the politics, the average American IQ. Likes that there are plenty of church kids around.
    • Elijah: Dislikes the chocolate and no rugby. Likes the obsession with other sports and the climate.
    • Mara: Dislikes the chocolate and that the ballet schools have too many people in each class. Likes that school starts later (8:55 instead of the German 7:40) and that everyone likes her accent.
    • Ariana: Dislikes the patriotic hype — ‘the greatest country on Earth’ is mentioned every morning along with the Pledge of Allegiance — and missing some of the German bakery treats. Likes the warm climate and the doughnuts.
    • Bryna: Dislikes walking home from the bus stop (bit too hot some days). Likes kindergarten, doughnuts and the trampoline.
    • Gaynor: Dislikes the chocolate, health care and the sugar content in many foods. Likes the proximity of church, the climate and the cost of clothes.

    For myself, there are number of irks about where we are at, some due to being new and others because of the culture and all that entails. I’ll probably blog about some of these in the coming months, if nothing else than to get them out of my system a little. On the other hand, there are many great things to enjoy about living here. The general attitude is much more similar to what I am used to in Australia, the weather is a definite bonus (again, much more like Australia) and the availability of many things is a decided boon.

    At this stage it is unclear how long we’ll be here. Though we will probably stay until at least late 2010, beyond that there are no plans to stay and no plans to leave. We’ll continue to make periodic assessments and just see how it goes.

    [1] The anniversary was actually end of August but it has taken me this long to get the post finished.

  • More on Micah

    Micah is growing fast. In fact he is probably our largest baby at this stage. He’s a good feeder, pretty decent sleep and is already wearing clothes for 3-6 month-olds at his 2 month mark. He’s quite strong, doing a good job of supporting himself with his legs, and is also very smiley. He’s been grinning back at faces (and sometimes miscellaneous objects) for about 3 weeks now. He’s also responding to some kinds of tickling.



    Friends and family gathered for Micah’s naming and blessing.


    Though nigh on 8 weeks old, Micah has already been smiling for a significant portion of his life, as captured in this photo by Ari.


    Micah looks down on the lesser people.


    Micah considers his future with this thoughtful pose.

  • Baseball with the Angels

    Recently a good friend invited Joshua, Elijah and I to join him at an Anaheim Angels baseball game. Now baseball isn’t something I grew up playing with softball being the generally preferred option that is closest. In the past, I’ve tried to watch the US-based ‘World’ Series at least twice and found the games like watching paint dry. And considering I don’t mind sitting down to watch cricket, saying baseball is boring appears to be an obvious contradiction.

    However, I was prepared to give it another go and certainly in a live context. In general, I usually enjoy even mediocre live entertainment as much or more than very good or great ‘canned’ stuff. And baseball on television definitely comes across to me as canned. So we headed to Angel Stadium on a week night to take in the game against the Tampa Bay Rays. Both the boys prefer the Angels to the other team in LA, as evidenced by their ability to procure hats as needed. And so, true to my expectations, the game, atmosphere and traditions were a lot of fun and very enjoyable. We stumbled through the never-known words to “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” during an innings change-over and bantered with an ice-cream salesman who was plying his trade throughout the stands. I even predicted the home run by Vlad Guerrero in the fifth innings!

    Fenton and the boys at a baseball game.

    The boys and I at the game. Note the dopey looks on the faces of the confused Australians. What, no wickets??

  • Announcing the Sixth

    After almost 8 months of expectation we are very pleased to announce the arrival of our sixth child, Micah Frederick. After a couple of weak false starts, Gaynor went into labour proper Wednesday 16th of July around noon. True to predictability, Gaynor’s parents — who are visiting for a while to help out with the birth — had left that morning for a few days in Las Vegas and were recalled for active duty after a pleasant lunch in Barstow. Gaynor had called me at work first, suggesting it was time for me to come home and also contacted her midwife. By mid to late afternoon Gaynor’s attendants were pretty much assembled.

