The wrist was first (aggressive inline skating). The knee came after coming off a scooter he wasn’t supposed to be on.
Category: Children
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Movie Insufficient for Gaynor
Even though we’ve lived and travelled across different parts of the globe now we still pine for the fjords of Australia.[1] Though it has only been just over four years, sometimes it feels like a different life. A couple of months ago we went along with my visiting brother Martin — who has been out of Australia much longer than us — and his wife to see Australia. We quite liked the film; fabulous cinematography, great story and what’s not to like about Hugh Jackman? But it also didn’t help Gaynor’s missing-Australia itch, which she’s had for a while now.
So when some relatively cheap tickets to Australia became available we had to make a decision. And the decision was that all children who had lived more than half their lives outside Australia were eligible for a return visit. Conveniently, this meant that the youngest (and therefore, cheapest) two would be heading back and Gaynor, obviously, would need to accompany a still-breast-fed Micah. So it was a win all round — except for the older children, whom we considered already fortunate having lived more than half their lives in Australia. The next part of the conversation at the family meeting went something like this,
“Well, we would all very much like to go back to Australia but unfortunately that’s not financially possible at this stage. So those children who are staying here, not only won’t be able to go to Australia, but you’ll also need to do extra work, picking up those jobs that your mother would normally do — cooking, a lot of the cleaning, most of the washing etc. We realise that this is a tough ask, so what we’d like to do is shamelessly bribe you.”
To this they all agreed and eventually — after much negotiation, as is the norm in our house — they decided on a new computer, primarily for the children. And so, yesterday we picked up a new Mac mini. This bribe also has the added benefit of getting the children out of my study.
Thus Gaynor is now set to fly back into Australia on the 4th of May and will be there for the entire remainder of the month. She’ll spend most of that time in Brisbane with a week in Canberra. So while she may not be able to catch up with Hugh Jackman or Nicole Kidman, she will be spending a reasonable amount of time with family and close friends. And I believe that’ll be sufficient for the time being.
[1] Though we do prefer kipping on our backs.
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Easter 2009
While Good Friday is currently sacrosanct as a holiday in Australia and Germany — indeed in many other countries that we’ve never experienced it in — that’s not the case in the U.S. At least, not in California. I’m told some other states do have it as a holiday but, well we don’t live there. So as such, Elijah, Mara, Ariana and Bryna all had school that day, while Joshua is currently on spring break. Well, not so much of a break as an exaggerated bend — it’s merely a week off. Unlike many other general populace workers though, it was a company holiday for me. Not sure why exactly but it’s good just the same. 🙂
So we had to be on our toes in order to continue one of our Easter traditions — freshly baked hot cross buns on Good Friday. When I say ‘we’ I really mean ‘Gaynor’. She was up early and had the buns baked in time for us to enjoy a good couple before dropping Ariana and Mara at school. Usually they catch the bus but driving them myself gave us just that bit of extra time.
The Devourees – the hot cross buns all prepared to fulfill their Easterly duties. 
The Devourers – the family gathers for our Good Friday tradition. Of course, the traditional condiment to accompany these delectable delights is nothing less than slatherings of butter. There are some things we are glad we have taken the time to carry on. 🙂
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A Recent Vote
We’ve always done our best to include the children in family decisions. We believe it is good for them and good for the parents. Matters such as, where we’ll go for holidays, where we’ll eat and what we’ll be watching. When there is no real common consensus, we’ll usually take a vote. However that sometimes doesn’t work out with the overall desires of the parents. A recent vote while travelling in the van helped the children keep some perspective. Fenton: “OK let’s vote. Hands up who thinks this is a democracy?”
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No longer a toothless wonder
To ring in the new year, Micah produced his first tooth — his lower front left — on the first day of the year and its companion showed up today. Those months of dribble are starting to pay off. He’s only been bested in the Fastest to Teeth Stakes by Joshua who clocked in at 3.5 months (same as his father, according to those in the know). So happy new year and many new teeth to all!
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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. -
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. 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. 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. -
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. H
2 O, 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.
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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. -
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.