    The birthing team had everything prepared

    The birthing team had everything prepared.

    Since it was a home birth we’d previously discussed with the children who would like to be there and who would rather not. Joshua and Mara had chosen to stay and both were very helpful during the labour and delivery. Gaynor’s father had volunteered to look after the other children, including Elijah’s friend visiting from Germany and took them off to a movie. By the end of the movie the boy had not yet shown up and so we arranged for Elijah and his friend to stay overnight with some friends of the family. Ariana and Bryna came home for a quick bite and then off to bed. They were both very excited to think that their new brother would be there by morning.

    There was a bit of a wait while the labour progressed but by late evening it was down to business. He was born at 10:02pm but took a few minutes before expressing his displeasure at the world.

    Gaynor cuddles her newborn.

    Gaynor cuddles her newborn.

    Overall the water birth at home worked marvellously well. The midwives were wonderful, the attendees performed well and, above all, Gaynor did great. She got through it with lots of ice crunching, ginger beer and hand squeezing. Both her and Micah are doing very well. After his first feed, he weighed in at 3.876kg (8 pound, 8 and a half ounces) and measured 53cm.

    He’s currently being loved to death by all his siblings, friends of siblings, grandparents and parents.

    Margaret admires the tired little fella.

    Margaret admires the tired little fella.

  • Language Update

    Of course, one of the challenges of moving countries is the language barrier. The shift to Germany meant an obvious difficulty but the move to California has brought its own subtle problems. In Germany the challenge was to learn a whole new language, in California it’s retention. Retention of both our Australian dialect and our German. The former is not such a large hill but the latter takes a lot more effort.

    The retention of our Australian was mostly put on hold while we were in Germany, in favour of them spending more time leanring and speaking German. Besides, there wasn’t much competition between the two, being so different. Living in a culture with a different dialect, on the other hand, is much more subtle. Most of the ‘replacement words’ — ‘vacation’ for ‘holiday’, ‘parking lot’ for ‘car park’ — are generally already known and very easy to understand even if they’ve never been heard before. Remembering to use them in context when speaking to an American is a bit harder. Americans are less likely to have heard the other version than we are to have heard theirs.

    A couple of our children are picking up a few accented words. Bryna has a few and Elijah tends to adapt his accent to his audience. It’s most obvious talking with him immediately after picking him following time with his friends. At first, we’d remind him but I’m pretty sure he’s not doing it consciously, so now I just let it go.

    Watching Australian television shows wasn’t something we could do in Germany — everything is overdubbed there — but the children have a few they watch religiously here. H2O, The Saddle Club and even Bindi the Jungle Girl all get a regular airing. In addition, we take our sports education very seriously and enjoy many rugby games, Brisbane Broncos, Queensland Reds as well as internationals.

    And so to German. To be honest, my German has never been that great. I figured out enough to hold a grammatically poor conversation for about 20 minutes. I can read a bit and know plenty of less used words that the rest of the family didn’t need to know, like Rechtschutzversicherung (legal insurance) and Ölwannedichtung (oil sump gasket). Gaynor and the children on the other hand did wonderfully. Gaynor could teach a 45 minute lesson at church and each child was passing German as a subject at their school. In the case of Joshua, Elijah and Mara that was at the academic high school. Ariana spoke fluently and without an accent with all her friends and Bryna really only spoke German.

    Gaynor and I have spoken a number of times about steps we’d take to help the children retain their fluency in German. Unfortunately for Bryna her only chance was for us to mostly speak German at home and that is something very hard to do when it’s your non-native tongue. Bryna now only remembers a few German words and phrases and almost always speaks in English. Her transition was complete within the first six months of our arrival. The retention improves with the older children and Joshua, Elijah and Mara seem to recall virtually all of theirs with Ariana somewhere in between.

    However, we are of the firm opinion that without constant practice and opportunities to use it they’d lose it. So to that end, we’ve tried to bring as many German books and DVDs with us as possible and we’ve recently had an influx of books and DVDs when one of Elijah’s old school mates came to visit for a few weeks. We also have an incentive scheme for them to read and report on German books, we subscribe to a monthly church-related magazine in German, a friend in Germany sends us copies of one of the children’s favourite television programs Die Pfefferkörner (English description) and every Wednesday is supposed to be ‘Deutschsprechtag’ — ‘German speaking day’. I say ‘supposed to be’ because not everyone remembers for all of the day but we are mostly making an effort! Hopefully these opportunities and ideas will be enough to help them retain the lion’s share of their ability.

    And finally, speaking of languages, we’ve set the children the challenge of being fluent in three languages by their eighteenth birthday. Some have picked French and others Spanish but we’ll see how they go. By the way, we’ve been pleased to see that southern California, at least, is very bilingual. Of course there are many people who are native or fluent Spanish speakers but there are also many stores that have signs in both languages. Perhaps ‘American’ as a synonym for ‘monolingual’ is on the way out — much to the chagrin of some US citizens I’m sure.

  • More Room to Read

    Well not actually more room to read as more more room to place some of our reading material. One of the things about moving internationally with very little is obviously fitting/filling out the new place. Gaynor has had pretty much free reign in this regard, though probably a bit slower than she would have liked. After our initial spending spree — Gaynor spent a day at IKEA buying the initial essentials like beds, cookware etc. — we’ve been slowly acquiring furniture and other bits and pieces.

    The most recent piece is for the things we have the most of: books. By volume, they make up about a third of all that we shipped. Though we had picked up a couple of bookcases here and there, all for free, we needed one or two large, main ones. So in a desperate attempt to save money and get what we wanted, it was agreed that I would make them.

    Fortunately, a friend and work colleague has a very well equipped woodshop and offered not just it but his expertise as well. The final results can be seen in the accompanying photographs with the final dimensions being 243 x 100 x 32cm, 8 x 3 1/3 x 1 1/12 foot, in the old (and current American) parlance. I’m quite pleased with the way they have turned out and Gaynor is quite pleased to be able to finally start unpacking the last (quite a) few boxes.


    Main bookcases
    Main bookcases already with a few things on them.

    Bookcase detail
    Bookcase detail.

    Edit: For those who’d like to know, the case is maple — main pieces are 3/4″ plywood and the trim is solid wood — with a red mahogany stain finished in one coat lacquer, followed by two more coats of semi-gloss acrylic.

  • Ari and Fenton’s Theme Park Trip


    One thing southern California doesn’t have in short supply is theme parks. Apart the the big and well known ones — Disneyland and Knott’s Berry Farm among them — there are plenty of smaller ones scattered about the place and all seem pretty popular. Recently, Ariana earned herself a free pass, from a Jump Rope for Heart fundraiser, for Castle Park. She gave me plenty of warning (nagging) that the day was coming up and that I was expected to attend with her. So Memorial Day weekend just her and I headed off for an afternoon of thrill rides and follow-on headaches. Ari pretty much picked the rides she wanted to go on and we had a great time, just the two of us. Gaynor and I try hard to make sure the children get individual attention, making time (even scheduling it) so that they don’t get lost in the crush.

    What is less fun however is removing a china egg cup after it has done the rounds with an in-sink garbage disposal unit. A child, who shall remain nameless, forgot to check the contents of the washing-up sink before draining and then later in the evening the same child threw the switch for the disposal unit instead of the light. Nasty crunching sound and a jammed disposal unit later found myself and some children with slender hands coaxing the remains of the egg cup back to the surface.

    Remains of the Egg Cup and some of its friends that helped bring it back from the brink, err sink.

  • Week 19, 2008

    Sorry, no catchy title for this post — it is simply an update on recent goings on. Remember, you can always check out our published calendar of activities with the “comings and Goings” link on the left hand side of this (and every) page.

    Firstly, Gaynor is hanging in there with the pregnancy. She has a little over two months to go and says that is tired and has had enough but the pregnancy is going well. No complications or health concerns and we sometimes wonder why we even bother with ante-natal care. (Yes we do know, so no need to email and remind us). He is kicking well — vigourously and frequently — and is already head down.

    Mara was a a busy girl this week. She participated in two acts — one a solo ballet dance and the other singing and dancing with two friends — in her school talent show. She also spent last Saturday morning at the school district track meet where she ran in the 50 yard shuttle relay with her school placing second.

    The boys have been busy preparing for a very large dance festival which will involve youth from the church from all over southern California. It’s such a major event they only hold one every 20 years or so. More on that in July when it’s finished.

    Gaynor and the girls attended an open house at Mara and Ariana’s school this past week. The girls were very proud to show off their neat work. Bryna was excited to visit the kindergarten classroom where she will be attending in the new school year, after the summer.

    Finally, since Gaynor’s interior design plans have outstripped our budget (actually they were never within) I have begun construction of a number of furniture pieces. First on the agenda is a pair of large bookcases — our books are the last thing really waiting to be unpacked — and a pair of low modular-type shelving. These will be followed, though the time frame isn’t yet fixed, by bedside tables, another coffee table and bar stools. A work colleague with an extensive woodshop has kindly offered it and some advice for my use. So, more on them when I’ve got something to show.

  • More Room to Travel

    Since we are expecting a new family member our current conveyance — a Honda Odyssey — will not be sufficient to fit us all in. So rather than try and find an 8 seater vehicle (seemingly somewhat rare) we thought we’d go the whole hog and have bought an older 10-seater, and as the Americans say, “full-size” van. And when an American says “full size” you know they mean it. The idea was that though we all fit into an 8 seater, there would then be no room for a friend or grandparent or two. And a 10 was just as easy to find as an 8.

    This van probably won’t get used that much, even though it is the “economical” model at 17mpg (13.8l/100km) — probably just when we need to go somewhere as a family. There are a number of things to fix on it but it’s currently driveable and I do have a few months to get them done before we really need it. Elijah has already given his numerous (and expensive) ideas on how we can best pimp it out.

    Elijah and Bryna are modelling our recently acquired 10-seater van -- vehicular expansion for the incoming child.

    Elijah and Bryna modelling our recently acquired 10-seater van — vehicular expansion for the incoming child.

  • Expecting the Sixth

    We are pleased to announce the expected arrival in mid-July of our sixth child. We are all quite excited, the children especially. Bryna, in particular, is thrilled to become a ‘big sister’ Gaynor traditionally has relatively easy pregnancies and this one is about as well as could be expected for the sixth.

    It has been an introduction faster than we would have liked to the US medical system. Gaynor spent some time researching the procedures and attitudes of local hospitals and, unfortunately, found them not in-line with her own. Mostly, they take an ‘I am in charge and you are merely the patient’ approach, including insisting on monitors, drips and bed confinement. In addition, the two local hospitals only have a limited number of beds where they allow ‘rooming in’, where the baby stays with the mother. Hospitals further afield are more, in our view at least, enlightened but given the unpredictability of arrival time we’d rather not be attempting to get to one an hour away (and longer if the traffic is heavy). She’s therefore engaged a local mid-wife, a profession seemingly not as widespread here in the US as in Australia or Europe. She’ll be doing most of Gaynor’s antenatal care as well as being there for the actual delivery, which we plan to be a home birth.

    Given the results of a recent ultrasound examination, we have a much greater suspicion of the gender of this one than with any of the others — the first definitive sign being at their birth. It’s always been a deliberate choice on our part — what can I say? We like to have some surprises in our life — but this time Gaynor peeked and he wasn’t being, shall we say, discreet.